KUOW News
Summary: Stories and features from KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio.
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With Seattle adding tens of millions of dollars to fight homelessness, people around the city want to know: Is that money being spent effectively? Valerie Nagle is one of them. She lives in her van.
Around Seattle, you might think more workers are getting hurt given that construction is booming.
For years, Tukwila’s stretch of highway 99 was known for its crime: drug sales, prostitution, burglaries and violence. Then one morning in 2013, hundreds of police officers raided the old motels where most of those crimes were happening. Mohammed Jama ran a small shop next to the motels. He’s part of the large Somali and refugee community centered around the Abu Bakr mosque in Tukwila. He told us the raid changed his life.
Everything had to work perfectly.
Breaking up is hard — especially if you're a city trying to break up with a bank. Especially if the other banks aren't all that interested in dating you.
The head tax is happening — but the weakened version passed by the Seattle City Council today won't address the scale of the housing crisis, some council members say.
It started with street trees. Tukwila wanted to plant some along state Route 99 to slow down traffic and beautify the area. But the state said no. Trees, it turned out, were not safe, at least not as safe as lamp posts.
News stories can be disturbing sometimes, but KUOW has a way to help process these stories. We call it #NewsPoet — and it involves a Pacific Northwest poet writing an original piece inspired by one of our stories. Today we revisit the story about the last man to be put to death by Washington state.
Is Seattle the sort of place where, if you can’t afford it, there’s no room for you?
Tukwila, a small city of about 20,000 people, punches above its weight. That's partly because it's willing to throw elbows around, seizing property by any legal means necessary in order to turn an aging remnant of highway 99 into the dense, walkable neighborhood many officials want. The technique is effective, but it can leave bruises.
Kim Malcolm talks with news analyst Joni Balter about why the head tax proposed by the Seattle City Council puts Mayor Jenny Durkan in a politically tricky position. Balter is a contributor to Bloomberg Opinion and host of Civic Cocktail on the Seattle Channel.
The complex and ever-changing time signatures of Sama Dams' new song “Pockets” almost feels more appropriate for a jazz trio. “But it’s still pop [music] and they never forget that,” says Jerad Walker, music director of OPB Music.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has proposed a compromise tax on large businesses that would pay to ease the city’s affordable housing shortage and homelessness crisis.
Seattle residents are fighting over homelessness and what to do about it. When we asked Ballard resident Sara Bates why she believes the issue has divided the community so much, she responded with this story and a question of her own for her neighbors.
