From FOX News:
Amazon halts planning for Seattle office tower as city mulls new tax
Amazon has halted planning on a new 17-story office tower in downtown Seattle as the city council mulls the implementation of a new tax that would raise funds to address local homelessness, the company confirmed on Wednesday.
Backed by at least four members of the nine-member Seattle City Council, the proposed tax would charge 26 cents per employee hour for Seattle-based companies with $20 million or more in annual sales, the Seattle Times reported. Proponents say the “head tax” would raise $75 million in 2019 that would be used to build low-income housing and outreach efforts for the city’s homeless.
“I can confirm that pending the outcome of the head tax vote by City Council, Amazon has paused all construction planning on our Block 18 project in downtown Seattle and is evaluating options to sub-lease all space in our recently leased Rainer Square building,” said Drew Herdener, an Amazon vice president and spokesman.
I have been spending a lot of time in Seattle recently and the homeless problem is massive. Tents everywhere. Seattle wanted to help these people and the outcome of this is that they have become a beacon for all of the mentally ill and indegent people in the entire nation.
The City Council's attempts at curing this problem are band-aids and sound bites and virtue signalling. They are not addressing the root causes - we need to bring back the institutionalization of mentally ill people. We used to do this until President Kennedy signed the 1963 Community Mental Health Act and it forced the inmates out of the institutions - because of their civil liberties. More on this here, here, here, here and here.
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