We have a great city here. Tons of parks, beautiful downtown, all kinds of human services with DSHS and WorkSource, Valley Cities and Sound Mental Health offices in north Auburn, and lots of Section 8 housing.

We even have free and reduced rate medical/dental clinics. But what we don’t have are shelters for the homeless, whether families or single folks. And if you think we don’t have homeless here in Auburn, you would be wrong.

We should not expect that all the shelters be in Seattle. We should be providing something for folks for the short term and possibly the long term. Many of these homeless folks live out of their cars, vans, or RVs. You can see them around sometimes, behind Lowe’s, in the Park & Ride, up at the rest stop on I-5, near Highway 18.

Why can’t Auburn provide a safe place for these folks to park their rigs, tents or whatever, that may have Sani-cans or showers and maybe even electricity and water? This way, folks in their RVs can use their refrigerators and bathrooms/showers, so when they go to the food bank they can keep the perishable goods a little longer.

Yes, this would cost Auburn money that is probably not in our tax base now. But how can we justify all the money used for beautifying Auburn, maintaining all the parks, etc., when we are not willing to fund a place for all the homeless to go?

Every city in King County should be doing its fair share, instead of expecting Seattle to take care of all the needs.

– Paula Eronson