Opinion: Critics Say DESC Promises Support. Neighborhoods See Something Different

Critic argues DESC housing projects - like Bloomside in Burien - bring neighborhood disruption and unmet promises, citing experiences near several Seattle properties.

[Editor’s Note: The following opinion piece is reprinted from a Facebook post by The Burien Voice February 28, 2026. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Highline Journal.]

Problem People / Problem Non-Profits

This was the scene in front of a DESC building in Beacon Hill this morning.

DESC (the Downtown Emergency Service Center) was founded in 1979. It started small, but over the next forty-seven years, it grew into a whale that rakes in tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money and operates some two-dozen large apartment complexes around Seattle housing thousands of people. It now owns or controls hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of property in Seattle, and it's all tax free.

DESC was initially created to address the issue of chronic homelessness by giving people a cheap or free place to stay and providing them with wraparound services to help them deal with their behavioral issues and lack of life skills. And in fact, that's what the organization still promises to do when it's out soft-soaping and guilt-tripping local residents and businesses into letting them open another building in the neighborhood. But that's not how things actually turn out.

I've been watching these operators for more than ten years now, and I've seen the pattern repeat over and over: They'll come into your neighborhood promising to house homeless people and keep them from creating problems. But the promised wraparound support never materializes, and of course the problem people DESC warehouses don't change their ways simply because they're now living rent-free in doors, so it's never long before they start spilling out of their apartments and into the neighborhood. Or drawing in other problem people from outside, who show up at a DESC building because they've heard that's where the drugs are, or that's where the free shit is.

Neighbors can squawk all they want about broken promises, but by that time, once the DESC building is already in, what leverage do they have with DESC?

Answer: None.

--Sadly, despite our many warnings, Burien had to learn its DESC lesson the hard way. Instead of taking DESC at their word about how they'd run their Bloomside operation, people (and especially councilmembers) should have gone out to visit DESC's other buildings around town. But no. They were too afraid of being called "anti-homeless" for questioning DESC's sales pitch. So they closed their eyes and swallowed.