Harrell Caught Lying Through his Teeth About Shelter Pledge

Bruce Harrell had another one of his meltdowns this week, trying desperately to spin an unbelievable narrative in order to cover up one of his failed promises. It didn’t go well.

Shelter Promises and Cover Ups

It is extremely well documented that Bruce Harrell promised to build 2000 new units of shelter in his first year in office.

Axios reports that they caught Bruce and his team lying about their progress, and then lying to cover their lies.

First, team Harrell put up a dashboard that directly misled the public about how much shelter has been built. 

After questioning by Axios, Harrell and his team reduced their count by 25 units. They also counted about 200 replacement units that were not actually added. And they counted 500 units that were already in progress before Harrell took office.

But, “Harrell's office denies inflating any figures.”

So Seattle is an “alternative facts” land now?

To be clear, the Axios characterization is generous, because we have actually lost shelter beds since Harrell took office. They aren’t even talking about net gain or loss to the region, which would be much more embarrassing for Harrell!

Still, Harrell decided to lie even more brazenly—-openly gaslighting reporters and the public.

“Harrell's campaign team now argues that his 2021 pledge was merely to ‘identify’ 2,000 units in a year — although media outlets including The Seattle Times, PubliCola and KUOW reported it at the time as a plan to add or create new units.”

How is this even a serious person? Can you imagine thinking you can convince the public that you ran a campaign focused on the homelessness emergency with your big pitch being that you were going to identify housing to be built? 

Harrell decided he could get away with this, because the main video evidence that folks (myself included) had linked to in the past on Facebook was recently taken down. (Gee, I wonder how that happened?)

It’s stunning that a person could convince themselves that they could take down the video and rewrite reality. I get, in the era of Trump, that may feel like a strategy. Bruce will get a chunk of his vote by sweeping the 15% of Seattle that is Republican—and they are certainly game for this sort of thing—but everyone else? Really?

Anyway WHOOPS!

The reporters at Axios found originals. Here are the direct quotes from Bruce Harrell.

KIRO:  “So we can build, we can do the 2000, again Compassion Seattle required 2000 units to be built, 2000 small homes, tiny homes, to be built the first year. We can do that.”

Resolution to End Homelessness: - “In my plan I talk about specific dollar amounts. I talk about allocating 12% to build the first 1000 homes and um, for six months, and 2000 within the first year.”

KNKX:  “We’re gonna build 1000 units in the first six months and 2000 the first year.”

Now, you may think we have a Mayor whose moral compass has been consumed by his ambition. I agree, and I think this is yet another reason he has no business being our Mayor.

But there is another issue here too.

This was a panicked, strategic blunder on Harrell’s part that was obviously going to backfire. This is a person who faced embarrassment and instead of finding a way to address failure . . . um, pooped the bed. He didn’t think through the obvious consequences of blurting out these lies, but just did it.

This fits with a pattern of meltdowns when he cannot deal with reality—yelling, pounding the table, stomping his feet, “how dare they” speeches about media writers, pounding his chest (literally! who does that?), and of course brandishing a gun at a pregnant lady over a parking spot. And panicking and lying to cops about it.

In other words, Bruce doesn’t have the stomach, the mettle, or the fortitude to keep his hands on the wheel when things get tough. He panics and flips the car.

With the federal government threatening to occupy our city, that’s not the kind of person I want at the wheel.