A North Seattle business fed up with a growing homeless encampment, has been blasting music to get the people who are living there to leave.
The encampment is stationed on a side street at N 128th St. and Stone Ave. North.
Nearby business owners said the Comcast Service Center has been playing loud music from a surveillance system with a speaker for about a month now. The loud music is described as classical or elevator music.
“Classical, all classical, all day long,” said a body shop manager named Tyler. “They came and asked us, ‘we’re thinking about playing some loud music, see if we can get them to move away.’”
Nearby business owners told KOMO News they don’t mind the loud music because they too are frustrated about the theft, drug trafficking, and garbage piling up, which they believe are a result of the encampment.
“They turned up the music, but as you can see it didn’t make a difference,” said business owner John Yang. “It’s unsafe for our employees to park their cars near Comcast, it’s also a deterrent for people to visit our businesses and it’s a safety issue with a nearby high school.”
Yang said their dealership got security after crime started creeping in.
“If we didn’t have that overnight security, we would lose cars, parts of cars,” said Yang.
KOMO News reached out to the City of Seattle's homeless response team, asking what the plan is to get the folks into a shelter.
Officials said the Unified Care Team has been working with Comcast, businesses, and neighbors for weeks and the site is on the list for a resolution.
City officials also said they did receive one formal noise complaint about the loud music from a member and when the UCT community relations staff reached out to Comcast, the issue was resolved.
There is a tiny home village right next to the camp, but it’s not yet open. Business owners hope the campers will accept the resolution.
“We pay business and occupation taxes, and the City of Seattle is very expensive to do business in, and it’s just not encouraging to do business in the City of Seattle,” said Yang.