Graffiti Prevention & Removal

Taking prompt, proactive steps to report and remove graffiti is the best way to prevent it from occurring in your community. The city’s Graffiti Nuisance Ordinance requires property owners to remove graffiti in a timely manner.

How to Deal With Graffiti

Report graffiti: Use the online report form, download the Find It, Fix It mobile app, or call the City's Graffiti Report Line at (206) 684-7587 to report graffiti on public property, or on private property that has persisted for a period of time. Make a police report online or call (206) 625-5011 when graffiti appears on your property. If you see an act of graffiti vandalism in progress, call 911 immediately. Graffiti vandals must be caught in the act to be prosecuted.

Remove graffiti: When graffiti appears on your home, apartment building, or business, take a photo to document for insurance purposes. After the police document the vandalism, remove or paint over the graffiti immediately.

Volunteer to clean up graffiti. Become an Adopt-a-Street volunteer and receive City support and supplies to clean up graffiti.

Make your property graffiti-resistant. Steps that are known to work include installing improved lighting and flashing motion-sensor lighting, growing vines or appropriate vegetation to cover unpainted retaining walls, installing a graffiti-resistant coating on your walls, keeping matching paint on hand to quickly paint out graffiti, and installing cameras to monitor activity on your property.

Graffiti on Public Property

Please report graffiti on city buildings, vehicles, litter cans, and recycling bins by using the online report form or the Find It, Fix It mobile app. You can also call the Graffiti Report Line at (206) 684-7587.

Seattle Public Utilities' Graffiti Rangers and removal crews from other departments such as Transportation and Parks remove graffiti from City property. Consistent with the Graffiti Nuisance Ordinance, the city strives to meet the 10-day timetable for removing graffiti from its property.

Hate graffiti gets high priority treatment. The City takes hate, sexist, racist graffiti seriously. Our goal is to respond to such graffiti on public property as soon as possible, usually within 24 hours.