Neighbors, members of the Leschi Community Council, and descendants of the man the park is named for are calling on Mayor Bruce Harrell and the city to act quickly to address health and safety concerns that have grown at the asylum-seeker encampment that formed late last month in the Central District’s Powell Barnett Park.

“How does the city deal with this sort of the emergency?,” Maisha Barnett, granddaughter of Powell S. Barnett asked during a Monday press conference organized to present a call from the community group for the city to provide an immediate response to sanitation and health needs at the park.

“We’re not here to decide whether they need shelter,” Barnett said, trying to put aside larger questions and frustrations that have complicated efforts to help the campers.

The group that spoke Monday is asking the city to act now to bring resources like portable toilets and sinks, better solutions for garbage, and more efforts to coordinate the camp immediately to Powell Barnett while larger questions about immigration and the bureaucratic grind that has created the camp to continue to play out.

UPDATE 4:45 PM: The mayor’s office says it has already started clearing out the camp and is working to remove “families and single adults still remaining. In the statement, the mayor’s office says about 150 people “transitioned from the park and into shelter and housing over the weekend.” The city says it has identified shelter for 40 families from the park. “Following this, we will evaluate the park for environmental and hygienic impacts, cleaning and restoring it as necessary to ensure it is available to the broader community for its intended purpose,” the statement reads.

“City parks are not intended to serve as makeshift shelters – lacking needed sanitation, security, and other safety-related amenities for those purposes,” the statement from the Harrell administration reads. “Camping in the park is not an appropriate, safe, or healthy shelter option for anyone, nor are its impacts acceptable for park-goers and neighbors.”

CHS reported here on the process that has put the asylum seekers from Congo, Angola, and Venezuela into a series of temporary camps and county and donor-supported motel rooms while the campers go through the long process of immigration and trying to establish legal status in the country.

The new camp is a few blocks east of Garfield Community Center where the group briefly set up tents on the campus tennis courts earlier in April in what turned out to be a one-day camp thanks to a private donation securing enough funding to pay for more nights at the Quality Inn in Kent.

Around 60 tents are now being used in Powell Barnett to house around 100 to 150 people, the community council estimates.

Monday, the smell of barbecue swirled around the camp in the haphazard rings of tents that circle the northern lawn of the park. The sounds of the camp were mostly children playing in tents and on the park’s play equipment as grown-ups took a minute to get something to eat on the park’s picnic tables. The center of the tents made for a small soccer field for kids as they dodged a flapping American flag. On a small grassy rise on the edge of the camp, children left a giant box of donated Legos and pieces scattered about on the lawn. Many of those in the asylum camp are children.

Not everyone who spoke during the community council organized press conference in front of an assembly of cameras and reporters said they welcomed the camp. A few said it made them angry. One noted that a nearby block of MLK Way was also filling with broken down vehicles and an RV with homeless campers not part of the asylum seekers.

Some speakers said not knowing where the refugees had come from and where they would ultimately go were concerns.  Some onlookers shouted pointed questions about why the asylum seekers aren’t in existing emergency shelters. Those answers weren’t resolved. But the council and neighborhood representatives said they agreed the city needs to act to address the health and safety issues as quickly as possible.

“We call on Mayor Harrell to take the lead-find the funds and resources to address this immediate health emergency, coordinate the efforts of the appropriate non-profit organizations, and press ahead with an intergovernmental effort to solve both the long term issues,” a statement from the Leschi Community Council members reads. “We especially want to see the initiation of an emergency response team.”

Maisha Barnett said communication from the mayor’s office so far had focused on removing the camp not more immediate needs around trash and bathrooms. Harrell has not yet responded to our questions about the situation. CHS has also reached out to District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth about the camp. Hollingsworth also chairs the parks committee on the Seattle City Council.

We’ve asked Harrell and Hollingsworth for more information on what emergency resources are being organized to help address the health and safety concerns — and how quickly they can be deployed.

UPDATE x2: The mayor’s office says the funding to help the families has already been allocated:

King County recently announced an investment of $2 million in funding for temporary housing and resources for asylees and refugees. Further, the State Legislature this session passed bills providing over $30 million for shelter and resources for migrants and asylum seekers and directed that the Washington State Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance design, coordinate, and lead a plan for a statewide response to emerging issues related to migrants and asylum seekers.

The Harrell administration says Seattle’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs is supporting “a coordinated response between public sector partners and nonprofit entities exploring opportunities to support these efforts.”

Back at the park, Eric Barnett, grandson of the activist and community leader the park is named for, said he felt some anger when he first saw the camp had come to the Central District. But he said his grandpa’s community spirit was a reminder to see the humanity in the situation.  “If my grandfather had been here, he would have helped them,” Eric Barnett said.

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