Broadway Hill Park is slated to be the next public space on Capitol Hill to be cleared of homeless encampments.
Advocates say the park at Federal and Republican amid townhomes, apartment buildings, and single family homes is one of a handful of spaces across Seattle set for sweeps this week.
A Seattle Parks representative said more information was coming including information from the Human Services Department regarding shelter referrals.
UPDATE 5:08 PM: Seattle Parks says the sweep is needed because of concerns about recent fires.
“After a series of fires in the park, the City has requested that outreach efforts at Broadway Hill Park intensify this week with the goal of getting all who are onsite situated into shelter and on a path towards a permanent housing solution,” the parks department statement reads.
Over the last six months, Seattle Fire Department has responded to Broadway Hill Park encampment for 10 fires (tent fires, rubbish fires or other illegal burns). These fires have caused damage to the park. After all tents and belongings are gone, Seattle Parks and Recreation staff will work to address this damage.
CHS reported on one fire at the park here in April. Other recent encampment fires were reported in April in the St. Mark’s greenbelt, and at Williams Place Park in March.
According to the parks statement, city-contracted outreach providers were asked to “intensify their efforts to those living unhoused at Broadway Hill Park” beginning last Monday, May 3rd.
Shelter resources include “wraparound services such as behavioral and mental health, case management, and housing navigation,” according to the statement.
The city posted notice of Wednesday’s planned sweep Monday morning.
UPDATE: The clearance is scheduled for Wednesday, May 12th
The early May sweep would follow the clearance of camps at the Miller playfield and Meany Middle School campus just before the return of students to in-person classes last month. Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office said the city’s Homelessness Outreach and Provider Ecosystem (HOPE) Team outreach efforts reported 30 people were referred to shelter before the camp removal work and clean-up. Seattle’s ongoing “shelter surge” includes leasing rooms in two downtown hotels.
In addition to clearing out left-behind tents and garbage, boulders have been placed in landscaped areas near the Meany junior high to prevent the return of campers in some areas of the campus.
Broadway Hill is the neighborhood’s newest park opened in 2016. Campers have set up there over the years and the small, 12,000-square-foot public space became a new location to turn to for some following January’s sweep and clearance of Cal Anderson. Encampments have also increased in the greenbelts around the neighborhood like the wooded area below St. Mark’s.
Seattle officials have said they were operating under federal CDC guidelines in allowing the camps to form during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In recent sweep efforts, notices have been posted to alert campers and outreach teams have been dispatched to the areas to provide information and referrals to shelters. The city has also typically provided data and reports of public safety and crime issues related to the encampments. Seattle Police were on hand for the Miller sweep but did not directly engage with the clearance.
We’ll update when we learn more from Seattle Parks and the Human Services Department about the Broadway Hill clearance and outreach effort.
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Awful and inhumane. This city disgusts me with their treatment of the houseless.
Seriously grow up and get some compassion! I’m tired of the edgelord coolguy comments in here about treating humans like scum.
You must be new here; lack of compassion clearly isn’t the limiting factor.
Awful and inhumane is letting people in need live in tents on our streets and in our parks. Letting people live without the services they need is not compassion.
No. Awful is not minding your own business. Unless someone is sleeping on your literal doorstep. Get over how people live their lives. Stop hating the poor for being poor.
No, no…. letting people live in squalor without toilets, showers, proper food, safety, etc is a fundamental human right according to the woke seattle folk. The fact that you’d prefer them to be in warm, safe, comfortable housing where their faces aren’t being eaten by rats means you must be a capitalist monster.
Why not both? Don’t act in bad faith and “concern troll.”
“Growing up” means making decisions based on reason, not emotion. Allowing public spaces to become filthy, unsafe campgrounds for the benefit of a few is not reasonable, nor compassionate.
“Unsafe” is subjective. And not based on reason. I can walk by someone living in a tent and be totally safe, and even make it home alive. Sorry you live in such fear. Try thinking of things based on reason and not emotion sometime.
If someone starts a fire in a tent that results in 3rd degree burns on their body, is that meeting your ever-evolving standards of “unsafe” yet?
Also, if a kid moves here to be a violent revolutionary and is living in a tent, and I happen to use my phone and they think I’m recording them, and they assault me and destroy my phone because of it, was I the one at fault because I successfully navigated late-stage capitalism while this person wants to smash it all down?
Unsafe for those RESIDING in them. And I’m fairly certain living in a nylon tent with an open stove, surrounded by human waste, trash, and needles is objectively unhealthy and far from compassionate. If someone is offered services (no matter how imperfect they may be) and refuses them, that shouldn’t be a free pass to just continue allowing such conditions to continue at the expense of everyone’s quality of life. That is not “fear”, that’s holding those experiencing homelessness up to the same basic standards as every other adult in the neighborhood.
The same danger exists in your structure. Do you not have a fire extinguisher in your house or apartment? I call BS. Fake problem.
Perhaps they do in yours. I prefer to clean up after myself. But to each their own, I guess…
BS yourself. My house had to be and constructed in compliance with fire and safety codes. It has smoke detectors and yes, fire extinguishers and insurance if after that something still goes wrong. It’s not even slightly equivalent to using an open flame in a tent. We’ve made rules to prevent disease and disasters and it’s not time to start ignoring them now. Yes – real problem.
How about the homeless treat the areas they set up camp with just a little bit of respect? Garbage, furniture, old TVs, needles, fecal matter are all things piled up at these encampments. What the hell else do these people have to do all day long? Keep the places clean and it would not cause such a strong reaction. People like you are not being compassionate. You are enabling poor behavior and inhumane living conditions. You are fostering dependence of government handouts with zero accountability. Tax paying citizens should not have our public spaces held hostage to a tiny fraction of a population being used as pawns by our “woke” city council and Seattle Homeless Industry, Inc.
Weirdly enough, some of the Tashkent Park campers are trying to do this – you can see them keeping the area picked up.
And then some drug abusing person shows up with mental health issues, starts collecting trash and stolen property, and presses the reset button on the effort all over again.
It might be smarter if we just said “camping’s not allowed” and went back to enforcing park rules. Now that pandemic-driven excuses to not use indoor shelters are ending. The CDC guidance on this has changed, or will soon.
Where do you think “Old TVs and furniture” come from? You think unhoused folks are hauling old CRT displays from camp to camp, shelter to shelter? No, that’s the HOUSED folks dumping their stuff in encampments. Go talk to your housed neighbors and tell them to dispose of their trash at the dump, not where people are trying to live with a tiny sliver of dignity. And ask them to help you fund a port-a-potty so people can do their business without having to use a bucket.
Totally agree with donating your used junk rather than dumping on the sidewalk and posting “free” online, pathetic, those camps are exactly where all that shit is going. Then we have to pay city employees overtime to dispose of it all.
That’s OK. Plenty of us are disgusted by people who think compassion is allowing drug addicted and/or mentally ill people to live in squalor rather than getting them the actual help they need. If the city had spent the last 20 years developing programs that treat people, rather than pandering to those who feel it’s a right to remain locked up in an illness we might not be in the situation we are now.
” ….rather than getting them the actual help they need.”
Because your half of the conversation always lacks this entire critical component of the point you’re supposedly trying to make. You don’t really get to rely on “letting them live in squalor is inhumane!” Unless your solution is better. These people being endlessly shuffled from one place to another – a policy you seem to be supporting and advocating – is doing nothing to address the inhumane conditions you’re so concerned about.
Couldn’t disagree with you more. Had the city done what people like me advocated and started in the 90’s to spend more money on building and maintaining more mental health and addiction beds and out patient support and require participation rather than throw it away on temporary fixes that just sustain living on the streets and toothless diversion programs that allow even convicted criminals to walk away with no consequences, we likely wouldn’t have such a large population of chronically homeless here that it simply overwhelms the system’s capacity and leads to shuffling people around. It’s not my fault that there are too many people here who bought into the libertarian idea that treatment is cruel.
Show more compassion? How many homeless have you taken in?
A few but it doesn’t matter because if they’re living in a tent in a park minding their own business I’m not bothered by it. Portland handles this fine. Why can’t Seattle gtf over it.
“A few”….lol.
They are NOT minding their own business Derek. They have a real negative impact on the surrounding areas, because ordinary citizens are discouraged from using the park spaces that taxpayers fund.
There’s a whole lot of D3 that’s fine with moving the unhomed someplace that they can actually get a roof over their heads without being a public health hazard to themselves and others.
A homeless person burned the skin off their own legs in a tent in Tashkent a couple of weeks ago. During a fire started by homeless activity in a tent, 15 feet from an apartment building.
The protest community appears to be fine with the unhomed remaining in parks, despite them being a threat to their own safety and others.
Derek, Derek, Derek…so naive. If you lived next to that park I guarantee you would feel differently after you discover mounds of fecal matter in your yard, the stench of urine from 25 people, both deposited by the ‘campers’. Needles left in the park grass and adjacent sidewalks (I counted seven just last week), fires – large fires with propane explosions, most inhabitants have addiction and mental health issues (exemplified by their daily screams and drug dealers who now come to the park). I live next door and am an extremely progressive liberal but when you start loosing the liberals, you have a serious issue. Homeless is a nuanced issue. I know because for 11 years I volunteered as a cook for homeless shelters – 2x a month. I got to know many of them. They don’t want to live outside. They don’t want to have to poop in the neighbor’s bushes no more than we want to have crime increase by 30% just in the last 6 mos. You need to grow up. If you refuse to understand the local neighborhood’s people’s perspective then look at it from the homeless person’s perspective – its NOT humane to allow them to live in squalor and filth. I recently heard my neighbor’s two young daughter’s, both under 10 years old, ask their mother to go to the park. She responded with sadness and said “Sorry girls, we can’t go there anymore”. Derek, expand your views on this and quit reducing your reactions to simply mirror the reactionaries. Grow up, bub.
Next one needs to be the park / bus shelter across from Safeway on 15th and John; especially as businesses and schools open; that’s a pretty significant public space where we need to ensure the safety of everyone, houseless or not who need access and safe transportation.
And Volunteer Park. Every single homeless (no need to make-up new words like houseless) encampment destroys part of the park it occupies. It was hard enough to see this happen to Cal Anderson, Miller, and Broadway Hill and I hate to see this happening to parts of Volunteer Park now too.
And can the city finally get rid of the hideous “garden” that was installed during CHOP in Cal Anderson and restore the park?
Miki: Agree about the CHOP “garden”. Time to reclaim that space as it was used for lawn seating for public events in the summer.
Please also sweep Williams Place park and the pocket park behind 711 and move people into congregate shelters and drug treatment centers or provide them transportation back to their families and the communities they came from before migrating to Seattle for drugs and a rule-free coddling environment.
Seriously grow up. “Coddling?” Are you kidding me? I wonder if you could handle being housless for one day because it can happen to literally any type of person in any walk of life at any moment. Maybe you grew up without hardship of any kind but that doesn’t mean you can just crap all over humans you don’t like “seeing” or whatever NIMBY problem you have. I seriously will never understand why it’s any of your business that someone lives their life the way they do without harming you. If they aren’t someone you have to deal with and sleep in a tent minding their own business, then what is your actual problem?? Do you just hate people???
Derek, you’re the only one on this thread that needs to grow up– you’ve made that crystal clear to everyone here. You can’t help people that refuse to help themselves. It took me years to realize that, too. This is probably 75% of the homeless population in Seattle. For the remaining 25%, there are ample services to help get them back on their feet, if they choose to take initiative.
There are not ample services which you would know if you were subject to the mayor’s vetos and whims like these folks and those of us trying to help. Maybe once upon a time it was 75% but 40-50% are families, the rate of unaccompanied minors is growing, and pot is the hardest drug a bunch of these folks ever touch.
Btw, as of 7 pm tonight, no housing had been offered to anyone still living at Broadway Hill Park. There are 2 sweeps scheduled that day, and one on Thursday. For those of you “requesting” other spots get swept, please go to one and watch someone lose possessions because they couldn’t pack in a less than 48 hour window (parks do not have to give 72 hours.) This is why more than half the folks we work with have no identification. /smh
“Btw, as of 7 pm tonight, no housing had been offered to anyone still living at Broadway Hill Park.”
I seriously doubt this, because the city’s outreach workers have been visiting there recently (according to this article) and they routinely offer shelter. Are you relying on the campers for your information? If so, are you not aware that homeless people often lie if it’s in their interest?
There has been a consistent attempt by people like you to try to guilt and shame reasonable, compassionate people who don’t want homeless encampments in our parks.
The more you do it, the more I support the sweeps.
Shame away. It’s complete manipulation and DOES NOT WORK. I encourage all of my neighbors to stop responding to the guilt trips.
Anyone who lives near these parks knows that pot is not the hardest drug going on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people openly shoot up not to mention all the discarded needles. Furthermore, pot does not cause the behavior that is also seen in these encampments.
And, oh, 48 hours is not enough to pack up a tent and few belongings? The people at Cal Anderson in December we’re given a week but some of them refused services and refused to leave.
Shaking My F-ing Head.
Somebody can’t put their ID in their pocket? A lot of these people have phones and I bet they keep track of them.
Yes please. There is no value in trying to help people when they are not interested in being helped. A bus ticket back to their point of origin should really be the first option.
Please sweep
Probably the mayor and all the cleanup people and the ‘HOPE team texting and email chains have somehow mysteriously disappeared from any public disclosure request as homeless camps are not the only thing that should be cleaned up in Seattle; the entire government bureaucracy needs to be abolished, cleaned up, and replaced with honest and competent public servants
If you’re nostalgic for how Seattle “used to be”, just go ahead and remember this as not a park and go ahead and let the people who have very few alternatives for shelter be.
Before this was a park two of the three houses located in the space belonged to Agnus Knudsen. She lived in the smaller one and rented the second out as her retirement income. She attended Central Lutheran Church…you know, the church located across the street from Cal Anderson Park that had its windows broken and it’s decades long Community Lunch Program (feeding program for the homeless) moved due to last summer’s protests. Agnus often opened her home to the homless folks she befriended on Broadway…offering the use of her shower, a hot meal at her table. As a personal friend of Agnus I feel comfortable saying that she would be horrified at the current state of affairs. People being allowed to languish in filth and unsupported by aid programs is not humane or acceptable. Stop calling them sweeps. Relocate people into shelter that assists them back onto their feet. Allowing them to remain in their current state is not acceptable. Incidentally…the Community Lunch Program was moved because the guests felt unsafe by the protests…
If you want social services and substance abuse treatment, that is available. If you simply want to abuse drugs, live rent-free in public lands and steal from the neighboring community, then you are not welcome anymore.
If by “social services” you mean housing, then that is not true.
these comments feel like the 1800’s
Try reading stories from 200BC, people are the same through out time…
Just to add some perspective here. I live on the block of Broadway Hill Park. This encampment has been awful. There have been at least 3 tent fires, one which exploded propane tanks and scorched a 15 x 20 foot swath of grass. There were huge piles of burned garbage and burned plastic smell permeating the neighborhood for days. I constantly see people smoking meth or crack, there are needles all around. The people there are fighting, screaming and clearly have extreme mental health issues. They have overtaken the park that many of us have worked tirelessly to see created. This isn’t a sad recently down on their luck homeless contingent peacefully camping, its a drug addled dangerous spot that honestly just really, really sucks to live next to. It is dangerous. They have trashed the walls, the plantings, the grass and I for one am extremely happy to see them go.
Absolutely Phil, I also live on the block of Broadway Hill Park and cannot wait to enjoy it again.
I have zero problems with the sweeps – whenever the encampments move from a couple people in tents to a giant meth fort that seems to be a magnet for shopping carts and other neighborhood junk its time to remove it and the cost is worth it until theres a better solution. The park campers could easier camp in a less visible / disruptive spot and never be bothered but lets face it – they camp downtown because theres easy access to drugs and stuff to steal – keep them moving so are parks don’t stagnate.
Many people camp in parks because it’s safer; 50% of women and 10% of men are outside due to DV situations. Add in the pandemic and the largest number of newly homeless we’ve seen, I’m not surprised they aren’t in a “less disruptive” spot.
Seattle Parks owns more property than any individual and that includes some hotels just waiting for a high bidder. Open them up and get more people jobs.
A park camper set fire to their own legs in Tashkent 2 Sundays ago; 3rd degree burns, hospital. An apartment building is 15 feet away, could have been also set on fire.
How in the world is anyone going to credibly assert this living condition is “safer?” Particularly with covid vaccines being available so the original need to camp to stay away from indoor pandemic exposure is ending.
There is no way to assert that camping in a park, without sanitation, without access to power, relying on cook stoves or sterno, is “safe.”
What would one say to the argument that in the course of living in public spaces, and at least in aggregate producing unsafe conditions as far as squalor, fire, and threatening personal behavior, that these people are not in fact just binding their own business, and that they do have an adverse effect on those living around them, not exclusive of the homeless, houseless, unsheltered, or similarly discomfited.
I walked by Miller Park this afternoon…I hadn’t known that the sweep had happened. Wow…what a difference! The park was full of people! Lots of kids in the playground. Lots of folks walking around, enjoying the day.
I hope that the people who were living there in tents have been offered and will take advantage of better options for themselves.
They were offered and accepted but 4 of them were then told they’d have to go back on the waiting list. Four others were waiting to hand in applications.
31 got into housing.
Must be so thrilling for you to know someone got pushed out of their living space to a more dangerous section of town than a park so you could frolic around and pretend oppression and societal decay isn’t happening. Yippeee!!! So excited for you!
Yippee is right! Sweep every encampment every day.
What you and your ilk never address is the victims, your compassion is 100% tied to political objectives. Take Jessie Puff and Ernanda Bendtsen. Drug addicted transients from Alaska that came here from California specifically because of the conditions created by SCC and Pete Holmes at the behest of people like you. Jessie gets in an argument over a laptop and sets a hotel on fire killing 2 people and sending others to Harborview with severe burns. Then while partaking in the fun CHOP festivities supported by your political allies Ernanda attacks a private security guard at the 12th Ave Art apartments with a machete. Fun stuff!
The lack of all consequences for public drug use, shoplifting, car prowls, and home invasions combined with the tolerance for encampments attracts the worst of the worst from across the country and we end up importing and tolerating destructive behavior all the way up until they commit murders. Seattle’s policies right now are so backward that we are punishing our business to fund the homeless industrial complex, which encourages the migration of violent dangerous criminals. Essentially we are taxing businesses and home owners to pay for people like Jessie Puff and Travis Berge (among others) to move here and commit violent crimes against our citizens. The policies being pursued in the city and are insane, stupid and dangerous and lack compassion for countless victims.
It’s time for seattle voters to grow up and live in reality, and it can start with recalling Sawant and not voting in any incumbents and removing Pete Holmes
Right on!!!
What ever happened to Jessie nad Ernanda?
They both got the housing they so richly deserved, i.e. prison.
I too think the sweeps need to happen. Public spaces should be for everyone and you’re kidding yourself if you think the state they’re in now is acceptable. Sorry Derek!