The City of Seattle team dedicated to homelessness outreach and “resolution” of camps is slated to clear tents, belongings, and debris from encampments that have formed on the blocks around 13th and Howell on Capitol Hill before the end of the month.
The tents and camping have been the subject of complaints including concerns from parishioners and officials at the area’s Greek Orthodox Church of the Assumption. “They are afraid to come. We want them to get [the homeless] help, we want them to get off the streets,” the church community’s president told KOMO. “We donβt have the infrastructure as a small church to do that ourselves.”
The situation has now been widely reported and picked up at the national level by outlets including Fox News.
A spokesperson for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority provided a statement to CHS that echoed what the organization has been telling national media. “We are aware of this particular encampment, and are in communication with outreach teams, but the need for housing and outreach is much greater than current capacity,” the spokesperson said, referring CHS to Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office and the City Hall department that remains tasked with clearances of camps in the city despite the formation of the regional authority.
A spokesperson for the cityβs Unified Care Team tells CHS the area will be cleared in January. “While we do not share dates in advance as they are subject to change, these sites are on the list for a resolution this month,” the spokesperson said.
The team has been assigned to the site on the public right of way along the sidewalk outside the church “and a handful of other sites within a few blocks of 13th and Howell.”
“Outreach staff are actively engaging with people at these sites who are living unsheltered and working to connect them with shelter referrals, resources, and other services to meet their needs,” the spokesperson said.
The city posts 72-hour notices before any clearance activities.
CHS reported here in fall on ongoing efforts by the city to clear camps with smaller homeless sweeps including a small Nagle Place encampment in late October.
The smaller sweeps including this effort in August to clear tents from Belmont near the Capitol Hill Goodwill followed a period of larger clearances as Seattle emerged from pandemic restrictions.
Last year, Mayor Harrell pushed for increased support for his Unified Care Team plan βto make neighborhoods and public spaces clean and accessibleβ with the new centralized resource dedicated to managing sweeps including outreach and clean-up including $38.2 million βto maintain and improve current levels of service for clean city, trash mitigation, encampment resolution, and RV remediation initiatives.β
Officials claim clearance efforts have also been successful on state property along I-5.
While the clean-ups continue, there is also evidence that it could be cheaper to provide supportive housing than continue the cycle of sweeps.
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There needs to be 0 visible tents in urban areas – and until then; the job is not done.
Reducing visible homelessness will help the people who need help (homeless); reduce risk of crime and harassment (helping the community) and will improve businesses by making the area more conducive to foot traffic
No more tents in Seattle!
Willing to take in one or two of these people to help reduce the “unsightliness”?
Some fascinating logic that. Putting something out of sight will lead to solutions! As opposed to people forgetting about it entirely.
Ooh, tell us the one about how Seattle is Dying next!
So you don’t actually want to solve homelessness, you just don’t want to see it.
Do I have that right?
There also need to be 0 hidden/invisible tents. It’s not compassion to allow people to live in misery.
There needs to be zero whiners who already have houses. Imagine that lol
You’re kidding right? Can’t see it so it doesn’t exist?
Answer: By getting at least some of them indoors, via outreach teams which are specifically tasked to accomplish this.
Followup: There’s nowhere near enough beds for all the homeless in our region.
Itβs amazing how Seattle and the West Coast struggle with this issue while so many cities large or small out east, in the midwest and south have relatively no such issue with visible urban camping. Almost as though Seattle and the West Coast have groups actively undermining the otherwise normal effort to maintain a city without encampment sites.
That’s because east coast cities fund solutions and pay high taxes.
People in seattle seem to want the problem to magically disappear without providing public housing or adequate funding**
**yes, we do provide some funding. But it’s a bit like saying “well we funded a levee but the river still flooded.” Just because you did something doesn’t make it enough.
This is so far from the truth. I live in OKC and homelessness and public camping is a problem here. We experience all 4 seasons and way more extreme weather than Seattle. It’s a widespread issue that is not impacted by individuals political leaning.
The urban camping crisis in Seattle is self-created. My theory is it was first allowed in West Coast cities as a prop to push a housing agenda. Cities on the east coast and in most parts of the world donβt allow public spaces to be privatized and destroyed. Rather, urban campers are moved to congregate shelters and then ultimately into housing.
It’s because those on West Coast seem to enjoy conducting performative things – you know, ‘compassion’ and crap without actually doing anything to resolve it.
Actually it is cities such as Seattle that have seen housing prices and rents soar due to an influx of highly paid professionals that are seeing this homeless problem. While other cities such as Detroit have high poverty rates, they do not have as many people living unhoused because they also have cheap rents available. Other successful cities such as Portland, San Francisco, LA, New York, and Boston have seen their homeless rates soar as their economies prosper.
Actually, Seattle has 10x the number of rough sleepers per capita relative to New York. Why? Because we allow it.
Also, because if you sleep outside in the winter in many east coast cities, you die… I grew up in a place that experiences real winter, sure you can get hypothermic and die in the weather we have here, but back there you simply freeze solid.. Where I grew up there were nearly no rough sleepers. They get people into shelter and people go into shelters out of absolute necessity.
Good. The guy in the encampent by the church is a drugged out klepto with no respect for anybody around. He actually had the audacity to put up a “sidewalk closed” sign in front of his piles of junk yesterday.
I walk by it every day to see what new bikes he’s stolen and what new garbage he’s hoarding in his drugged out delusion. It’s not pretty. There’s always 2-3 new bikes in the morning.
The first tent on Howell St showed up over 6 months ago. Others have followed and so have the drug dealers. There are piles of human waste and needles and accumulated and stolen items and garbage everywhere. Crime and trespassing has skyrocketed in the vicinity. Meth heads mumble unintelligibly and threaten residents of the neighborhood. One of them swings nunchucks menacingly. They have now accumulated propane tanks, creating a fire hazard. Mature street trees have been damaged. This never should have been allowed even for a day. Instead, our elected leaders and city officials did nothing and let drug addicts and drug dealers run roughshod over a residential neighborhood. Inaction created a magnet effect so the problem grows worse by the day. This is not a housing crisis. It is a drug crisis and a leadership crisis in progressive west coast cities that have enabled it for far too long.
Our city leaders have encouraged this for years. You are correct it is a drug crisis and allowing people to use drugs without interference is cruel and inhumane. While destroying themselves they are also destroying the communities they hang out in. The responsible action is to enforce drug use and sale laws to disrupt the cycle of use, create a period of sobriety and then have mandatory rehabilitation programs if anyone really cares about helping people. We also need to vastly expand our mental health system for those that need it. Those that are homeless due to financial issues have far better outcomes. I would gladly pay more taxes for real help but don’t like spending anything on this laissez faire approach. Thank goodness for Mayor Harrell and a couple council members for starting to work on actual solutions.
Mayor Harrell has and will always be the problem. He turned a blinds eye for years in the council but all of a sudden has teeth as the Mayor. LoL.
Better late than never.
Nah.. as a single council member he never would have been able to get past the majority of enablers. As mayor he has way more power to act without their cooperation.
I live right near this intersection and these people in tents are not bothering anyone. They are not noisy or disruptive. There is a little extra trash around, but not anything dangerous. If we cannot offer them permanent supportive housing in the area, the very least we can do is leave them alone. There is not enough housing in this city for the number of homeless people. There is no where for them to go right now. We should be spending our money on creating housing for all, not on sweeping tents.
The actual entrance to this church is from the parking lot on the other side of the building. These church-goers don’t even need to walk past the tents. I guess even knowing poor people are nearby is very distressing to them.
They are not noisy or disruptive.
So the woman who lives in the second tent from 12th on Howell thatβs been screaming βget off me!!!β At the top of her lungs every week for the past four months at 10pm, 11pm, 12am, 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am, nonstop, like sheβs being violently raped, even though sheβs aloneβ¦ how would you categorize that?
Or do you not know anything about that because you donβt actually live βright near that intersectionβ.π₯΄
Oh my god, I hear her too! I have had to call 911 three times. It is crazy she hasnβt been taken to the hospital for help yet.
More lies and spin from people that do not live here
Sam wise probably owns a house on the other side of the hill, drove by once and decided that there is no problem π Gotta love it when the rich come tell us little people on the renting side of town that weβre being intolerant of the poor.
Your description of the area is very different than other commenters here. I suspect you are minimizing the problem.
We are not just spending money on cleaning the camps. We ARE spending a lot of money on outreach and placing willing homeless people in places like hotels, 24/7 shelters, etc.
Cool so you wanna get my bike back that they stole or pay me the 1k for it?
I live in the building at the intersection of 13th and Howell. And I agree with SamWise that the encampment has done no harm to the resident or churchgoers. I work from home 4 days out of the week and go for a walk everyday. These people are not drug addicts, donβt steal and they arenβt dangerous. They just want a small space for their shelters and belongings.
They have quietly lived in their tents for over two weeks. Sure there is a bit more trash in the area, but it doesnβt impede using the sidewalks.
In addition, there is very little noise. My bedroom faces the encampment and I sleep with my windows open every night.
Iβve been a resident of Seattle for over 5 years and I was born and raised in NYC. And as a black woman I think white people need to learn how to be uncomfortable. If you want to live in a city, youβll have unhoused neighbors. Unfortunately American society doesnβt provide a social net, everyone is closer poverty than wealth.
All I can say is karma comes back 10 fold. For those reporting this encampment and pushing for their displacement I hope you never need help or support from your community. Clearly you donβt have any empathy for others.
FYI I want be responding to replys.
Stop spreading lies. Stop gaslighting. Iβve walked up on the residents shoot up bare assed into their wherever. Iβve walked by as they smoked God knows what. Iβve stepped over needles in my doorway that werenβt there before they arrived. Theyβve laid passed out in front of my doorway well into the afternoon. One of them did tidy up and tried to keep everyone on their best behavior but itβs not his job to be the mayor of tent city.
Last, you can stop patting yourself on the back for being ok with vulnerable mentally ill people living outside during the coldest months. Thatβs not empathy. But you want people to be uncomfortable so that makes sense.
Your comment is the very definition of “virtue signaling”.
“There is also evidence..” you mean we have reason to believe actually housing the homeless prevents these encampments in the first place? Who would have thought! These sweeps have been happening for years and nothing ever changes. Almost like taking all of their belongings making them move around without actually housing them does nothing to solve the root issue, and they just continue to suffer. If only we put as much effort into actually helping them as we did stopping them from inconveniencing us.
You are naive. Have you even walked by the site? The current condition is not sustainable. In Europe it would be called an open air drug market. When we allow encampments to fester for months and years, it signals that camping, open drug use, and criminality are allowed. It creates a magnet effect for those that want to do drugs with no rules and for drug dealers with guns. The more Seattle allows this, the more people come. There is no way for Seattle to build our way out of this crisis without enforcement.
What about 17th Ave. In front of Sound Health? There is soooooo much garbage it smells like a compost bin. The tents are wired to a fence and if you walk on the sidewalk you’ll trip over them and get hurt. This problem has been reported to the city by at least 20 people. It’s been like this for at least 6 months. It gets worse every day.
It’s ugly to see the tents because theyre usually intimidating people and trashy.
“While the clean-ups continue, there is also evidence that it could be cheaper to provide supportive housing than continue the cycle of sweeps.”
It’s not either/or. Both need to continue, and this is what Mayor Harrell is doing.
By the way, the word “sweeps” needs to be go away. It implies that we are only moving the homeless along, but in fact a lot of effort (and money) is being spent to get them into more stable/humane housing.
It’s mostly true though, the methodology, whatever you want to call it, in it’s current form pushes people away. Service providers and housing are backed up with huge waiting lists, so people may go on those, otherwise the offer is pretty much a shelter (typically only overnight, no pets, nowhere to store anything during the day) or at best a couple nights in a hotel. We’re ultimately making it more expensive by making it harder to reach people that need help. Until it’s actually geared towards getting people real help and transitioning them towards housing and needed services.
Bus tickets back to Florida are cheaper
Several years ago, a sex offender and meth dealer from Florida that moved to Seattle to escape felony warrants set up a tent on Howell. The city let him camp on Howell and then in Cal Anderson Park for months. He raped two teens in his tent that came to buy meth. Why should Seattle build him a view apartment while long-time residents are displaced? It is not Seattleβs responsibility nor is it feasible or wise to house every lost soul that shows up here due to our lax policies and pro-drug culture.
And don’t forget our city council’s “anti-racist” policy of not allowing background checks on tenants, which lets violent felons live in public housing alongside good people and families who truly need help to get on their feet. Another reason why felons come to Free-attle.
That premise is nonsense. Seattle isn’t building apartments, “view” or otherwise, for newcomers. Waiting lists for any kind of subsidized housing in this city are years in length, and I suspect most indigent people who come here from elsewhere realize they aren’t going to be offered much of anything beyond congregate shelter and soup-kitchen meals for a very long time.
Here’s the reality: Seattle (along with Portland, SF and LA) is one of a small handful of U.S. cities where living outdoors year-round is somewhat survivable, and thus it’s inevitably a magnet for those with no other options. Even the harshest of anti-homeless policies isn’t going to change that fact. It’ll just make people more miserable and desperate.
Exactly what Jesus would do.
Probably get his feet washed by a ladyβs hair then turn some water into wine? Dude sure knew how to party!
Seriously tho I think if Jesus were real he would probably think of everyoneβs needs here. Like heβd probably think about how my special needs 4 yr old cousin that lives in a basement apartment at this corner doesnβt need people from this camp using her bedroom window as their own outhouse/needle dump. Then heβd probably think that the people taking dumps and putting needles in my little cousinβs window deserve to poop with dignity and have a safe place to put their hazardous health waste.
Maybe heβd consider how thereβs a lot of different people living in this area, & different people have different needs – not just the folks in the tents. People that I know in this section of the neighborhood are low income and working in low paying health care gigs and can barely afford to hang on to what they have. Itβs not some rich vs poor, either/or scenario.
Everybody here deserves a good quality of life. The city allowing people to block sidewalks with private property and take poops in a toddlerβs window does nothing to contribute to that good quality of life for anyone in this area.
Hi real Jesus here.
First off, stop having your artist’s drawing me as a white man. I am not white nor was I ever white. I mean I grew up the middle east….
Secondly, if I were here and real (spoiler I’m not) I would be helping both the homeless and your daughter. I wouldn’t reject anyone and help everyone. Because you know, that’s my whole motto.
Although I think I am going to update something I used to say.
Instead of “I’ll say it again-it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of A needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
It is now “I’ll say it again-it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of A needle than for middle class Seattleites person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
Remember I always said feed and house the poor.
Did these church-goers try get together with city/county/state officials to help alleviate the need of the homeless?
Yes making sure no body can see problems is a sure fire way to fix them and a great way to spend resources. Question, we’ve been int his crisis using the same tactics for decades, has literally anybody seen anything the government does WORK?
Are you intentionally ignoring the progress that Mayor Harrell has made on this issue? Encampments are noticeably fewer since he took office, and at least some of the former campers are now indoors.
Are there statistics for this, because I haven’t seen a significant change in the number of tents, I just see them in increasingly dangerous places, like up in trees and The Jungle area under I-5
Are they fewer or just in different locations? Because there was an encampment at Cal Anderson that was swept in mid-2020, then an encampment at Williams Park (15th and John, 4ish blocks away) that was swept in mid-2021, and then there was an encampment at Seven Hills Park (2 blocks from Williams Park) that was swept in early 2022, and now thereβs an encampment at 17th and Howell (1 block from Seven Hills), Howell and 11th (5 blocks from Seven Hills, and 1 block from Cal Anderson), and other sidewalks around Capitol Hill (like the one in this article). Encampments are being moved in literal circles around the neighborhood. Maybe some people get temporary shelter, when sweeps happen, but it is not a long term solution. I agree with many commenters that having encampments is horrible for the people living in them and near them, but sweeping is not working.
Yes it is working. The issue is that there is a portion of the population that is unhousable due to mental health issues, drug addiction or extreme antisocial issues (anarchists). In most societies they would be committed. No amount of outreach will solve it. It is a enforcement issue.
Also gone are the large encampments at Miller Playfield, Tashkent Park, Broadway Hill Park, at the First Hill Whole Foods, and quite a few smaller camps here and there. Progress has been made! Yes, some campers just re-locate elsewhere, but some of that is because many of them refuse offers of shelter.
Hello Phillistines, Your Savior here. There I was, the only white dude in Jerusalemβ¦ anywho, clean up my temple or Iβll smite all yβall. Peace Out.
Hey y’all, you want to be an alley? Did you know people of color are disproportionately homeless. Being an ally means being ok with uncomfortable situations, otherwise you are just another person who doesn’t care about people of color.
Actions defined who we are.
I live next door to the encampment, and have never had a single issue. They are people who need help, and trying to keep them out of site doesn’t solve anyone’s real problem.
Please have empathy for your fellow humans.
Howdy, Allah suggests that you support those in a narrow place. Be an ally in the alley, but be aware. Peace out.
There’s nothing compassionate about allowing and abetting homelessness. Our mentally ill citizens do not deserve a single night on the streets. Our drug addicted citizens should get healthcare, not free rein. Our poor citizens deserve help and care, not performative progressivism, which does and helps absolutely nothing.
And I find your choice of words–that you have never had a single problem living next to an encampment–hypocritical. It reminds me of people who aid and abet the school bully, just because “he’s always been nice to me.” There’s nothing compassionate or progressive about victim-blaming. Just because you’ve never had a problem doesn’t mean the people who have had one are lying about it.
To say “being an ally means being ok with uncomfortable situations” insinuates that white people have never been uncomfortable. Many of us are addicts, trauma survivors, women, queer, poor, disabled . . .
Many of us have been and are still uncomfortable.
I’m not going to join forces with anyone who has such a simplistic and quite frankly, dumb view of humanity.
I’m super happy to walk outside my “way too expensive apartment” to see homeless people camping on the sidewalk for days. Tents, couches, etc. To top it all off, I blatantly see people dealing drugs next to the dog park (which I’m nervous to go to) or you see the drug addicts bent over and barely able to stand up from heroin. I also, love when they urinate and defecate while I’m walking past them too.