(Image: Unified Care Team)
A graphic from the latest Unified Care Team quarterly report
Seattle’s Unified Care Team, the city’s group overseeing homeless encampment removal and outreach efforts, says it executed 94 “priority site” and “RV resolutions” in the second quarter of the year.
The report (PDF) to the city council this week is part of a required reporting process put in place last year to keep the council apprised “about the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness who were engaged and connected to services, the number of people connected to shelter and housing, the number of declinations and why people refused help, how many people were displaced from encampment removals, and so on,” according to a brief on the session.
Work for the team is increasing. Officials say public requests for clean-ups and outreach to the team climbed over 9,300 in the quarter — more than 100 per day.
A disproportionate 40% of those requests were made in the northwest area of the city in neighborhoods including Queen Anne and Ballard, and in the city’s downtown.
CHS reported here last fall on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s push for increased funding for the UCT to maintain “clean and accessible Seattle neighborhoods, parks, and open spaces” including sweeping encampments and clearing tents from public spaces like parks.
While the team has been effective at clearing camps and sweeps, its outreach efforts have resulted in around 60% of those contacted declining shelter. The UCT has begun tracking those declines and says that the top reasons for individuals to turn away the efforts include hopes of placement in a tiny house village, not wanting shelter, wanting to remain with family or friends, or having other shelter available.
The team says second quarter stats show outreach efforts are improving with a 21% increase in shelter acceptance compared to the same period last year.
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Homeless unified “CARE” team? What a CROCK! As they speak of “sweeps” where they take EVERYTHING these poor humans have managed to save from their existence, our Government comes and TRASHES it! We don’t even ALLOW DOGS TO BE HOMELESS! Severe lack of compassion with these “sweeps”.
“where they take EVERYTHING these poor humans have liberated from people’s yards, cars, and local businesses then leave laying to rot all over the neighborhood.”
FIFY.
Carping about things you don’t have the capacity to understand fixes nothing. You want to FIFY? Get up off your *** and volunteer to aid the families. You might learn something.
Oh, I understand quite well, thank you, and have know plenty about what confusing enabling with compassion can do to a person and a city. Want to fix it? Stop accepting it.
This ^^^
oh please. Stop with the “families” trope. Go check out ANY camp in the area and you’ll see a bunch of strung out psychos – no, not “mentally ill”, drug induced psychotics.
If you know so much, fix the problem, then. Run for office. Wow us with your intellect.
Exactly. Much of the stuff is just flat out stolen from folks nearby. Near Fred Meyer in Greenwood, the one on the corner behind it had numerous patio umbrellas, and a whole lot of bikes in varying states of disassembly. It appeared to have burned down over the last weekend though.
We don’t let dogs continue to be homeless when we find them. They are forcibly put into shelters where they forcibly receive medical care and rehabilitation (forced to be around humans, forced to be around other dogs to repair their behaviors).
We do however simply ask the homeless if they want services, and most say no.
Letting someone slowly commit suicide with drugs or wallow in mental illness is not compassion, even if we let them do it with their belongings.
A lot of dogs also get euthanized, so maybe not the best analogy?
But yes, it’s incredibly sad that people seem to care more about and have more empathy for stray dogs than for fellow humans whom need help.
Hear hear! On both counts!
After 5+yrs of personally being homeless I am finally off the streets & wrapping up moving into an apartment of my own. I don’t consider myself a drug crazed psychotic “Ne’er-do-well” And if it weren’t for marijuana being “legal” it would’ve been much worse!
It’s not as glamorous or easy as it looks folks! Plus, you’d really be amazed at just how close you are to finding yourself in similar (exactly the same!) situation yourselves.
Be kind people we’re really not that different from one another
Peace
Your idea of compassion is entirely transactional though. ‘Take the deal and get outta my sight’ is barely hyperbole based on what you wrote.
Your detractors below seem to be especially lazy today.
Drug addicts trash is not “property.”
The city has occasionally paid out to people they swept for property destruction by judge ruling…so…your own team kinda says youre wrong about that.
Actually, the headline case in the forefeont of my mind of Yeager was the city basically throwing its hands up about the economic cost to fight it. 10gs to Yeager to stop pursuing the litigation over property destruction in the course of a sweep.
What a waste of money. A perpetual cycle of them sweeping, the homeless moving to another spot, then sweeping again till they’re back at the spot where they started. They also don’t fully clean the area when they do it. They only care about optics and can’t even do that very well.
It is entirely about aesthetic cleansing to the satisfaction of psyche.
It sounds like we need to double the size of the CARE team and open more congregate shelters with drug treatment
More permanent housing options would really go a long way also. Just a thought…
Yes, AND congregate shelters to address the immediate need. The city cannot possibly build enough free housing for every addict that drifts into town because rumor has it you can live in the park with no hassle, no consequences, and abundant drugs until you get a free apartment for life at a cost to taxpayers of $100,000 per person per, babysitters with Narcan included.
Try living in the park for a while before implying it’s no hassle and easy living. There’s plenty of research showing this isn’t the case and not the primary source of homelessness 🙄 As Darren says, more available affordable housing would keep people from entering into these situations, it’s also much better for getting folks out of this situation. For some reason folks really like to put the folks they don’t want to see (elderly, homeless, and people with drug addiction) in their neighborhoods and just sent off to congregate “shelters” where they can somehow be taken care of until they reach a more comfortable state of being for us… It’s really sad and demoralizing for our society.
They continually refuse them, as most programs require one to logically not be on drugs while living there. Seems a bridge too far, I guess.
We all do tons of unhealthy addictive behaviors, some of these impede with people’s lives. Should we kick someone with a gambling addiction out if they buy scratch offs? Where do we draw the line, some addictions we seem okay with (and they actually run large parts of our economy) but when they become ones we’re uncomfortable with we blame the individual rather than looking at the society that has created a culture of addiction…
Perhaps we draw the line at where someone’s addiction impacts society? This is so complicated!!!
So to be clear, if someone were homeless and had a gambling problem, you would require them to get treatment before providing them with shelter? Just trying to understand where your line is…