The city is trying to put a stop to a new pattern of homeless camping on the north end of Cal Anderson Park.
Monday, city outreach and clearance teams were again in the area and a city representative said workers provided campers with information and offers of shelter while directing the residents to clear the area.
“Cal Anderson is a site Unified Care Team monitors nearly every weekday as it’s frequently repopulated with tents and individuals,” the representative said.
The recent efforts have followed a pattern of outreach, clearance, and return. Friday, teams had visited the park to offer shelter and services. The city says there were seven campers and none “accepted referrals before leaving the area.” Over the weekend, the campers returned.
After a wave of major encampment clearances coming out of the height of the pandemic, removals around Capitol Hill have typically involved only a few tents and happen with little notice. CHS reported on the more frequent, smaller encampment removals last October after a sweep cleared Nagle Place west of the park. The city’s effort includes a near $40 million budget “to maintain and improve current levels of service for clean city, trash mitigation, encampment resolution, and RV remediation initiatives.”
Calls over encampments have continued to increase in the city as officials have encouraged encourage reports of “reemerging issues using the City’s Customer Service Bureau form or Find It, Fix It app.” Stats from the Find It, Fix It service show that a bulk of the system’s calls are related to homelessness but the app’s categories don’t show choices like “encampment” or “tents.” Instead, the calls are frequently reported under general inquiries, or “illegal dumping,” the most frequent category of Find It, Fix It complaints.
According to the city, Monday marked the 25th time workers have been called to Cal Anderson “offering individuals shelter and services, clearing tents, and maintaining the park grounds for public use” since July.
The park was the site of a massive encampment sweep in December 2020 that involved multiple arrests of campers and protesters after camps grew in size across the city during the early heights of the COVID-19 pandemic.
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
Sweeping doesn’t work. Never has never will. More housing with less private landlords is the only way out.
So they’ll have a chance to do drugs inside, disturbing other tenants? There should be a place outside of the city, with all the needed facilities and treatment on the site. It’s a serious situation.
I wonder if you ever take a step back and read what you write.
I’m not sure which seattle you live in, but we all do drugs inside our apartments.
speak for yourself
Yeah, cuz totally, weed and beer has the same consequences as fentanyl and meth.
No, “we” do not.
I agree we need more housing. And more treatment centers. But what do you do until they’re built? Keep sweeping. Note how some of the folks approached didn’t want a referral to a shelter.
Sweeping works at removing the garbage piles, which is a start
Bring the cops with next time and start checking for outstanding warrants.
That’s the single worst idea
How so?
Pay me 20 bucks for everyone without a warrant or would that wind you up out on the street?
Exactly! I’ve seen these particular “unhoused neighbors” (mostly working-age men under 40) there at the northern of the Cal Anderson. They aren’t taking the free housing that’s being offered because they prefer the 24 hour fenty party going on in the streets. And yes, I bet 100% of them either have warrants or on parole.
Pretty good suggestion.
You bet! And for repeat offenders (returning to the same place after a sweep), at the very least they should get a citation (even though they can’t pay it). Better yet: a few strategic arrests to send a message this will not be tolerated. After all, camping in public parks is illegal. Or doesn’t that matter any more?
So they choose to live on the street and don’t want help? Why are they not arrested for continually trashing the park?
And don’t we have vagrancy laws?
The mutual aid crew have been coddling them non-stop. They basically don’t care about law abiding folks
The mutual aid anarcho-communists should be cited for trespassing and garbage dumping when they move encampments from site to site. Their goal is not to help people but rather to politically weaponize encampments to push an anti-capitalist agenda.
It would be nice if kids could use the playground in the morning. Lately there’s at least 3-4 people passed out underneath. Down to let people sleep and not take kids to play at 8am. But by 9 or 10 kids should get to use it. One caregiver nicely played a harmonica in an attempt to bring some wakeful vibes. Not a single one stirred. There was also paraphernalia surrounding the person who wasn’t covered with cardboard.
Heartbreaking for kids who have to grow up with passed out people in their playground and needles, etc
Really? Who would let their kids play in a physical space just occupied by drug addicts? They need to be out of that space permanently so it can be safely used by those for whom it was intended. So sick of this attitude that these people should be allowed to sleep in until 8AM and that kids shouldn’t be able to play there before that hour. Wake up! This is not normal.
From what I’ve seen, nobody. The parents were having the kids avoid it and stick to the swings.
Why would anyone take a child to an area to play where there are likely needles and other drug paraphernalia?
Well why should we allow for fentanyl and meth addicts to take over our public spaces?
I want my kids to be able to play outside. We don’t have a yard. We should be able to use our local park. I also have to take my kids on the bus and light rail. You can’t really avoid public spaces.
Many of this recent crop of addicts that refuse services showed up after the nearby encampments along I5 were cleared following murders, assaults and arson. We need a citywide camping ban and enforcement. Prioritize connecting drug addict campers with family and the community they came from before showing up in Seattle homeless to pitch a tent in the park. Open congregate shelters and treatment facilities. Commit people to mandatory treatment that can’t care for themselves and are destroying the city. Housing first, harm reduction ideology, and insane permissiveness in west coast cities created this drug addict encampment crisis. This is drug addiction crisis not a housing crisis. Until we collectively acknowledge reality, it is going to continue to get worse.
I would say it’s a drug crisis and a housing crisis…they’re not mutually exclusive. Otherwise…I wish you were running for city council!
There is a drug crisis that leads to drug encampments in public spaces and a housing crisis that leads to displacement. They are separate issues with different policies needed to address them. Lumping them together as one crisis is propaganda.
I would argue that the war on drugs mentality, capitalism, and lack of social services are the greater drivers of this issue. Oh, also the Sackler family. Harm reduction, if you look at the studies, has a far more positive impact on everyone, and treats someone dealing with addiction like a person with free will.
everything i don’t like is capitalism
True, there are fewer drug problems in socialist paradises like north Korea and cuba
I completely concur. This city is run by very unwise and short-sighted people. We need wise, intelligent, mature people in charge who aren’t afraid to make the hard decision of mandatory treatment. It’s inevitable.
Broadway Hill Park on East Republican and Federal Ave East has been free of encampments for about a year and the park became re-populated with neighborhood children and neighbors using the park as intended. As of 9/19 there are now four tents, one being massive, with two unleashed pit bulls, about ten people milling about (one of whom was injecting something in their arm).
The safety of the neighborhood is, once again, in peril. Allowing people to live like that is not humane, not kind and not helping them. Allowing people to take over small, needed neighborhood parks is also not helping anyone but instead making the immediate area unsafe at all hours.
The dealers are back, the crime is back – nothing is good about this for anyone.
Saw some kids playing soccer there during the early part of summer and thought it was looking pretty nice. But it seems like it’s slowly deteriorating again. Same with Tashkent.
There are a small group of apartment managers and longer-term residents that battle to keep Tashkent clear. It’s an ongoing battle. Seattle Parks sweeps the campers out, it’ll be 100% clear for a few days, then the campers return. Meanwhile the LIHI properties at 420 Boylston Ave E and 225 Harvard Ave E, both opened in 2022 or 2023, have turned into regular ongoing crime zones, with up to 16x the SFD calls (check the data) as any apartment in the immediate area. Occasional gang cars and gun play overnight from these buildings or nearby is also quite common now, weekly at least. All in the name of “just give them a home.” But we do nothing for their drug habits. And thus, giving them a home means we enable them to continue their crime and their addiction and their early deaths. This is hardly an acceptable status quo, yet it’s the one our Progressive reformers have decided we deserve.
Agree, and this is what I’d like to hear from the folks running for city council. PS, I love your name!
I thought mr broken windows mayor and hardball prosecutor lady were going to fix everything?
Please call Seattle Animal Control about the unleashed pit bulls!! This is dangerous to everyone around the area.
That park has always been an issue with said people. When it was a reservoir it was really a hot dang mess. Acting like this is a recent problem is a gas lit. Seattle has always looked a bit ratchet over by cal Anderson. Now let this move up to 15 near volunteer park, and then we can start acting brand new. I saw a tent up there once and was like “NOPE” what’s worse is they don’t even want the ducks up there.
This is gaslighting non sense. I’ve lived on the Hill for over a decade now. Prior to the pandemic and CHOP/CHAZ nonsense Cal Anderson did not have permanent campers. It wasn’t a thing. Yes you had the drug dealing over in the West entrance by the picnic tables but there were not homeless camping in organized fashion as we’ve seen (again) this month and countless other months since the pandemic.
As for your comments on Volunteer, there have been tents there as well. The reason you don’t see organized “camping” at Volunteer is because there are no drug dealers and homeless “outreach” nearby like Cal Anderson.
At Cal Anderson they get served free meals and given free stuff by the church on the corner and others, and for drugs they just walk over to Nagle.
CLEAR THE PARK OF DRUG USING HOMELESS.
What are you talking about? There never used to be tents at Cal Anderson. At all. Lived cross from that park from 2007-2018.
I will echo what Jonathan and Brian said. I have lived in Seattle since 2008 (and never further away than a 10 minute walk to Cal Anderson). Tent camping there was unheard of.
Heck, I remember when me and my college age friends would drink beer in Cal Anderson after dark, and we (a bunch of dweebs arguing about our philosophy reading assignments) were the roughest people there!
Before the lid was placed on Cal Anderson you could reliably find members of the “Rainbow Family” camping in the park during the summer.
For most of its life that park has been a real shit-hole.
I’ve never seen a tent at Cal Anderson until 2020. Homeless sleeping on benches, sure.
There are more than enough vacant buildings on the Hill to have multiple shelters with different systems adapted to the unique needs of homeless people (i.e. safe injection site, women & children, co-ed adult). It is ludicrous and insane that they keep trying the same shit over and over knowing it doesn’t work.
Do renters and property owners get a discount on their rent and property taxes?
What did it cost the City to clean-up Cal Anderson back in 2020?
Yeah, not a chance
Does anyone else who’s been here a very long time remember how, before Cal Anderson Park was built (when it was just a fenced reservoir with a ring of lawn around it), there were always folks shooting up / passed out in this exact same place?
It wasn’t the full encampments and tents that we see now, but that north end of E Denny has been a favorite spot for homeless folks for 30+ years. It’s fascinating how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
It’s fascinating how the more tax dollars we collect and throw at this problem, the more things stay the same.
Serious “you should have seen Seattle in the 90s!” vibes here. Whataboutism is never helpful.
The park was clear of encampments (not drug users and sellers) from 2010-2019. It was the BS around CHOP/CHAZ and the lack of political will during the pandemic that permanently cemented Cal Anderson’s fate, apparently, as a place were tents will go up.
Nah, the past is always golden, Seattle used to be the “city on a hill,” nothing bad ever happened, things were never better than they were before, and the only ones to blame are those who think homeless people aren’t subhuman. Oh yeah and housing costs are not too high, even though high housing costs don’t cause any problems whatsoever. /sarc
yep! most of the problems people complain about here either A: were already present and persistent before today’s circumstances or B: are being faced by nearly every other major city.
folks seem to have this fantasy that the hill was some kind of paradise 20 years ago. nope, it was dirty and dangerous just like today, just a lot cheaper so you couldn’t complain so much about it.
that said the scale has increased like everything else in this city so it’s become more difficult to address effectively. no one is saying it isn’t a problem, but it’s definitely not a new problem.
Clearly, you didn’t live on the Hill 20 years ago.
You’re nuts… back in the 90s there may have been a random person taking an extended nap in the park sometimes, but there were zero tents or long term “residents”… There were tents elsewhere, but it was not tolerated in any of our parks until COVID.
It is so much worse now. There were gutter punks that would come through in the summer, but zero tents. Problem areas existed back then but they were managed and there were still consequences.
I remember when the reservoir was NOT filled with drug addicts. I miss those days and wish we could return to that.
I lived blocks from the park for years, ran there at night around the reservoir, and walked all around the neighborhood at all hours. Sorry, but it was not like this twenty -five years ago, Yes, there were some homeless people, but not very many and no tents. The problem has gotten dramatically worse.
You could see this coming a mile away. About three weeks ago a group of campers showed up at the east entrance, completely blocking the stairs. They then moved to the north end after a couple lame attempts by the city to move them.
Look at the attitude of these “homeless”. They are so brazen. Setting up bike chop shops, setting up furniture, having small fires and so on and on and on!
These are not people “down on their luck” these are criminals and vagrants and drug addicts taking advantage of Seattle’s lax attitude towards their criminal elements.
These people need to be removed from the park. Full stop.
Well as for the drug dealers, they are not going anywhere as long as there is a night life on the hill. Plus Seattle is Uber boring sometimes and the drugs help people cope with the boredom. So whether the dealers sale to the unhoused addicts, or just the party goers they still have a source of income via the hill.
Now for the children and teens. Im sorry the hill is not the place I was able to grow up kicking it on. As a grown man im terrified of that place after a certain hour, or even just a certain area. It’s just neighborhood like it used to be. Go to school, go a community center and go home and get ready for college or something. The hill is not a fun place to be acting grown… unless you have money then this does not apply.
“….” Stats from the Find It, Fix It service show that a bulk of the system’s calls are related to homelessness but the app’s categories don’t show choices like “encampment” or “tents.” Instead, the calls are frequently reported under general inquiries, or “illegal dumping,” the most frequent category of Find It, Fix It complaints.”
I don’t use the mobile app (Find it, fix it), but I do use the online version,and there is a category there to report “Unauthorized Encampment” (on page 2)
Select Service Request – Citizen Web Portal (motorolasolutions.com)
The link to the Seattle Times article is from March 2022. The app now has an option to report unauthorized encampments. There are a few submission screens to report a selection of options to report tents, cars, if people are present. I think it’s the last screen where you can report what sort of trash, human waste, large items, or hazardous waste is at the site.
Thank you for this link. I will be reporting the encampment that has sprung up on 18th and Howell now.
If you’re serious about ending this nonsense, you need to put Republicans in charge. And we all know that’s never going to happen.
Google “Oklahoma City encampments,” “Fort Worth encampments,” ‘Fresno, CA encampments,” etc…All Republican-lead, all having the exact same issues and proposing the exact same solutions that have been tried and failed here.
Used to walk through the park daily; never saw a tent, never got aggressively approached. This was ~10 years ago. Now, both are quite likely to happen any time I go near the park. New arrivals and gaslit people are just spinning stories if they say “it was always like this,” *because it wasn’t.* And no, it wasn’t worse in the 1990s either.
Campers permanently in the area is new, drug tourists by the dozens are new, drug dealers gunplay over who owns Nagel Place and Rancho Bravo parking lot are new, felons with outstanding multiple warrants being allowed to remain encamped is most definitely new. All thanks to stupid Progressive policies that enable crime and give zero F’s about what happens to crime victims..
You had some gutter punks in the summer hanging out smoking weed. You didn’t have hardened criminals setting up tents, chop shops and in general being up to no good.