This is a bit dated, but a few weeks back, I came down that little bit of 5th Ave NE that runs alongside I-5 and passed a backhoe clearing out the homeless encampment and the bushes that were hiding it. I went by a few days later and snapped a few pictures of the cleared area.
There was a bit of debris, including an old wifi router, a hypodermic needle and other odds and ends where the bushes and tents used to be, but it was mostly bare dirt. Someone has scraped out a little cave / shelf for a bed at the far north end. One tent had returned, south of the cleared area.
How horrible to be trying to live in freezing cold these days. That said.. who has solutions? How fast wil this fill up again?
No one has a good solution. That needle is a clue. Apparently most illegal encampment occupants are opiate addicts, 80% is the smallest figure I’ve seen. Because of this and other very intractable behavioral issues, it isn’t a simple matter of giving people a hand up. Cleanups are a whack-a-mole solution, they just go somewhere else, and they’re difficult, risky, inhumane and maybe counterproductive. Jail, bus tickets out of town, etc. are impractical even if there were a legal basis. There’s a new “low barrier” city sanctioned encampment under way up north, but the odds seem very poor that the city can manage this population that way.
That said … we supposedly threw out Nickels because his administration didn’t do a good job clearing the streets after an unusual snow storm. This may not be as big an inconvenience, but it has its own dangers, it isn’t as picturesque and it’s 365 days a year. With an election coming up, this is the time to hold city hall feet to the fire.
Well, interestingly.. our currect mayor just scrapped the Bike Share program.. maybe he will change his homeless project tune?
He has already (like with Pronto) been bold enough to scuttle one of the City Council’s worst moves on homeless encampments and go with the sanctioned low barrier camp. Going past that without offending Seattle voters is going to be really hard. We’re pushovers, as long as we think we can drive past with the windows closed and it really isn’t going to bite us personally.
Bellevue has homeless as well, albeit a much smaller number.
And yet, no tent encampments. Hmm….
Bellevue doesn’t have the scale or drug infrastructure to provide useful information or advice but San Francisco is laughable since they can’t even get the (literal) human feces off a two block stretch of Market street. LA has lost control of it too.
I ride my bike through this area twice every day for the last 4 years so I get to see it up close and personal. They would stretch out blackberry vines across the path that is there and flatted my bike several times. There was never any groups living here until about 2 years ago when the tents started popping up en masse. Things got really bad and there were repeated sweeps and they always came back… until the last sweep. This one has held the longest and it came with the clearing of the bushes, mending of fences, and general maintenance of the area. I am happy to see this cleaned up because:
1) there was drug use occurring in the open within a block of an elementary school.
2) there was always garbage strewn about from neighbors who had the garbage taken and items were being rummaged through, specifically mail, in an attempt to steal identities.
3) there were items left out in an attempt to antagonize people from using the trail to get down to the burke gilman – panties, porn magazines, bras, various women’s clothing strewn about in the dirt.
I got to see plenty of these people up close and personal and nearly all of them were completely drugged out and filthy, carrying out petty crime during the day to fulfill their habit. I can only thank the mayor for getting this particular spot cleaned up as it touches my life daily. To the people that got displaced – you don’t have a right to camp there any more than I do. I follow the rules, you don’t. Goodbye.
Where is this ‘”low barrier” city sanctioned encampment under way up north’?
8620 Nesbit Ave N – one block off Aurora, near Seattle Fabrics.
I almost rented up there. I recall address so well. Instead I ended up here 2 blocks off 99 in a large apt building.
BTW the cave has been there for at least a couple of years. I’m surprised that hasn’t made some civil engineer nervous. Not that the structure is in any jeopardy, more the general principle and longevity of the thing.