I chatted with George Scarola, Seattle’s Director of Homelessness, this past Friday to get some additional details about Nickelsville’s imminent move to Wallingford.
First important note is that the while Nickelsville’s Ballard lease expires on November 17th, the city will be extending it until mid-December to give themselves time to raze the City Light-owned building at the Wallingford location and otherwise prepare for the move. That includes setting up electricity and water service, two things that the Ballard site lacked (instead, they had to rely on a noisy, unreliable generator and a 600 gallon water tank.)
“We’re trying to step up our game with the new site,” George said. “They’re still primarily tiny houses, not up to code, but LIHI [the Low Income Housing Institute, operators of Nickelsvile] and the city are putting more work into making them livable. And there are also a set of tents within tents: large canvas tents on platforms, with individual tents set up within. It keeps them warmer and drier.”
I was curious in particular about the Community Advisory Council, or CAC, and how that would be formed.
“The CAC is a go between between community and camp,” George explained. “It’s up to the camp operator to decide who goes on committee, but they’ll be looking for people who will be constructive, can bring in resources. Obviously, they don’t want people who are hostile the camp, but they do want people who can ask hard questions. They will consult with the LIHI and the city, but I would expect to see someone from the faith community, the Wallingford Community Council, the [nearby] John Stanford School, and someone who can represent the residents of the Wallingford neighborhood.
“Again, they’ll consult with the City and LIHI, but the camp operators make the decisions. They’ll have applications available within a couple of couple of weeks of their opening, hopefully in December or early January.”
Just as Nickelsville’s Ballard lease was for one year, with the expectation that it would be extended to two, Wallingford should expect to host the homeless camp through the end of 2019.
The City of Seattle will be holding a community meeting on Tuesday, November 28th to discuss the relocation from 6:30 – 8:00 PM at the UW Fisheries Building (1122 NE Boat Street) – Auditorium 102. City officials and representatives of the LIHI will be on hand to answer questions.
The flier contains the following FAQ:
How was this property selected? The City completed an assessment of available properties to identify those that were suitable and geographically distributed across the city. The sites had to meet the requirements of the existing encampment ordinance, including location in non-residential zones, proximity to transit, and minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet, among other criteria. Northlake property is owned by Seattle City Light, has the physical capacity to support an encampment community, is close to public transit, and located in a non-residential zone.
How long does the permitted encampment stay in one place? Permitted encampments can operate for 12- months with an option for an additional 12-month extension. Each site must be vacant for one year between use. The City is currently hosting six permitted encampments in Othello, Ballard, West Seattle, Interbay, Georgetown and North Seattle for 300 people on any given night. The Northlake site will host the Nickelsville encampment community that has been located in the Ballard neighborhood for two years.
What is the timeline for this project? We expect to have the residents move onto the property during the month of December 2017.
Who do I call if I have a question or concern? While the Northlake site is being planned, please contact George Scarola, Director of Homelessness ([email protected]). Once the encampment is opened, the community should contact the operator directly. The contact information will be shared at the community meetings.
Who makes up the rules for each encampment? The Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) is contracted to operate the permitted encampments, and they selected Nickelsville to oversee the day-to-day management of the program. The encampment is governed by a set of rules and a Code of Conduct , developed by Nickeslville, which each resident must read, sign and agree to abide by. This will be an alcohol and drug free encampment. The Code of Conduct for each site is posted on the www.seattle.gov/homelessness web site.
What oversight will be provided at the encampment? LIHI and Nickelsville are responsible for safety and security within the camp. Residents are screened for acceptance and must follow camp rules to stay. Banned residents will not be allowed to return to camp or to illegally camp in proximity to the City-owned sites. Residents have access to necessary services like case management and medical treatment to help them transition out of homelessness into permanent housing.
What happens if there is a problem at the camp? Two security workers (members of the camp) are on duty at the front desk 24/7, for three-hour shifts. Security workers monitor activities in the camp and respond to inquiries from both residents and interested community members. They also perform scheduled perimeter checks, neighborhood patrols and trash cleanups.
How can I help? Neighbors and businesses have generously supported other managed encampments in the City through donations of food and clothing. The camp operator will share information at the community meeting about how best to get involved.
The Camp will also establish an on-going Community Advisory Committee (CAC) that will provide input on encampment operations. Members of the CAC will include the operator, business and community members and encampment residents. The Committee meets monthly and meeting notes are posted on the City of Seattle’s Homeless Response website.
What can we do to welcome our new neighbors?
I have been thinking the same thing. Perhaps if they’re willing we should go to one of their meetings and ask them what they would like from us.
Thanks for the comprehensive story, Jordan.
It is interesting that the city uses the name Nickelsville. I doubt the city is consciously disrespecting a former mayor but that’s how it appears.
@KatCat7 – ISTBC but I don’t think the tent encampments are the city’s. They are housed on city land but I believe they are managed by LIHI/SHARE/WHEEL et al (hard to keep track of where one ends and the other begins). The encampments are given city land to occupy with the proviso that they are managed by a non-profit. Another camp was managed by a different org but group went bankrupt and the camp is now also managed by Scott Morrow and Sharon Lee’s system. All of which is to say that the camp was originally named by the inhabitants, not the city – why our tax dollars are sent to support a disparaging name for the camp is anyone’s guess. Perhaps Mayor N was not suitably socialist.
KatCat7, I don’t believe there is any disrespect implied to former mayor Nichels. Nickelsville just stuck after its first use and people associate it with this type of homeless encampment.
Berta, in the context of Hooverville – which most certainly was a disparaging name for the POTUS who graced the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression – how are you confident that this isn’t disparaging too?
https://www.alternet.org/story/134218/nickelsville%3A_seattle%27s_homeless_name_new_tent_city_after_city%27s_mayor
“Well, I started living in Nickelsville on September the 25th. Why we named it Nickelsville, after the mayor, because the mayor actually single-handedly have actually—he didn’t start homelessness, but he’s actually single-handedly trying to drive homeless out of Seattle.”
A look around town would show they vastly overestimated Mayor Nickels’ power.
I don’t think many overestimated Nickel’s power. He lost the election for his second term, largely because of an unusual snow storm that the city handled badly. Remember that?
Pork Pie: “he’s actually single-handedly trying to drive homeless out of Seattle.” Can you cite a published source here, please?
See link above.
It was at first, of course. But like many words that start out as derogatory, the term is no longer a criticism of Nickels, in my view. I mean how many Seattle residents even know who he is/was? In a way, the fact that these tent cities,with their particular organization and rules, have been around for so long is a sort of back-handed complement.
You’re moving the goalposts, Berta. The term Nickelsville is nothing but derogatory. We all know who Hoover was (if we went to school) and we all know Hooverville never became a term of endearment, especially because of their longevity.
While the original intent of naming these encampments after Mayor Nickels was meant to be disparaging, if they’re proven to be a successful means to move people out of homelessness, then Nickels will have the last laugh.
Dubbing the ACA “Obamacare” was also meant to be disparaging, but Obama embraced it by saying, “Yes, Obama cares.” Maybe Nickels should do the same.
Obama was in power and that privilege made it much easier for him to reclaim the term. Nickels is not. You might be interested to know (assuming you don’t) that SHARE’s mission isn’t to move poeple into housing: “Together, SHARE and WHEEL educate our community about the causes and effects of homelessness, build bridges with homed people to address those issues, and actively lobby to change policies that oppress homeless people.”
They don’t publish how many people they move into housing that I can find, but Barb Poppe was pretty clear that creating a bunch of tent encampments was not where the city should be focusing its resources: “I find it horrifying you have children living in encampments and that is somehow acceptable to this community,” she said. “It’s just unconscionable to me this is a choice that’s been made here. That said, I understand there’s great pressure to have a short-term solution. But I don’t happen to think these encampments are the best solution.”
I guess time will tell if these camps move people into housing or just establish a bargain basement version of affordable housing in this wealthy city.
The Nickelsville encampments have monthly meeting notes that document movement. You can find them here: http://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/sanctioned-encampments
For example, the Georgetown encampment saw 29 people left last month. 7 moved into permanent housing, but 16 left with permanent bans due to bad behavior. I guess those 16 probably moved down a level to the unsanctioned camps.
And of course these sanctioned encampments are just a bargain basement version of affordable housing. It’s just a bunch of tiny houses put on areas not zoned for residential for people who can’t afford rent of “normal” places. These are the nicer mini-slums of Seattle. These are much better than the unsanctioned tent cities though, which are the worse mini-slums.
Very helpful link. Maybe they should add “moving people into permanent housing” to their mission statement since they do manage to do so.
If Nickels feels he needs to say anything about it, I am just guessing without any kind of research, but I bet all he needs is the numbers – how many while he was in office, how many now. It’s like, today, you can complain about whatever US president of yesteryear you want, but they all startin to look good.
I’d like George Scarola to get more specific about the city’s claim that “Banned residents will not be allowed to return to camp or to illegally camp in proximity to the City-owned sites.”
This promise is too open ended. Specifically, does that mean no illegal camps in proximity, period? Or does it mean only banned residents won’t be allowed to camp? If it’s the latter and illegal encampments pop up, how will we know if those illegal campers were ones who were banned from the city-sanctioned site?
Also, how do they define “proximity? 1 block? 5 blocks? We need to pin down Scarola and get answers to questions like these. Because if problems do arise we don’t want to leave the city any wiggle room because their promises were too vague when they try to renew the lease a year from now. It’s not fair to neighbors and businesses nearby if the city makes al these promises to do a good job and then drops the ball.
Also, who gets to determine and decide if the city has kept the faith and deserves an extension for second year there? The city? Or the neighborhood? Are they going to ask us for feedback before they make that decision? Or will they just announce it after it’s all been decided, as they have in the past?
We should demand the right to decide whether the camp deserves the right to a second year after the first year is up. If the city really believes it can do as it says, then they should have no problem accepting those terms. Otherwise, all the promises and assurances and Community Advisory Councils mentioned above are meaningless.
It’s actually not that complicated. People camping blocks away from this site were there before this encampment, and this encampment would not change that. These encampments self-enforced many rules and routinely kick people or ban people. If those people linger, like staying within a couple of blocks, the encampment people will call the police. Look at the past meeting notes of the various encampments around the city and you’ll see. If we want to learn more, the more useful way is to go attend the meeting of these existing encampments or talk to their management teams.
You can think of this more like allowing a temporary tiny apartment complex to be built across for Ivar’s, leading to about 30 poor people living in tiny houses that shares many of the concerns you have.
So you’re saying that the city wouldn’t kick out the nearby illegal campers once the tiny house encampment goes in? Then how are they going to know if people banned from the tiny houses aren’t camping in said illegal encampments?
They won’t know, of course. It’s not like they’ll be walking over to those encampments and checking their ID. And btw, where do those banned campers go once they’ve been banned? They wander freely through whatever neighborhood they just came to. Remember, they were banned for good reasons. And now they’re here.
Again, this is why we need Scarola to be more specific about the conditions he says will be followed.
There is no added incentive for the less desirable homeless people to be close to these sanctioned camps, which are poor and drug/alcohol free. Adding a sanctioned camp would only increase the number of people that might complain about the less desirable homeless people.
These camps have strict rules and are NOT solutions for the homeless in the worst shape. All the homeless horror stories people talk about are neither going to be improved or worsen by these camps. If anything, these camps simply help some poor people to be safe from the same fear you got.
“There is no added incentive for the less desirable homeless people to be close to these sanctioned camps,”
So now you’re saying that the sanctioned camps haven’t actually kicked out undesirables, since there’s no incentive for them to be there in the first place? I want the people in the sanctioned camp to be safe too. It’s just that I don’t trust the city to do right by them or us.
Fact: The unsanctioned camp near the Ballard Nickelsville, as well as solo campers along the BNSF tracks were enlarged with barred Nickelsville members. The person was first accepted to Nickelsville, then banned from Nickelsville, then desired to remain near Nickelsville primarily because a) they had personal connections to someone still in the Nickelsville camp and/or b) they did not want to wander far and there was an established camp (albeit unsanctioned) nearby. Nothing too surprising there.
The concerns voiced by neighbors were largely because the original agreement with the neighborhood was to not allow satellite camps within a certain distance…that part of the agreement was enforced for quite a while. Then it was, and permanent fencing was installed. Extensive camping remains along BNSF ROW and in Golden Gardens hillside, but that’s well outside the area outlined by Nickelsville and, to TJ’s point, were long-established campsites.
You are trying to create binding commitments where they are not helpful or necessary. George Scarola is a good guy with a long history doing good things. The city is acting in good faith. We know they going to do their best to meet their commitments. Good will and good intentions will have much better outcomes for all than trying to prescribe meticulous rules.
Good will and good intentions have burned through nearly $1 billion in our money with no progress to show for it. Game over.
I don’t think trying to define strict rules about people evicted from a homeless camp will save a billion dollars.
We spent way more on traffic and it’s getting worse. It’s not correct to say a lot of spending should mean progress, because it might just mean not spending enough. And for the homeless issues in Seattle, it’s not even an issue with money. Money just represent temporary patches.
The reason we keep spending more on traffic and it’s getting worse is because Ed Murray put a corrupt bike activist by the name of Scott Kubly in charge of SDOT. The latest example of SDOT flushing our money down the toilet is the $177 MILLION we’re spending to tear up 1st Ave. to put in a one mile long streetcar line. (And btw, that cost will rise due to lawsuits from bicyclists getting their tires caught in the tracks.) Just think how many buses we could have running for that kind of money.
And a good example of Seattle wasting money on the homeless issue is it’s plan to open up heroin injection sites, while doing nothing about upgrading our woefully lacking detox and treatment facilities. All the other cities in Puget Sound had the good sense to say no that lunacy, but not us, we have to be first! If you build them, they will come. Especially once we start giving them free heroin to prevent fentanyl OD’s.
The core of the issue is much simpler for both traffic and homelessness: the city is growing fast and the infrastructure is slow to catch up.
Not sure why you think street car is in any shape or form a significant factor for the traffic issue. If anything, street cars in most studies showed to be more efficient than buses.
Drug is actually an issue separate from homelessness, just related. It’s not like our homelessness situation would be much better if there are no drug abuse issues ever.
The infrastructure is slow to catch up because we don’t collect impact fees and we waste money on stupid things like the streetcar lines, when we should invest that money in things like better timing of traffic signals and way more buses. And they are certainly not “more efficient than buses.” Streetcars are locked into their route, buses are not. Furthermore, the city used wildly inflated projections to justify the tax grab for them, and ridership and revenue has fallen well below those projections. Here’s what CM Lisa Herold recently said about it:
“The financial assumptions are simply unrealistic based on our history with the streetcar,” Seattle City Councilmember Lisa Herbold said in the Times. “I don’t want a situation where we don’t meet those projections and the result is we end up seeing bus-service hours cut to pay for any shortfall.”
The only reason why we’re doing the new streetcar project is because Herbold’s colleague, District 4’s own CM Rob Johnson, doesn’t want to lose the “free” money that the feds are contributing to it.
As for drugs being “an issue separate from homelessness,” that is imply absurd. Here’s what our illustrious former mayor had to say about that:
“The estimate is that half of the people who are addicted to opiates are homeless. And about 80 percent of the folks in our unauthorized encampments are addicted to opiates. That crisis continues to grow,” Murray said.
“We can’t continue just to fund things because it feels good or it sounds good. We’re going to have to make some tough choices,” Murray said.
The infrastructure didn’t catch up because it’s slow to build things up. More money wouldn’t have magically created new light rail lines overnight. Same for housing.
Drug users are by default on the lowest level for anything, including most of the assistance. It’s even more of a case of unauthorized encampments, which are essentially gatherings of these them. However, in poorer and cheaper cities they’d have higher percentage of addicts and lower percentage of homeless people. Places with the most severe homeless problems and the most severe addiction problems don’t overlap.
Excellent questions. Thank you.
Today is Nov. 19. Is this happening onthe date published in this article? Do they have a new date? how is the building demolition going?