The city “swept” the Troll’s Knoll homeless encampment this past Monday. The encampment has been a source of both frustration and sympathy for the neighborhood, but had been what passes for home for a few dozen people up until this point.
The city is required to give advance notice of sweeps, to hold any property removed in storage for at least 70 days, and to provide shelter for anyone displaced by a sweep. According to KIRO, when the city Navigation Team arrived on Monday, most of the 20 or so tents at the encampment were empty, the residents having moved on in anticipation of the sweep. As of Monday night, KIRO reports that only three of the people swept had accepted the offer of shelter. (The city apparently asked shelters to hold spots open for those displaced by this sweep in anticipation of the need.)
For many, the fact that most of the swept residents refused the city’s offer of spots in homeless shelters will be taken as evidence that they don’t want help. As Matthew points out on a Facebook post on the topic, though, there are a number of reasons people choose to remain on the street rather than take a bed in a city homeless shelter: there are no mixed gender shelters, for one, so couples must separate. For myself, given the choice, I think I would prefer prefer to find a place to sleep outside with my wife or on my own rather than take a mat in a gymnasium-style room of a hundred-plus people, many of whom are physically and/or mentally ill.
And, of course, drug abuse is a major problem, as well. There were reportedly four deaths from overdose (likely fentanyl) at the encampment recently, and the city reported cleaning up hypodermic needles from the encampment. No surprise to anyone living nearby.
I anticipate a lot of folks cheering the removal, as I’ve seen that it has been a source of concern for neighbors for a while: there were fireworks going off at all hours, loud music, rising crime rates and, of course, needles. I also anticipate a lot of people decrying the city’s heartlessness in removing people who have nowhere else to go, regardless who’s “fault” it is.
It’s all true. There is no single cause of homelessness, and there are no obvious answers or solutions. We can all criticize the city’s policies, but it’s harder to come up with a solution that will actually make things better. Homeless people won’t magically become model citizens because they’re offered a place to sleep, nor will they just disappear if they’re pushed out of their tents. There is no single cause of homelessness (rising housing costs, drug abuse, mental illness, bleeding heart social programs, income disparities), all of these things contribute.
Please have some kindness in your comments and keep them constructive.
In the time it took to read this post, Bill Gates made $100,000.
And probably gave away most of it to charity.
And those charities cater to people who want to better their own lives, as opposed to the self-destructive types we have camping in Seattle
I am not sure how that is relevant. If a person does not want to accept help. That person has free will to decline the city’s generous invitation to sleep in one of its facilities. Camping in public right of way is a crime and should be treated as such.
I, for one, would not separate from my wife nightly, which means I would have to decline the city’s “generous invitation”, too. Assuming “is a crime and should be treated as such” means people who don’t sleep in shelters or in homes they pay for should be arrested, what would you advise I do to avoid arrest?
That’s a tough choice. I would pick staying a shelter over jail. But I would also pick staying in a shelter over living in a public park or right of way too. I understand why the city doesn’t let genders sleep together in shelters. Could you image what that would be like. Would you want to sleep next to a couple doing who know what in a shelter??
As wealth inequality grows, so does homelessness.
Its not income inequality causing these people to be homeless. Most of these people are not in a place to keep a job. I know the news likes to pull out the few examples of people who are working poor, who are homeless and they do existing, but the vast majority of these people are not currently capable of holding a job. That’s why there homeless.
How do you suppose “these people” got to a place where they were incapable of holding a job? Certainly they weren’t born that way.
It wasn’t because bill Gates has lots of money. Its because they have mental illness or drug addiction issues. In the later case drug companies bear some responsibility but so does the person using the drugs. In the first case I would put the blame on people against universal health care.
The same economic policies that allow for the accumulation of an obscene amount of wealth into the hands of the few prevent the implementation of social policies like universal health care and a living wage. And as we gut things like the estate tax and capital gain taxes, furthering the divide between the very wealthy and the rest of us, the social safety net will get weaker and rates of homelessness and drug addiction will rise.
(And I bet Bill Gates would agree.)
Street addicts and the indigent already have universal coverage via our excellent King County public health system. But it’s a pipe dream to think somebody who lives and enjoys a self-destructive lifestyle will suddenly start accessing the health care system
And most of the time their mental illness was caused by recreational drug use and addiction
It’s not that the news have a bias. It’s that people define homeless differently. Majority of the homeless people have jobs or can hold jobs. Many of them live in cars and use the facility at work to keep clean. When you say “vast majority of these people”, the “these people” part isn’t the general homeless population, but a specific sub-set of chronicle homeless people.
The solution for different types would be different, and I think it’s obvious when people say homeless they quite often means different things.
Many of the “these people” you are referring to are similar to those already homeless in Seattle before this city got so expensive. There used to be drug-users with mental illness hanging around places like the Jack int the Box in U-district for years. Majority of the homeless people in Seattle used be like that I guess, since there weren’t much of a affordability or homeless problem back then. Nowadays it’s quite different.
It’s actually the opposite. As more money and cash are spread around town, drugs become more prolific and accessible. Take away some of the expensive mountain bikes and electronics that addict campers use as currency, and much of the drug use and addiction will go away. Same for people stupid enough to give cash to addicts at on and off-ramps. That cash fuels the drug trade – with an economic downturn, much of that roadside giving goes away.
The situation is sad on many levels. There’s no one solution, but I would love to see more programs that offer jobs and job training to to people who are homeless. And I think money spent preventing homelessness with emergency rent subsidies could go a long way. As well as case workers bridging the gap for those coming out of prison or those aging out of the foster system.
Thanks for your thoughtful coverage of this Jordan.
We need universal health care that includes rehab and mental health. Medicaid for all!!!
I would expect that the vast majority of the residents of these camps already have incomes low enough to qualify for Medicaid.
That’s great they have a bed if they want and health care…Although I don’t think medicaid covers mental health and rehab?? or does it??
I don’t know what Medicaid covers. I do know that since Washington expanded Medicaid, anyone under 138% of the poverty line (up to $1,436/month for a single person or $1,945/month for a couple) is eligible for it.
“Medicaid for all” therefore doesn’t seem like a valid solution for this particular problem, since most tent campers are likely to already be on it or at least eligible to sign up.
Then the question is: where are the gaps? Are these folks failing to sign up for Medicaid despite being eligible? Does Medicaid not cover the treatment they need? Do they refuse this treatment despite it being available? I’d love to find out from someone more knowledgeable.
Good points it would be interesting to know.
In King County any indigent person has free and unfettered access to quality health care, excellent mental health care and free meds. Federal programs can augment this care – but the only thing stopping somebody from tapping into our free public health system is the patient him/herself.
100% agree.
Not sure job trainings are solutions, unless we are talking about using job training as an excuse to occupy somebody’s time and attention. Job training programs have been mostly ineffective if we measure them by getting relevant jobs later, and there are always going to be people who are not productive enough to justify the minimum wage, especially when the minimum wage is high. Direct assistance is much easier and efficient.
We need to stop linking benefits and welfare to jobs. The output per worker has becomes bigger and bigger in variation nowadays that a very productive worker can produce enough to support a hundred. We need to rethink what work means. Maybe giving some people” government jobs” to dig holes out of the ground with spoons would be the right thing to do.
City needs to hire more staff for navigation teams and clean up all unsanctioned camps throughout the city and get the people help and/or arrest. The attached link to KOMO News special on homeless entitled “Is Seattle Dying” sums it all up. http://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is-dying
Solutions based on reason for homelessness:
* Can’t afford rent — City needs to build epic number of affordable housing directly, not wait for 300 affordable units per year by MHA; significantly bump up funding for emergency loans/grants for people at risk of losing housing now.
* Substance abuse — Divert to treatment; if refused, arrest.
* Theft — Arrest and assess whether diversion to housing and/or treatment will work; third arrest = jail
* Just want to live on the taxpayer dime and create mayhem — Arrest
Zero tolerance for street/park/RV/car camping. We cannot arrest our way out of this, but we can build housing yesterday and arrest/treat our way out of it. Time for a new approach. No more dithering…BUILD HOUSING AND TREATMENT PROGRAMS NOW, adequate to the crisis. And yes, I’d be willing to entertain the tax increases or redistribution of current resources to pay for this. Thanks.
So I clicked on the link for “Matthew.” Let me get this straight: you are using Matt Lang as a source?
Last spring this clown helped set up a particularly atrocious illegal encampment by our fellow Wallingford neighbors over by the sound barrier wall on our side of I -5. Lang and his activist friends set up the camp with no warning to neighbors, and afterwards told neighbors who were understandably alarmed about it not to worry, they would take care of it, it would be under control and there wouldn’t be problems and they would take care of the trash and human waste. The camp was literally 30 feet away from their front doors, right across the street.
Well just a week or two after they made that promise, as one might expect, things went very badly downhill. The camp grew, rapidly. For two months that quiet little street was subjected to daily tresspassing, vagrants crapping on people’s lawns, fights spilling out into the street, women and even children being threatened, car prowls, open drug use, and needles everywhere.
Oh and a huge bike chop shop that they set up on the other side of the wall. You know what Mr. Lang said about that? Those bikes weren’t stolen, they were “found discarded” by bicycle stores in “refuse piles.”
Lang is a well meaning but naive idiot who shouldnt be taken seriously. After all, he said that the troll camp is one of “cleanest and well kept” camps he’s ever seen. That doesn’t say much for the hundreds of other camps in the city because I can tell you that I walked through the east camp on the first day of the sweep AFTER they had swept it, and there were still needles everywhere and the stench was awful.
I have heard that people are considering making a garden there with planters. I think that’s a wonderful idea. Give that spot back to the people and not to a bunch of drug addicted criminals.
Were any of the statements that I quoted him on incorrect? It was his post that brought the sweep to my attention, so I referenced it. The specific point that I referenced, that there are multiple valid reasons for refusing city shelter, I agree with.
I reject the growing trend in discourse of attacking people as a way of casting shade on their ideas, without actually having to address the ideas themselves. An idea may have merit or not, regardless of who says it.
I identified one of those incorrect statements in my post.
And just to be clear, this is not an attack on you. I’m going after Matt Lang. Because this guy does not give a rip about what he does to communities who he imposes these camps on. He is simply about pushing his own agenda and that is to make “homelessness” as “in your face” as he can, consequences be dammed. I was involved in the fight to get rid of that camp last spring. It was all over the news and Lang has never once apologized for it or owned up to his mistake.
i would “cast shade” on anyone on anyone bringing an illegal encampment into my neighborhood and then use the ol’ “they found those bikes” when called on the chop shop aspect…
this guy did the same thing to an area between Fremont and Ballard.
Jordan, please correct your post: ZERO deaths occurred at the camp. Yes, overdoses did occur, but, thanks to people’s harm-reduction practices, all survived. The only overdose death that occurred in the area happened to someone inside of a home.
I am unsur eof which facts are facts. I heard on a news radio station 2 days ago there were 6 deaths there due to overdoses. ( comment re comment)