City crews are at work in Capitol Hill’s tiny Broadway Hill Park after Wednesday morning’s deadline for removing personal property from the public greenspace.
Seattle Parks and the Human Services Department say two people living in the park were referred to shelter at the Executive Hotel Pacific, one of the city-leased in a “shelter surge” effort to move more people out of camps as COVID-19 slows. One of the referrals came Wednesday morning, the city says, while five others “voluntarily relocated out of the park.”
Policy requires crews to store “personal items” recovered during sweeps. A bin of belongings was reportedly stored from the Broadway Hill clearance.
The sweep follows the clearance of camps at the Miller playfield and Meany Middle School campus just before the return of students to in-person classes last month. Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office said the city’s Homelessness Outreach and Provider Ecosystem (HOPE) Team outreach efforts reported 30 people were referred to shelter before the camp removal work and clean-up.
Seattle’s ongoing “shelter surge” includes leasing rooms in two downtown hotels. The city says the HOPE Team has made “at least 130 referrals to shelter from high-priority sites such as Rainier Playfield, Miller Park, University Playground, Gilman Playground, and Albert Davis Park” over the past month.
Broadway Hill Park is the latest target for the city to sweep and clear. While some neighbors and area businesses have complained about Capitol Hill area encampments, the city has typically provided a public safety explanation for the camp clearances. At Broadway Hill Park, officials blamed a series of encampment fires for making the situation untenable at the corner of Federal and Republican amid the residential blocks just east of Broadway.
“These fires have caused damage to the park,” a Seattle Parks statement released after Wednesday’s start of the clearance and clean-up reads. “After all tents and belongings are gone, Seattle Parks and Recreation staff will work to address this damage.”
Broadway Hill Park is closed to the public during the clean-up with a plan to reopen Thursday.
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Sounds reasonable. Next up, the park next to Safeway on 15th and John.
We need a homelessness solution.
We also need public spaces.
When parks and community centers become occupied temporary housing areas, they are no longer public, they are private spaces- not open and safe for everyone’s use. Privatizing public spaces, and therefore losing our most critical and free to all community asset is not the solution to homelessness.
Volunteer park is becoming one of those privatized public spaces. People putting tents, running gas generators under the low hanging branches, creting fencing.
I contacted park department, to no avail.
I live next to Broadway Hill Park and am glad it is being restored. I walked through Volunteer Park yesterday and am amazed at how many people are now going there, setting up camp and using the park as their bathroom. Enough. The homeless are not safe there and have ruined the park with needles, fecal matter, urine, propane explosions, screaming in the middle of the night, drug dealers, defacing the park, etc. It’s not a good situation for anyone.
Empathy requires being able to see two sides of a problem, and from both angles this encampment was not sustainable. Glad to see it given back to the neighborhood and no longer held hostage by the campers.
Agree, definitely.
They should power wash more, it really helps keep the city clean.
“five others “voluntarily relocated out of the park.”
In other words, most of the campers at that park (5 of 7) have refused shelter and will just wreak havoc on another park or public space. Par for the course. Their addictions/mental illness are stronger than their desire to live indoors.
@rwk – 100% agree.
IF there’s shelter space available it’s NOT a “sweep”, it’s just enforcing the law that you can’t camp out and drink in a public park. That’s ALWAYS been true. The caveat was that IF there is NO shelter space available anywhere, then the police can’t move people out because you can’t make it illegal to just ‘sleep somewhere’. But when there IS shelter space, the police have EVERY right to tell you, me or anyone they can’t throw up a tent and make a park their home just because you “wanna”. You don’t like the shelter, fine! Get job and a crappy tiny basement room/apartment (I’ve lived in those myself). I must have passed 100 “help wanted” signs drive between Burien and West Seattle yesterday. This isn’t the dust bowl or great depression, businesses are BEGGING to hire people. There’s not massive unemployment because of some dust bowl like jobless situation. I can’t tell you how HARD I roll my eyes seeing folks on Broadway begging for money in front of Dicks which has a HELP WANTED sign up noting they have medical/dental and 401k. WTF. If my live choices were “live under a freeway with no bathroom” or working stocking shelves or flipping burgers and living in a tiny apartment I have to bus to 45 minutes away…I’d take the tiny apartment.
Edgy Coolguy Republican has logged on.
“The poor should do the job I don’t want to do either!”
It’s called reality
The hard truth is that most of the people that refuse shelter are drug addicts. It is not Seattle’s responsibility to take in every drug addicts from across the region and beyond. There is not a right to occupy and trash our public spaces. There have been dozens of fires across the neighborhood from the stolen propane tanks in these encampments, which are used to cook meth. We need FEMA tents, mandatory drug treatment and a camping ban across the city.
Mandatory treatment? You realize, drugs would be pouring into the facility, right?
I’m down for this. being “tolerant” hasn’t helped much.
Fascism is tour answers? Mandatory treatment? Gtfo that’s awful.