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With Seattle ‘intensifying’ clearances, Capitol Hill’s Tashkent Park swept of campers

Thanks to a CHS reader for the picture

Tashkent Park is the latest public space around Capitol Hill to cleared of encampments as city officials say they are ramping up clearance efforts as COVID-19 restrictions lift.

Notice of the planned July 1st sweep of the Boylston Ave E location was posted by Seattle Parks last week. We have not received details from the city about how many individuals were camping in the park and if any accepted referral to shelter or services.

In recent sweeps like early June’s clearance of Williams Place Park, the parks department has said public safety concerns and maintenance needs have required the encampments to be cleared.

As with previous clearances, Tashkent Park was closed to the public for maintenance and clean-up following the effort. According to the notice, belongings were not slated to be stored as in past camp clearances. We’ve asked the city for more details. UPDATE: A parks representative said outreach staff “reported that those who were residing onsite opted to take their belongings that they wanted as they moved into shelter.” The rep said the HOPE team visited the park and “indicated that those who were residing at this park said that the remaining belongings were no longer wanted.”

During the months of pandemic, Seattle officials said they were operating under federal CDC guidelines in allowing the camps to form.

“As the City surpasses 80% of individuals vaccinated and as part of our re-opening efforts, the City is intensifying outreach at locations across the City to bring more individuals from encampments in public rights-of-way including parks, playfields, sidewalks, and the downtown core inside and on a path towards permanent housing,” a representative from Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office said. “The City has invested more than $200 million into addressing homelessness including new hotel based shelter, 24/7 enhanced shelter, and tiny home villages in addition to permanent housing solutions.”

Seattle’s ongoing “shelter surge” includes leasing rooms in two downtown hotels.

Capitol Hill encampment sweeps

The mayor’s office rep declined to confirm if Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park was next for the ongoing sweep effort.

“As a practice, the City does not announce removals prior to the posting date because individuals may accept shelter or voluntarily relocate prior to the posting and dates frequently change,” the spokesperson said.

 

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16 Comments
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JerSeattle
JerSeattle
2 years ago

IDK, we have non-profits dropping off furniture for the homeless at these camps. This city is such a mess.

ballardite
ballardite
2 years ago
Reply to  JerSeattle

There should be laws against that – illegal dumping – and large expensive fines given to the people who do this.

C Doom
C Doom
2 years ago

The park had turned into an ongoing crime scene. From the guy waving a snow shovel and attacking passers-by with it, to the pile of dirty needles (still there as of yesterday) to the fire that put a kid into the hospital with 3rd degree burns (his screams were pretty harrowing to hear that night). Tashkent had become an ongoing open air drug market and mental health crisis ward.

The contingent that says we should enable park camping is turning a blind eye to the fact many of these folks in crisis are incapable of self-maintenance without self-harm, and in no sane universe would be allowed to roam the streets unsupervised, free to self-medicate, free to start fights and assault people, free to wallow in their own physical crisis. They perpetuate their crises while a city government allows them to continue to self-harm in the name of “freedom.”

We need solutions that don’t enable people experiencing mental health and drug crisis to continue to self-harm in the middle of densely populated urban park areas. It’s the height of stupid to suggest this is OK. Only a ridiculous revolutionary or very out of touch with reality do-gooder (or Amy Hagiopian) thinks this is a good idea. These poor folks need mental health resources, they need actual homes, and they need to be out of self-supervised living because they are incapable of doing it, as regularly demonstrated by their piles of trash, needles and filth left around everywhere.

If the antifa-fueled fantasy of no-government being superior, and all government being bad, then would not these park camping sites have all broken out with wonderful examples of self-governing free people by now? Rather than the trash, drug, and crime pits they always become? I thought government was oppressive and bad. Maybe people do actually need rules enforced – we’ve seen what happens when they are not. CHOP murder and fires and crime was an antifa-and-absent-police-created hellscape I won’t soon forget, nor will many other long-term residents around here.

Jules James
Jules James
2 years ago
Reply to  C Doom

Thoughtful. Thank you.

Andy H.
Andy H.
2 years ago
Reply to  C Doom

🎯

Mo O'Connell
Mo O'Connell
2 years ago

Letting people live in parks is NOT a long-term, or even a good short-term, solution. Greater minds than mine have been trying to help the homeless, so I won’t pretend to have the answers. But I do know that “letting” people live in sub-housing (tent camping in parks, under bridges, along highways, on downtown streets) is cruel. I was a landlord for over 20 years and never rented out a place that I would not live in myself. That’s the way it should be — the litmus test should be “would that be good enough for me?”. Most will say sub-housing options are not good enough for them or their families. So why would we think it’s good enough for “them”? That’s dehumanizing “them”, making them “other”, “sub”.

Kevin
Kevin
2 years ago

Public parks are for the public which means 720000 residents in Seattle, not only for the dozens of tents.

And please get some sense of reality… The tents are not some paradise on Earth that is being genocided. It’s cold, uncomfortable unsafe, most of them filled by garbage and drug addicts. People have been murdered there.

16yrCDRes
16yrCDRes
2 years ago
Reply to  Kevin

And a dog horrifically kicked to death as well.

Xtian Gunther
Xtian Gunther
2 years ago
Reply to  Kevin

Seattle has 769,500 residents. Just keeping it factual ;-)

Christopher
Christopher
2 years ago

I was just at Broadway Hill Park while walking in my old hood. I used to live on that block. The tents are back and it felt really tense and scary when I tried to sit down there to drink a coffee and think about when I lived there. I also found a sharpened screwdriver on the sidewalk right there, with black electrical tape on the handle.
The tents should be removed as soon as they are put up, in my humble opinion.
The residents of those tents are clearly engaged in hardcore drug use and petty crime.

RWK
RWK
2 years ago
Reply to  Christopher

I think the City, once a camping site is removed, should return a few weeks later and do another removal. Otherwise, homeless people learn that they can just return to where they were, without consequences. Why do we allow them to call the shots?

Fairly Obvious
Fairly Obvious
2 years ago
Reply to  RWK

Why do we allow them to call the shots?

Because when the accepted standard is to treat people experiencing homelessness with pure and utter contempt, while simultaneously expecting them to just up and stop being homeless, you get people with nothing to lose and will do whatever they can to survive.

Maybe we should start saying “please” when we ask them to stop being homeless?

Caphiller
Caphiller
2 years ago
Reply to  Fairly Obvious

I think Seattleites have a lot of compassion for homeless people who are down on their luck, between jobs, etc. Where we don’t have sympathy is for people who trash our parks, assault people, consume illegal drugs, start fires. That’s not just being homeless; that’s being a criminal and endangering everyone nearby.

Resident
Resident
2 years ago

City should remove tents all parks at the same time. Right now its like Whack-a-mole and tents return after few weeks…

Fairly Obvious
Fairly Obvious
2 years ago
Reply to  Resident

City should remove tents all parks at the same time. Right now its like Whack-a-mole and tents return after few weeks…

It’s cute that you think dislodging encampments is a solution to the homeless problem as if they all of a sudden will “decide” to not be homeless anymore.

Unfortunately delusional people like yourself drive the narrative and we end up in the situation we’re in.

Don’t pull a muscle patting yourself on the back for such great ideas!

Joey
2 years ago

Camping in the city is illegal.