Thanks to a CHS reader for the pictures. Volunteers were also reported working at the site helping campers move their possessions.
As the Seattle City Council dug in Wednesday on Mayor Jenny Durkan’s 2022 budget proposal including some $115 million in spending earmarked to address the city’s homelessness crisis, workers were on Capitol Hill executing the latest ordered clearance of tents and belongings from a city park.
“Because of an encampment impeding park access, outreach to Thomas St. Mini Park intensified this week with the goal of getting all who are residing onsite connected to shelter and on a path towards a permanent housing solution,” a statement sent to CHS by Seattle Parks reads.
The city said the encampment included four occupied tents and five used for storage in the Bellevue Ave E pocket park. According to the city’s Human Services Department, seven people “residing on site” were referred to shelter “such as the Navigation Center, Blaine Center, and Executive Hotel Pacific, all enhanced shelters with wraparound on-site services, including behavioral health case management and housing navigation, to help end a person’s experience with homelessness.”
The city says it posted notice about the clearance Monday.
In addition to the camp, many of the area’s mutual aid efforts have continued to provide meals and services at the park.
Wednesday, volunteers were also reported at Thomas Street helping people move their tents and possessions.
Wednesday’s clearance is the latest on Capitol Hill and follows sweeps across the city as Seattle has increasingly acted to clear camps in this latest phase of the pandemic and with more shelter and service resources reportedly available.
It comes as sweeps have become a divisive issue in the race to replace Durkan as mayor. Lorena González says her homelessness plan would not emphasize sweeps and would focus on the creation of affordable housing, adding more shelter space and services, and a “revisit” of the wealth tax to help pay for it. Bruce Harrell has also called for more housing but says his plan hinges on “a capital campaign” supported by charitable giving from the private sector, not new taxes. Meanwhile, Harrell says parks and streets should be cleared of encampments with increased outreach effort from workers to provide shelter and services.
Next on the list for clearance on Capitol Hill could be Seven Hill Park, just off 15th Ave E near Kaiser Permanente’s Capitol Hill campus, where a camp has grown along with complaints of street disorder and disturbances.
“This site is a priority for removal and for shelter offering, but this takes time,” a Seattle Parks department email response to one complaint reads. “Closing the park and excluding all from the park would not allow outreach providers the time needed to make connections to services and shelter prior to a removal, and would likely cause individuals to relocate within the neighborhood.”
At Thomas Street, the city says the HOPE Team that coordinates homelessness outreach and referrals to shelter was at the park “daily” and worked with “outreach providers such as Catholic Community Services, and Ryther, to connect individuals at the site with services and shelter as available.”
The city says that, in the first half of 2021, that process resulted in 873 “referrals to shelter, including tiny houses and hotel-based shelter resources” in which someone experiencing homelessness accepted an offer of shelter and were connected to an open shelter resource.
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This is great! The mutual aid was providing food and clothing to a drug dealer who walks around the neighborhood selling meth with a 6 inch knife by his side. Month by month he would take trash and construction supplies to build a multi room drug den. Anyone that provides mutual aid to this should be ashamed. The City of Seattle and Seattle parks took too long to resolve this. Let’s have a block party this Saturday to celebrate! Thomas park is free of drugs and scary tweakers!
This is so sad.
It’s sad that instead of being able to live in a public park where their safety and the public’s safety is in jeopardy, they are being given shelter and a path to housing? Why on earth do you think that?
I really don’t understand what else you think can be done at this point. Outreach and housing are being offered. We can’t continue down this path of allowing everyone to simply set up camps and live all over the streets and parks. So far it’s proven to be dangerous for not only the surrounding community but also for the actual people living in these encampments.
Not really.
apparently your car hasn’t been broken in to yet
Sorry CapHillNative, should have been clear. Meant that it’s not really sad the park was swept. Believe me, I’ve had enough property broken, stolen, or otherwise defiled over the last couple of years.
The city needs to sweep Broadway Hill Park just off of Republican Street and Federal Ave
Agreed, Broadway Hill Park has gotten really bad lately.
The city needs to enforce the no camping in parks law already books, period.
That’ll solve the homeless problem for sure!!!
/sarcasm
Did they even say that? It will ensure access to the parks for all & not just a select few.
If you think the City enforcing the no camping law will result in parks free from homeless, I’ve got a bridge to West Seattle to sell.
It wouldn’t ensure access to the parks “for all” at all but at least no one living near one of the almost 500 parks (covering 6,441 square miles /12% of Seattle) will have to deal with it. Maybe if garbage cans were put back and the mayor quit blocking/provided funding for outreach to actually happen along with realistic temporary housing solutions vs single-gender, congregate, no ADA access shelter spaces, we’d see more success with folks accepting offers (when they’re given) instead of ending up pushed along to the next park.
If you don’t like people living in your park spaces, push for actual solutions, not just the tired “the city should sweep *here*!” If you’ve never been to a forcible removal of people and sometimes non-consensual destruction and disposal of their personal belongings, they are stressful, traumatic, and symptoms vs solution-based. Do better.
No…. people were not en-masse camping in the parks pre-COVID, exactly because we were enforcing it….. Yeah, they were definitely still out there – highway verges, areas like ‘the jungle’, but they weren’t taking over the parks like they are now. Sure, people would occasionally find a hidden area where they might not be discovered for a long period of time- like deep in Interlaken or a tent might occasionally pop up, but also be quickly removed from a more public area, but *nothing* like what started happening as soon as COVID announcements that there would be no sweeps came.
BS. They were camping other spots and also parks because people go where amenities like running water and bathrooms are. Yes, they got swept faster in the fast, generally because someone complained, and ended up someplace worse off. You saying you know or understand the state of the almost 500 parks then or now is a bit odd.
BS yourself – it was not anything like now pre-COVID, stop trying to normalize it…. And yes I’ve visited a ton of our neighborhood parks – perhaps not all 500, but I’ve been to a lot of them, all over the city and people were absolutely not being allowed to set up long term or large encampments in them pre-COVID. If a tent did pop up, it was generally moved relatively quickly – if a camp popped up and started to grow it was moved relatively quickly. Many of the larger, more sprawling, less transient camps were on, I believe, SDOT property…. Areas that are now relatively empty because people are being allowed to stay put in the parks.
Lol!!! Solve the homeless problem??? Trying to make mentally ill not mentally ill is an impossible feat. So is helping someone who doesn’t want help because of illness or drug addiction. Keeping them houses with tax payer money is the only way. Jail for breaking laws would help too. Jail makes people sober and time to reflect on change if they are able.
American prison system does no such thing. If you truly believe that, you should go visit a federal prison sometime and then let us know if you still think that is in any way effective in rehabilitating people.
Throwing the homeless (or mentally ill) in jail is more expensive than housing and treating them.
It’s been swept already once. People come back after a while. Same thing with Tashkent. And same will probably happen with Williams Place.
I don’t have a solution. I do know that if the people setting up tents in the parks would not endanger themselves and others, and would clean up their spaces, I would be less bothered by their presence.
ugh no. i’d appreciate it if they weren’t stealing packages and dumping the contents of their unwanted stolen goods behind my building. I’d say return to enforcing no public encampments. We’re not far behind Portland. We’d be in the same spot as Portland if the city offered free methadone clinics, which I’m glad Seattle isn’t offering.
Also, i’m happy we’re not SF.
Before you lambast me, I’m a liberal but my philosophy regarding the homeless is that as long as they respect their neighbors who allow them to sleep on the street or under open covered parking w/o stealing their neighbors’ property, harassing their neighbors (I’m black, live on the hill and have been screamed racist names as I’m walking down the street or down alleys by passing homeless), or being a loud nuisance, then I have respect for them and will let them be. 2020 changed my opinion of the small subset of the homeless population that are entitled drug addicted homeless people taking advantage of Seattle’s kindness and tolerance for them. The past two years has been nothing but enabling homeless drug addicts to not give a damn and get worse.
I’ve actually dealt with close relatives during my childhood who were addicted to drugs starting in the late 80s. Seattle is doing it completely wrong by enabling them.
Sure wish the city would sweep Tent Guy, who has built a fortified complex in front of my apartment and has been living here for a year and a half. The obvious drug problem that the rest of us are left to deal with because the city won’t — is why I am finally moving out of Seattle. Pretty heartbreaking to see such a beautiful city crumble and decay to this. I’ve lost hope. The poor management of this city is to blame, and the Seattle City Council should be ashamed of themselves. That definitely includes Lisa Herbold. The theft, break-ins, assault, attacks, threats, shootings, lack of police response to issues that you are prohibited from dealing with, junkies nodded out, and tweakers randomly screaming and losing their s*, often becoming aggressive or violent. It’s constant. The residents and businesses are suffering. I’ve had enough.
Cool. Maybe more vacancies will lower my rent.
We are looking at the rear end of the housing crisis in this region coupled with little to no social safety net that prevents homelessness in the first place.
This economy breeds homelessness. One silver lining though; If Some of us can put up with a few screaming people having public mental breaks once in awhile, it might be long enough to see more squeamish tech folkx abandon the Hill with their teslas’s, yoga studios, and montressori day cares, then maybe some of us working stiffs can actually bring back our affordable rents, dive bars, art spaces, and live music venues.
What do you have against cleaner transportation, health care that’s targeted towards women and an alternative educational system that teaches how to think instead of what to think?
This polluted, classist and sexist attitude is what needs to move off the Hill.
I think you gave away your real intention by saying “Cool. Maybe more vacancies will lower my rent”.
I think none of any Seattle residents think having people camping in the Park is a good idea. But they want to politicize the issue to push for some self-centered economic agenda such as cheaper rent, etc.
People should really just try to solve the homeless problem I think, it’s already tough enough problem to solve without others tacking their own agenda onto it. (Seattle activist politicians such as Gonzalez are trying to do the same thing, hence you see they didn’t make any improvement despite hundreds of millions spent.)
LG is one of 9 plus the mayor (who sat on, vetoed, or changed if she could, any actual improvements instead of doing anything useful); blaming one council member is shortsighted. We need focus on housing first with wraparound supportive services; the more time that passes with someone on the street, the more barriers they have to getting back where they once were.
The neighborhood needs a dog park. This would be the perfect size for one.
There are 3 dog parks within a mile of that park… two of them are within 1/2 a mile…
Dog parks don’t help. They tried that on the park known as “crack park” on 3rd Ave nearby Dan and Rey’s Market. All it did was cause the Ferals to loiter all around the periphery of the park. The crime and damage to the area did not cease.
How is this sad when housing is being offered, i guess the truth about how many people have been housed will never be told, the blaine Center will get about 60 men into shelter this year, and this time of year always sees alot of people housed before winter sets in. Gonzales is lying.
Not everyone is offered housing or even shelter at a sweep; every org and volunteer at a sweep will back that up. AFAIK, the only ones saying every person at every sweep is offered something is the Mayor’s Office.
And the Blaine Ctr may get 60 men into shelter but shelter is not housing. Where are you seeing that “alot [sic] of people get housed before winter?” Because a lot would be thousands and that isn’t happening.
The city acts bizarrely random, either the city should repeal any laws prohibiting living in parks, or consistently enforce no one should be living in parks. There’s no rhyme or reason for any decisions currently.
This is the Gonzalez, Sawant, Herbold, Morales, etc. way of governing. They have no clue what they’re doing. It’s painfully obvious we need a change of leadership. Activism has a place in governance but it should be nowhere near the top of the priority list.
Not random. Cleaning up from nicest parts of city to worst. Squeaky wheel gets the grease!
Kudos! Thank you for giving me my neighborhood park back to me. Someone who works very hard just to be able to pay the rent in this neighborhood without breaking the LAW.
“Mutual Aid” just enables junkies to live their Junkie Lifestyle and props up the Taliban heroin trade.
More likely they are propping up the Chinese pharmaceutical companies that manufacture fentanyl… cheaper and stronger than heroin and dealers can get it in the mail….
Poppy famers are switching to saffron.
Premature celebration. Likely Mayor-to-be Lorena Gonzalez pledges to end sweeps and allow people to camp in the parks and anywhere else they want. Likely in January, the camps will be back and there will be no hope of sweeps. This is part of Gonzalez’ Progressive Agenda which the local Democratic party is endorsing. Gonzalez is expected to win the vote, especially with the help of the young people. So expect the camps to be part of the landscape again, soon.
Except many programs switch from city to county at the end of the year. It’s likely they plus the new mayor will have to work closely to create new solutions but ending sweeps is in everyone’s best interests whether you see that or not.
Enforce the vagrancy laws that exist in Seattle. The camp at Broadway Hill Park has had many of the same people living there for over a year. Vagrancy laws prevent that.
Drug dealers, tweakers, people with mental disabilities that are untreated, plus the urine and fecal matter and mounds of garbage are not good for anyone – the homeless in the camp and the nearby residents in the neighborhood all are at risk. That camp has held the neighborhood hostage for well over a year now, and it’s taken away a great little park where kids, dogs and adults used to enjoy. Vagrancy laws could clean up our parks.
We have the laws. We need enforcement!
Yay! My 90 year-old granny used to enjoy sitting there. Now we can return.
Ahhhh. So THAT’s why the population of Tashkent Park tripled a few days ago. Now it’s back up to the old numbers.
I would like to see, for once, the media reporting how many people offered shelter, how many refused and why.
If they refuse (as a lot of comments here are referring) due to they wanting to have access to drugs, they want their “freedom”, etc… Then it’s very obvious what they City and all of us should deal with people like this.
If they refuse due to valid reasons, then we should fix these reasons.
First, not everyone is offered shelter. I don’t care if it’s the mayor or parks repeating this but there has been support at every sweep since they began again and not only is there no way to do this in the time given, there are not enough spots.
And those offered refuse for valid reasons like not being able to go to a shelter with partners/pets, some shelters are known to be scarier than a park (if you aren’t straight, have no place to lock your items, etc), and because they don’t have much notice to collect two large garbage bags of their favorite items and throw away the rest, then move into a new place where they know no one that has arbitrarily weird rules (not even about drugs.) Plus the fact that none of the current enhanced shelters (over 20) seem to be ADA accessible at all.
There are better ways to do this but Durkan has spent her time ignoring those with experience, continuing to try to sweep against CDC guidelines, and thinking an offer to a congregate shelter during COVID-19 is fine.