Groups of residents and protesters awaited a Friday night tour of Seven Hills planned with city officials. Public safety director Andrew Myerberg met privately with a smaller group, instead.
The notices went up Tuesday at the park. Thanks to a neighbor for the picture.
The city has posted notice that Capitol Hill’s Seven Hills Park will be cleared of tents and belongings Thursday as Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office says it is responding to concerns following months of complaints from neighbors about tents and disorder in the 16th Ave at E Howell park.
Officials say they requested “that outreach efforts at Seven Hills Park intensify” in advance of the Thursday sweep.
“At the beginning of this week, city staff observed 12 tents, and outreach has identified eight individuals residing at this location long-term,” a Seattle Parks spokesperson said.
Officials say the effort had resulted in two referrals to “24/7 enhanced shelter” — “outreach is ongoing and those remaining onsite will all receive offers of shelter prior to an encampment removal,” the spokesperson said.
UPDATE 2/17/2022 9:30 AM: The clearance is underway:
Seven Hills Park at 16th and Howell on Capitol Hill being swept. pic.twitter.com/BIzodJVYxv
— Alex Garland (@AGarlandPhoto) February 17, 2022
The sweep follows months of complaints from residents in nearby buildings about camping in the park that began at the height of the pandemic with the number of tents ebbing and flowing along with clearances at other nearby parks spaces including Cal Anderson, Williams Place, and Miller Playfield.
People have been living in the park for months and residents in nearby buildings including the adjacent The Sanctuary townhome building, an overhauled, 1906-built church turned into a condo development in the 2000s, have complained to City Hall about the number of tents increasing following last summer as other encampment areas in the city were cleared.
“What initiated as an act of compassion has now turned into a public health concern for those who live near the park – as well as for all who are living in the park,” a resident wrote to then Mayor Jenny Durkan in an email sent in late September 2021. “As a local resident with property adjacent to this beloved park, we fear that there is increasing risk associated with the growing encampment in this park – we no longer feel safe. We know how bad things can get if there is no intervention and are keenly aware it took someone getting killed at Cal Anderson Park (just four blocks away) before the City of Seattle intervened.”
The just before Christmas 2020 reopening of Cal Anderson after a Seattle Police and Seattle Parks sweep of encampments and activists that included 24 arrests came two months after the murder of Lisa Vach in a domestic violence murder-suicide at the park.
“During the past three weeks we have seen the total number of tents increase from 1 to 14. The situation is neither safe nor sanitary,” the September letter continued. “In addition to the garbage strewn throughout this small park, we have personally witnessed the destruction of public property, limbs ripped from trees, needle use out in the open, burning toxic materials, urinating in public, defecating in the ally and the community garden, and screaming and yelling at all hours of the night. Most importantly, a neighbor of the park was physically assaulted and harmed while walking through the park.”
“Please know that before we can remove an encampment, there must be offers of shelter to all those residing within in an encampment,” the city responded a week later:
This site is a priority for removal and for shelter offering, but this takes time. 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.
“Your concern regarding encampments at Seven Hills Park has been shared with a multi-departmental team that tracks and engages encampments,” the city’s response read.
At Seven Hills, escalating concern and incidents including an October fire and a November stabbing added to the calls for more to be done despite pandemic restrictions.
Thursday’s sweep now comes after Seven Hills has been thrust into the spotlight as the new Harrell administration begins its promised new approaches to homelessness in the city. CHS reported on the plans for a “scheduled removal” and involvement from Harrell’s newly appointed public safety director Andrew Myerberg, the former head of the city’s Office of Police Accountability.
The planned clearance comes amid an escalation in City Hall responses to public safety concerns, worries about homelessness, and media coverage. Earlier this month, Harrell pledged a crackdown on Seattle crime in a mix of “hot spot” policing, more arrests, and more efforts to address core problems of poverty, addiction, and mental illness.
Harrell has also promised his administration will do more to address issues of public safety and clearing encampments. During the campaign, his homelessness plan called for more housing and “a capital campaign” supported by charitable giving from the private sector, not new taxes. Harrell said parks and streets should be cleared of encampments with increased outreach effort from workers to provide shelter and services.
The administration, meanwhile, will end years of pandemic restrictions on evictions this month.
Friday night, a crowd of residents and protesters gathered at the park expecting a tour with Myerberg and community representatives. Instead, Myerberg reportedly met in private with a smaller group. The mayor’s office did not respond to inquiries about the meeting and the changed plans around the canceled tour.
This week, notices were posted notifying campers of the impending clean-up.
The city says the HOPE Team, the program within the Human Services Department that coordinates homelessness outreach and referrals to shelter, has been at the park “almost daily since the beginning of last week coordinating outreach” with Catholic Community Services’ SCOPE outreach team “to connect individuals at the site with services and shelter as available.”
Seattle Parks and Recreation staff will store personal items “in accordance with City policy,” the flyers say.
PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
I hope that at least some of these folks will respond to offers of help and be able to turn their lives around. I hope that “Tashkent Park” will get on the list. The number of tents there has been slowly increasing, with attendant clutter, needles, and the like
Squeaky wheels get the grease. I promise you a park will never be cleared unless neighbors are complaining/reporting it, even if someone commits a crime, attacks someone, kills someone, or tries to kill someone, as we’ve learned in my corner of the Hill. Call 206.684.4075 to leave a complaint and use the Find It/Fix It app Every. Single. Day. Make a list of the dates/times of your complaints–you’ll need it.
I hope Seattle and King County finally focus on opening congregate shelters and drug treatment facilities across the region, reconnecting people with their families, implementing a camping ban citywide, and enforcing it without all the handwringing.
“reconnecting people with their families”
You would need to give out interstate bus tickets to almost all of them if you really wanted that to happen…
Bus tickets and outreach to their families should be part of the plan. Every drug addict Seattle takes in from Florida and Arizona uses a huge amount of resources that could otherwise be spent helping local people who have fallen on hard times that need support and housing. Seattle will never dig out of this hole if we continue to be a magnet because of our permissive culture and easy access to drugs.
Anecdotal, but the drug addict who caused immeasurable damage to my property and belongings 8 years ago was also from out-of-state.
Based on her Facebook selfies from the time, it sure sounds like she sure had fun hanging out on the streets, doing heroin, and playing with her dog.
I think she got a few days in jail for it all.
I hope everyone can just get a job and be normal lol to all commenters. #hope #normal #givecapitalismachance
That WOULD be nice, wouldn’t it? Just think about it…reduced labor shortages, reduced homelessness, lower personal and property crime rates, greater quality of life for all involved. But that would require responsibility and sacrifice, which is apparently too “uncompassionate” to ask for.
Letting people sleep in the freezing cold while struggling with addiction is inhumane. Get them into shelters/rehab, let these people reclaim their lives or at least some piece of it. Enabling them to sleep in tents around drug dealers is just willful ignorance of drug addiction and it’s behaviors at this point.
We’re “letting them”? Meaning we could simply “not let them”? What other phenomena are under our complete control, do tell?
Well, when the “progressives” of Seattle just whine about “it’s all capitalism’s fault” without doing anything else then, yeah, you are letting them. Because you offer no meaningful alternatives to pick people up out of the streets, treat their drug addition and mental illness (if those apply), and put them on the road to recovery. You do nothing – so you are letting them. The opposite is, “not letting them” by giving the homeless options and making them choose something other than out in the street.
But, no, it’s easier to post snarky comments as though you are morally superior because you think capitalism is a bad idea. Here’s a suggestion, how about every “progressive” that voted for Sawant open their doors to one homeless person and let them sleep on a couch or even the floor? That would get people off the street real quick.
But, no, it’s just more screaming: “Tax The Rich”
I see that “suggestion” made quite often on this board. But a lot of us in Capitol Hill live in smallish apartments where it’s not easy to take someone in. At the request of a mutual friend a while back I looked into offering couch space in my 1BR to an about-to-be released (nonviolent) prison inmate. Nice guy. I liked him. Landlord not as enthusiastic — wanted background check, lease changes and a couple hundred bucks additional rent which I would have had to pay since he had no money. Otherwise I couldn’t give him a key and he could only stay 14 days as a guest. It just wasn’t feasible. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s tried.
Thank god for the selfless leftists that almost invite an ex-felon to live in someone else’s apartment to virtue signal on social media.
Agree! But the real reason that no one takes in a homeless stranger is that they know to do so is asking for trouble.
Thank you for putting that more eloquently than I did.
Exactly. But also this Moving Soon character is a troll.
My building has stabbings and fatalities. My building has fires usually twice a month. The same seems to hold true in the surrounding blocks. Should we be forced to abandon the properties and relocate or not, just because we’re out of sight? It isn’t the camps.
That sounds like some kind of awful building you live in. My building does not have stabbings or fatalities, as you refer to them. It also does not have fires. My building is populated by people who care about their homes, seek security, safety and happiness when within them, and do not inflict harm upon those in the surrounding neighborhood. In other words, my building is full of normal people pursuing uneventful lives. It is the camps.
Your building isn’t public property. The parks are.
His building probably is public property, because any building with these kind of problems must be “affordable housing” for drug addicts from Florida that were previously living in a Seattle park.
Organizations like Capitol Hill Housing and Bellwether housing have “affordable housing” all around the city and hill that are free of fires, assaults, and murders. So it’s not “affordable housing”, where rent payment is a requirement.
Straw man with his head up…..
Really. Your building has stabbings, fatalities (from stabbings, am I too assume?), and fires on a regular basis? And the buildings around you are the same? I’m going to call bullshit. If there was, by some some chance, a Bermuda’s Triangle of buildings in Seattle where people on fire were stabbing and killing each other with abandon then we’d surely have heard about it. Can you provide ANY evidence to back up your preposterous statement?
You know. Like the stabbings and fires we hear about in the camps.
And IF your building had those issues then yes I would recommend that you leave. Why? Because it wouldn’t be safe.
Grow up.
There is low income housing on the hill that is notoriously crime ridden. I’m sure the poster can’t just leave. Not everyone can jump ship to a condo.
I’m sure d4I3d can speak for themselves.
And again, I feel like we’d hear of ANY housing on the hill which bursts into flames on a regular basis and where people are stabbing and killing each other will ye nil ye. So if you’re just going to make unhelpful statements, step off.
While this is clearly a ridiculous question, it’s also funny you ask, because I lived in a building that caught fire and we were kicked out and forced to relocate due to safety concerns.
Why all of this coordinated outreach wasn’t done years ago (potentially preventing increased incidents) is beyond me. Both homeless, or troubled individuals and the nearby residents have been completely ignored by the city, and its been a very stressful few years. I’m really glad that Seven Hills is being cleared and hopefully restored, as I’ve not felt safe in my home for a while. Countless incidents of burglary, vandalism, drug use, harassment, destruction of gardens, stalking and “bathroom breaks” on my front porch. People need help! Seattle can do better.
I’m wondering how Kshama Sawant is going to react to this order? Isn’t it her district?
Sawant DGAF about anything happening in the district unless it’s a Starbucks trying to unionize.
the city needs a plan to realistically address the fact that most of these addicts, mentally ill and hard core “homeless by choice” folks will never be self sufficient and will always require assistance – if they’ll take it.
i also wish there was some real information and statistics associated with the homeless – to measure success and failure of responses, etc as well as state/county of origin (and no, listing the food bank when you roll into town doesn’t count).