Thanks to a CHS reader for the picture from the mini park
The pace of Seattle homeless encampment sweeps has picked up under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s administration including clearances of small camps sometimes nearly as quickly as they take shape. The new pace will bring a clearance this week of one Capitol Hill encampment apparently formed by an individual camper at the Thomas Street Mini Park.
The latest clearance has been announced for the area around the 300 block Bellevue Ave E park on Thursday morning where city workers and outreach contractors are planned to be on scene to provide assistance and clear away any remaining belongings and debris.
“The City is addressing this encampment as it impedes access to the park and open space for neighboring communities,” a Seattle Parks spokesperson tells CHS about the planned clearance.
It isn’t the first time in the current pandemic wave of Seattle’s homelessness crisis that the park has been swept — CHS reported here on a clearance last September — but the small camp targeted for clearance this time is indicative of the increased and more rapidly deployed resources for removing encampments from public spaces under the Harrell administration as COVID-19 restrictions fade.
If the city can keep up the new approach it could mean much larger sweeps required for areas with multiple tents in encampments that have formed over several months like the February sweep of Capitol Hill’s Seven Hills Park will be a thing of the past.
Meanwhile, a $10 million philanthropic effort focused downtown is hoped to grow teams of peer navigators to help connect more people with shelter. The money will go to boost the newly formed King County Regional Homelessness Authority, hoped to better organize the various county and city services currently addressing homelessness in the area even as Seattle has been left footing most of the bill. A controversy over funding for tiny homes is the latest example illustrating the challenges faced in creating the cross-municipality authority.
Others would like to create potentially longer lasting change by providing more housing in the city. The House Our Neighbors! coalition announced a proposed ballot initiative that would establish a developer to create more rental housing options in the city, powered by public funding, and protected from free market influences, and city and county restrictions. With enough signatures to get the proposal on the ballot, the initiative could come before voters in November.
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When will Tashkent park be returned to the neighborhood?
Can they please do Tashkent?
Agree! Recently, the city cleaned up partially at Tashkent (removed the unoccupied old tent sites and trash) but did not remove the majority of the tents, including the one that occupies the arbor and bench. Why did they just do half the job?
Next up should be Broadway Hill Park. Please email Rachel.Schulkin@seattle.gov to request this be done. The more people who do this, the more likely the city is to clean it up!
The city didn’t clean Tashkent. A resident that lives nearby got fed up with the garbage and needles, and moved all of the stuff from along the fence line to down by Belmont where it was no longer able to keep being ignored by the City.
Now for the city to replace the garbage can that was removed along Belmont…
Some might wonder what was observed in the pile that was moved down closer to Belmont for the city to pick up. A quick once over with the eyes walking past saw: IDs, passports, credit cards, opened mail and packages from surrounding buildings, family photos, harm reduction items provided by Public Health, unused bags of comfort and hygiene care items (wipes, toothbrushes, combs, new socks, space blankets, hand warmers, and packs and packs of raisins and granola bars [thx for the donations!]), bags of rotting food, months old melted ice cream in containers, urine in bottles/poo in a few buckets, dozens and dozens of AA batteries (some whole, some leaking), scads of new women’s scarves, women’s clothing from target with tags still attached, foam of all sorts, broken furniture, rotting blankets and pillows, shoes, and rats and their tunnels.
As someone that lives close to the park, much of this stuff was added after the last sweep and just kept accumulating.
Rachel responded to my email, basically referring me to seattle customer service for reporting encampments. Interestingly, I had already written to customer service about Tashkent a couple of weeks ago and have received no response.
Broadway Hills Park was (finally) cleaned up on Thursday….yea!
By the way, Rachel is a “customer service” rep for homeless issues, but she is a good first contact for reporting a camp. She then adds the camp to the list of those which are evaluated by a “multi-department” team. It’s a slow and cumbersome process, but at least it results in a camp being cleared….eventually.
Hopefully she added Tashkent. In her reply to me, she suggested I email customer service, which I had done already a couple of weeks ago. But…today I got an acknowledgement of my complaint so maybe she forwarded it.
Okay I just emailed Rachel. thanks for the tip
I’m don’t live far from that park and I want them to stay I like it being put to use by people in need.
It’s clear you just like to troll here. But to respond to your point – enabling park camping is to enable ongoing addicted people to further their addiction by not getting them into assigned living and help they need. It is perpetuating their crisis and helping them to die sooner by letting them keep using off-label Fent and risk OD. Do you want them to die? Keep enabling them to camp unsupervised in the parks.
I want them to just stay wherever they want. Sweeping them makes things worse for them. I would like a program to supervise and service the parks. Homeless people have always congregated and camped in parks despite literally every anti-homeless effort past, present and future. They’re literally going to move back in after the sweep. Parks are public spaces and seeing people shelter themselves there brings me more joy than watching yuppies let their dogs poop everywhere while staring at their phones. This is not trolling. I am literally just saying the things I think the same as any other commenter.
They were not staying at Tashkent before April/May 2020.
Not in the past, unfortunately in the present, and hopefully not in the future.
You are welcome to host them, I’m sure you have excess floor space, nothing would make them happier than being housed with someone that loves them. Time to open your doors and kitchen.
Moving Soon should be sure to have plenty of aluminum foil on hand for them to torch up with. And keep an eye out for the nodders with torch in hand as they’ll burn your house down. Average of five fire calls to encampments a day right now, most due to drugs and inattention I would bet.
I’ve lived in this city for most of my 58 years and have seen a lot of things (remember the Donut Shop and The Turf?) including my own friends kicking heroin, as well as the crack zombies roaming downtown in the eighties, etc etc. But nothing like the daily shocking scenes of open air drug use I see now, en masse, and the obvious neurological damage this new crop of drugs is doing to the users (what I call the junkie dance party), many of them very young to be so far gone. And lets not forget about the I-90 rock throwers last year. Thankfully nobody got killed from that.
It’s all very sad, and I would assume being homeless is the absolute worst, therefore often leading to drug use in order to escape the trauma. But why should that give the addicts automatic license to drag the rest of society down with them? We should be seriously trying to help those who seek it and are open to it, and not tolerating in the least those who are just out to destroy our city while destroying themselves.
Because sweeping them doesn’t help. Yes, we should be seriously trying to help people and we are not. We just sweep them which makes their life more miserable for like 48 hours until they just settle at another park what is the point of this?
You ignore the fact that we ARE helping some of the homeless (those who are open to being helped). An important part of the sweeping process is that first there is an intensive effort (often months-long) to move the campers into some kind of indoor housing (hotel rooms, tiny home villages, “no-barrier”shelters, etc.), and if accepted this provides more humane housing at a minimum, and sometimes leads to recovery from addictions. One example is the recent purchase by the City of 3 new apartment buildings on Capitol Hill, which otherwise were destined to be market-rate and now are specifically for formerly-homeless people.
You are being disingenuous when you claim we are doing nothing to help the homeless.
Usually it’s having a home, then getting hooked on cheap crystal, alcohol, whatever, and then homeless. Not the other order you mentioned.
No I think you’re confused. The park is the perfect place. It’s available. They’re already using it. The city should service the park. The only other solution is to sweep the park and people just move back to the park. This is obvious. I understand you are being silly but it’s ridiculous the amount of anti-homeless sentiment in these comments.
Why are you “moving soon”?
Because my place is going to be torn down for condos.
This is a beautiful notion worthy of thoughtful argument that has several layers. The first of course being the obvious. The second goes to power, whom has it and how is it used? Everyone deserves access to a public space but how are those rules for fair and equitable use promulgated, whom do they benefit?
Democracy versus a Republic or the minority suffering the whim of a majority
Interesting
It is clear that you have some very bigoted ideas about the addicts/homeless. “Enabling” is a nonsense concept. Addicts do not require enabling. If you really want to help keep them alive, then there are well-proven harm-reduction approaches that you would be promoting. Instead, you are insulting those that you claim to be helping by pretending that arrests first and services second is the best way to help them. That doctrine is not about helping the homeless; it is about making them disappear. It will prove to be both ineffective and illegal.
Homeless people are not being arrested, unless they break the law, and even that is uncommon….but that may be changing for those who are repeat offenders.
Understand, subsidized housing does not solve addiction of any kind. For sure it cloisters it away from public view, well for the most part, but subsidized housing curing addiction is a false premise to any argument for or against subsidized housing.
I agree. Trashcan Park needs reclamation, it’s dirty and dangerous — it belongs to all of us, not just those few.
You “plz mister mayor do Tashkent” goobers realize this is the comment section of a blog, right?
typical name-calling vitriol. what, people can’t express their opinions about their neighborhood? Also, it seems like a good amount of people feel the same way about Tashkent.
I see some people here have actually volunteered to do needle pick-ups and trash removal. What have you done, except trolling?
I don’t know about Guy but I drop off food for them.
Great, thanks. It may have been rotting in a bag by the fence line.The rats thank you.
They also need to sweep the disaster zone in front of Whole Foods. Rather than post notice, they should just sweep all open-air drugs at the first sign of trouble. If they move down the block, they should be taken to a shelter and encampment removed immediately rather than the usual handwringing and delay.
They absolutely need to sweep in front of Whole Foods. I’ve been complaining about this for months. The sidewalk is completely blocked, trash is spilling to the street, people shooting up in broad daylight, disturbances, fires…it’s a huge public health hazard.
Had to get around a guy smoking drugs just to get in.
Oh the humanity!!! Not drugs!!
Seriously? It’s not about the ‘drugs’ per se, it’s about the choices the drug users are making. There are literally thousands of out of the way places users could go to get high and do their thing, but many choose to block places of entry to businesses, take over entire city blocks and sidewalks, or use bus shelters thereby denying safe travel to others, not to mention the epidemic of users on the buses themselves (talk to some bus drivers if you haven’t).
This is not what should be considered the norm for our city, and the drug use effects everyone, including the homeless who aren’t users of the nasty crop of synthetic drugs that are driving people to madness and the rest of us bitter and losing empathy. It’s great that 12th and Jackson is cleared now (though most have just moved around the corner – saw tinfoilers yesterday taking over the bus shelter at 12th and King). But why did it have to get to the point where so many already struggling businesses had to fold up shop there because it got so nasty, with zero accountability from the users or the cops or City, leaving the neighborhood a shell of what it was before? Where’s the humanity in that?
Tashkent has needed attention for 6 months now. I recently noticed from my window that the campers that took over the arbor have ripped apart the bench. I assume this was for firewood – which they so nicely wait until the middle of the night to chop. Clear it, please!
This behavior is so gross. Where do they move to? You just want them out of sight out of mind with no home… shame.
You set them up in front of your home, or take them in.
And do it without consulting your neighbors.
Good – clear all public spaces; including parks, sidewalks, and all high way passes too. They belong to everyone.
Wow! Your user name really worked out today! What’s a weird coincidence.
Need to get Tashkent park cleaned up. There’s a „Highrise“ enclosure that has a drug business running out of it. Walking your dog here is dangerous with the amount of needles being left around. It’s simply a dangerous area.
Have also seen a few possible drug buys at that big encampment nearest to Belmont. Car drives up, then a packet exchange happens through the car window. Or someone walks up, waits at one of the tent openings, is handed a packet and walks off. Seen it 3 times in the past 2 weeks, just by random when walking past.
Who cares?
Obviously the voters care, since we voted for Harrell and Nelson, the two candidates who actually treated the increased crime and homelessness as urgent issues. So that’s a problem the far left either has to acknowledge, or you’ll continue to lose elections by shrugging off our concerns, as you did.
I think quite a few folks care, because black markets, especially those structured around trafficking drugs and people, treat women and children as disposable, consumable objects.
I lived on John St last fall and the 3 tents under my window belonged to 2 street pimps that were selling sex with girls who were too young to consent to being sex workers, let alone sex itself.
Every tent isn’t a home. Every person in a tent isn’t homeless. We are all travellers that need to look out for each other.
Capitol Hill voted for Gonzalez, Nikita Oliver, NTK and Sawant. All of whom campaigned against removing the drug camps from our public spaces. So it’s no surprise that other neighborhoods get cleaned up before ours.