Some of the tents along Belmont (Image: CHS)
Police are investigating after a fight and attempted shooting reported Thursday night at the large encampment area that has formed along Belmont Ave E at Denny as officials say the site has been prioritized for outreach and removal after ongoing reports of public safety issues including gun violence and fires.
“This encampment is a priority site for the city,” a spokesperson for Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office told CHS earlier this week before Thursday night’s gunplay. “It is on the list to receive upcoming outreach with the goal of connecting those living onsite with shelter before an encampment removal.”
With a faster response to providing shelter and housing outreach and clearing even small camps on Capitol Hill under the Harrell administration, the stretch of Belmont across from Goodwill has grown into the largest camp in the neighborhood.
Complaints have also grown. The mayor’s spokesperson says the city received its first “service request” regarding the encampment in early June. Since then, the city has received around 90 more reports of safety and clean-up issues at the site.
Thursday night, police were called to the tents along the street after a reported fight broke out and ended with gunfire. Police say one of the fighting campers took out a gun and tried to pistol-whip another person before firing a shot. Arriving officers could not locate the suspect or a victim. Evidence of the shooting was recovered at the scene.
Thursday’s bout of gun violence follows a shooting in June that sent one man to the hospital. In late May, Seattle Fire responded to two mornings of encampment fires in a row.
The mayor’s office spokesperson said the decision on whent to clear a camp depends on “resource capacity and a variety of factors” including shelter availability, impact to public space and the natural environment, pedestrian access, pending construction, public safety incidents and verified SPD and SFD data, “and more.”
As of late this week, no notice of shelter outreach and clearance had yet been posted at the site by the city.
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I think I read on another neighborhood site that the management of the apartment building adjacent to the camp has lost several residents and is having a difficult time finding new tenants. When CHS is back from vacation it might be of value to interview tenants and management of that apartment building and/or staff of the Goodwill re:how the camp has impacted them.
Wasn’t that site just swept a few weeks ago? I distinctly remember a TV news segment on it.
Two abandoned tents were removed, but several more have set up house.
There are 3 news stories on KOMO.. search for BONNEVILLE .
As a resident of The Bonneville, and 1 of 6 street level apartments, I can tell you it has been a constant pain in the ass for 7 weeks now. We can’t open our windows due to the drug use and smell of trash (and worse), and the fighting & yelling. And with the heat wave this week, it will truly be hell for us.
I agree this location is highly inappropriate and is putting the adjacent renters (presumptively working class) in serious discomfort and danger. If the city can’t identify any permitted campgrounds these people could relocate to, it’s time to allow campers back into certain designated areas of the larger city parks (e.g., Volunteer, Cal Anderson) and provide sufficient services to keep them as clean and safe as possible. I know that is far from an ideal solution and carries its own set of problems, but as we see in this case, the alternative to park camping is even worse.
These campers refuse going to shelters, because it’s more profitable for them to keep camping on the streets and dealing and trading Fent pills. Some of this same group were camping in Tashkent 4 months ago. We found stolen ID, stolen passports, stolen clothes and pill bottles in among the junk they abandoned.
This encampment site since April has caused attacks on Goodwill and Captain Black’s employees, has caused numerous calls to SFD and SPD, and has had two shootings and one death in recent weeks.
It is completely ridiculous to allow this encampment – or any other – to persist in a densely populated area. Now you would destroy Volunteer Park to support your Marxist theories on Housing. The campers aren’t interested in housing. They are addicts who need help but have refused offers of help so far. Stop being a deluded, well-intentioned fool.
I’m not a Marxist. My approach to this issue is informed by the basic principle that if a public authority says “no, you can’t be here” (which I agree would be reasonable to say about the Belmont encampment) it needs to also say “but you can be over here” — and that “over here” needs to be a reasonably close distance because people have myriad valid reasons for wanting to be in a particular locality, housed or not. I understand there is a SHARE/WHEEL sanctioned encampment nearby; perhaps some of the Belmont campers could be accommodated there. The city should definitely try to facilitate that. But saying “you can’t be here, or here, or here, just get out of this neighborhood and go be someone else’s problem” denies both people’s American citizenship and their humanity. Call me a fool if you like, but I hope I will never be so lacking in empathy as to endorse such an appalling sentiment.
No to placing them back in the parks. I was walking to Cal Anderson with a friend and her toddler daughters last summer and had to lift her daughters of the ground in order to avoid them getting stuck by used needles left on the sidewalk between the tennis courts and the soccer fields. It’s a family and community park. It’s not the grounds of a homeless shelter while displacing working tax paying residents of the hill.
We did that back in 2020 and we shouldn’t do it again. That was a failed experiment.
Tent camping options are provided by SHARE/WHEEL – easy google search to learn about the self-managed community. We help fund this organization as tax payers. However, to participate in a tent city, you have to be able to obey their code-of-conduct. I have to wonder if many of these campers refuse this option because they are not interested in changing their behavior or lifestyle. Unless you are suggesting, that we provide city funded camp sites for people to actively use drugs without any sort of rules or regulations. That’s a hard no for me. Invite them to live in your garden terrace and not in the public green space.
I’ve heard a lot of arguments happening at that encampment as I head to Goodwill. Have been tempted to write in to the city but haven’t because now that the mini-parks are being cleared and monitored (Yay!), I can understand that the tenters need someplace to be. But it sure doesn’t seem safe for them.
Yes, they do need some place to be…and that place is in enhanced shelters (including hotel rooms and even tiny homes) that are offered to them by outreach workers, and which they often reject.
True, not every camper prefers a temporary hotel room or tiny house. But it’s not like those resources are going begging — just try to get into one! Vacancies are few and far between. If we’re not going to build actual housing in the quantity needed to solve this problem, we need designated camping areas for people who want to keep their tents and other possessions, which they typically have to give up in order to enter other forms of shelter.
They need to go. As a resident who lives a block and a half North of there, i no longer feel safe walking down that block to either Goodwill’s or Captain Black. It started with two tents right before Memorial Day then it quickly grew with a row of tents including two that are situated on the sidewalk blocking the path. That in itself is an ADA violation that could cost the city dearly if they were sued by someone.
There used to be a pop-up kitchen for Shef in one of the buildings where the encampments are facing but that encampment has since drove them out due to delivery drivers no longer able to safely pick-up orders without having their cars vandalized.
The Goodwill has already been vandalized after hours. Someone set off fireworks which landed on the little alley space that Glo’s had, which caught on fire, blowing out the transformer which woke all of us over night.
Was this the Capitol Hill to where you were attracted to live and envisioned to be? If not, don’t feel angry about my post and go email city council. Also where the hell has Sawant been knowing this is happening in the heart of her district yards away from where her staff were campaigning for a no on her recall election? It’s been fuckin crickets from her.