City Homeless Advocates Camp Out at City Hall
posted by on June 9 at 12:55 PM
Posted by news intern Chris Kissel
Yesterday evening, advocates for the homeless camped out for a third time in the shadow of Seattle’s $75 million City Hall building to protest the removal of homeless encampments across the city.
When I got down there yesterday, I immediately struck up a conversation with Robert Hansen, who has been a vendor for Real Change, which organized the event, for 14 years. We talked about the condominium conversions and ever-increasing rents in Seattle that offer few affordable opportunities for low-income and homeless residents.
Hansen said he wants Mayor Greg Nickels to realize that the Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness isn’t working, and laments the treatment of the homeless during the recent sweeps, which he sees as inhumane. “They even take their pictures of their wives, and their babies,” Hansen said. He added that he wanted to see more money put into shelters and affordable drug-treatment centers.
Hansen and I spoke to each other among the 15-or-so tents that had already been set up for the night, the walls of the City Hall building looming in the background. Campers were taking a few hours to chat with each other, so I thought I’d take the time to get to know some of the others who’d gathered for the evening.
Food Not Bombs was there handing out free food (when I talked to one volunteer, he told me the group had been kicked out of Occidental Park yet again earlier that day). Sprawled in front of the FNB tent were Johnny Legrand-Beall, 21, president of the Student Coalition for Peace and Justice at Shoreline Community College, and Rick Harlan, 60, president of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Both said they came to show their support of the sweeps protest.
“Every little bit of change counts,” said Legrand-Beall slowly, guitar in hand. “We just gotta get people’s voices heard.” Harlan, who was homeless for a while in the ’70s, said he’s upset that homeless men and women who are dependent on drugs don’t have an affordable place to go.
Finally, I met Veronyka Tristan and Neres Johnson, a homeless couple standing outside the gathering. Tristan, who said she had recently become pregnant, told me that she and Johnson have been homeless for months. “You try to sleep at a park and the police wake you up; you try to sleep under a bridge, and people throw water on your stuff,” she said. Tonight, the couple would be camping out. After that, they said they’d be sleeping “wherever the Lord lets us sleep.”
Tristan and Johnson, like nearly everyone I talked to yesterday, had a few choice words for city politicians. “If the mayor were here, I’d tell him to grow some balls,” said Tristan. “I’d kick his ass,” Johnson added.
Real Change Executive Director Tim Harris put it a little less bluntly. “I’d ask him, ‘What are you afraid of?” he said.
Harris said that the main goal of the camp out was the “keep the pressure on, to let them know that opposition to this is not going to go away,” adding that independent oversight is needed during the sweeps and that advocates are waiting for a concrete answer from the city regarding how the displaced homeless are treated and where they will go.
Harris added that there would be a memorial service later for homeless men and women who have died living outdoors in Seattle, and that about 20 people would block the street in a civil disobedience demonstration in the morning.
Stinky hippies. Stinky, well-meaning, hippies.
Homeless people have iPods?
I saw a guy camped in a doorway using his laptop the other night. The fucker was probably getting free internet.
Chris, what's the point of highlighting the fact that City Hall cost $75 million? Unless you are trying to make the point that the City spends over half that much EVERY YEAR in taxpayer money on homeless programs. Add in the tens, if not hundreds of millions from the feds, the state, the county and dozens of charitable organizations - and it makes you wonder why we still have homelessness here. We shouldn't be yelling at our politicians, we should be yelling at the "activists" and program directors who seem to be getting nothing done with the obscene amount of money that they've already been given. Perhaps if they did their jobs rather than making pointless political statements we wouldn't have people living in the camps in the first place.
I've worked in the social and human services field in Seattle for over a decade... I have to say, Seattle has one of the BEST social services infrastructures in the country. There are tons of programs in our city to help people get on their feet and become self-sufficiant.
While we could always use MORE bednights, for the most part, people sleeping on the street are chronically homeless and are probably on the street for a reason...
There are so many shelters, food programs, detox programs... There is so much MONEY out there for transitional housing, work training, etc... If people are sleeping on the street they've either decided NOT to take advantage of those programs or they've been banned from them for some reason.
I agree with the sweeps-- there are places that people can go if they are sleeping on the streets. Places like Tent City and night shelters. It is a health and safety issue to have people sleeping under bridges, in doorways, and in parks.
The woman who just got pregnant? Absolutely unacceptable. She could walk into any Planned Parenthood and get an IUD inserted for FREE.
And the Food Not Bombs people who keep disributing food in Occidental Park? Total twats. The city has designated a place for food distribution and it's only a few blocks away. The city is right in wanting to reclaim Occidental Park, which has the potential to be a bright spot in the middle of the concrete jungle, but is instead a giant piss filled "park."
The city isn't trying to hide or displace the homeless population, they're trying to manage and control it.
Nothing against Food Not Bombs, but they've been getting kicked out of Occidental Park for 10 years.
They need to get the proper permits, that is all. If they are denied those permits, then you've got a story.
As backwards (in this case) as it seems, an organization can't you can't just show up and give away food to the public any more than I can tow a hot dog cart down there and set up a business on a whim.
Seattle should just learn from all the other American cities that have ended homelessness.
I don't suppose any of the reporters -- or unpaid interns -- at the Stranger could be troubled to discuss the issue of homelessness as if homeless people who are not mentally ill were, in fact, responsible adults who should be expected to take responsibility for their situation?
I mean, if a homeless person is camping in a greenbelt, you've got one of two things going on: either a mentally ill person has been left out in the cold, and we need to support politicians who direct funds to address that person's needs, or some lazy fuck-up is building on public land and illegally dumping both garbage and human waste there. If some big corporation did that, the Stranger would be first in line to write an expose about it. But if it's poor people doing it, the Stranger backs them up.
Well fuck that.
Homeless people aren't spotted owls and they're not children and, unless they're mentally ill or developmentally disabled, they can and should be held responsible for their actions.
Every time they shut down homeless people downtown, it just pushes them to other parts of the city.
i almost forgot: congratulations on impending parenthood, Veronyka & Neres!
These slog comments are pretty disheartening blame-the-victim apologies for the Nickels administration's needlessly cruel policies of terrorizing homeless people.
Also disheartening is that the Stranger sent a news intern to cover this story, and still hasn't covered this morning's direct action. The Strangers is getting scooped by the dailies on this issue.
Everyone should read comment 5 above, and this comment from Judah in the other thread:
I've spent years of my life in camps like this, mostly between the Ballard locks and Golden Gardens, and they're disgusting dangerous places. The homeless people who build them just abandon them when the time comes. New people coming into the camp area don't want to use the abandoned gear because it's full of infectious human waste; you can get everything from lice to hepatitis off used mattresses and tarps, and if you pick up a needle stick it can be a death sentence. So the new people use the same areas, but they build new camps. Unless the city or the railroad comes through to clear the garbage out from time to time, the pile of old clothes, human shit, newspapers, blood, vomit and food waste will just grow indefinitely. And yes, clearing a camp like that is disgusting and difficult work.
But let's pretend for a second that we live in Erica's magic kingdom: suppose we let the homeless people leave their stuff in the greenbelts.
How long before the structures become more permanent? How long before someone applies for squatter's rights and the greenbelt disappears? How do we deal with waste disposal in the camps? How do we pay for it? And how do we police the camps? If we do police the camps, how are the greenbelt camps different than the high-barrier shelters that people don't use? If we don't police the camps, how long before something politically untenable happens? Failure to enforce federal drug laws can result in the suspension of federal block grants for roads, schools, and so on.
At the end of the day, the nationwide homeless problem is a result of the de-institutionalization that took place under Ronald Reagan, and nothing short of recreating the mental health infrastructure that Reagan destroyed and that Clinton was too much of a Republican to repair will address the problem in any meaningful way. The city is just attempting to deal with a problem that needs to be dealt with. Don't like their solution? Fine. What's your alternative? I imagine it's about as viable and well thought out as letting a population suffering from mental illness, substance abuse and epidemic levels of infectious disease built permanent camps in our public spaces, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Let's hear it.
Oh, wait, nevermind: Erica's a journalist her job is just to bitch about problems, not fix them.
Sorry, the italics ended too early. The whole thing is a quote.
If these dirtbags and losers took half the energy that they used to "protest" and instead used it to finding a their way back to productive society, taking a shower and GETTING A FREAKING JOB then they wouldn't be homeless.
Yikes, I agree with Troll this time.
ecce, the protestors by & large are the activists, with the most photogenic & coherent homeless providing critical mass.
i'd like to see FNB get the street schizophrenics to organize a rally. that would be impressive.
can we sterilize women who are homeless?
seriously, how the fuck can we feel bad for homeless people that go off and get preggers?
The tragedy of the comments, indeed.
It's clear what ever the plan to fix the problem of affordable housing, isn't working, but threaten the Mayor & getting arrested isn't going to help either.
Just a reminder:
No pissing in the streets.
No shitting in the streets.
No littering in the streets.
No smoking crack.
No panhandling.
There are lots of places to build camps in Washington. The best places that I can think of are in forests...
De-institutionalization was the result of pending lawsuits by civil rights organizations to not hold people against their will, mental or not.
When did the beggars of our society become so entitled? What gives them the right to pitch a tent and defecate in our parks? Forget it. Sweep on Nickels!
Uh, CP @ 22 is not the usual CP.
However, I'm against crapping in parks.
As for pitching a tent in the park, I make sure I have a newspaper on my lap.
CP @ 22 is not the usual CP.
Although I, too, am against people crapping randomly in parks.
As for pitching a tent in the park, I at least try to cover my lap with a newspaper.
oh yeah! let's set a requirement on how much worth a woman must be able to access before she's allowed to use her reproductive organs in whatever manner she sees fit! how about maybe she wants to be a mother? how about maybe the couple profiled are poor and displaced but still have the right under our great country to love one another and plan a family? how about this whole demonstration is not a pity show but transient citizens of Seattle being present at their-- yes, it's their's too!-- city hall? how about y'all get back to work at your jobs where you can fuck around and write comments on the slog speculating and disparaging the homeless for not getting jobs like you've gotten? if only everyone were more like you, the world would be an incredible place. until then, let's play china and decide what women can and cannot do with their bodies.
Listen folks; when you have to deal with these people living in your neighborhood, shitting in your yard, and fucking with you constantly, you tend to have a different point of view. I have been harassed, had my garbage stolen, and had to watch homeless people piss on my lawn. I have also seen them at the local market with a stack of bills buying smoked salmon and you guessed it ALCOHOL. To the people who care so much for the homeless, why don't you welcome them into your homes? You are so tolerant right?
wong weezy, obviously they are very poor at planning much less planning a family if they supposedly do it while homeless.
how bout this; free apartment to any homeless woman that gets her baby makers destroyed.
@27,
How about we implement this little piece of Nazi (and no invoking of Godwin's Law, here - you are advocating eugenics, after all) policy after we start a mandatory sterilization program for callow would-be yuppies?
It's amazing how many self-styled progressives here sound a lot like supporters of Herbert Hoover circa 1931.
If/when the economic shit really hits the fan, more than a few of you will likely find yourselves homeless, so you might want to be careful what you wish for.
Mr. X, It isn't mandatory. It is a voluntary program where if you get your fallopian tubes tied like high tops, you get a free apartment.
And I'll take every measure to preventing a pregnancy from happening if I or my GF are homeless.
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