Tag: encampments

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Harrell, Opinion, Police

The New City Council Is Just Asking Questions

By Erica C. Barnett

As I’ve noted previously, with some frustration, the Seattle City Council—which includes six brand-new members and a council president with just two years’ experience—is still spending most of its public meeting time getting up to speed on various city departments and offices do.

This slow-moving crash course in Civics 101 is probably necessary, since most of the new council members have never worked in or around City Hall, but the endless PowerPoint parade does give the impression the council has nothing urgent on its plate, even as a $230 million budget shortfall looms.

One thing the new council has been doing plenty of is asking questions. Although many are rhetorical or more-a-comment-than-a-question (looking at you, Rob Saka), they still say a lot about what the council hopes to do whenever they get around to governing full-time. Here are a few examples, from who recent council briefings about housing, homelessness, and public safety.

Sara Nelson wants to know if the problem with police hiring is the exams.

Nelson, a former council aide and two-year council veteran, pressed the director of the city’s two Civil Service Commissions, Andrea Scheele, about the city’s contract with the National Testing Network, a company the city uses to test new recruits’ knowledge, skills, and aptitude for the job, suggesting that the city should consider picking another vendor that could move applicants through the hiring process faster. The Public Safety Civil Service Commission administers tests for applicants for SPD and Seattle Fire Department applicants.

The city “invested heavily” in helping to develop the NTN test, Scheele noted, after a judge put the city under federal oversight amid allegations of bias and excessive use of force in 2012. (The US Department of Justice terminated most of that consent decree last year).  “The exam was tailored to assess a candidate’s cognitive abilities, but also to evaluate candidates’ skills and abilities related to judgment, appropriate human interactions, and integrity and ethics,” Scheele said.

“I don’t get a sense of urgency, frankly, when I’m listening to your presentation. And that’s not acceptable. You’re here to serve the city, the citizens of the city, and the citizens of the city deserve to have police officers put on the streets as quickly as possible.”—Councilmember Cathy Moore, speaking to Public Safety Civil Service Commission director Andrea Scheele

About a month and a half ago, Scheele added, Mayor Bruce Harrell asked the PSCSC to “consider either adding or switching to” a test from a company called Public Safety Testing. Currently, between 60 and 65 percent of applicants either drop out during the testing phase or fail the NTN test, Scheele said. According to the Seattle Times, 90 percent of applicants pass the PST test.

Cathy Moore wonders if the problem with police hiring is that civil servants have no “sense of urgency.”

During her presentation, Scheele noted that the PSCSC now provides a list of candidates who have passed the application test to SPD, but said it would take another full-time employee to accelerate that process to every two weeks or faster. Currently, the two civil service commissions have three staff.

“I just think we’re moving way too slowly, and basically what I see here is a bureaucracy that’s clunky,” Moore responded. “We need to go faster. There’s no reason that we should be waiting to [administer exams and] send [SPD] a list of eligible candidates every six to eight weeks.”

“I don’t get a sense of urgency, frankly, when I’m listening to your presentation. And that’s not acceptable,” Moore said.

Scheele said the reason the PSCSC would need another employee to speed up the testing process is because the commission would have to stop processing test scores in batches—a change that would speed things up from the applicants’ perspective, but would add a new inefficiency at the end of the process. Moore said Scheele’s answer was “not satisfactory,” and told her to come back to the council in 30 days with “concrete steps that you’ve taken, because this is just too slow.”

“You’re here to serve the city, the citizens of the city, and the citizens of the city deserve to have police officers put on the streets as quickly as possible. Obviously, they need to be qualified, and we need to go through this process,” Moore continued. “Although there’s some question about whether we actually do need to, but nonetheless, this is where we are. So we have to light a fire under our our civil servants’ feet, because you are here to serve the city of Seattle.”

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Sara Nelson wants to know if we could subsidize cops’ housing (and day care, and cars, and college, and child care…)

Police officers in Seattle make a starting salary of around $83,000 before overtime and hiring bonuses, but could Seattle do more?

Nelson and other council members think they could, starting with perks like housing subsidies, “take-home cars,” subsidized day care, medical benefits after retirement, and other goodies that aren’t available to other city employees.

Rob Saka, elected last year, siad the city should consider paying relocation assistance for police who move here from elsewhere; when he learned that the city already does this, Saka said, “that’s great—and then paired with an actual housing subsidy, I think that that will be the most impactful.” Los Angeles provides new recruits with a $12,000 annual housing subsidy for their first two years, but the subsidy is only for housing in the city; currently, most SPD officers live outside Seattle.

Rob Saka wants to know why Seattle prioritizes homeless people’s privacy.

Washington state law allows unsheltered people to opt out of putting their personal and medical information into the county’s tracking system for homeless services, the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). A significant number of people choose to do so because of privacy concerns, since the information the county tracks includes detailed information about substance use, time spent in hospitals or jail, and information provided to case managers. This “opt out” option means that Seattle’s homelessness data is never perfect; shelter referrals, for instance, represent an undercount.

Saka, along with council newcomer Maritza Rivera, wanted to know if there was a way to get around these requirements in order to “run analytics capabilities and use services to help us make better informed decisions and monitor trends, get ahead of trends, [and] plan—better planning, better outcomes.”

Saka, a former attorney for Meta, said he was aware that “there are some some notable potential privacy and security challenges with collection of certain data. But just because that is the case, and just because … the same issue applies to various technologies, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them or adopt them. Let us have effective safeguards in place to to control for that. But we need strong data collection capabilities to help us make better data-informed decisions.”

Requiring people to opt in to HMIS in order to receive homeless services would require a change in state law, something Rivera suggested the the city should support in an upcoming legislative session.

“What I know is that when budget time comes around and the REACH [homeless outreach] coordinators come in, they yell, ‘Stop the sweeps! Stop the sweeps!’ and then they are making it easier to stay in these dangerous environments.”—City Council President Sara Nelson

Maritza Rivera wants to know why we let people say “no” to shelter.

Rivera also questioned why the city allows people to decide whether they want to go indoors based on what shelter is available—saying no, for example, if the only option is a mat on the floor in a mass shelter.

“We do need to prioritize getting people indoors, whether or not we’re able to—you know, the goal is their first choice, but if that’s not available, we nevertheless have to get folks indoors. … I feel it’s inhumane to leave people on the street regardless” of whether they get their choice of shelter, Rivera said.

Tanya Woo wants to know how the city can help police feel safer at encampment sweeps.

Woo, who lost her race against District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales before the council appointed her to a citywide seat in January, said she has seen plainclothes police officers show up at encampment removals in the past, but “most of the time they don’t attend these, because they’re afraid of interactions during protests or interactions with unhoused residents. So,” she asked, “is there is there a plan going forward and how to mitigate some of that during resolutions?” Woo heads up a volunteer night watch in the Chinatown/International District, and led a successful effort to prevent the expansion of a Salvation Army-run homeless shelter in SoDo.

Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, who was leading a presentation about the Unified Care Team (the city’s umbrella group for encampment response) said police do show up at every encampment removal, adding that “the issues are, 98 percent of the time, with the protesters and not the actual people that are unhoused at the site.”

Sara Nelson wants to know: Why do we even pay for homeless outreach, anyway?

Nelson, whose beer business was one of the first to place eco-blocks in the public right-of-way to keep people from parking their RVs there, singled out the outreach provider REACH in asking Washington what the city’s outreach contracts are for.

“When we talk about outreach, what is it really supposed to do? Because when I hear you say you said earlier, that we want our outreach providers to stay engaged week after week, and we hear that they meet people where they’re at to build trust—toward what end?” Nelson asked. “Because if they’re just if we’re just building trust so that they can stay in these dangerous situations, exactly what is the programmatic goal of our outreach investments?”

“What I know,” Nelson added, “is that when budget time comes around and the REACH coordinators come in, they yell, ‘Stop the sweeps! Stop the sweeps!’ and then they are making it easier to stay in these dangerous environments.”

Although Washington noted that outreach is “a critical part of the homelessness response system,” Nelson’s disparaging comments about REACH could be a preview of the city’s upcoming budget discussions, where spending on everything but police, fire, and 911 will be on the table for cuts.

homelessness

Claiming Need for “Protection” from Unsheltered People, Burien Bans Nighttime Homelessness Throughout City
Burien City Councilmembers Hugo Garcia and Linda Akey

By Erica C. Barnett

This post has been updated with a comment from King County about enforcement by the King County Sheriff’s Office.

Burien, the Seattle suburb that recently banned sleeping outdoors at night in the vast majority of the city, tightened the vise on the city’s homeless residents last night by making it a misdemeanor to “camp” outdoors on any public property in the city, including all sidewalks. The new ban expands on an earlier (and already much-amended) law that allowed people to sleep at night in public spaces where camping wasn’t “explicitly prohibited,” including some sidewalks in downtown Burien.

The city council passed the new sleeping ban 5-2 last night after a brief debate.

The hastily proposed amendment came just one week after PubliCola was first to publish a video in which Councilmember Linda Akey ranting at homeless people who had set up tents on the sidewalk outside her condo building downtown, telling them that she had the “authority” as a homeowner to call the police on them. In the video, which made it all the way to the Daily Mail, Akey can be seen roaming up and down between the tents, telling people to go somewhere else because “I live here and you do not belong here.”

The expanded ban, which one public commenter referred to as a “survival ban,” prohibits people from sleeping or setting down items like tarps, blankets, and cooking equipment at any time of day on any public property in Burien. (Almost as if it was being sarcastic, the law says it’s fine for homeless people to sleep in apartments and other types of homes.)

“This reads like a middle-schooler’s parody of a Fox News story,” one resident, Paul Hood, said of the legislation.

Although the law includes a now-standard exemption saying police can’t arrest or move people if there’s no available shelter, it defines shelter so broadly that a bed 15 miles away in Seattle would probably qualify, as would a church-based shelter that required a person to enter treatment or participate in a religious program; under the existing and amended law, people whose addiction or mental illness makes staying in congregate or sober shelters untenable could be arrested for violating the law.

To accommodate the possibility, however remote, that people might end up sleeping in certain areas because no shelter was available, the ordinance also explicitly bans “camping,” under any circumstances, within 500 feet of schools, daycares, libraries, and parks, on the justification that “the Burien community has vociferously asserted that the significant increase in unhoused individuals has resulted in an incredible increase in crime and public indecency, and has made the use of libraries, sidewalks, and other public places uninviting if not dangerous.”

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The new law gives Burien’s city manager, Adolfo Bailon, absolute authority to add any amount of city land to the “areas protected from unhoused encampments” without any public discussion or legislative approval. Bailon, as we’ve reported, received a critical performance evaluation and improvement plan last year, but has refused to release it to the public; late last year, the firm that evaluated Bailon resigned their contract with the city because, in their view, the city had failed to take its recommendations seriously or “take constructive action” to address Bailon’s performance.

Three homeless Burien residents, along with the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, have sued the city over the previous version of the ban, arguing that it violates the state constitutional ban on cruel punishment, among other violations. SKCCH director Alison Eisinger said the plaintiffs’ attorneys are currently amending the complaint to reflect the new, even more restrictive ban.

“Burien residents told their city council in public comment that history will not look kindly on those who wrote and passed this law and drew the outrageous map, and we agree,” Eisinger said. “Our co-plaintiffs and others braved snow and freezing temperatures outside while five council members pretended that excluding people from their community means helping them.”

The bill makes creative use of “whereas” clauses, ordinarily used to cite facts that justify a piece of legislation. In lieu of facts, the law asserts political views, using unsourced, unsubstantiated, and sometimes outrageous claims to make the case that homeless people are a uniquely menacing threat to “the Burien community,” meaning Burien’s housed residents.

One clause cites “allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assaults, drug use, thefts, and trespasses in or near unhoused encampments” as a justification for the ban; another claims that “the Burien community, including business owners and residents, has demanded that the Burien City Council and law enforcement address this significant increase in crime.” A third asserts, again without evidence, that “young girls” are being “taken into tents” by predatory homeless people.

“If council wants to adopt this ordinance, there may not be the votes to prevent it,” said Councilmember Sarah Moore, who—along with Councilmember Hugo Garcia—voted “no.” “But please consider if you want [the whereas clauses] in our recorded history.”

“It’s really hard to be here and have your entire community turn their backs on you. I grew up in this town. My last listed address is here. I had my daughter in this town and I graduated [in] this town, and it’s crazy watching y’all just try to push us out.”

Many public commenters who opposed the ban noted that they, too, are part of the Burien community, and often outnumber anti-homeless voices at city council meetings. “This reads like a middle-schooler’s parody of a Fox News story,” one resident, Paul Hood, said of the legislation.

Others noted that the buildings the legislation purports to “protect,” using buffers similar to those that keep sex offenders from living in most areas, are closed at night—people aren’t using the library or going to school at 10pm, making the specific justification for the “protection areas” patently absurd. (Homeless people are still allowed to exist in Burien libraries and parks during daytime hours, for now.)

In fact, most of the commenters at Monday night’s meeting opposed the ban, including several residents of an encampment outside City Hall whose names were called while they were outside, laying tarps over their belongings as a heavy snow began to fall.

One who made it back in just as the comment period was winding up, Marina, almost didn’t get to speak. Deputy mayor Stephanie Mora tried repeatedly to shut her down, telling her she was out of order and did not have the right to speak. After several people in the crowd intervened—pointing out that Robert’s Rules of Order allow people to speak at the end of the meeting if they weren’t in the room when their name was called—Marina spoke for two minutes as Mora stared off in another direction. Here’s some of what she said:

It’s really hard to be here and have your entire community turn their backs on you. I grew up in this town. My last listed address is here. I had my daughter in this town and I graduated [in] this town, and it’s crazy watching y’all just try to push us out. … We’re waiting here for any kind of help. But you guys don’t want us here. The cops told us the other day to keep walking north. They’re the ones who shuffled us into the alleyway in the first place.

[Homelessness] can happen to anybody. I lost everything so fast, and I was trying my hardest not to. I feel like most of us are maybe just a couple bad steps away from being homeless. And we need help. And I thought y’all had the money to help us. We don’t want to be out here like this. All my friends, my family, they’re out there right now, covered in snow under tarps, miserable, cold, and completely alone. … I have nerve damage in my fingers from the cold. … Some of our people are really sick and they’re not getting the help that they need. They’re out here fighting demons, because that’s what they’re treated like. We’re treated like trash around here and that’s just not nice.

When Oasis Home Church opened a temporary encampment for homeless residents last December, Marina noted, she didn’t have to sleep on public property. The city threatened a lawsuit to stop the church from hosting the encampment.

The ban, which the city passed as an “emergency” ordinance, goes into effect immediately.

UPDATE: The King County Sheriff’s Office told the city of Burien it would not enforce the new camping ban, prompting the city to issue a statement attacking the county for “claiming the authority to decide the constitutionality of existing laws and potentially politicizing an important public safety issue”—as if a ban on homeless people existing at night was not political, and as if the existence of homeless people was an inherent public safety threat to housed Burien residents.

Asked how the King County Sheriff’s Office, which serves as the police department for Burien, plans to enforce the expanded ban, a spokesperson for King County said, “Burien adopted this ordinance with minimal notice to the public and no outreach to King County, which provides law enforcement services to Burien by contract.  This is atypical.  It is unclear why this measure was adopted as an emergency ordinance when prior versions of the same ordinance allowed for full public input and debate.  It is crucial for law enforcement to follow constitutional norms when enforcing any law. King County is currently evaluating the ordinance to ensure that it fits within the proper mission of the Sheriff’s office.”

 

Addiction, homelessness

Burien Councilmember Tells Unsheltered People Outside Her Condo Building: “I Have Authority. I Live Here and You Do Not”

By Erica C. Barnett

Recently elected Burien City Councilmember Linda Akey was caught on tape confronting a group of unsheltered people last week outside her condo building in downtown Burien. The group, who had set up tents on the sidewalk under the building’s awning, are among dozens now sleeping on sidewalks around Burien after the council imposed a daytime encampment ban that requires people to pick up sleeping bags, tents, backpacks, and other “indicae of camping” by 6:00 every morning.

In the video, Akey can be seen telling people that they are “trespassing” and threatening to call the police on them if they don’t move their tents at least five feet away from her building and onto the public portion of the sidewalk. Every tent shown in the video appears to be well over five feet from the building.

“I have authority. I have authority. I live here and you do not belong here,” Akey says. “You’ve gotta move all the tents out of here. We will call the police,” she continues.

In an email, Akey said she was “not acting in any capacity as a government official” in the video, “but as a homeowner.  I want to work toward positive solutions. I recognize I may look angry and I apologize for raising my voice.”

“Get away from here, move away from here. If you don’t want my attitude, then leave, take your tent. Residents live up here. … I live here and you do not belong here.”

“On the night in question, I approached individuals camped on the sidewalk, informing them of condo policies and city ordinances,” Akey continued. “While I empathize with their challenges, ensuring everyone’s safety is a top priority.”

In the video, as some of the people on the sidewalk begin to heckle Akey—”take your drunk ass home,’ one says—Akey continues: “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to help you, okay? And everybody out by 6 am, okay? I want all tents gone by 6 am. If you need to start at 5am to do that, then you do that. You can laugh at me all you want, but the law says 6 am.”

At this point in the tape, a person tells Akey, who has walked behind a tent in the foreground, to “get away from my tent.” She responds, “Oh, no—get out from under where I live. … Get away from here, move away from here. If you don’t want my attitude, then leave, take your tent. Residents live up here.” The video shows Akey pointing up at her building. “I live here. I live here. All these people live here. All these residents. All these residents. All these residents. … I live here and you do not belong here.”

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Prior to the adoption of the new law, people living unsheltered in Burien were allowed to stay in public spaces other than parks.

The law says that people can’t be swept from a location unless shelter is available, but does not specify where this “available” shelter has to be. It also allows police to arrest or sweep people who can’t go into available shelter because of “voluntary” actions like active addiction and behavioral health conditions that lead to—as the law puts —”unruly” behavior.

Burien has no year-round shelters for the general population, and the council and city manager repeatedly stalled efforts to open a King County-funded tiny house village somewhere in the city before finally accepting the offer late last year.

When the city began enforcing the new “camping” ban last fall, it scattered the residents of a large encampment on Ambaum Blvd. throughout the city—including back into downtown Burien, where an encampment sweep in March of last year set off a series of events that led to the encampment ban. Akey lives less than a block from the original encampment.

In a second video, one encampment resident calls the experience of looking for housing “a loop you never escape from” while Akey repeats, “I want to get you housing, I want to get you help” and asks them what she can do (“do you mind if we get a shower?” one asks) before telling them, “This is not the place for you to live.”

Near the end of the video, a partially obscured Akey can be seen in an argument with one person, who claims she put her hands on them. “Let’s do it. Right now,” Akey says. “You want to live underneath other people? You guys don’t have to live here. You can live somewhere else. You can accept services. You can turn off the camera.”

In another video that appears to have been taken after the first, the man accompanying Akey (who appears, based on social media photos, to be her husband) tells the group, “you’ve been offered [housing] multiple times,” and claims that “there are programs for everybody.” Several encampment residents respond that this isn’t true—one calls the experience of looking for housing “a loop you never escape from”—while Akey repeats “I want to get you housing, I want to get you help” and asks them what she can do (“do you mind if we get a shower?” one says, laughing) before repeating, “This is not the place for you to live.”

In her email, Akey said her “primary concern is the well-being of all involved. I believe a multi-faceted approach involving residents, social services, and relevant authorities is crucial to address homelessness and addiction.

“One promising strategy is [criminal legal system] diversion programs, which often become more readily available when existing laws are enforced fairly and consistently,” Akey said. “By enforcing existing laws, we can ensure a safer environment for everyone in our community while also providing pathways to support and rehabilitation for those experiencing homelessness and addiction.”

The LEAD program has a contract to offer people accused of several specific misdemeanors, such as drug possession and theft, to bypass the criminal legal system and enroll in case management. The program is not designed as an off-ramp from arrest and prosecution for sleeping outdoors.

Prior to her election, Akey was a frequent public commenter at Burien City Council meetings. In September, when the council passed the encampment ban, she testified that allowing people to sleep outside is a way of “enabling” people. “I know some people reject help; however … sometimes rock bottom helps a person decide their life is unmanageable and that they need help.”

Three homeless Burien residents have sued the city of Burien over its camping ban, arguing that the law criminalizes homelessness.

homelessness, King County

What Did Burien Get From Its No-Bid Contract for Encampment Response? We May Never Know.
Image via City of Burien

By Erica C. Barnett

The Burien City Council—which acquired two new members, Linda Akey and Alex Andrade, at the beginning of this year—declined to add a discussion of The More We Love’s $49,000 contract to respond to encampments to its agenda during its meeting on Monday, leaving the public without important information about what the group did with the public’s money..

As we’ve reported, Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon signed a contract with The More We Love, founded and led by Kirkland mortgage broker and Union Gospel Mission (UGM) volunteer Kristine Moreland, to respond to and remove encampments in Burien.

The More We Love has claimed to be far more successful than any other group working in Burien at permanently housing people and getting them into treatment, but those claims have been met with skepticism by established homelessness organizations. Permanent housing is expensive and in short supply across King County, and there are nowhere near enough slots in licensed treatment centers for all the people seeking inpatient or outpatient rehab. Meanwhile, there is no year-round general shelter in Burien, so The More We Love reportedly transports people to UGM’s high-barrier, faith-based shelter in Seattle.

Without detailed information about where the money went, how many people The More We Loved helped, and how, Burien residents (and at least some city officials) simply don’t know what Moreland and her group did with public dollars.

A basic report, with data on specific performance metrics, could affirm that Moreland’s claims are true; or it could confirm that The More We Love has exaggerated its success. Such reports are standard practice for other homelessness outreach contracts. For example, REACH—a longstanding outreach group affiliated with Evergreen Treatment Services—provides detailed reports showing how many people at a specific encampment accessed a specific list of services over each reporting period, along with a breakdown of how they spent each public dollar they received.

Without that kind of detailed information, Burien residents (and at least some city officials) simply don’t know what Moreland and her group did with public dollars.

In response to a public disclosure request, PubliCola did receive two brief documents described as “30 day reports” on The More We Love’s contract. The narratives, which are attached to invoices for $24,500 each, do not include specific data such as itemized expenditures or results. Instead, they consist of bullet-pointed lists with items such as:

• Family meeting for Detox for a human in the encampment;

• Working with SCORE [the South King County jail] on resources.

• Work with local sheriffs to guide and strategize on how much pressure to put in what areas for successful moving.

• Helped de-escalate around the transit station and gas station where that group was creating friction between themselves and the business owner.

• Worked alongside OPS (Operation of Prosecution Survivors) [sic] and successfully address several needs involving vulnerable and sensitive females, connecting them to case management, and getting them in an environment where they are lifted up.

The Organization of Prostitution Survivors is a group that views sex work as “a form of gender-based violence.”

Despite Explicit State Guidance, Burien Keeps City Manager’s Performance Evaluation Secret

In related news, the city of Burien has categorically refused to provide PubliCola with City Manager Bailon’s performance evaluation, along with related emails and email attachments, claiming that they are exempt from disclosure under the state Public Records Act.

PubliCola requested the records after the private firm that conducted the evaluation, Nash Consulting, terminated its contract with the city, saying that their evaluation was “not met with the seriousness it deserved by several key stakeholders, and unfortunately, we have concerns that constructive action was not taken in response to the feedback presented in the evaluation report.”

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In response to PubliCola’s request, the city provided a brief two-page “summary” of the evaluation from former mayor Sofia Aragon that we had already published back in December. That document summarized the evaluation process and included six brief bullet points about the goals Bailon should work toward, such as “evaluate the capacity of the organization to meet urgent challenges.”

Although the Public Disclosure Act does exempt some personnel records, guidance from the state Attorney General’s office says that the performance evaluations of city managers, specifically, are subject to disclosure. Citing a case out of Spokane, the Attorney General’s Open Governance Resource Manual says “the performance evaluation of a city manager—the city’s chief executive officer, its leader, and a public figure—was not exempt because it was of legitimate concern to the public.”

Burien’s disclosure office got so overzealous with their redaction tool that they blacked out the Employee Identification Number for Discover Burien, The More We Love’s fiscal sponsor. EINs (30-0048516, in Discover Burien’s case) are unambiguously public and readily accessible; the city has not responded to a followup about why they blacked out this public information.

In addition to the performance evaluation, the city of Burien is refusing to provide an email from Bailon and documents about a “complaint of improper government action” that appears related to Bailon’s failure to inform all city council members about a deadline from King County to spend $1 million on shelter or lose the money. Instead, the city provided a set of mostly redacted emails, along with notes about attachments that are purportedly also exempt from the public records act.

Initially, Bailon said he didn’t see an email from Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock because his inbox was swamped with emails about an unrelated sanctioned encampment at a Burien church, but he later admitted that he had opened and responded to Braddock’s email without informing the council, to whom he reports.

Burien’s public disclosure officer did not respond to our email objecting to their refusal to disclose Bailon’s performance review; we have asked the Attorney General’s Office to review the documents in light of their guidance that city manager performance evaluations are public records.

Incidentally, Burien’s disclosure office got so overzealous with their redaction tool that they blacked out the Employee Identification Number for Discover Burien, The More We Love’s fiscal sponsor, on both of the documents they provide. EINs (30-0048516, in Discover Burien’s case) are unambiguously public and readily accessible; the city has not responded to a followup about why they blacked out this public information.

homelessness

In Texts With Burien City Manager, Encampment Contractor Asked for Cash Up Front, Complained About Pay
Image via City of Burien

By Erica C. Barnett

Text and phone messages obtained through a public records request suggest that Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon actively involved himself in city contract negotiations to ensure that The More We Love, a group that conducts private encampment sweeps, received a contract to resolve encampments for the city. The group, run by Kirkland real-estate broker Kristine Moreland, became a subcontractor to the local business advocacy group Discover Burien after Moreland was apparently unable to secure the level of insurance the city requires for contractors.

Bailon has repeatedly distanced himself from the city’s actions on behalf of The More We Love, going so far as to note, in a memo to the Burien City Council in November, that the “City is not involved in the process to recruit or select a subcontractor.”

Even as he was claiming to be disconnected from the selection process, Bailon was in almost daily conversation with Moreland about the contract, exchanging at least 32 text messages with Moreland and talking to her on the phone at least eight times—for a total of nearly an hour—during the three-week period of October immediately before he signed the contract. At the end of the month, when it looked like the contract would collapse because Moreland’s group couldn’t get insurance, Bailon and city staff scrambled to switch the contract over to Discover Burien, with The More We Love as a subcontractor, sending a flurry of messages between the early morning and evening of November 1 to ensure that a new contract was drafted, executed, and signed that day.

“I am stuck on this to move forward with the contract. I just want to help the humans and move on,” The More We Love’s Kristine Moreland wrote. “I was unaware that Debra was taking 4K from her side. She didn’t disclose that to me when we said we were ready to sign. I am happy to meet her in the middle or see if you guys can bridge her need to get paid.”

The text messages between Moreland and Bailon consist mostly of back-and-forth discussion about the details of her contract, including when Moreland’s group will get paid. In one mid-October exchange, Moreland asked if she could invoice for future work immediately and get paid in 30 days, which she said would help her “float the insurance cost.”

After “checking with Finance,” Bailon responded: “We could accept an invoice right away, but couldn’t actually commence the process for payment. That is the initial response from Finance. We’re checking for more detail.” One minute later, Bailon added, “The bigger problem is that we have a process that pays for work performed instead of in-advance. Depending on the contract, [i]nvoices typically include a report of the work performed during the pay period.” This policy—perform the work, then get paid—is standard for human-services contracts in the city of Seattle, and ensures that contractors don’t take money and then fail to perform the work they were hired to do.

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After Discover Burien told Moreland they would serve as lead contractor for The More We Love’s encampment work, there was apparently another wrinkle: Debra George, Discover Burien’s director, wanted $4,000 to administer the contract, and Moreland objected.

“I am stuck on this to move forward with the contract. I just want to help the humans and move on,” Moreland wrote. “I was unaware that Debra was taking 4K from her side. She didn’t disclose that to me when we said we were ready to sign. I am happy to meet her in the middle or see if you guys can bridge her need to get paid. Can we work together and move on so we can get to work. I appreciate you.” Later, Bailon told Moreland he had “‘I increased the amount to $48 k, per our discussion” (in fact, the contract was for $49,000); the city manager can sign a contract of up to $49,000 without a public process.

In November, the King County District Court issued a judgment against Moreland in favor of Bank of America, which sued her for allegedly failing to pay $33,000 in credit-card debt.

As we’ve reported, Moreland was sanctioned in 2020 for violating consumer mortgage lending laws, and was allowed to keep her license in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars in fines that she has since failed to pay. Additionally, she has faced criminal and civil charges related to an alleged DUI and unpaid bills; in November, the King County District Court issued a judgment against Moreland in favor of Bank of America, which sued her for allegedly failing to pay $33,000 in credit-card debt.. She also distributed private personal and medical information about various homeless people in Burien to city council members, the Burien police chief, and the owner of a real-estate company.

The flurry of activity (and sole-source contract) on Moreland’s behalf is in marked contrast to Bailon’s response to another potential contractor that wanted to work with the city to shelter Burien’s homeless population, the Low Income Housing Institute. LIHI submitted a proposal for a tiny-house village that Bailon dismissed as unrealistic, telling Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon that LIHI was “skating on thin ice” with the city because they emailed an “unsolicited” proposal to city officials. “I am unsure as to why LIHI has commenced a full-court press on this issue of a village (tiny home, pallet) in Burien, but their efforts have included attending nearly all Council meetings over the past two months,” he commented in an email to a city of Seattle staffer.

Burien banned sleeping in public during nighttime and early-morning hours; the ban went into effect November 1.

homelessness, human services

Burien Assails Church For Hosting Homeless People Displaced by City Sweeps

By Erica C. Barnett

The Burien City Council capped off 2023 by holding an executive session last Monday to discuss “litigation or legal risks” associated with a new church-based encampment in the city, whose nighttime outdoor sleeping ban went into effect December 1. After the city swept a longstanding encampment where many of Burien’s unsheltered residents had been living, a number of people moved into a structured encampment at Oasis Home Church that has been operating since November 1.

Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon, along with City Attorney Garmon Newsom II, has insisted that the encampment can’t operate without a temporary use permit would limit encampment operations to no more than 60 days in any calendar year.

“Oasis Home Church remains in violation of  the city’s zoning codes,” which do not allow encampments, Bailon said at last week’s council meeting. “Oasis Home Church continues to refuse to acknowledge the rights afforded to the city of Burien to protect public health and safety. … The city is not aware of how, if at all, public safety is being addressed at Oasis Home Church. We do not know of any protections in place to protect the people in the encampment and at the community at large.”

In a letter dated November 30—the day before Burien’s sweeping encampment ban went into effect—Burien assistant city attorney Ndiabou Diagana explained why the city believes it can restrict a church from hosting a homeless encampment, which is explicitly allowed under state law. Acknowledging that the state law supercedes city codes, Diagana argued that the city still has the right to require a temporary use permit because the law only prohibits cities from enforcing laws that pose a “substantial burden” on their free exercise of religion (emphasis in letter.)

One irony of the city’s decision to challenge the encampment so publicly is that many council members who voted for the sleeping ban have repeatedly said that religious and private charities, not the government, should bear the burden of helping homeless people in the city.

“Asking for a temporary use permit to know how, where, how long, and in what fashion the encampment will be run is reasonable, within Burien’s Washington State Constitution Article XI, Section 11 authority to protect health and safety, and not a substantial burden,” Diagana wrote. “Even Washington’s Religious Freedom provision prohibits practices inconsistent with peace and safety. The temporary use permit is a tool that municipalities use to ensure peace and safety.”

The thing supposedly threatening “peace and safety,” in this case, is an encampment intended to provide some sanctuary and safety for people who are homeless in a city that has effectively banned homelessness, which is precisely the type of situation that led to the law allowing churches to host encampments in the first place. One irony of the city’s decision to challenge the encampment so publicly is that many council members who voted for the sleeping ban have repeatedly said that religious and private charities, not the government, should bear the burden of helping homeless people in the city.

Oasis Home Church’s lead pastor, Mark Miller, did not respond to a request for an interview.

In its letter, the city also argued that the two-month limitation shouldn’t be a problem for the church, since the encampment’s supporters have already said it would be temporary. But this is being cute: If the church agreed to a 60-day limitation, it would have to shut the shelter down on December 30, just one month after Burien’s encampment ban went into effect.

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The city declined to respond to a list of questions from PubliCola; a spokeswoman said the city could not comment on legal matters. It’s unclear if the city plans to sue the church or the Burien Community Support Coalition, a nonprofit started by Councilmember Cydney Moore. Moore, who lost her reelection bid, was excluded from the executive session because, according to City Attorney Newsom, she would be a “party” to any future legal action.

Before joining most of the council in closed session, Newsom accused Moore of misrepresenting her connection to the encampment, charging that she “denied entry to a member of the press who was attempting to enter this site.” The “member of the press” Newsom was referring to was Jonathan Choe, a self-appointed provocateur and staffer for the right-wing Discovery Institute who takes iPhone videos of himself confronting homeless people and activists and posts them on X. Choe’s video of his encounter with Moore shows him attempting to enter the fenced encampment and Moore asking him to leave.

Laws against trespassing, along with basic ethical standards, generally prevent members of the press (and general public) from non-consensually entering privately operated shelters, sanctioned encampments, transitional housing for domestic violence victims, and other places where homeless and formerly homeless people live.