Tag: encampment

Burien Council Bans Sleeping Outside at Night, Still Has No Plan to Address Homelessness

Burien City Council members Kevin Schilling, Sofia Aragon, and Jimmy Matta

By Erica C. Barnett

The Burien City Council voted Monday night to ban unsheltered people from sleeping in public spaces between 10pm and 6am, after failing for more than six months to create any shelter or other legal place for a group of several dozen people to sleep.

The vote broke down along the same lines as every previous vote on the encampment, with a four-member majority (Stephanie Mora, Kevin Schilling, Jimmy Matta, and Sofia Aragon) voting to adopt the ban, which is modeled after a similar sleeping ban in Bellevue.

Burien police, who are King County Sheriff’s Office employees, would be in charge of enforcing the ban. A spokesman for King County Executive Dow Constantine told PubliCola, “the county will be reviewing the legislation with our legal team to understand any potential impact to policies or procedures, and will be discussing next steps soon.” Earlier this year, the county decided not to help the city remove unsheltered people from another city-owned property.

“It’s not compassionate to force people to disperse to even more dangerous areas where their caseworkers can’t find them. And it is so painful to witness our council considering this right as the weather turns particularly nasty, knowing that it will keep getting worse.”—Burien Councilmember Cydney Moore

Unlike Bellevue, however, Burien has no year-round shelters that are open to all people, so the sleeping ban puts the city in a dubious legal position. Under a Ninth Circuit federal ruling called Martin v. Boise, cities can’t sweep encampments unless shelter is available. Other cities, including Seattle, have interpreted this ruling broadly, offering shelter that may not be appropriate or viable or proclaiming that a tent or group of tents are “obstructing” public space and removing them without notice or an offer of shelter. A King County Superior Court judge ruled recently that this broad use of Seattle’s police power is unconstitutional, and the case is under appeal.

Councilmember Cydney Moore, who voted against the ban, said prohibiting unsheltered people from sleeping at night won’t “get anybody off the streets” or solve homelessness in Burien. “It’s not compassionate to force people to disperse to even more dangerous areas where their caseworkers can’t find them. And it is so painful to witness our council considering this right as the weather turns particularly nasty, knowing that it will keep getting worse.”

The city has made no apparent progress on finding temporary places for people to live. City manager Adolfo Bailon said an offer of $1 million and 35 Pallet shelters from King County was insufficient to pay for a new shelter location, and that the city would need to find at least another $200,000 to make the offer pencil out.

The county offered the money to Burien earlier this year, along with garage space that would allow a Toyota dealer who is currently leasing a city-owned lot for his overflow inventory to store his cars so that the city could use the space for temporary shelter. After the council majority rejected this offer in July, council members and City Manager Adolfo Bailon have floated a number of non-viable locations for the shelter, including a contaminated site owned by the Port of Seattle that the Port has said is uninhabitable.

Last month, Bailon raised the possibility of moving the encampment to an empty lot next to a county library, businesses, and public housing in Boulevard Park, a lower-income, largely Latino neighborhood. Last week, councilmember Hugo Garcia pointed out that the original justification for displacing the encampment was that it was next to a library, homes, and businesses in wealthier, whiter downtown Burien. “This reeks of white supremacy,” Garcia said.

Mora immediately moved to censure Garcia, but her motion failed for lack of a second; she made the same motion last night, and it failed again. In a thread on X (formerly Twitter), Councilmember Sarah Moore, the third member of the anti-sleeping ban minority, said Garcia was not accusing any of his council colleagues, specifically, of being a white supremacist, as Mora suggested. “I applaud his courage for naming what he saw and I hope we can collectively engage in challenging conversations like this productively,” Moore wrote.

At last night’s meeting, Moore also proposed having a public discussion about a proposal, which Bailon said last night is moving forward, to pay a group called The More We Love to remove encampments from public spaces. The group, run by a Kirkland mortgage broker named Kristine Moreland, offers “sweeps” at $515 a person and was recently paid to remove the encampment in Burien from a spot next to the Burien Grocery Outlet. Although Moreland claimed to have “housed” a huge number of the people living in the encampment, the encampment has actually moved to another location in the middle of a busy intersection. The city currently contracts with REACH, an established outreach group.

Burien Decides to Take No Action on Encampment on Its Property, Opening Path for Private Sweep

By Erica C. Barnett

After a heated public meeting Tuesday night, the Burien City Council declined to take any action on a longstanding encampment on city-owned property, effectively allowing a private business that has leased the property to remove several dozen people who have been living on the site since the city forced them to move from a strip of land next to City Hall in April.

As we’ve reported, the city of Burien evicted encampment residents from an area next to the building that houses both Burien City Hall and the local King County Library branch in April. After encampment residents moved (legally) to a city-owned lot nearby, the city decided to lease the property for $183 a month to a nonprofit animal shelter run by the director of Discover Burien, a local business group, which says it plans to open a dog park at the site.

Over the course of the two-hour meeting, which was frequently interrupted by loud disruptions from an unruly crowd, the council discussed and rejected several potential resolutions, including a land swap that would involve accepting $1 million from King County and relocating encampment residents into pallet shelters on a city-owned parking lot site currently leased by a Toyota dealership, which would move the vehicles it is storing there property owned by King County Metro. The Downtown Emergency Service Center will open a new 95-unit permanent housing project in Burien later this year, with 30 percent of the units reserved for people living homeless in Burien, such as the current encampment residents.

“We don’t know where people will choose to go. Certain sidewalks are available. The city does not have camping bans on sidewalks throughout the city. However, there are regulations that govern ADA accessibility … that the sheriff’s office has addressed in the past.”—Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon

As part of that deal, the encampment would move temporarily to a local Methodist Church that has agreed to host it until the city can work out a deal with the dealership, whose owner was out of town this week and apparently unaware of the discussion about his business.

King County floated this option during conversations with county officials, including Councilmembers Jimmy Matta and Hugo Garcia, last week. Councilmember Stephanie Mora called her colleagues “very unethical and not transparent” for talking to the county without letting the rest of the council know, leading Matta to note that as an elected official, he is allowed to meet with other government leaders.

Mora is a longtime encampment opponent who has unsuccessfully proposed a total ban on “camping” in Burien. During Tuesday’s meeting meeting, she claimed that homeless people draw drug dealers into cities the way children draw ice cream trucks to parks in summer; in April, she opposed placing a portable toilet near the encampment, saying that homeless people should relieve themselves in dog waste disposal bags.

Under a 2019 federal circuit court ruling called Martin v. Boise, governments can’t force homeless people to move from public property if there is no suitable shelter available. Burien has maintained that it isn’t violating Boise by leasing out the property and forcing people to move, because people can simply move their tents onto public sidewalks or other strips of land where they are technically allowed to be. (Burien bans people from sleeping in its parks, using a similar justification).

With its vote, the council also declined to consider other potential options to relocate the encampment temporarily, including other county-owned properties, or continue working on a resolution while allowing people to stay where they are. Councilmember Sarah Moore asked City Manager Adolfo Bailon to address the distinct likelihood that—as the council’s own agenda noted explicitly—people would simply move onto local sidewalks since the city has not found anywhere for them to go.

“We don’t know where people will choose to go,” Bailon said. “To your specific question, yes, it is possible. Certain sidewalks are available. The city does not have camping bans on sidewalks throughout the city. However, there are regulations that govern ADA accessibility … that the sheriff’s office has addressed in the past.”

The King County Sheriff’s Office provides Burien’s police department. Last month, King County Executive Dow Constantine’s attorney sent a letter to the city of Burien saying the sheriff’s office would not help remove the encampment, prompting the city to issue a statement saying it was King County’s responsibility, not the city’s, to address homelessness in the region. Burien officials opposed to the encampment have suggested repeatedly that homeless people are migrating from Seattle to Burien, but there is little evidence for this claim.

Earlier this week, the organization placed signs around the property ordering people to vacate by June 1; according to KIRO, most people had vacated the encampment by early this morning.

Despite Community Consensus, a Longtime Burien Encampment Scatters Because There’s Nowhere to Go

Members of the Burien City Council listen to testimony about an encampment just outside City Hall at a meeting in March.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Friday, the last few people who have been living in tents outside Burien’s city hall and downtown library building will pick up stakes and leave. Earlier this month, more than a year after the first tent appeared on the sidewalk on the west side of the building, the city plans to evict the encampment and its residents, who currently have nowhere to go except elsewhere in the city.

In a joint letter sent earlier this month, a group of local leaders including Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon, Police Chief Ted Boe, Burien Toyota owner Dean Anderson, and the project manager for the LEAD outreach program in Burien, Aaron Burkthaler, asked King County to “access 30 units of the Health Through Housing program to provide a service that can have an immediate positive impact and save lives.” Health Through Housing is a county program that purchases multi-unit buildings, primarily hotels, to shelter and house people living throughout King County; it’s funded by a sales tax the King County Council passed in 2020.

Advocates for people living unsheltered say it’s the first time they can recall people with such different perspectives coming together to work toward a common goal. “I’ve never been in a situation like this before, where we as social workers are aligned so strongly with law enforcement and the city administration,” said Devin Majkut, the program manager for LEAD. “We’re all asking for the same thing, and getting nothing.”

The cluster of about 15 tents has been the subject of intense debate, and growing consternation, over the past few months.

Robin Desimone, who owns the Iris & Peony floral shop across the street from City Hall, says she’s “fed up” with the encampment, where she says she has seen “brazen activities going on,” including fires and drug use, “with no accountability for their actions.” Nonetheless, she said, she wants to see a solution that works for the people at the encampment, because removing the tents will just force people to move elsewhere in the city, including places like the alley behind her business.

“If I wanted to be in the middle of this, I would move my business to downtown Seattle,” Desimone said. “This is a small town and a small street. But behind the scenes, we’ve been trying to find solutions.”

Advocates and case managers say they’re encouraged by the city’s willingness to partner with them to advocate for funding and assistance from the county—and frustrated, along with them, by the county’s unwillingness to put some money and other resources toward the immediate problem posed by the encampment.

In significant ways, Burien has taken a more nuanced approach to its relatively small homeless population than its overwhelmed neighbor to the north. Four years ago, the city council passed a ban on “camping” in public parks, but did not prohibit people from sleeping in other public spaces, a tacit acknowledgement that people have to sleep somewhere. A court ruling called Martin v. Boise prohibits officials from sweeping encampments without offering people another place to go, and while cities like Seattle often elide that rule by providing shelter “offers” that are unappealing or inappropriate, Burien literally doesn’t have enough shelter for everyone living on its streets; hence, the incomplete encampment ban.

The scene outside the building that houses both City Hall and Burien’s King County Library System branch is a tangible result of this compromise: The encampment—which began as a single tent occupied by a hard-to-house couple who had a good relationship with the library—sprouted on a small concrete pad on the west side of the building just a few feet feet from Town Hall Park, where camping is illegal.  Although some neighbors, blaming encampment residents for everything from catalytic converter thefts to broken windows, clamored for a sweep, the police and Burien’s human services department refused, citing the law that allows them to be there.

But when a tent caught on fire last month, sending one encampment resident to the hospital with severe burns, the organization that controls the building—a condo association run jointly by the county library and city government—decided to evict the people living there, prompting a month-long scurry to find them somewhere to go.

Currently, there are no year-round adult shelters in Burien, and the city has no hotels that could be converted into shelter. During a recent city council meeting, City Manager Adolfo Bailon floated the idea of a sanctioned encampment or tiny house village, but said an 80-bed village would set the city back a million dollars.

It’s “unfortunate,” Desimone said. “A properly managed facility would be great and would solve a lot of our problems.” But funding for such a facility would have to come from the county or the KCRHA. “Our city can’t do that huge a lift—we don’t have that big of that economic base, and to be honest, we’re not going to be bringing any new businesses in with the situation as it is now.”

Burien’s general fund is around $35 million, about 2 percent the size of of Seattle’s. The city’s homeless population is also significantly smaller—around 200, at most, according to Burien human services manager Colleen Brandt-Schluter. Majkut says the number may be even lower, more like 75 to 100.

Advocates and case managers say they’re encouraged by the city’s willingness to partner with them to advocate for funding and assistance from the county—and frustrated, along with them, by the county’s unwillingness to put some money and other resources toward the immediate problem posed by the encampment.

Burien City Councilmember Kevin Schilling, who grew up in the city, said unhoused people have always used the library as a place to get warm, read the newspaper, and use the restrooms. What’s new, he said, is the “immediate, recent visibility of [homelessness] around City Hall.”

“This could be a case study about where there are missing links [and] folks are falling through the cracks,” Schilling said. “They’re not being housed, they’re not getting the services they need, and now we’re in the situation where they’ll be moved, but they won’t be moved anywhere [in particular] because we don’t have anywhere for them to go.”

Brandt-Schluter said telling people to go somewhere else will only make it harder for their case managers to find them and provide help with court dates, case plans, IDs, and housing assessments—the prerequisites for unsheltered people to access housing. “‘If not here, then where?’ is really our mantra right now, and we’ll continue to have to move people in and out of doorways, out of parks, out of City Hall, out of wherever, as long as there isn’t permanent supportive housing and shelter with services that folks can go to.”

“‘If not here, then where?’ is really our mantra right now, and we’ll continue to have to move people in and out of doorways, out of parks, out of City Hall, out of wherever, as long as there isn’t permanent supportive housing and shelter with services that folks can go to.”—Burien human services manager Colleen Brandt-Schluter

Not everyone believes it’s Burien’s job to help everyone living at the encampment.

At the recent council meeting, Bailon said he had “heard” that most of the encampment residents “had never lived here before,” and that “they may just return to where they came from, to where they thought was a safe place before relocating from that location to here.”

But Brandt-Schluter, who has met with the encampment residents personally, said almost all of them either “come from Burien or they’ve been in Burien a long time and consider Burien in their home.”

Although some officials and business owners have suggested sending people living unsheltered in Burien to Seattle, where there are more services, “a lot of these folks don’t want to go to Seattle,” Brandt-Schluter said. “They don’t feel safe going into Seattle, they’re afraid to leave their case manager and the people they’ve established relationships with. And there’s this human side of things, too, of trying to match people [with shelter and services] where they can be successful.”

Representatives from the KCRHA and DCHS told PubliCola they weren’t able to come up with any immediate housing or shelter solutions for any of the people living in the encampment. “There’s just nothing that’s been made available for those folks,” Majkut said, adding that LEAD and its outreach partner REACH were able to refer a few especially vulnerable people to shelters in Seattle. “I appreciate that the city leadership in Burien is committed to providing resources for people living unsheltered there, but they need help to do so from the county and the RHA.”

In the absence of some last-minute intervention, the people who have lived outside City Hall over the past several months will most likely scatter throughout Burien and its nearby greenbelts—a temporary resolution that does nothing to address the larger problem of homelessness in Burien. In the longer term, advocates are looking for sites for a future sanctioned encampment or tiny house village, including a former elementary school on the border with White Center where Transform Burien, a nonprofit that runs a food and clothing bank, is now located.

Majkut said two things stand out about the people who’ve been living in the encampment: Many have a history of profound trauma, including domestic violence, and all are eager to move into shelter or housing, “which is really rare. So it’s been particularly hard for our team to have all these folks say ‘I’m ready, let’s do this,’ and we have nothing to offer them.”