Tag: SHARE/WHEEL

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Harrell

After Tumultuous Relocation, Tent City 4 Contemplates Its Next Move

Although Councilmember Cathy Moore and Mayor Bruce Harrell expressed surprise that Tent City 4 planned to stay in Lake City, emails show their offices were working to make the move happen as far back as February.

By Erica C. Barnett

Back in May, when the city told SHARE/WHEEL, the group that operates Tent City 4 in Lake City, that it would no longer be able to move to a long-planned new site where the Lake City Community Center was previously located, North Seattle City Councilmember Cathy Moore, who will leave the council on July 7,said she opposed the site because the neighborhood had not been asked to weigh in on having a self-managed encampment at that location, just a few blocks away from its previous site, the Lake City Mennonite Church.

The neighborhood, Moore told PubliCola in a statement, opposed the encampment. “The community directly impacted by the TC4 siting at the Mennonite church and now at the LCCC site is requesting that KCRHA find a different site outside of Lake City,” Moore said.

It’s unclear who, specifically, Moore meant by the “community”; by all accounts, the encampment was welcome at its previous location, and a representative of the Mennonite Church  told PubliCola they would be thrilled to have them back any time. Long before their anticipated move date in mid-May,SHARE Tent City 4 residents did door-to-door outreach and held a well-attended public where only one person raised any objection—a woman who erroneously believed the encampment would block access to the Lake City Farmer’s Market.

But by May, the city had made up its mind: Under no circumstances would the encampment be able to stay at its new site for a year, as previously planned. After a flurry of last-minute negotiations, the city agreed to allow the encampment to relocate to the new site for one to six months, until they can find what Mayor Bruce Harrell called a “more appropriate” location.

Since they moved, SHARE/WHEEL representative Michele Marchand said, the group has not received “a single complaint” about the encampment. “We’ve gotten all kinds of donations.” Tent City residents provide 24/7 security, and do litter pickups in the neighborhoods around their encampment sites.

On a recent weekday, the camp was quiet and largely unoccupied—a collection of closely spaced tents, including many set up directly on the grass, sizzling in the early-summer heat. By early June, the camp still didn’t have electricity or water hookups, and was using a noisy portable generator to supply the power that kept a fan going in the large open tent that served as the camp’s front office. Apart from the generator, which a Tent City representative said they shut off at night at the request of neighbors, the camp was silent.

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Justin Fain, who’s currently living in a large tent covered by a silvery tarp, said uncertainty around the encampment’s future was making it harder than expected to get electricity and water to the site. SHARE/WHEEL representatives told PubliCola the city had just informed the group that they needed to be out within three months. Later, Harrell’s office said they would once again have six months to leave.

Overall, Fain said, the group is getting along well with the neighborhood. “Everybody’s been very welcoming,” Fain said, including staff at the Lake City library branch, who recently ordered pizza for encampment residents.

Moore, who spoke to the Seattle Times about her opposition to the encampment, said her problem wasn’t with “Tent City per se, but the profound lack of investment in Lake City and the (feeling) that Lake City is being asked to shoulder a responsibility that other parts of the city are not being asked to do.”

“To say Lake City doesn’t need shelter is ridiculous,” Fain said, noting that the city does regular encampment sweeps at Albert Davis Park, just outside the Tent City 4, and along 33rd Ave. NE. “There’s tons of homeless around here.” On the streets around Tent City and in the park, several tents were visible on the day I visited. And it isn’t just single people in those tents; it’s also families.

The Mennonite Church is still hosting a small family shelter in a vacant dental building near Tent City 4’s previous location, but it’s perennially full. In the week before I visited, Fain said, six families had arrived at Tent City 4, with a total of 24 children; they’ll stay at the encampment until space opens up at the family shelter.

***

Moore’s comments last month, and the swift action by Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office to put the kibosh on a one-year lease between the King County Homelessness Authority and the city, suggested she just heard about plans to move Tent City to a new site shortly before it was supposed to move in May.

Harrell, similarly, suggested that the planned community center location was news to him. In a statement announcing that the city would allow the encampment at the site for up to six months, Harrell said, “Improving coordination among the City, KCRHA, and Share/Wheel will allow for strengthened community engagement and more effective process timelines that lead to better outcomes and remove uncertainty from similar situations going forward.”

Emails obtained through a records request, however, show that Moore, Harrell, and the city’s Human Services Department, which answers to the mayor, were aware that SHARE/WHEEL was planning to move to the community center site as far back as February. Not only that—HSD suggested the location. On February 26, a KCRHA staffer told SHARE/WHEEL that the city’s department had identified the Lake City Community Center site as a possible location for the encampment, and suggested that the organization start talking to Moore’s office about that site as soon as possible.

“The site is the old Lake City Community Center, which was demolished last summer and is currently awaiting redevelopment into a new community center and housing,” the HSD staffer wrote. “HSD has confirmed with leadership of both the Parks Department (who owns the property) and the Office of Housing (who is financing the redevelopment) that the site will be available for this interim use through May of 2026. We have the approval of the Mayor’s Office to proceed.”

In a March 6 email, one KCRHA staffer told another, “Tent City 4 has met with CM Moore already.” On March 14, SHARE/WHEEL met with a group that included Moore’s aide Harry Pollet, and reported to KCRHA that “CM Moore’s Office is starting to consult with District stakeholders about Tent City4’s request for the Lake City Community Center site,” as well as a short-term family shelter at the Mennonite Church, and was working with Seattle Public Utilities to figure out what it would cost to provide utilities at the site for a year.

Emails show that the city continued communicating with SHARE/WHEEL and the KCRHA in April, discussing the need to expedite permits and get a one-year lease signed “ASAP.” During this period, the group held its public meeting and did door-to-door outreach to the surrounding community.

But then, in May, something changed, and city officials, including Moore and Harrell, started saying the site, and the Lake City neighborhood as a whole, was not an appropriate site for the sanctioned encampment.

PubliCola sent Moore a list of questions about what happened between February and May, when she appeared to go from working with SHARE/WHEEL and KCRHA to secure the Lake City Community Center site to opposing any encampment in Lake City.

In a statement, Moore responded, “I think the entire siting process was poorly managed and resulted in needless angst for everyone involved.” Moore added that she heard in May that the site was “unavailable due to lack of utility hookup and need for a quick turnaround for the forthcoming affordable housing project.” According to the Seattle Times, developer Mercy Housing won’t break ground on the project until 2027.

Fain said Tent City residents were gratified that, before and after the move, four Seattle City Council members have visited Tent City 4 and talked to its residents directly. Cathy Moore, who represents the neighborhood, was not among them.

 

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Harrell

Last-Minute Rug Pull Leaves Lake City’s Sanctioned Encampment, Tent City 4, With Nowhere to Go
Image via Seattle Mennonite Church

By Erica C. Barnett

Back in February, SHARE and WHEEL—the shelter providers and homeless advocacy groups that have run self-managed tent cities in Seattle for many years—began doing outreach about plans to relocate Tent City 4 from its current location at the Seattle Mennonite Church in Lake City to the site of the former Lake City Community Center four blocks away.

Ten tent city residents fanned out across the neighborhood, knocking on doors and handing out about 500 flyers notifying residents about the move, and the group held a well-attended community meeting where only two people objected to the new location, according to several people who were present. One of those, a woman who worried that the community would block access to a farmer’s market, withdrew her objection after realizing it would not. “We had nothing but a positive response,” WHEEL organizer Michele Marchand said.

By design, Tent City never stays on one site for more than a year—a commitment that helps mitigate community concerns about their presence. Their lease at the church ends on Saturday, May 17, and all 104 residents, including families with a total of 17 kids, plan to leave that day. Until last week, they planned to sign a lease with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to move to the community center site, with Journey Christian Church serving as the “faith sponsor” at the new location.

Last week, however, something changed, according to several people directly involved in planning the move, and the city decided not to give KCRHA control of the land. (KCRHA had planned to add Tent City 4 to its master lease agreement with the city, which hands authority over city-owned properties to KCRHA for the duration of the lease. Previously, the city’s Human Services Department would sign agreements with providers directly for the use of city-owned land.)

In response, the homelessness authority informed Tent City representatives that their lease would not be on the agenda for a KCRHA governing board meeting on May 15, as previously planned. That means that the relocation they’ve been planning for months won’t go forward—and they’ll have to move somewhere else, potentially to public land where they do not have formal permission to be.

Lisa Edge, a spokeswoman for the homelessness authority, said, “KCRHA and Seattle Human Services Department continue to receive community input and are reviewing it.”

Several people involved in the negotiations say Seattle City Councilmember Cathy Moore, whose north Seattle district includes Lake City, is behind the sudden reversal; one said she became “apoplectic” when she learned the encampment was moving to a new site in her district last week and reached out to KCRHA to stop it from moving forward.

Moore is a member of the KCRHA’s governing board of elected officials, which—thanks to the elimination of a separate implementation board late last year—now makes all major decisions for the homelessness authority. (Previously, the implementation board approved such leases). The sudden shift, according to SHARE/WHEEL’s Anitra Freeman, came “in spite of [Moore] being really friendly to us in the past.”

Moore declined to respond to detailed questions about her role in the decision to deny Tent City 4 a lease at the new location.

Kate Jacobs, a spokesperson for Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, said the city “supports a solution that results in a new location for Tent City 4 that meets the needs of the people who reside there and the broader community.” We followed up with additional questions about why the city is transferring control of its own land to KCRHA—a move that effectively shifts responsibility for what happens on city property to the homelessness authority— and will update this post when we hear back.

Several people involved in negotiating the move say Tent City 4 was the target of a late-breaking email campaign directed at elected officials, including Moore and Harrell. In a meeting with Tent City 4 residents last week, Marchand said, KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison told the group that “they’ve been flooded with …  form emails” opposing the sanctioned encampment.

Pete Lagerwey, a member of the Seattle Mennonite Church, said Tent City has only had a positive impact on the neighborhood. “They’ve been fantastic neighbors,” Lagerwey said, picking up trash in the neighborhood and providing 24-hour safety patrols. “We’re sorry to see them go and we would invite them back in a heartbeat.”

Edge, from KCRHA, said the agency “is committed to helping resolve this issue” and is working with SHARE/WHEEL and the city to “identify a property for them to move to. KCRHA has asked SHARE/WHEEL and the current faith sponsor to consider extending the current lease while the issue is resolved.”

But Tent City 4 representatives say they plan to keep their word to the neighborhood and leave on May 17, whether they’ve reached an agreement on the community center site or not. “Our backup plan, no matter what, is to keep our word and move somewhere else,” said Brandon, a resident of the encampment. “That’s non-negotiable.”

The Mennonites are supporting Tent City 4’s commitment to move on schedule. “They’re a poor people’s organization and all they have is their own good word and trust,” Lagerwey said. “We’re not going to extend the lease, because we’re going to help them keep their word.”

Alison Eisinger, director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, called Tent City 4 “a well-organized self-managed group with a long track record” that has moved from one location to another dozens of times without incident. “This is the easy stuff,” Eisinger said. “If Seattle can’t figure out how to help 100 people who manage their own shelter move, how is this city ever going to site anything, shelter or supportive housing, anywhere?”