Tag: sweeps

education, homelessness, human services, Mayor Durkan, Morning Fizz

Durkan Says Schools Should Use “Reserves” for Encampment Response; Homelessness Authority May Hire Ex-HSD Director as Consultant

1. On an appearance on KUOW’s “The Record” Thursday, Mayor Jenny Durkan doubled down on her assertion that it’s up to the school district, not the city, to shelter and house people living in an encampment next to Broadview Thompson K-8 school in north Seattle. The encampment is on district-owned land on the south shore of Bitter Lake, directly adjacent to property owned by the city.

As we’ve reported, the school district has asked the city not to sweep the encampment without providing outreach and access to shelter to the dozens of people living there. Durkan has responded that the since the school district has made it clear they don’t want the city to remove the camp, it’s up to the district to “stand up their own process” for providing outreach and shelter to the people living there, using their “billion-dollar budget” to do so. 

Responding to a question posed by PubliCola’s Erica C. Barnett on KUOW, Durkan said the school district would “have to address [the encampment] the same way we do—you have to do outreach and really try to find places for people to go. You can’t just push them onto the city property [next door] and expect the city to deal with it.” Other than a rough line in the grass, there is no clear demarcation at the site between school district and city property.

Durkan disputed the idea that the school district doesn’t have the funds to stand up its own human services system. For example, she said, if the school district “want[s] to contract with an entity like JustCARE, they do have the reserves, plus money in their transportation budget that they didn’t use this year.”

The school district actually has an ongoing shortfall in its transportation budget, and can never have a surplus in that funding source because the state reimburses school districts for transportation costs after the fact.

JustCARE is a program that provides hotel rooms and intensive case management to people living in encampments in Pioneer Square and other areas. In a memo to the school board and other district officials in April, then-deputy mayor Casey Sixkiller estimated that the district could shelter 30 people through JustCARE for one year for around $1.5 million, or “set up a new tiny home village and provide services to 30 individuals, not including site selection and completing the SEPA process which adds both time and additional costs,” for $1.1 million.

“Our billion-dollar budget is intended for the education of children. We don’t have funding in excess to divert to rehousing adults living in Seattle.” — Seattle school board director Liza Rankin

“The school district so far has declined to act” to provide shelter, housing, and services to residents,” Durkan said on KUOW. “We’re hoping the school district makes a different decision, but they as a board have to decide what their priorities are.”

2. At a school board meeting on Wednesday, board director Liza Rankin, who represents the district where the encampment is located, responded directly to Durkan’s previous comments suggesting the district should set up a system parallel to the city’s to fund shelter, outreach, and encampment removals. “Our billion-dollar budget is intended for the education of children,” Rankin said. “It runs 104 schools, it employs about 8,000 staff, it serves 54,000 students, and it is still not enough to cover counseling, nursing, full-time librarians and more at each and every school.”

“So we don’t have funding in excess to divert to rehousing adults living in Seattle,” Rankin continued. “That being said, we continue to be open and wiling to partner with any and everyone who wants to support the district in the compassionate rehousing of people in our community who deserve much better.”

3. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority is in conversations with former interim Seattle Human Services Department director Jason Johnson about consulting on “sub-regional planning” in South King County, PubliCola has learned. Specifically, Johnson would work to map out the existing resources in South King County for the homelessness authority.

KCRHA spokeswoman Anne Martens said the agency is “still talking through potential scope,” adding, “we don’t actually have a contract in place, so there’s nothing official” yet. Johnson was Durkan’s pick to lead HSD, but he failed to win confirmation from the city council and served in an interim capacity throughout his two years in the position, which ended in December 2020.

Elections, homelessness, Morning Fizz

Campaign Fizz: Compassion Seattle Claims Endorsements It Doesn’t Have, Farrell Looks on the Bright Side

1. Compassion Seattle, the campaign for a proposed charter amendment on homelessness, recently posted a long and impressive list of endorsing organizations on their website, including more than half a dozen organizations that advocate for or provide services to people experiencing homelessness. The charter amendment would impose an unfunded mandate to add 2,000 shelter beds in a year using existing city funds, and would enshrine the policy of encampment sweeps in the city’s constitution.

The only problem? Most of the homelessness advocates on the list told us they never endorsed the initiative.

PubliCola contacted the Compassion Seattle campaign on Thursday morning to ask them how many of the groups on their list—which included the Downtown Emergency Service Center, Evergreen Treatment Services (which runs the REACH outreach program), the United Way of King County, and Farestart—had actually endorsed the measure.

We also contacted those four organizations, plus the Public Defender Association, the Housing Development Consortium, Plymouth Housing, and the Chief Seattle Club. Everyone but the HDC and Plymouth got back to us, and every group said they had not endorsed the initiative.

Jacque Seaman, vice president of the Fearey Group, told PubliCola that “the leaders of these organizations have been involved and expressed their support as you’ve seen; some are now going through their own internal processes to confirm endorsements.”

For a candidate to claim even one endorsement they don’t actually have is a major, newsworthy faux pas; for a campaign—particularly one run by a former Seattle City Council member and a longtime local public relations firm— to falsely claim at least six organizational endorsements is incredible.

In this case, the campaign used the apparent stamp of approval from homelessness advocates to suggest that Compassion Seattle is an equal partnership of do-gooder advocates and business groups, when the truth is that its funding comes almost entirely from large downtown property owners and other business interests, and its endorsement list is heavily weighted toward business associations, downtown groups, and individuals who want encampments out of sight.

It’s true that some of the groups on the list—notably Plymouth, DESC, and the PDA—contributed input that softened the measure, which originally focused almost entirely on encampment sweeps. And some of these groups may ultimately decide to endorse the proposal. But it’s sloppy at best, dishonest at worst, to claim support you don’t have, and the seasoned campaign professionals promoting this measure know better.

 

For now, Compassion Seattle has taken down its entire “Endorsements” page; Seaman said the campaign is “removing [the groups’] endorsements until they notify us their process is complete.”

2. Mayoral candidate Jessyn Farrell’s campaign released a poll to supporters showing former city council member Bruce Harrell solidly in the lead with 23 percent support. The campaign’s point wasn’t to highlight that Harrell is the frontrunner, though; it was to show that “the race for second in this two-way primary is wide open,” with no clear runner-up and 41 percent still undecided. Farrell was tied for third place with Colleen Echohawk at 7 percent support.

The campaign did not release the full results of the poll. In an email to supporters, they noted that while city council president Lorena González came in second with 11 percent and 65 percent name recognition, “her popularity ratings are net negative (31% favorable / 34% unfavorable),” which could “limit her growth potential.”

Harrell’s campaign sent a message to supporters saying, “one of our opponents just released a poll showing our campaign to end the infighting and excuses at City Hall is catching on!”

The González campaign said their own polling from March concluded that González is essentially tied with Harrell (a statistically insignificant 19 to 20 percent) and that “Colleen Echohawk and Jessyn Farrell trail González and Harrell by double digits, with nearly 4 in 10 voters undecided.” Their polling also has González with a much higher ratio of favorable to unfavorable ratings (36 to 21 percent) and shows Farrell’s share of the vote increasing by just 1 percent after an “informed introduction.”

Campaign polls describe each candidate using their biography, typically with a more positive and detailed biography for the candidate doing the poll, and use the resulting “informed introduction” number to demonstrate that their candidate’s ranking improves after voters are fully informed about the candidates. Each of the polls has a margin of error of more than 4 percent.

Bikes, Health, homelessness, Mayor Durkan, Morning Fizz, Parks

Fake Anti-Homeless Signs in Ballard, Public Health Says City Shouldn’t Cram People Back Into Shelter, and More
What size shovel would it take to yank these babies out?

1. The city has begun the process of closing down temporary “redistribution” shelters that opened last year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including a 130-bed shelter run by the Downtown Emergency Service Center at Seattle Center’s Exhibition Hall. The Human Services Department, which reports to Mayor Jenny Durkan, has asked DESCo begin the process of moving the people living at Exhibition Hall to other shelters, with the goal of emptying out the building the end of June.

The city hopes to move many of the Exhibition Hall residents to DESC’s existing Navigation Center, a 24-hour mass shelter in Pioneer Square that has been operating at reduced capacity throughout the pandemic, with about 36 people sleeping in communal rooms that used to shelter 85 a night.

However, after a recent site visit, representatives from the King County Public Health department recommended against “adding more residents to the communal sleeping rooms at this time.”

In a report on the visit, the health department’s Health Engagement Action Resource Team (HEART) noted a number of worrying conditions at the Navigation Center, including poor ventilation, lack of soap and hand sanitizer in restrooms, and bed spacing didn’t leave much room to squeeze more people in. Among other issues, the team noted that the windows in sleeping rooms didn’t open; air purifiers were sitting in storage; some exhaust fans weren’t working; and “[s]everal hand sanitizer and restroom soap dispensers were empty.”

“Note: Good handwashing is far superior to using hand sanitizer,” the report noted, in a section that was both bold and highlighted. (Quick, someone tell Mayor Durkan!)

A spokesman for the public health department confirmed that the department “did not recommend that DESC immediately increase capacity [at the Navigation Center] before implementing the team’s recommendations, which the organization and the City of Seattle are reviewing.”

Ultimately, the decision to add more beds to the Navigation Center is up to DESC and the city; last week, DESC director Daniel Malone told PubliCola that additional beds were “desired but not yet possible due to [the] pandemic.”

In addition to figuring out how to increase capacity for existing clients at Exhibition Hall, the Navigation Center is a receiving site for the city’s HOPE Team (formerly known as the Navigation Team), which provides shelter referrals at “high-priority” encampments targeted for removal by the city. Even at full, pre-COVID capacity, the Navigation Center only had 85 beds, so restoring it to full capacity won’t provide enough spaces for everyone at Exhibition Hall and new referrals; other Exhibition Hall residents will be distributed to shelters around the city, as well as a new, county-funded hotel that will reportedly be announced soon.

2. A row of “No Camping” signs along Northwest 52nd Street in Ballard may express the city’s overall sentiment toward people living in tents and vehicles—as we’ve reported, the city has begun ramping up encampment sweeps as businesses and schools reopen. But they aren’t official, the Seattle Department of Transportation confirms.

It’s unclear who placed the blocks or signs in the right-of-way, or whether the two apparent acts of anti-homeless vigilantism are related.

The first indication that the signs are fake is their jarring design: Unlike the city’s parking signs, they’re brown with white lettering, with red “no” signs over images of a tent and an RV. The second sign is that where you would expect to see a phone number for the city, the signs list the website for their manufacturer: An online service called SmartSigns.com.

Meanwhile, less than a block away, on 14th Ave. NW, a series of “ecology blocks”—large concrete blocks ordinarily used to build retaining walls—have been moved into an area marked for one-hour parking, physically preventing both people living in vehicles and any other driver from using the parking spaces.

It’s unclear who placed the blocks or signs in the right-of-way, or whether the two apparent acts of anti-homeless vigilantism are related.

A spokeswoman for the Seattle Department of Transportation said they were not aware of the unauthorized signs and anti-parking blocks, and noted that the signs “are not enforceable by the Parking Enforcement group.” The process for removing the signs is lengthy and involves identifying the person who installed them and sending them a letter “requesting the removal of the unauthorized objects,” the spokeswoman said. SDOT did not explain why they can’t simply go out and remove the signs and blocks, which are on city right-of-way.

Council member Dan Strauss told PubliCola he has heard that homeless people “think that they will get housing if they come to Ballard”—a reference to the fact that, according to providers, people sometimes come to encampments that are scheduled for sweeps because the city’s HOPE Team has exclusive access to some of the most desirable shelter beds.

3. The unauthorized signs are about two blocks from Gilman Playfield, where the city removed dozens of people and tents in response to neighborhood complaints earlier this month. It’s even closer to two encampments on the city’s “priority” list for removals this week—one in front of Reuben’s Brews on 14th, and another along 8th Ave. NW between NW 46th and 47th Streets.

On Monday, District 6 city council member Dan Strauss, who represents the area, told PubliCola he has heard from multiple service providers that homeless people “think that they will get housing if they come to Ballard.” Continue reading “Fake Anti-Homeless Signs in Ballard, Public Health Says City Shouldn’t Cram People Back Into Shelter, and More” →

Affordability, Health, homelessness, housing, legislature, Mayor Durkan, Morning Fizz, Sightline, Urbanism

Inslee Issues Pro-Housing Partial Veto; Another Avoidable Outbreak Preempts Planned Sweep; Affordable Housing Data Supports Single-Family Upzones

1. An important follow-up story to our Olympia coverage: On Thursday, Governor Jay Inslee vetoed several sections of a supposedly pro-accessory dwelling unit bill that ADU advocates convinced him failed the smell test. A pro-affordable housing coalition starring the AARP, Sightline, the Sierra Club, and the Washington State Labor Council, initially supporters of the legislation, wrote Inslee a letter after the session ended telling him the bill would actually end up being detrimental to the pro-housing movement.

PubliCola wrote about this bill all session, noting that housing development antagonist State Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46, Seattle), the House Local Government Committee chair, derailed the bill with, among other objections, odd complaints about “profit tourism” (a scary-sounding, but frankly meaningless epithet).

State Sen. Marko Liias (D-32, Edmonds) originally passed the bill on the Senate side, but by the time it came back from the House, thanks to Rep. Pollet and Rep. Sharon Shewmake (D-42, Bellingham), the legislation was watered down to the point that the affordable housing advocates felt compelled to send their letter urging Inslee to veto major portions of the bill, including provisions that gave cities veto power over ADU mandates.

Inslee’s message was clear: Let’s actually do something to create more affordable housing stock.

Now that the governor has weighed in, I’ll be working to pass an even stronger bill in 2022.

After Inslee’s partial veto, Liias told PubliCola:

“We need more housing options. Renters and homeowners both benefit from ADUs. I was disappointed in the House amendments. Now that the governor has weighed in, I’ll be working to pass an even stronger bill in 2022.”

A key piece of Liias’ bill did survive Inslee’s pen, a section that prohibits local rules barring non-related people (such as roommates) from sharing housing.

2. A new outbreak of an unspecified gastrointestinal illness temporarily halted a planned sweep at a homeless encampment near White Center this week, after King County Public Health recommended strongly against uprooting people with severe symptoms such as diarrhea and vomiting.

The Centers for Disease Control has recommended that cities refrain from sweeping encampments during the pandemic, because redistributing large numbers of people throughout cities causes an obvious risk of community transmission. But the city has begun ramping up sweeps of homeless encampments in recent months anyway, citing the need to keep parks and playfields safe and clear for kids going back to school, among other justifications.

“In general, we recommend taking into account potential communicable disease risks if there is a plan to move an encampment where there is either an active disease investigation or an active outbreak.”—King County Public Health

A spokeswoman for the public health department, Kate Cole, said the county is trying to figure out what pathogen is making people at the encampment sick. There have been several reported outbreaks of shigella among homeless people in the last year; the disease spreads rapidly when people lack access to sinks with soap and running water, which the city, under Mayor Jenny Durkan, has been reluctant to provide.

“In general, we recommend taking into account potential communicable disease risks if there is a plan to move an encampment where there is either an active disease investigation or an active outbreak,” Cole said. “We understand there are many health and safety factors that play into the City’s decisions about moving encampments and we maintain regular coordination with the City to address these complicated situations.”

The city identifies a list of “priority” encampments each week and directs outreach providers to offer shelter to people living at these sites before removing them. In addition the the White Center encampment, the city just placed encampments in Ballard and on Capitol Hill on its priority list.

3. We’ve got some more data to help put the city’s recent Mandatory Housing Affordability report in context. Last week, you’ll remember, we added some initial context to the report: Based on the total affordable housing dollars generated by development in the 6 percent sliver of the city’s single family zones that the council upzoned in 2019, it appeared that those areas were producing more funds for affordable housing than expected. Continue reading “Inslee Issues Pro-Housing Partial Veto; Another Avoidable Outbreak Preempts Planned Sweep; Affordable Housing Data Supports Single-Family Upzones” →

homelessness, human services, Mayor Durkan

Homeless Outreach Providers Balk at New Contracts That Would Put them at City’s “Beck and Call” for Sweeps
Tents at Gilman Playfield in Ballard, one of the city's "high-priority" encampment locations
Tents at Gilman Playfield in Ballard, one of the city’s “high-priority” encampment locations

By Erica C. Barnett

Homeless outreach agencies that contract with the city’s Human Services Department have threatened not to sign their 2021 contracts over new requirements that they argue would harm their relationships with clients and give unprecedented new power to the city.

Agencies that provide outreach and engagement to homeless encampments, including the outreach that happens before the city removes an encampment, have been operating without contracts since January. Late last month, HSD sent out new contracts that included requirements—not included in previous contracts—that would effectively subordinate the agencies to HSD’s HOPE Team (formerly the Navigation Team).

The new rules would require agencies to drop whatever targeted outreach they are doing with their existing client base—non-English-speaking day laborers, for example, or chronically homeless Native American men—and provide outreach and shelter referrals to whoever happens to be living in “priority” encampments identified by the city in the runup to an encampment sweep.

“We’d be at their beck and call,” said Derrick Belgarde, interim director of the Chief Seattle Club.

The new contracts would also require providers to create detailed “supplemental daily outreach reports” about who they contacted and what services they offered each day.

“For American Indians and Alaska Natives, we know they’re not grouping in these larger encampments—they tend to stick together in smaller groups, and they’re kind of hard to find,” Andrew Guillen, the grants and contracts director for the Seattle Indian Health Board, told PubliCola. “If we’re going to be prioritizing just the city-designated high-priority encampments, then we’re often going to be excluding American Indian and Alaska Native people.”

“The fact that they seemingly thought they would sneak it in and we’d sign the contracts and agree to these new changes without any negotiation—that’s the thing that’s been the most surprising.”—Andrew Guillen grants and contracts director, Seattle Indian Health Board

The Seattle Indian Health Board was one of seven outreach providers that signed a letter to HSD late last month saying they would not sign their new contract in its current form. The letter raised four broad objections to the new contract language, including the “lack of trauma-informed care” in the contract requirements, the fact that the city’s encampment removal schedule gives them just two or three days to meet with clients and refer them to appropriate shelter and services, and the fact that the contracts require agencies to go through the HOPE team to place people in shelter, imposing a new “middle-man” on their relationships with clients.

“There was a complete lack of communication around any of these changes,” Guillen said. “The fact that they seemingly thought they would sneak it in and we’d sign the contracts and agree to these new changes without any negotiation—that’s the thing that’s been the most surprising.”

The new contracts stipulate, among other requirements, that all the city’s outreach providers must “Engage in coordinated outreach strategies at City prioritized encampments as directed by the HSD’s HOPE team … Provide coordinated outreach at City prioritized encampments including day-of removals” and “utilize the City’s recommendation and referral process” for shelter beds.

New reporting requirements, which include monthly reports to the HOPE team, include items like, “Describe your program’s level of participation in HSD’s HOPE team-coordinated outreach strategies at City-designated high-prioritized encampments this past month”—a major shift, providers say, toward a centralized, top-down approach to outreach and engagement.

“They expect us to be on call when they need to focus on certain areas,” said Derrick Belgarde, interim director of the Chief Seattle Club. “We have a problem with what’s defined as a ‘problem area’—it’s always the ‘nicer’ areas with louder voices that seem to get the attention of the mayor.”

Belgarde said the criteria for outreach “should be what’s in the best interest of people on the streets. We have our outreach people out there—they’re the professionals; they should be able to go and work on these people they’ve built relationships with without being told they can’t because they have to go to other neighborhoods.”

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We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

The city’s “recommendation and referral process” would require providers to work through an elaborate “decision tree” to make the case that individual people at encampments—people they may be meeting for the first time, and for whom their agency is not the best fit—deserve one of a small number of beds the HOPE team has reserved on any particular night. The process requires providers to take down detailed personal information from every person at each encampment the city prioritizes for removal, including mental health and substance abuse history, sexual orientation, immigration status, and other extremely personal information. Continue reading “Homeless Outreach Providers Balk at New Contracts That Would Put them at City’s “Beck and Call” for Sweeps” →

homelessness, human services, Mayor Durkan, Parks

As Summer Approaches, Encampment Sweeps Ramp Up

By Erica C. Barnett

As summer approaches, the city has accelerated the pace of homeless encampment removals, which declined dramatically during the pandemic thanks in part to public health guidelines that cautioned against moving people from place to place.

But now that many people are vaccinated and students are returning to school, notices of impending encampment removals are starting to show up again in parks and other public spaces around the city. The Parks Department, which is in charge of removing most homeless encampments after the dissolution of the Navigation Team, will post notices like the one above at seven “high-priority” encampments this week. If people are still on site on the day of a posted removal, the department can remove their property, including tents and survival gear. The encampments are:

Madrona Park (Madrona)

Albert Davis Park (Lake City)

Second Ave. Extension (Pioneer Square)

Hubble Place/Convention Center (Downtown)

Amy Yee Tennis Center (Mt. Baker)

Broadway Hill Park (N. Capitol Hill)

8th and King St. (Pioneer Square)

The city refers to these sweeps as “MDAR removals,” a reference to the multi-department administrative rules that describe how and when the city can remove encampments. Generally, the city justifies such sweeps by saying an encampment is obstructing the use of a public space or poses a danger to its residents or the surrounding community. For example, the city recently removed a large encampment in Miller Park on Capitol Hill, arguing that the homeless residents posed a danger to middle-school children returning to school nearby and were preventing youth sports leagues from using using the park.

We have asked the Parks Department and Mayor Durkan’s office why they chose these specific encampments for removals and will update this post when we hear back.

Support PubliCola

If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

When the city decides to “prioritize” an encampment for removal, the Human Services Department’s HOPE team notifies outreach workers who work to connect people living there to shelter and services. Two days before a sweep, city staffers post a sign announcing the time and date when everyone has to leave a location.

A persistent problem with this approach, going back to the days when the HOPE Team was known as the Navigation Team and included a large contingent of police, is that people often mistrust city government and don’t want to move into shelter, which is often a poor fit for people with complex mental health issues or those who simply prefer the privacy, autonomy, and community an encampment provides, however tenuously. Lately, the city has been referring some encampment residents to the Executive Pacific Hotel, where the Low-Income Housing Institute has 139 shelter rooms.

On the day of a removal, cleanup crews from the city’s Parks Department, who are not outreach workers, in remove any tents, trash, come through to remove any tents, trash, or possessions that remain. Nonprofit outreach workers and HOPE team members, according to Durkan spokeswoman Rachel Schulkin, also show up to offer shelter referrals on the day encampments are removed; “for instance,” she said, “11 referrals to shelter were made at Gilman Playground last week, with transportation assistance also being provided.”

Continue reading “As Summer Approaches, Encampment Sweeps Ramp Up” →