City Council Will Address Encampment Sweeps Next Week

Last year, this Seattlish editor stood in the pouring rain by the freeway exit on 6th Ave talking to a woman whose tent had been taken in an encampment sweep. There were no shelter beds available for both her and her partner, so she was trying to get enough money for a hotel room, just for the night.

“We came back and it was gone,” she said. Because that’s how sweeps of non-sanctioned encampments tend to work—you leave your tent for a few hours to go live your life, try to find services, or maybe even go to work and then, upon your return, all that’s left is a note stapled to a tree.

These encampments have homelessness advocates and activists worried about the community—and upset with the City. But, said newly-elected Councilmember Lisa Herbold last night at a 34th LD meeting, at her request, the City Council will be briefed on “the City’s adherence to encampment protocols and sufficient access to services/shelter.”

Despite promises from the City that encampment sweeps typically come with an attempt to link residents with services, there are wildly conflicting stories about what actually happens when SDOT, the police, or outreach workers show up to “clean up” an encampment. Some residents say that they were given hotel vouchers and numbers to call. Others say that everything was simply gone.

And while the city often keeps the possessions they find, as Real Change’s Aaron Burkhalter reported last year, “the city has staff on site during cleanups to determine what items to save and what to throw away. But there’s no established criteria to determine whether an item is garbage or not.“

“It is cold comfort to know that a small amount of possessions might be sent to storage, and that with luck they can be found later,” wrote SHARE in a letter to the Mayor regarding sweeps. “Instead of very little, people are often left with nothing. This increases even more the chance they will be abused, assaulted, molested, murdered and get sick. This tears apart the social fabric and increases desperation.”

In his State of Emergency announcement, Mayor Ed Murray stated that the City would address how they sweep encampments; instead of waiting for and responding to neighbor complaints, instead, they’d step in only when safety issues were involved. However, since the declaration, there have been an alarming number of sweeps which don’t seem to have had anything to do with safety; we reached out to Human Services and have yet to receive an answer as to why that is. 

Encampments are dangerous, but not for the reasons people thing; they’ve often in areas that present risks to the residents. In the last two years, several people have died as a result of falling from ledges where they’d been camping onto the freeway. 

As of December, the Seattle Times reported, there were more than 500 sweeps in 2015; in 2014, there were just 351. That volume has activists, advocates, and people experiencing homelessness both worried and suspicious—particularly when, in the last two weeks, there have been reports of as many as a sweep a day. And with the One Night Count approaching rapidly, it seems as though there’s an active attempt to lower the numbers without actually ending homelessness. 

Herbold pointed out that the One Night Count is a factor regarding homeless sweeps—but lowering the numbers is actually the opposite of what the City should be trying to do. In his State of Emergency announcement, Murray hammered on the fact that to meet our goals to provide services and get people indoors, we’ll be reliant on Federal dollars—which is exactly what is determined by the One Night Count. 

The Tuesday briefing is just a first step, but it is encouraging; it means that they’ve at least heard the concerns of the community. It’s also a great reflection on what new Councilmembers can do—they can see what matters to people and move on it. 

We’ll be tweeting the briefing Tuesday, so stay tuned.