Last month, I visited an encampment in Ballard that was scheduled to be cleared. After hearing from concerned community members, I decided to extend the timeline to clear the site because I thought that better outcomes were possible for the people living there, their neighbors, and local businesses.
The conversations I had there underscored the reality that we simply don’t have enough housing, shelter, and services for everyone who is living unsheltered. I talked with a woman who was 5-months sober, owned three small dogs, and was struggling to find a place to sleep inside. And with some work, we were able to identify a spot for her in a tiny house village. Our teams also helped five more people living at the encampment to secure housing or shelter; by extending the deadline, we were able to help them make that transition without additional displacement. I’m grateful for that.
However, we weren’t able to find places for everyone. Significant safety hazards have been identified at this site, and notice will soon be posted for the site to be cleared in the next 48 hours. This is not an ideal outcome, but I believe that moving forward to clear this encampment is the right step at this time.
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Every year, thousands and thousands of people receive the support they need to stabilize their lives, thanks to the hard work of our dedicated city employees, and our housing, shelter, and service providers. But if you take a step back or just walk around the city, I don’t think that anyone can really argue that our overall approach to homelessness has been successful.
We can’t get so used to the way things are that we start to feel it’s natural for so many people to be left to sleep outside every night. We have to make sure that everyone can access and enjoy our parks, trails, sidewalks, and other public spaces. And we can’t just keep moving people from place to place and calling that progress.
Here is what we’re doing to find a better way forward.
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First, we will continue and improve on our efforts to keep public spaces open and accessible. The city’s Unified Care Team does important work managing public spaces. They monitor the locations of encampments and RV sites and prioritize outreach and clearance work based on an analysis of safety risks to people living there and the surrounding neighborhood, as well as impacts on access to public space, sanitation issues, and any illegal activity. I am going to make sure the work of this team embodies the best practices that have been developed, including conducting early outreach to people living on-site prior to any posting of a removal, allowing flexibility when housing placements are imminent, and prioritizing responses based on neighborhood impact and public safety concerns. It’s vital that we also more effectively address predatory behavior and crime that is harmful both to people living in encampments and to nearby residents, businesses, and workers.
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Second, I am asking the Unified Care Team to deliver recommendations on how to improve our processes to achieve better outcomes for people living unsheltered. I understand the harm caused when an encampment is cleared with little or no notice, belongings are lost, and people’s precarious sense of stability and community is disrupted. I’m committed to minimizing this harm at the same time as I take seriously the City’s mandate to keep public spaces open and accessible for their intended use.
Under my administration, this necessary work will continue. It will be improved. And it is not enough.
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Most importantly, we are moving rapidly to expand shelter with supportive services. This is the single most important thing we can do to address encampments, care for our neighborhoods, support local businesses, and keep our city’s parks, trails, and other public spaces welcoming, lively, and enjoyable to all.
The bottom line is that we have twice as many homeless people in Seattle as we have shelter beds, leaving thousands of people with nowhere to go. Until we expand emergency housing and shelter with support – including substance use disorder treatment and behavioral health services – we will not see much progress, no matter how much we step up encampment outreach and removals. And we have been falling dramatically short of the mark here.
The Seattle Times calculated that over the past four years, the city’s total shelter capacity increased by just thirteen beds, while the number of people living outside continued to increase. That failure is a big part of what’s driving this crisis, and that’s why one of my first actions in office was to issue an executive order to accelerate the expansion of emergency housing and shelter.
Since then my team has been hard at work. We have been working closely with the city’s budget office and philanthropic partners to secure the funding we need to expand shelter. We are identifying parcels of city-owned land which could potentially site tiny houses or micro-modular shelters. And we are exploring every potential administrative and legal tool we have to accelerate the expansion of emergency housing and shelter, including by speeding permit approvals for projects like the upcoming RV Safe Parking program in West Seattle.
I know those steps don’t mean much until you can see new shelters open, more people have a safe place to go, and fewer people sleeping in doorways and tents. But we are moving quickly.
I am determined to add 1,000 new units of shelter or emergency housing this year, and we are on our way to reach this goal.
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After so many years when it seems like homelessness has just been getting worse, it can be hard to believe that we can actually make progress. But we can.
Seattle is one of the richest and most creative cities in the country. We have incredible public servants and some of the most innovative and effective service providers anywhere. And we live in a place where all of us want the same things: for everyone to be able to enjoy our beautiful parks, spend time in safe and vibrant public spaces, patronize our unique businesses, enjoy their neighborhoods, live their lives, and have a warm bed to go to at night.
It’s your city. We can do this.