City employs new rules to curb homeless camps
Homeless encampments in parks and greenbelts are almost as common as espresso stands in Seattle, and various city departments have made occasional efforts in the last 15 years to get rid of them. The results have been mixed; often as not, new encampments spring up within days to replace the ones removed.
But the city has come up with new rules and procedures to get a handle on the problem, according to Patricia McInturff, outgoing director of the Seattle Human Services Department.
The new rules and procedures are an update of a 1996 Seattle City Council ordinance, she said, and the change was sparked last summer by an effort to remove homeless encampments on a Queen Anne hillside above the Aloha Inn on Aurora Avenue North.
The cleanup could have gone better, McInturff conceded. City staff members from several departments took out an estimated seven tons of trash, but they also hauled off tents and belongings of the illegal campers without advance notice, she said.
"They took samurai swords to the tents; they cut them up," said Rex, a regular homeless man in Lower Queen Anne who has lived in the greenbelt above Elliott Avenue West for two years.
While that's an obvious exaggeration, McInturff said any chance the homeless people had to retrieve whatever of their belongings that weren't tossed was made difficult - if not impossible - by posting fliers with a city phone number that no longer worked.
One of the problems the city faced was that different city departments had different procedures in place for dealing with homeless encampments, she said. A draft of new administrative rules dealing with the issue was released on Jan. 11, and all the city departments will have to follow the standardized regulations, McInturff said in an interview after the draft was first released.
Among the provisions was a call to provide a minimum of 48 hours' notice of upcoming encampment removals, storing personal belongings for 60 days, and giving the Customer Service Bureau - the lead agency in the effort - 10 days to respond to a complaint from the public or a city department about a homeless encampment.
The draft was also the subject of a public meeting on Jan. 28, and the new procedures were roundly panned by almost all of the speakers, according to minutes of the meeting.
Lubna Muhadeen from the Seattle Human Rights Commission, for example, was less than impressed. "Removal of encampments threatens what little security homeless people have," Muhadeen said.
Doug McKeon, another of those who testified, charged that the new policies were an organized effort in the mayor's office to get rid of the poor in Seattle, while Keystone Church of Christ Pastor Rich Gamble made another point. "We shouldn't be criminalizing homelessness."
The draft and the final set of rules issued on April 11 call for the Human Services Department to conduct an outreach effort to help the homeless before their camps are removed and to provide "additional interim/overflow shelters, as necessary...."
The city has space for 1,189 homeless people, and there are also 100 family-voucher units. But the one-night count of homeless people in King County found there were roughly 2,600 of them, according to minutes of the Jan. 28 public meeting.
"We don't have a place for everybody, and we never have," McInturff admits. But she insisted that Mayor Greg Nickels' "Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness" will help ease the strain on the system.
The city spent $40 million on homeless programs last year, according to a press release from the Human Services Department. "We've also changed the way we fund shelters," McInturff said of focusing on moving people through the shelter system. The result is 1,200 transitional-housing units, she said. "That's a real change in how we do business."
The goal is not to just roust the homeless, according to McInturff. "We want to engage these people." One way is through the Veterans Administration, since 20 percent to 30 percent of homeless people are veterans, she said.
Some changes are included in the revised administrative rules and procedures. Instead of 10 days to take action on encampments, the various departments whose property is being used for that purpose now have 21 days. Notice to those living in homeless encampments about removing them has been increased from a minimum of 48 hours to a minimum of 72 hours.
And while the definitions of personal property have been expanded to include tents, for example, keeping the homeless people's property 60 days so it can be retrieved remains the same.
The definition of an encampment has changed, as well. Action by the Human Services Department will now be triggered if there are three or more campsites in the area of a football field, McInturff said.
Any fewer than that, and the department whose land is being used will take the lead in encampment removal, she said. That could be Parks and Recreation, City Light, Seattle Public Utilities and the Seattle Department of Transportation, to name a few.
The criteria for notice about removing encampments has been refined. No notice is needed to remove property if "the authorized official has reasonable suspicion that a person in the encampment is engaged in (a) a violent crime, (b) a felon drug delivery, or is in possession of weapons in the encampment."
Rex, the homeless man in Lower Queen Anne, said crime is a problem sometimes in the greenbelt where he lives. "They raped a couple of girls down there," said Rex, who added that the women were looking for crack cocaine. Parks department staff members have even asked if he's safe, Rex said.
He estimates that there are 10 people camping out in the greenbelt, which includes Kinnear Park. Rex had already heard about the new policies from fellow street people in the neighborhood, and he said his camp has been removed before.
Rex also said he's been told by city staff members in the past to tear down his campsite and simply to come back later. "As long as they give me eight hours' notice, it's nice. It's cool."
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or 461-1309.
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