The 2006 One Night Count found nearly 800 children ages 6 and under homeless in King County. A few of them are being represented on the streets this Thursday as a local non-profit takes life-size cutouts to downtown sidewalks.

For Family Services’ “Don’t Just Look Away” campaign, child models posed with cardboard signs scrawled with statements like “We live in a car.” Printed up at life size, the cutouts furnish visual reminders of those who are homeless but often hidden from view.

“Every [charity] is faced with the same dilemma; parents call us in desperate need, saying ‘We’re sleeping in our car,’” says Family Services’ Patricia Gray. The agency was able to find housing for 296 families last year; they turned away many more.

The guerrilla stunt has the tacit sanction of Nordstrom and the state Convention Center, whose sidewalks will feature some of the 300 cutouts.

Housing the middle

Councilmember Tom Rasmussen wants to secure places to live for Seattle’s middle class: those making 80 to 120 percent of the area’s median income.

Rasmussen’s asking the city to revise the city’s Comprehensive Plan so its housing goals “better reflect the income demographics of the city,” he wrote in a May 1 memo. Doing so could lead to an alteration of the city’s $86 million Housing Levy, currently targeted to the poor, when it comes up for renewal in 2009.

The Council’s Urban Development and Planning Committee discusses this and other amendments Wednesday, May 9, at 2 p.m. at City Hall. Rasmussen couldn’t speak to the amendment before press time.

—Adam Hyla

Quixote abroad

Camp Quixote is looking for a new home. The Olympia tent city has been housed on the property of a Unitarian church since early February, a week after it formed in protest of the city’s new anti-homeless Pedestrian Interference Ordinance.

“We don’t have an official place yet,” says Rob Richards, an organizer with the Poor People’s Union, which started the tent city. If all else fails, they’ll head to the woods. “The campers are dedicated to keeping the community together; that’s number one in their minds.”

The group’s 90-day agreement with church leaders is about to end, and though at least six other congregations have said they want to host the campers, says organizer Rob Richards, nobody’s ready yet.

“If we get a location for the 19th, we’re good for the rest of the year,” says Richards.

Olympia city officials are working out a means of legitimizing the camp with a temporary land-use permit.

—Cydney Gillis and Adam Hyla