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John Bayly to city: "Don’t take what’s left of my life." Photo by Andrea Lee
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Close to 150 some people assembled at the Seattle Center Jan. 28 to speak about the city’s draft rule for removing homeless people’s possessions from public property. The opinion, publicly voiced, was unanimous: Don’t go through with this.
No one spoke up in defense of the proposed rules to the 11 city officials assembled behind a long table at the front of the room. The city employees — staffing agencies that respond to complaints about homeless people, meeting their needs, or controlling or managing property on which the homeless are found — listened impassively, sometimes frowning, never nodding, as staff from local shelters, citizen activists, people who are or have been homeless, and neighbors came to a mic in the center of the room.
The gist of their comments: confiscating and destroying possessions and criminalizing their presence in public spaces worsens homeless people’s misfortune. Some called for portable hygiene facilities to be placed near well-frequented campsites. Others demanded that the city scrap the rules and start over — acknowledging that many have no alternative but Seattle’s streets.
City officials are seeking to implement the new encampment removal procedures by Feb. 15, according to a Dec. 17 briefing memo by mayoral aide Marilyn Littlejohn.
“I don’t understand how the city can throw away a picture of a daughter, or a son, or a grandson” simply because it’s worth less than $25, Real Change vendor John Bayly told the assembled officials. He said he suffers from anxiety and depression. “You want to take the last piece that is holding me together.”
Paul Boland said that last year his church’s members collected enough money to buy more than 170 sleeping bags: “Now we learn that our bags are hazardous materials and that if they are rolled out under the Ballard Bridge they will be taken.”
Written comments sent to the city are less unanimous in their opposition. Freshman city councilmember Tim Burgess told staff they were “headed in the right direction. I appreciate the balance between taking care of the people in the encampments by bringing in the caseworkers and the city’s desire to clean up the encampments.” Discovery Park neighbor Julia Allen said sending outreach workers to meet homeless people would only postpone the maintenance crew’s work. “The longer the camps stay in place, the more garbage, trash, hazardous materials, and human waste that accumulates,” she wrote, “and the greater the risk that a fire will burn down the entire park.”
The destruction of encampments continued Jan. 29, a day after the hearing: one Real Change vendor reported that he and at least seven others lost their survival gear to a maintenance crew sweeping through state Department of Transportation property on the east slope of Capitol Hill near Eastlake Ave. |
