Deliberate misinformation

Burying their press release on a Friday afternoon ensured that the city’s new encampment protocols weren’t fully appraised before they became old news.

By TIMOTHY HARRIS, Executive Director

Why only 20 new beds when your own staff says there are 100-300 homeless campers? Couldn’t Tent Cities be a solution? Isn’t this a shortsighted quick fix? Aren’t these policies punitive? Where’s the compassion?

Unfortunately, Scher chose to confront Nickels with a statement I made to Sharon Chan at the P-I after the city blindsided us with the release of the protocols.

The city released paper versions of the protocols to the press two hours before making them available to advocates. Chan was scheduled to call me at 4 p.m. The documents were released at 3:30.

Taking no chances, they buried the story in Saturday’s paper with a late-Friday press release.

It took me about 10 minutes to find the stuff they were hiding. All camping on public property was illegal and subject to citation or arrest. No surprises there. This was in the draft and no one expected that to change.

But the city was now making a distinction between “unauthorized camping” and “unauthorized encampments.” Camping is to erect any equipment that a reasonable person would assume is for the purposes of remaining when the property is closed. An encampment is three or more structures, any of which are within 300 feet of the next.

In a lawyerly bit of work that few people would catch in a quick reading, the protocols are written to apply to “unauthorized encampments.” Yet all camping is illegal.

So, do those who are camped alone or in pairs rate notification, outreach, and access to shelter and services? The answer would appear to be no.

Also deeply troubling is the new recurring encampment clause, which says that sites will be monitored once cleared, and if encampments recur three times within a 60-day period, permanent signs will be posted and belongings will be cleared without notice.

Given that just 20 new shelter beds have been provided, and more than 2,600 people were found outside during this year’s count, one can reasonably assume that encampments are likely to return.

Call me cynical, but it’s easy to imagine a scenario where within six months, every key site in the city will have reached this status.

There is also a provision in the procedures document that says anyone who already has a citation will not have the right to enter posted areas to retrieve possessions. The more expansive administrative rules — which detail the legal framework behind the procedures — clarify that the previous citation rule is site-specific.

But I didn’t get that far before the press called. Everyone in the world, it seems, was trying to get the 20-megabyte document from the city server at the same time, and the download was like molasses in January. There was no time for detailed legal analysis, and none of this was in the easily digested press release.

Call it misinformation by design.

If the new policies on campsite removal were limited to the good news in the city’s press release — expanded notification time, contracted (but underfunded) outreach services, better provisions for storage, and 20 new shelter beds — we’d have grudgingly declared victory and moved on to focusing on oversight and accountability.

The Mayor’s office has fatally undermined the legitimacy of the new protocols by sneaking in provisions that exempt those camped alone, in pairs, and, eventually, in any of the city’s key sites from their application.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a policy that began in secret would, after six months of process, arrive at a self-justifying set of protocols in which the secret exceptions are hidden in plain sight.

There are no provisions for independent oversight of any sort.

This brings us back to exactly where we started, with the city removing most encampments without notification, services, or storage of belongings, operating without accountability, and lying to cover their tracks.

This is not acceptable. A compassionate policy on campsite removals requires the following:

The hidden exceptions must be challenged and removed from these protocols. Otherwise, the three-camp definition and the recurring encampment clause will render the policies meaningless by overly limiting their application.

Outreach needs to be consistent, relationship-based, and adequately funded. The zero-tolerance approach outlined in these protocols undermines the capacity to do real outreach by needlessly chasing those who are often already resistant to services from place to place.

The City Council needs to press hard for oversight and accountability. We should know how many people have been removed from encampments and where they went. If the exceptions that exist were applied, this information would be so incomplete as to be meaningless.

While strategies and tactics still need to be worked out, this much is clear: These protocols are unacceptable.

It’s always embarrassing to get something wrong in public. I took great solace that Mayor Nickels gets stuff wrong too. In the space of 20 minutes on KUOW, he said he didn’t know what was in his own policies, that there was enough shelter for everyone, that homelessness would be solved by 2014, and that the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness was “on track.”

Were these the mistakes of a bumbling, underinformed public servant who goes on the radio without having his facts straight? Or the calculated and often-repeated lies routinely offered by power to justify the unjustifiable?

While you’re deciding, we at Real Change will be organizing a response. We hope you will join us.