Director's Corner
Director’s Corner - Encampment Policy - 09-08-10
The Revolution, or some facsimile thereof, met last Thursday in the City Hall basement.
As we awaited the signal to begin, Mayor McGinn’s Encampment Policy Review Committee made small talk at the center of the room. Long-familiar faces were legion. If one had in mind to wipe out the top leadership of Seattle’s anointed homeless advocacy community, this was a clear opportunity.
To no one’s great surprise, a large contingent from Nickelsville silently flanked the sides of the room. Homeless Empowerment Organizing 101 is “Nothing about us without us,” and at issue, buried in a morass of potentially confounding detail, was the fate of Seattle’s signature outlaw encampment. Founded two years ago amid a brutally executed crackdown on urban camping, Nickelsville has picked up stakes and moved at least every three months ever since. Last month, Nickelsville drew a line.
Our patience, they said, is at an end. There would be just one more legal move, hosted by University Congregational Church, an early and ardent faith community supporter. After that, one way or another, Nickelsville members said, they would move to a permanent site. Good intentions would no longer do. As the hardship of winter approaches, they said, they now need something much more substantial: Land.
And so, there we sat, convened by the Office of the Mayor. We were, we all recognized, long on knowledge and short on power; an advisory brain trust, scheduled for a mere three meetings of 1.5 hours duration. The question on everyone’s mind, I think, came down to this: are we here to act or talk? Given that none of us knew, we could only assume the former.
We began the work of parsing our task. Mayor McGinn arrived to offer a few words of his own. How, he asked, can this group help make the reality of survival encampments workable? What are the issues involved? What are the options for resolution? We, around the table, he said, knew the answers. He, the Mayor, was prepared to listen.
We catalogued dismal reality. A long, uncertain tunnel of deficit budgets and reduced human service resources — unemployment benefits ending after 99 weeks, GAU benefits hitting a two-year wall, and WorkFirst eligibility in contraction — all within a high unemployment economy. I said the task ahead of us was akin to disaster planning. There is a major hurricane off the coast, and while we cannot foresee the strength or eventual direction of the storm, we’re already in it and have every reason to plan for the worst.
We went into business mode. Our nominated facilitator recommended we focus on the matter of a long-term encampment and the question this leaves unanswered: How do we best serve those, numbering over 1,500, that would remain. The room assented. We agreed upon the values of honoring human dignity, acknowledging the realities of the street, and doing no harm. We counted off by twos to explore our two questions and assigned a chair to each group. It would be Vince Matulionis of United Way on encampments and Rick Friedhoff of the Compass Center on who’s left.
And then, an hour and a half later, we left, filled with necessary faith that our work was meaningful, and mindful that the devil, choosing to lie low this time, waits ahead, down in the details, smirking and twiddling thoughtfully with his tail.
Comments
You presented very graphic images and facts in this time of the great depression 2. Let’s call it that-the media has a different name for it.
Hoovervilles or Nickelvilles are now a reality. As a group we need to recognize facts and work together. Your publication has been very insightful on the challenges we face together in the puget sound area
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