by Megan Ramer
On Aug. 7, members of our Seattle Mennonite Church were forced by the City of Seattle to conduct a sweep of humans who were camping on an unused plot of grass on a property we own. We acted with as much grace and compassion as we could, and still we caused great harm.
Continue reading OPINION | City Officials Believe the Only ‘Good’ Homeless Person Is a Dead Homeless Personby Erica C. Barnett
(This article was originally published on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
The Burien City Council voted Monday night to ban unsheltered people from sleeping in public spaces between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., after failing for more than six months to create any shelter or other legal place for a group of several dozen people to sleep.
Continue reading Burien Council Bans Sleeping Outside at Night, Still Has No Plan to Address Homelessnessby Erica C. Barnett
(This article was originally published on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
Mayor Bruce Harrell gathered supporters in the Westlake Center plaza Wednesday morning to announce his latest downtown activation plan, officially titled “Downtown Is You.” But the press event was initially sidelined by a group of anti-sweeps protesters holding signs and chanting “stop the sweeps” and other slogans from a few feet away. After halting his prepared remarks, Harrell hopped down from the stage and attempted to get the protesters to be quiet, but he gave up and returned to the stage after several responded that they didn’t trust his offer to talk to them in a different venue.
Continue reading ‘Downtown Is You’: Harrell Unveils New Downtown Plan Against Backdrop of Anti-Sweeps Protestby Guy Oron
(This article was originally published on Real Change and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
New records obtained by Real Change indicate that the City of Seattle oversaw a massive rise in sweeps of unhoused people living in tents and vehicles in 2022. According to the log, the City conducted 943 sweeps, averaging more than two-and-a-half per day.
Continue reading Seattle Conducted More Than 900 Sweeps of Homeless People in 2022by Amanda Ong
In September, King County announced plans to build a new shelter for the unhoused in SoDo, near the CID. The plan was highly controversial as there had been little to no outreach from the County to the CID about the proposal before the plan was announced. The County even seemed to avoid community input by scheduling public hearings during weekday work hours, preventing attendance from many working residents.
Continue reading With Contentious Shelter Plans Canceled, CID Residents Organize Their Own Safety Solutionsby Marcus Harrison Green
(This article is co-published with The Seattle Times.)
At times, our city’s most astounding feat is being well-versed in the language of compassion, without any fluency in the exercise of empathy.
A perfect illustration was the cruel contrast I witnessed visiting the corner of 4th Avenue and Cherry Street in late February, just days before Seattle’s eviction moratorium expired.
Continue reading OPINION: When It Comes to the Unhoused, We Speak With Compassion but Act Without Empathyby Erica C. Barnett
(This article originally appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
A three-week standoff between mutual-aid volunteers and the City of Seattle over a row of tents across the street from City Hall ended abruptly this morning, March 9, in a surprise sweep spearheaded by police and the Seattle parks department, who cordoned off Third and Fourth Avenues between Cherry and Washington Streets and began ordering people out of their tents at 8:00 am. (The parks department posted removal signs at 6:00 a.m., giving anyone who happened to be awake just two hours to pack up and get out.)
Continue reading Surprise Sweep Displaces Encampment, Scattering Unsheltered People Throughout Downtownby Leo Brine
(This article originally appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
On Thursday, Feb. 24, House Democrats amended legislation creating a new office to deal with encampments in public rights-of-way, removing many of the provisions that homeless advocates feared would be used to sweep encampments indiscriminately — and leaving unanswered questions about what its actual impact would be.
Continue reading With Advocates Watching Closely, State Legislators Propose Office to Respond to Encampmentsby Erica C. Barnett
(This article originally appeared in PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
As part of an effort to substantially reduce the number of unsheltered people living in downtown Seattle before summer, Seattle City Councilmember Andrew Lewis is working on a plan to relocate as many as 600 people into sanctioned encampments around the city, potentially including South Seattle.
Continue reading Councilmember’s Homelessness Plan Could Include 10 New Mass Encampment Sitesby Erica C. Barnett
(This article originally appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted with permission.)
Late Friday afternoon, King County Superior Court Judge Christine Shaffer struck Charter Amendment 29 (CA 29), the “Compassion Seattle” homelessness initiative, from the November ballot, agreeing with opponents of the measure that it went beyond the scope of the initiative process. Specifically, Chambers said, the amendment attempted to overrule the City of Seattle’s authority to determine its own homelessness and land-use policies — authority granted to local jurisdictions by the State Legislature that cannot, she said, be overturned by an initiative at the local level.
The amendment, if adopted, would require the City Council to spend a minimum of 12% of its general fund revenues on homelessness, dictating further that in the first year, that money would have to pay for 2,000 new units of “emergency housing” (shelter). It would also change local land use and zoning laws by requiring the City to waive code requirements, regulations, and fees to “urgently site” the projects it would mandate.
The groups that sued to remove the proposal from the ballot, including the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness and the ACLU of Washington, argued that the voters of Seattle lack the authority to overturn these sort of legislative decisions and that the amendment would effectively undo the agreement the City and County made to create the new King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Judge Shaffer agreed.
Continue reading Judge Strikes Homelessness Charter Amendment from Ballot
