Tag Archives: HOPE Team

News

Homeless Service Providers, City Employees Told to Use Encrypted App

July 12, 2021 Editor Leave a comment

by Erica C.Barnett

(This article originally appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)

One of the leaders of the Homelessness Outreach and Provider Ecosystem (HOPE) Team, a Human Services Department-led group that coordinates outreach work at encampments, directed city staff and nonprofit outreach contractors earlier this year to stop using text messages, which are subject to public disclosure, to communicate about homeless encampment outreach and removals.

Instead, the HOPE Team leader, Christina Korpi, wrote in an April 8 email that staffers should use Signal, an encrypted private messaging app commonly used by activists, journalists, and others who want to shield their messages so that they can’t be read by anyone except the intended recipient. Signal can be set to auto-delete messages on both the sender and the recipient’s phones, making them impossible to recover.

In Korpi’s email, which went out to dozens of outreach providers and at least eight city staffers, including the members of the HOPE Team, she wrote, “We are planning to start using the Signal app instead of text message thread for field communications. Please download this app on your phone, or let me know if you have concerns or questions about using it.”

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News

Community Garden Still Rooted in Jimi Hendrix Park Despite City’s Demands to Leave

July 10, 2021 Editor Leave a comment

by Andrew Engelson

A community garden planted at Jimi Hendrix Park by the activist group Black Star Farmers is still growing lettuce, pumpkins, cucumbers, and other produce despite recent demands from Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) that activists remove it. Planted about two months ago, the garden is part of a network of six food plots across the South End designed to draw attention to the need for equitable use of public space, environmental equity, and the lack of access to fresh food near Communities of Color.

On Thursday, July 8, staff from SPR arrived to remove the garden but left the site when several activists surrounded the shed and garden plots.

Marcus Henderson, the creator of Black Star Farmers, was behind the effort to plant a garden in Cal Anderson Park during the Capitol Hill Organize Protest (CHOP) in the summer of 2020. Since then, the group has now expanded its activist efforts throughout the South End.

“The privatization of public space is a huge issue,” Henderson said in an interview with the Emerald. “The system has evolved to prevent mistakes, but now it’s so cumbersome and huge that these spaces are not being utilized because the processes to access them are over-managed. We’ve also very much focused our public spaces on recreation and not actually sustaining our community.”

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News

Sweeps Continue in Seattle: Perspectives From the Street

June 14, 2021 Editor Leave a comment

by Luke Brennan

According to Public Health – Seattle & King County, more than 68% of the county is now fully vaccinated. This news, along with warmer weather and the CDC’s update that fully vaccinated people can start to safely resume pre-pandemic activities, has encouraged many to head to parks and sports fields. But for the unhoused, the return to normalcy brings precarity as the City of Seattle has resumed its controversial sweeps of homeless encampments.

As the pandemic has eased this year, some parents and community members made complaints to city officials concerning encampments in Seattle parks. This was the case at Gilman Park, where one parent reported that her child had received threatening comments from a homeless man who was living in the dugout. Gilman Park was swept on April 30, with 46 people offered referrals for alternative shelter in hotels or tiny villages by the city’s HOPE team.

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News

Homeless Outreach Providers Say New Rules Would Put Them at City’s ‘Beck and Call’

May 10, 2021 Editor Leave a comment

by Erica C. Barnett

(This article originally appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)

Homeless outreach agencies that contract with the City’s Human Services Department have threatened not to sign their 2021 contracts over new requirements that they argue would harm their relationships with clients and give unprecedented new power to the City.

Agencies that provide outreach and engagement to homeless encampments, including the outreach that happens before the City removes an encampment, have been operating without contracts since January. Late last month, HSD sent out new contracts that included requirements — not included in previous contracts — that would effectively subordinate the agencies to HSD’s HOPE Team (formerly the Navigation Team) and require them to create detailed “supplemental daily outreach reports” about who they contacted and what services they offered each day.

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News

As Summer Approaches, Encampment Sweeps Ramp Up

May 5, 2021 Editor Leave a comment

by Erica C. Barnett

(This article previously appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)

As summer approaches, the City has accelerated the pace of homeless encampment removals, which declined dramatically during the pandemic thanks in part to public health guidelines that cautioned against moving people from place to place.

But now that many people are vaccinated and students are returning to school, notices of impending encampment removals are starting to show up again in parks and other public spaces around the city. The Parks Department, which is in charge of removing most homeless encampments, will post notices like the one below at seven “high-priority” encampments this week. If people are still on site on the day of a posted removal, the department can remove their property, including tents and survival gear. The encampments are: