Nickelsville Talking Point

You gotta hand it to the Nickels people. They know how to stay on message. Every time Greg opens his mouth on Nickelsville, he says something like, "I respect their right to make a political statement," or "It's obvious it's a political demonstration." Karen Zaugg Black, his spokesperson, is in the PI tonight saying, "We certainly recognize that this is a political demonstration." Here she is again in the Times: "What I heard the mayor say today was that people have political demonstrations to make a point about an issue, and I respect that."

These people should spend more time talking to the people in the camp. Homeless campers don't give a crap about politics. What they want is a safe place to stay, and a supportive community where they have a voice.

Is that political? I think it's pretty much what we all want

Erik Lacitis, the Mayor's boy at the Times, went all meta on the Mayor's message, and interviewed three consultants who agreed that the "public relations stunt" was poorly timed, since the crashing economy would focus people's attention on their own pain. As Cathy Allen put it, "The people you know who are hurting are far more important than the people you don't know who are hurting."

I think the consultants are wrong on this one. The media, except for Lacitis and one dishonest op-ed by his newspaper, has been extraordinarily sympathetic. The encampment has continued to expose the lie that homeless people in Seattle are taken care of, and the Mayor will look like the shit that he is when he bulldozes the camp.

The convergence of an economy on the skids and a tent city full of people who are experiencing hard times, I think, makes us a little more likely to consider homelessness through the lens of our own economic vulnerability. In other words, I think the timing makes people more sympathetic, not less.

Lacitis also took pains to cover the Mayor's other talking points: Seattle does more to help the homeless than anyone, and anyone who wants shelter can get it.

This is, of course, a lie. John Iwasaki's PI article mentions that 12 men and 12 women were turned away from Nightwatch the night Nickelsville went up. That means the shelters were full enough that 24 people who were trying to get in could not. This is the case more often than not, which is why lots of people stop trying to get into shelter and sleep out instead.

This is hardly a big secret to anyone who deals with homelessness and doesn't, figuratively speaking, have his lips around the Mayor's dick.

Nickelsville is visible evidence that city policy on homelessness — which entails holding the line against new shelter while punishing those who are left to sleep outside for trying to survive — fails miserably when it comes to meeting the need that exists. The Mayor's dismissal of the tent city as a "political statement" is itself a politically calculated evasion.

Tim Ceis came by the camp tonight to say that clearances would begin between six and seven am in the morning. Someone else will have to be there for me. I'll be taking my kids to school.

You Can Fool Some of the People ...

The City's full-court press propaganda offensive on homeless encampments is developing new cracks. While the TV media can generally be counted on to accept the City's framing of the issue (Seattle is ending homelessness — encampments are dens of filth, drug abuse, and criminality — the "clean-ups" are consistent and humane — concerns of advocates have been met) and to faithfully broadcast whatever shocking images the city offers, print and radio have become more critical.

This, as you are no doubt aware, isn't universally true. I started to read the Seattle Time's third and latest travesty of an editorial and decided to stop before I was overtaken with murderous rage. They're hopeless. But Danny Westneat wrote a column recently in that paper that admirably asked the key question: With the numbers going up and the line on shelter being held, where are people supposed to go? I always follow this sentence with the word "Hello?," but few in City Hall seem capable of listening. In my opinion, he nailed it. Nicole Brodeur, who just last November penned a dehumanizing piece of shit, has redeemed herself recently as well.

Robert Jamison followed suit yesterday in the PI, and did us the favor of mentioning the Camp4Unity tent City we're doing on City Hall Plaza tonight. He goes even further to take on the history of City duplicity on this issue, the failure to follow their own protocols, the moral bankruptcy of a policy that steadfastly refuses to address the inconvenient math of twenty new shelter beds for 2,600 or so people, and the complete absence of accountability by the City. I generally follow this string of observations with the word, "fuckers!"

In Seattle, where city shelter beds are full, the homeless have few choices. They can sleep on cold, hard sidewalks. Or they can find a freeway underpass or a park -- and risk being swept away by city muscle.

A middle ground has to be found, but Mayor Greg Nickels -- deft and articulate when it comes to dealing with condo developers and wealthy streetcar advocates -- is tongue-tied and tone-deaf to the down-and-out.

That's why homeless advocates are firing back.

They're camping out this weekend at City Hall Plaza at Fourth and James to make a statement: The homeless shouldn't be treated like garbage.

Fuckers. John Iwasaki, who I once called a hack after he turned a city press release into "news," seems to have developed newfound critical facilities as well. To see this sort of thing outside the pages of Real Change does my battle-scarred and deeply pissed off heart good. I'm hoping to see more of it in the coming months.

The Numbers Game

Yesterday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer brings excellent news for those who are concerned with homelessness in Seattle. Apparently, our City's 150 shelter beds are more or less adequate to the need, and last Tuesday, one shelter even had 18 open beds available. Here's the lead:

More than 150 homeless people stayed in Seattle shelters Tuesday night and even more are expected later this week, a spokesman for the city's human services department said.

Nowhere does the article state that these are the emergency overflow shelter beds that are opened during extreme weather conditions to supplement the 2,368 or so regular beds that are more or less always filled past capacity.

This has the odor of City of Seattle pre-emptive message management on the eve of the one-night count. Which begs the question, is the PI being intentionally misleading here, dumb, sloppy, or some pathetically craven combination of all three?

Nor does the PI refer to the fact that, on average, these overflow shelters operate at capacity. Real Change's analysis of the numbers provided by the City shows a handful of open beds on some nights, and that on others extra people are shoehorned in. This basically involves a space on the floor with a blanket.

75 men's beds have 9 open spots on average. 25 women's beds are, on average, exactly at capacity. Bottom line: claims of unused shelter capacity are exaggerated at best.

Meanwhile, last night's count, organized by the fabulous (as opposed to confabulating) Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, found 2,631 people surviving outside. 140 were counted within the City's "overflow" system.

Here's one way to think about shelter availability. According to the P-I, the odds of winning the Washington State Lottery's Mega Millions game are 1 in 43. The odds of winning at Lotto are 1 in 27. The odds of finding an open shelter bed, should everyone staying outside make the attempt, are no better than 1 in 292.

No wonder people don't bother.

Last night's one-night count of homeless people in King County brought out an astonishing 925 volunteers to scour the streets, buses, and back lots of King County last night in search of the unserved. This is a 25% increase over last year's record 735 volunteers.

This morning's one night count press release described a landscape of dire and growing need, and a community of highly motivated volunteers who are united in pushing back on recent anti-homeless City policy.

Many counters cited changes recently proposed to City of Seattle regulations regarding the removal of homeless people and their belongings from city property as their motivation for joining this year's effort. Count organizers urge concerned community members to attend a public hearing (download flier here) on the new rules, scheduled for this Monday, January 28, at 6:00 PM at the Rainier Room in Seattle Center.

Volunteers returned from the Count full of stories and observations.

"I didn't see people where I expected to, in parks and places like that. I found them in loading docks."

"We counted someone on the premises of a building, and the building security guard said 'oh yeah, I let them sleep here. I just tell them they have to get out in the morning, even though I know that building management doesn't want them around.'"

"One guy had his electric blanket plugged in at a construction site. That was pretty smart."

"I didn't think I'd see many people, but when I finished I counted 32 people spread out through the area."

Experienced counters observed continued changes in the local landscape, including construction and gentrification, that may make it harder for people to find shelter in more densely populated neighborhoods. The number of people observed across the county living in cars, vans, and campers continues to increase, according to these counters.

One-hundred-twenty five teams of counters spread out through the county in the pre-dawn hours to find 2,631 people surviving outside of an at-capacity emergency and "severe weather overflow" shelter system. Yet, according to the P-I, City efforts are adequate to the need.

In other news, I am hereby forced to rescind my earlier judgment that the PI's John Iwasaki is a "hack." He merely wrote one poorly researched article that was vaguely hackish. Iwasaki completely redeems himself with this morning's one-night count reporting here.

Time to Stop Being So Damn Nice

The Mayor’s new draft policy on homeless clearances has been released, and there’s only one way to say this. It’s an atrocity, pure and simple.

From the moment the Mayor’s office was called on their secret campsite clearance policy last October, their response has been characterized by contempt for process, continued secrecy, and commitment to aggressive clearances. Meanwhile, they fed a mostly willing media scare stories about homeless criminality to stigmatize and smear this City’s most vulnerable.

Existing laws are sufficient to identify and prosecute criminal behavior that truly poses a public threat. This policy isn’t about that. This is about eliminating visible poverty through a systematic campaign of harassment and criminalization.

The Mayor’s policy extends the parks exclusion ordinance — which was designed as a tool to ensure that public parks remain family friendly — to all public property throughout the city, no matter how urban or remote. Groundwork is laid to deputize any city department or their delegated authority with the power to issue progressively onerous citations based on no more than suspicion of illegal activity, which is defined to include sleeping.

Homeless advocates were promised inclusion in the drafting of a “consistent and compassionate” City policy toward homeless campers. Instead, we were stonewalled and offered two weeks “comment period” on a draft policy that is anything but.

There is no legislative process or any other real opportunity for the public deliberation that this sweeping change in public policy deserves.

A public hearing has been scheduled for January 28th, at 6:00 pm at Seattle Center’s Rainier Room. I just checked the PI story that announced this hearing, and see that they're listing the time as 7:30. And yet the HSD website has the original time.

So which is it? 6, or 7:30? Who the hell knows! We're going with 6:00.

Meanwhile, if you read the article you'll see that hack journalist John Iwasaki was so busy uncritically sucking up the city line that he neglects to mention the key component of the proposed policy change: the extension of the parks exclusion ordinances authority to ticket and arrest those who sleep outside at night to every scrap of public land in the city.

He probably didn't even read the thing. I mean, 20 pages. Who has the time? Better to just ask Patricia what to write.

And listen to the fearless "homeless advocates" whom the City has embraced as our representatives:

"What's being proposed is a big step in the right direction. I'm glad to see that the city is responding out of a sense of humanity toward people who are in encampments," said the Rev. Sandy Brown, executive director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle. ... The proposal covers a number of key components that concerned advocates, said Bill Block, director of the Committee to End Homelessness in King County.

Long-time homeless organizer Paul Boden said once that when it's more important for you to be at the table than to stand your ground and say what needs to be said, it's time to leave the table.

But maybe these guys were selectively quoted as being more supportive than they are. Hacks will do that to you.

At this point I wouldn't talk to the PI's John Iwasaki if he were the last journalist at the last daily in Seattle. Not that he's ever called me.

While it is critical to pack the hearing, nobody should be under the illusion that this alone is going to stop this Mayor. We need to aggressively and creatively fight back. Call 441-3247 x202 or email organizer@realchangenews.org for more information.