Who Wouldn't Want To Sleep Here?

Casey McNerthney at the Seattle PI called me last night after being driven around around a bit by Sgt. Gracy to get today's story on homeless people refusing shelter. I like Casey. He's a good reporter who's done right by the homeless more than once. For some reason, however, my rather clear explanation of why people avoid shelter didn't really get into his story, although I do appreciate the bit that did.

City, county and federal officials need to do more, according to Tim Harris, executive director of the Real Change newspaper.

"To say that there needs to be more of an investment in services is a radical understatement," he said. "They spend money where they see value, and they don't think homeless people have that much value."

To be fair, "some homeless people" were quoted saying pretty much what I told him. People are afraid of getting lice, and shelters are demoralizing. City Human Services press flak David Takami gets some of the rest, although he seems to find it much more mysterious than it actually is. "Some don't want to sleep next to somebody else. Some people have mental health problems that make it an issue."

This is ball park, but doesn't really get to the brokenness of the system, and why some would rather just avoid it altogether. Both Takami and the police are quoted as saying "the goal is to help homeless people become self-sufficient -- paying bills and maintaining a home." Shelters, apparently, help people do this, and being literally on the streets, they say, does not.

This is fiction. Shelters don't have the resources to provide real services. Not most of the ones for single homeless people anyway. And many of the people they contain have been permanantly written off, never to come back. The system is radically underfunded and overcrowded, and fundamentally broken. To say that shelters are somehow "a pathway" to rejoining the mainstream is to participate in a collective fairytale that denies the reality of what's going on.

If McNerthney really wants to know why people don't want to be in shelters, he should spend a night at DESC on one of the mats on the floor, four inches from the guy with the deep cough that won't stop. If he's smart, he'll put anything of value in his shoes and keep those under his pillow. If he's lucky, he won't get any of the bugs that are around.

I used to only really hear that about lice and bedbugs at Union Gospel. It's been a consistent complaint for years, and apparently they either don't care or can't get it under control. But now I hear it all the time about DESC too. There's an infestation, and people don't want to go there.

To listen to Sgt. Gracey and David Takami talk, you'd think that the shelters have legions of social workers, and to walk in the door is to enroll in some sort of homeless makeover program, where one learns the intricacies of personal hygeine and money management, gains soft and hard job skill training, overcomes their addictions and mental illnesses, and is placed on a smooth road toward becoming a housed member of the working, if not middle, class.

Bullshit. They're warehouses for the broken, written-off, detrius of the global economy. There are not a lot of jobs out there for, say, a 49 year old black felon who lacks a high school education, or a 60 year old unskilled laborer with a bad back, or a border-line retarded thirty-year-old who's been on the street since he was fourteen and is now addicted to crack, or the woman whose customer service skills have been honed by fifteen years of nickel and dime street prostitution, and so forth.

So we pack them in where we don't see them, and offer the minimal conditions necessary to sustain life. Then we boot them out at 5 or 6 a.m., so they can disperse before the real citizens get downtown so they won't have to see the undiluted misery of so much human wreckage discharged to the streets for yet another day.

Large shelters are total institutions for those whom most people would rather not see. The line staff are heroic, but underpaid, overworked, and completely stressed. There is nothing reasonable about what's expected of them, and this translates to what they are able to do. The best of them are saints, but most are as human as the rest of us and become numbed to the extreme misery of what they see. Under these conditions, true empathy becomes unsustainable.

Those who have the wherewithal to fend for themselves outdoors often choose to do so. To me, this isn't a mysterious, inexplicable choice. It's a matter of finding personal dignity in the fact of everyday survival, as opposed to surrendering to dehumanizing misery and the loss of personal agency. If I were homeless, it's what I'd do. It's a rational choice.

If the city wants people to go to shelters, they need to invest in these places to bring them past the tipping point of offering more to homeless people than they take away. There are both physical and moral dimensions to this.

A decent shelter should offer some sense of community. There should be meetings, activities, and the sharing of food. Large, institutional settings don't lend themselves to this. They foster, instead, a sort of defensive isolation.

A decent shelter should be a homebase, where possessions can be stored and real respite from the hardships of the street can be found. They should offer some semblence of personal space. A real bed, for example, that one can return to each night, and at least a few feet from the next person over

A decent shelter should not restrict one's personal liberty anymore than necessary. One should not have to subject themselves to a 10 hour lockdown to sleep indoors.

A decent shelter should operate on a small enough scale for people to know each other. A decent shelter should have a client to staff ratio that gives people some small chance of getting real help. All most shelter staff have time for is the bare essentials, and barely even that. Basically, the priority is to see that no one gets hurt. This isn't a "pathway." It's a tar pit.

People who have a hard time sleeping on sheets with a threadcount of less than 300 don't get to judge homeless people who opt out of shelter. They simply have no idea of what they're talking about.

If the city wants people to go to shelters so damn bad, they should invest the resources to make them places people would choose to be. This isn't rocket science.

So forget the bullshit "helping" rhetoric. Very few people are being helped, and there isn't a lot right now to help them toward. The affordable housing that's supposed to be the solution isn't there. The waiting lists, if you can get on them, are years long. Try getting a gravely mentally ill homeless person some services sometime. You learn fast that things are very, very bad. And they are going to get worse.

If the city wants to help people who don't go to the shelters, here's an idea. First, do no harm. Then, why not just ask what they want? You might learn something.

The PI Weighs In

This morning's Nickelsville PI Editorial, Ending Homelessness, A Broader Effort, gets a lot right, and the haters have already lined up to comment. Homelessness is a far larger problem than Seattle, based in three decades of rising inequality, bad federal housing policy, and growing economic insecurity for the majority of Americans. And, much could be gained if the Mayor and his people actually talked in good faith with Seattle's homeless advocates. Over the past year, their "dialogue" has brought a steady stream of victim-blaming rhetoric, political stonewalling of advocates, and systematic attacks upon those engaged in outdoor survival activity in the face of an inadequate emergency shelter system.

The Mayor's latest response to Nickelsville, which threatens all real and perceived allies of the encampment with fines, will only worsen an already poisonous situation, where unaccountable power does it's damnedest to crush a growing grassroots response to an unacceptable situation that is both dire and deteriorating.

Where they get it wrong is in dismissing Nickelsville as "posturing" by protesters toward the end of scoring "publicity points." This misunderstands the real need for a safe haven for the outdoor campers upon whom the city has declared war, and the equally real need, in the absence of any real possibility for productive dialogue, for poor people to fight back by any means necessary. Nickelsville is about survival, and for those of us who have been dehumanized and swept from visibility, the stakes could not be higher.

The federal and regional solutions that the PI editorial board calls for are essential to any real effort at solving homelessness, and the macro-economic causes of growing poverty must become a far higher priority for policymakers and advocates. No authentic progress on ending homelessness can occur without broad economic reform. The lip service these complex issues routinely receive must be replaced with strategic alliances that target root issues of racism, poverty, and an growing trend toward state-sponsored repression of the poor through increasingly brutal anti-homeless policies and mass incarceration.

In a declining economy, things are likely to become much worse for poor and homeless people. When concerns with Seattle's policy on homeless sweeps is routinely met by the city with hardball tactics and dismissive gestures, advocates are left with little alternative than to fight back with whatever pressure politics we can muster. We'd all be a lot better off if some middle ground might be found, in which the larger issues could be jointly addressed from a place of unified political power. This, however, isn't where we find ourselves. Anyone who's ever been in a schoolyard fight knows this much to be true. When a bully is on your back and your nose has been shoved into the dirt, your first priority is to turn the tables and get back on top.

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.

Seattle Steroids Abuse Receives National Attention

With the economy in flames, the launch of Nickelsville looming, and organizers in Ballard looking to establish safe zones for the growing numbers of car campers, the notion that anyone is "ending homelessness" through better use of data and smarter deployment of resources is becoming more ludicrous by the day.

Today brings a bit of reality to the mix from the Associated Press' Evelyn Nievens. Her story, In hard times, tent cities rise across the country, has centered the nation's attention, for a few days anyway, upon the obvious.

Nievens' reporting made headlines everywhere from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to USA Today to MSNBC and the Huffington Post and several hundred newspapers and blogs in between.

From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.

Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening.

"It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. "The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."

The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.

"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the 80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group for homeless advocacy organizations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore. and Seattle.

The relatively tony city of Santa Barbara has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans. The city of Fresno, Calif., is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood. In Portland, Ore., and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters. Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include include Chattanooga, Tenn., San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently reported a 12 percent drop in homelessness nationally in two years, from about 754,000 in January 2005 to 666,000 in January 2007. But the 2007 numbers omitted people who previously had been considered homeless - such as those staying with relatives or friends or living in campgrounds or motel rooms for more than a week.

In addition, the housing and economic crisis began soon after HUD's most recent data was compiled.

"The data predates the housing crisis," said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for HUD. "From the headlines, it might appear that the report is about yesterday. How is the housing situation affecting homelessness? That's a great question. We're still trying to get to that."

In Seattle, which is experiencing a building boom and an influx of affluent professionals in neighborhoods the working class once owned, homeless encampments have been springing up - in remote places to avoid police sweeps.

"What's happening in Seattle is what's happening everywhere else - on steroids," said Tim Harris, executive director of Real Change, an advocacy organization that publishes a weekly newspaper sold by homeless people.

Homeless people and their advocates have organized three tent cities at City Hall in recent months to call attention to the homeless and protest the sweeps - acts of militancy, said Harris, "that we really haven't seen around homeless activism since the early '90s."

Cool. We're organizing, and HUD is working on getting around to looking at the problem. Real solutions can't be far off.

Ever do a vanity Google? I just did. Googling the exact phrase "What's happening in Seattle is what's happening everywhere else - on steroids," said Tim Harris receives 1,010 matches just now. Sweet.

Dioxin at Lora Lake: A Few Good Questions

CEHKC Director Bill Block gets ashed at last summer's Lora Lake faux civil disobedience.

Ah, Lora Lake. We hardly knew ye. Last summer's affordable housing flash point fizzled with barely a whimper last week when the Port Authority issued a press release written by King County Housing Authority (KCHA) declaring their mutual agreement that the much vaunted deal to save 162 units of affordable housing in Burien is now dead of poisoning.

There will be no autopsy. But read on. Someone needs to call the coroner to see if Lora might be revived.

Apparently, levels of dioxin were found in the soil that exceed current residential standards. Testing and soil clean-up were performed in 1987 by the State Department of Ecology before the now doomed apartments were built, but, as the press release explains, things change.

However, since that time, testing and clean-up standards have been made more stringent. Results of the recent environmental analysis revealed soil contamination of dioxins and other contaminants that exceed current standards for residential use.

Though remediation will still be necessary, the lower environmental standard required for industrial purposes means eventual redevelopment for an industrial use, rather than a residential use, likely remains financially feasible.

At this point, the "homeless advocates" involved collectively shrug, throw up their hands, heave a deep sigh, and say, "Dioxin. Watcha gonna do? Can't poison poor people can ya?"

Here's "homeless advocate" Sandy Brown, quoted in Jennifer Langston's recent Seattle PI article.

Sandy Brown, senior pastor at First United Methodist Church who led demonstrations and prayers to preserve the apartments, said he was disappointed with the outcome.

However, he agreed it doesn't make sense to spend scarce affordable housing dollars on cleaning up pollution.

But last year's controversy, he said, sent a clear message that government-owned housing serving lower-income residents shouldn't be bulldozed and not replaced.

"I think we're not going to see the same cavalier approach to (destroying) 160 units or so as we did in this case, so it's still a victory," Brown said.

Yo, Sandy. Way to grab victory from the jaws of defeat. I am totally inspired. Thanks for the prayers.

And intrigued at how similar your messaging is to Rhonda Rosenberg's at KCHA. Real Change reporter Cydney Gillis covered this story, and her notes contain a remarkably similar quote. "As a result of all this stuff that's happened, the Port has become more sensitized to the importance or regional need for affordable housing." The Lora Lake fight, she said "focused much-needed attention on the region’s loss of affordable housing."

It's nice to see so much agreement on the terms of surrender.

Should any of the fire breathing advocates who have apparently given up on this decide to take a closer look, here's a few questions they might ask.

According to a Port of Seattle press release issued last February to announce suspension of the deal pending further testing, samples were taken at depths of seven and fourteen feet. Soil mitigation, however, only occurs two feet down. This, presumably is what happened when the site was tested and cleaned in 1987 prior to original construction.

So, why the sudden interest in finding deeply buried contaminants? It just seems odd. I'm not a scientist, but looking around on-line, it seems like soil testing usually focuses on samples taken at much shallower depths.

Also, there's the needing to have it both ways issue.

When one decides to demolish an apartment building due to dioxin contamination, one runs the risk of a class action suit by former tenants. This issue was addressed by Rosenberg in Gillis' earlier Real Change piece when the deal was first suspended.

"... the housing authority does not believe its previous tenants, who were evicted in June, would have been exposed, as the contaminants are believed to be sealed under Lora Lake’s concrete-on-slab construction."

Let me ask a possibly naive question here. If the contaminants are sealed, and no one is exposed, then what's the problem? Unless, of course, you tear the place down.

So, why is the deal off again? Maybe I'm just shooting in the dark here, but it seems like these are questions worth asking. Serious activists don't always believe what they're told.

Going Down With No Backbone

The thing we've been waiting for is happening. As Seattle City Council prepares for the delivery of Mayor Nickels' big fat gift to for-profit housing developers in the form of an expansion of the Multi-Family Tax Exemption, the economy is contracting, and with it, the capacity to deliver the services that are most needed when budgets go south. This morning's Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports a projected $70 million shortfall on the King County side.

County Executive Ron Sims has asked department directors to prepare 2009 budget proposals that would cut spending by 8.6 percent from a sustaining level of services to close that gap.

In response, several elected officials from the county's criminal justice agencies -- Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, Sheriff Sue Rahr and judges of the district and superior courts -- called a joint news conference June 5 to sound the theme of "Public Safety in Peril," making alarming predictions about the effects of the proposed cuts. The criminal justice agencies' budgets, which account for 70 percent of the $650 million general services total this year, are presented by Sims to the County Council for approval -- but Satterberg, a Republican, and Rahr and the judges, who run as nonpartisan candidates, are independently elected and operate from their own power bases apart from Sims, a Seattle Democrat who is the county's highest-ranking elected official.

The article goes on to describe how the budget process will, despite denials on both sides, become politicized by the upcoming race for the King County Executive position. The Public Safety in Peril frame offers a taste of what is to come. As the criminal justice system eats the county budget alive, a new downtown jail is proposed at a cost of $110 million for construction and $19 million annually to operate. It doesn't take a Norm Stamper to see that this is the wrong direction, and we can count on the politics of fear to drive at least one side of this debate.

Meanwhile, the State picture is looking equally grim. The Washington State Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that, in the face of a projected $2 billion deficit, the legislature needs to look more realistically to the revenue side of the picture to sustain current levels of services. Even these, as anyone who understands how broken things are will sadly confirm, are nowhere near adequate to the need.

The continuing projection of a significant deficit is a matter of public concern and a deliberate conversation about how to close the gap should begin in earnest. It is important to note, the problem is not one of spending; current budget figures are largely in line with past budgets as a share of the economy (see figure above). Instead, changes to our revenue structure must be part of the discussion.

Earth to Olympia: Grow some fucking balls and start taxing the rich. Race to the bottom corporate welfare and weak-kneed anti-taxation policies that favor the most affluent are an unsustainable politics.

Washington State is far from alone in this. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that 29 states face a total shortfall of at least $48 billion for 2009. As Washington State isn't even on their list, this projection surely underestimates the scope of the crisis. While there's an excellent discussion of the complexities of various alternatives at their website, I'll put it in layman's terms: We're screwed, and we're going down, big time.

Looking at the Seattle picture, I'm reminded of a line from Joan Baez' anthem to an asshole:

You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague

Meaning this: Seattle, like everywhere else, is heading toward ugly recession, but recent Office of Finance analyses project mostly blue skies. The June Economic Update admits only to this:

Sales, B&O, and REET taxes are particularly sensitive to recessions (see table) as they are good representations of economic activity. Inflation adjusted sales tax receipts declined on average 6.5% in the first year of the last four recessions. B&O receipts suffered similar fates. If we are in recession the NBER likely won’t identify it until late summer. By then Seattle’s tax receipts should provide some guidance as to where we are and where we’re going.

Meanwhile, if anyone's driving, they're not saying. Compared to last April's economic report to the City Council, which projects a mere 30% probability of recession, this most tentative of admissions to bad news comes 0ff as downright alarmist. But even this, if one scrolls all the way to the last line, foretells budget cuts to come.

So, why are we giving tax breaks away to rich developers so they can create housing at prices that exceed what the market already delivers without the aid of public subsidy? Getting re-elected takes money I guess. Especially when one lacks a backbone.

Why I Was Arrested

I went out into Cherry Street by City Hall yesterday after camping out there with 150 of us on Sunday and waited with fourteen others to be arrested. It had been a long time coming. Simultaneous to the arrest, we flooded the Mayor's office with calls. The press coverage was huge and it was favorable. We need to do more. This is a beginning. Not an end.

Until last year, the City of Seattle would clear encampments after a pattern of neighborhood complaint identified problems needing to be addressed. It didn't happen all that often. The shelters are full and thousands remain outside. Everyone who knows anything about homelessness in Seattle knows this. The policy, therefore, had been to mostly look the other way.

Then came the condo boom. Housing costs in Seattle rose dramatically and cheap housing became even more scarce. The rental vacancy rate went below 4%. Those who lacked decent credit, had felonies, or had poor rental histories were basically fucked. They couldn't get in. The numbers on the streets rose by at least 15%. Then came the sweeps.

We started hearing whispers about a zero-tolerance policy in the Mayor's office on homeless encampments last summer, but couldn't get any on the record confirmation. Finally, a public disclosure request offered the proof we were looking for. There was the acknowledgment in black and white that policy had shifted, and a list of key sites for proactive clearances. Public employees were required to report any camp they saw, and any single report from anyone was enough to trigger a clearance. Horror stories began to surface. Homeless people complained widely of losing their stuff and of radically increased harassment.

Once we broke the story, the shit really hit the fan. The City launched a media offensive to justify their actions, focusing on filth, criminality, and drug use. Most of the media, for a time, obliged. The City recognized that their asses were hanging out all over the place and retreated for awhile to assess and address their various legal vulnerabilities.

Now, there's a set of protocols that pretends to offer help to people, yet shelter turn-aways are at a record high. They hired a couple of outreach workers, and give notice before they throw people's stuff away. They added twenty shelter beds. For 2,633 people counted surviving outside. And those were just the ones who were found. Twenty beds.

Throughout all of this, advocates were stonewalled and kept in the dark. The Mayor and his staff meet all questions with the same empty, dehumanizing mantra. We spend $40 million a year on housing and homelessness. We have a ten year plan to end homelessness. Homeless campsites are illegal, filled with debris, feces, bottles of urine, and hypodermic needles. People are being offered services.

The City sells the protocols as consistent and humane, and speaks of how liberal they are. Yet two huge loopholes were added after the public comment period that deny protections to the homeless in the majority of cases. Camps of less than three structures are unprotected. Camps that reoccur in areas that are cleared will also be denied protection. The Queen Anne sites cleared a week ago have already been reposted for repeat clearance. Within six months, it appears, no outreach, notification, or storage of possessions will be required most of the time.

The sites where homeless people frequently camp will all soon be permanently posted for immediate removal. The gloves will, once again, be off, and we'll be back to where we started, with the City doing whatever the hell they want. This isn't conspiratorial shit. This is the clear intention behind the wording of the protocols. The permanent posting strategy may not stand up to legal challenge, but it will be years before a suit is filed and a ruling made.

Meanwhile, people are being chased around and harassed. They are being driven to more remote locales, and their gear is being trashed. Their odds of survival have decreased. The stress of homelessness has radically multiplied. At Real Change, we see it everyday.

The story of organizing and committing the Civil Disobedience action at City Hall will have to wait til later. We wanted a media grand slam that was critical of the Mayor. It happened, although, as usual, print and radio were the only ones to leave the City frame behind. Both the dailies — the Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times — were great, and got the story right. The key bit from the PI was this.

"What the mayor needs to realize is that opposition isn't going to go away, it's only going to increase," said Tim Harris, one of the event's organizers and executive director of the nonprofit activist publication Real Change. "He has to negotiate with human service advocates and homeless people to come up with a more just policy and agree to some form of accountability."

The Seattle Times talked to me about four times over the course of several days, and got the story right as well. My favorite part there was ...

"We feel it's time to make the strongest statement we can, and say that we withdraw our consent from the way the city is being run," said Harris, the executive director of Real Change.

But the most amusing coverage for me was the KUOW interview, which I did at 6:10 a.m. while reclining on the broad wall next to the stairs that lead up from the 4th Avenue side of the building. As I talked on my cell, I looked out over a sea of tents and sleeping bags on City Hall Plaza.

It wasn't too early. I got up at 4 when a reporter from KOMO asked for an interview and the few hours sleep I managed that night came to an end. I guess she was worried she might get scooped.

KUOW is a major NPR affiliate, and the story was repeated several times over the morning. My favorite moment here is the short sardonic laugh I offer when asked why people don't just go to shelters.

The footage of the Civil Disobedience portion of our demonstration above is by Dr. Wes Browning. More to come.

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.

From Today's Mail ...

Hi Timothy Harris:

I just mailed this letter to the PI when I picked up the current Real Change and read your update on Nickels, et al, continuing to foul up.

As the U.S. keeps wading the Big Muddy of illegal and immoral wars and occupations, another Depression, Real Change will be ever important.

Enclosed is $10 to keep the pot boiling.

Peace and Justice,
Lyle Mercer

Letter to the Editor,

This 1930s youngster vividly recalls Seattle's waterfront Hooverville (one of many nationwide named after the then current President), a large hodgepodge of crammed shacks, built with discarded lumber and inhabited by hundreds of jobless and homeless men - and a few women. To survive they scrounged for food and cooked it in cast-off pots.

Such deplorable human neglect vanished after World War II when 16 million of us donned uniforms, were fed and housed at no personal expense. The two front conflict totally wiped out unemployment.

Today, with more and more Americans being driven out of their "subprime" homes by crooked money lenders, other workers worry about escalating oil and food prices as the economic crisis deepens.

As Angela Galloway reports, our local governments have yet to eliminate the suffering which forces Seattleites to sleep in doorways and under bridges.

With some 50,000 millionaires thriving in these parts, why are we unable to eliminate homelessness as we did in wartime 1940s?

With only a small portion of the taxes being poured into the Bush Cheney oil war, we could easily shelter the shivering in this late spring.

I will answer Mr. Mercer's question. The massive homelessness in America that began with Civil War demobilization and the painful economic restructuring that accompanied the advent of the factory system of labor was not solved by wartime employment alone. This did indeed empty the Hoovervilles, but things could have returned to the pre-war status quo.

Instead, the GI bill delayed the shock of demobilization by providing higher education to large numbers of white GIs and was the largest engine of class mobility this nation has ever seen. The 1949 Housing Act was passed, promising decent housing to every American family. A suburban housing boom was made affordable to large numbers of people with low-interest FHA loans, and huge public works projects provided continued employment to many (women and minorities didn't fare as well). And, an agreement was forged between government, big business, and the civic sector (labor, churches, civic organizations) to look to the common good. This lead to steady economic growth and declining rates of inequality up to 1973.

Then came globalization and another painful round of economic restructuring. Deepening inequality has been institutionalized within our economy and our political system, and has become the "common sense" of our time. The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer, forever.

As more and more people experience the increased economic vulnerability that this system creates for nearly everyone, we are coming to realize that this "common sense" is nonsense, and that we have a mutual stake in deep systemic change.

The letter was accompanied by two five dollar bills and a typed quote at the bottom:

But remember always, Dante, in this play of happiness, don't you use all for yourself only ... help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friends ... In this struggle of life you will find more love and you will be loved.

- - - Nicola Sacco

Mr. Mercer, you are loved. Thank you.

Smart, Brave, and True

Just when I was beginning to despair that no Seattle reporter would ever really get the sweeps story right, along comes Angela Galloway in today's PI with Seattle Homeless Camp Policy Under Fire: critics see loopholes in rights protections. Galloway deserves major props for taking a second shot at a story the City buried in last Saturday's paper and hitting all the right points.

Broad exceptions to the application of the protocols mean that campers will be evicted without the benefit of rights or process.

This plan has little or nothing to do with ending homelessness, and is punitive and arbitrary.

And then, my favorite quote. Alison Eisinger, on the unfortunate sartorial habits of the Emperor: "It is facile in the extreme to pretend that the 10-year plan is a solution to a problem that affects thousands of people tonight."

Thank God someone finally said it. Anyone who's really paying attention knows that the plan holds few immediate solutions, and that its long-term prospects are dicey at best. To hide behind the Ten Year Plan while criminalizing survival activity is the height of lying hypocrisy.

Eisinger goes on in her reasonable way.

All homeless people have the rights to shelter and services. Further, some people might unwittingly set up camp in recently swept locations, she said.

"When the city puts forward a protocol that is supposed to be designed to help people get off the streets, what we expect to see is a protocol that doesn't punish people for going places where they believe they will be safe," Eisinger said.

Whenever a Nickels administration person gets called on the inconvenient math of very limited space for a large number of unsheltered homeless, the answer runs something like this: "Well, we have a Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness, because we believe that housing connected to services and not shelter is the answer. It's a Ten Year Plan, not a Two Year Plan. Seattle spends more than $40 million annually on housing and homelessness. 1811 Eastlake ... Plymouth ... blah blah blah. We're committed to ending homelessness and believe we're on track."

This is the rhetorical equivalent of fairy dust. Just a small sprinkle magically makes homeless people disappear.

The key issues of when the protocol applies are now out in the open, and the city is defending their right to take people's stuff without offering warning or services.

Patricia McInturff, director of the city's Human Services Department, said the rules were intended to apply to encampments that hit a "critical mass" of people, not small groups or single individuals illegally camping.

"Certainly, these people are welcome to go to a shelter," said McInturff, who is leaving the department this week. "But it doesn't trigger me calling an outreach team to go out to a neighborhood and post advanced notice for one person."

"How we deal with individuals is something that can be discussed in another setting -- and may or may not be," McInturff said. "But this policy is about encampments."

This is all quite clarifying.

Tim Burgess appears to have closed ranks with the Mayor on this one, despite the fact that none of the issues that once concerned him have been resolved. At least we now know where people stand.

McInturff''s retirement begins today, and her quotes are those of someone who is a) tired of lying, b) a good soldier to the end, and c) already ceasing to really give a crap. Most people I've talked to think there's a straight line between her taking the heat for Greg on this policy and her precipitously announced retirement plans. Many think that the good stuff that exists in this plan is her work, and that she stood up to the face of true evil, as represented by Tim Ceis and Marilyn Littlejohn.

As Patricia heads off into the sunset toward her Hawaii lanai, it scares me to know that, at some deep, carefully submerged level, she was what passes for an ally in this administration.

Serendipitously, the story appears online next to the Dalai Lama photo gallery.

Galloway got it right. She is my new hero. Journalism with integrity lives at the PI.

Bad News Always Gets Buried

Anybody who's been around for more than ten minutes knows governments release bad news late on Friday. The story then runs on Saturday, when newspaper circulation is lowest. This is best accomplished by releasing a blizzard of paper at the last possible moment. A brief press release and "fact sheet" are helpfully provided to frame things for the reporter in a hurry.

We thought the City was going to do this last week. Reporters were expecting the new protocols on Friday when the City unexpectedly postponed the release. The Mayor's executive order, which includes the procedures document, was filed with the City Clerk the following Monday. The 20-page administrative rules document, which backs up the procedures wth more detailed legalese, were signed by all the affected department heads on Monday as well.

So, why then did they wait until four days later and at the last minute on Friday to release the news? Sharon Chan at the Seattle Times had a paper copy at 2:00 pm, as promised by the City Friday morning, but had no electronic copy to forward. No one else had the documents until the City uploaded them to their website an hour and a half later, which left advocates less than an hour to absorb forty-some detailed pages of material and formulate a response.

How's this for a process? Create a unilateral policy with a two week period for public comment. Respond to the comments with some concessions, but then put a whole bunch of other bad stuff in there that no one's ever seen before. Release the policy at the close of a Friday and call it a done deal.

None of the bad news was in the press release. This spoke of meeting the "thoughtful" concerns offered by advocates with another day's notice, additional time for outreach, and twenty new shelter beds at the Compass Center with improved policies on storage of possessions.

That doesn't sound so bad. One could even say this was a win for advocacy. Their opening position, after all, was that storage was out of the question, that 48 hours was sufficient time for outreach, and that there would be no new shelter.

It seems like they've come a long way.

The new stuff, however, makes it even worse than before. Here's the crap that floats to the top.

The Threshold of Three
A distinction is drawn between "unauthorized camping" and an "unauthorized encampment," which means three or more people within 300 feet of each other. The protocols apply to "unauthorized encampments." Yet, all camping on public property is illegal and subject to issuance of an exclusion notice or arrest for criminal trespass. This means that the procedures don't apply to campers who are not in groups. The City could have evicted Treeman and destroyed his property with no notice and have been in compliance with their policy. This is very bad, and it is new.

The Recurring Encampment Clause
This is also new, and very, very bad. Once a site is cleared, it will be monitored for a recurrence of campsites. Should an area have three recurrences within a period of 60 days, it will be placed into a new status, where no outreach or notice is required before issuing citations and destroying belongings. It is not hard to imagine a scenario where, within six months, the majority of key sites have been cleared for automatic removal without notice.

Zero-Tolerance
Any campsite that is identified either by a city employee or by a call to the Community Service Bureau is immediately slated for removal. The issue of whether any problems are being caused is immaterial.

One Citation = Vulnerability to Arrest
Anyone who has already received one citation anywhere has no immunity to arrest when trying to retrieve possessions or access outreach services from a site that has been slated for removal. Also new. Also very bad.

So, lets review. Less than three campers and the City has no responsibility to warn, hold belongings, or help. More than three documented instances of encampments within 60 days, and the City can also do whatever it likes.

So sleeping on your own means you have no rights. But after a while, sleeping in groups probably means you have no rights either. And, if you have received one citation already, you have no rights. Do you see where this is going?

This is a compassionate policy designed to help people? I don't think so. This is a lawyerly means of criminalizing survival while evading the responsibility we have to offer help. Were it possible for me to be more disgusted with the Nickels Administration, this would have done it.

Both the Seattle Times and Seattle PI put up brief stories on their websites Friday afternoon that merely summarized the City press release, but Sharon Chan and Angela Galloway offered good ink to advocates in their Saturday stories. Sharon's is actually quite good, and I'm not just saying that because she quotes me. Galloway uncritically accepts Marty McComber's line that nothing's changed, this has been happening for 15 years, and we're just making life better for homeless people.

It's an appalling lie, but a very useful one.

Both stories accepted the City's frame, as the largely supine dailies almost always do. "City listens to advocates and softens policy." Galloway's lead quote is McInturff saying how "delighted" she is. Few of us share her enthusiasm.

A more accurate frame would be "City sneaks broadly undermining loopholes into final protocols in preparation for all out war on poor."

Learning From the Treeman

Mike Lewis' Seattle PI story yesterday about David Csaky, the treeman of Eastlake Ave., made me very sad and very happy. I love that this man exists. I love that he has found creative ways to survive and carve out spaces that become his own. I love that he lives with the animals and makes good friends with squirrels. I love that his neighbors like him, want him around, and care whether he's happy. I love that a reporter took this amazing story and did it justice. I love that just as the City is about to release their new policy on homeless encampments, we have a poster-child for Homeless People Who Should Be Left Alone.

I'm sad that desperate people have to make their homes in the out of the way spaces where no one else goes. I'm sad that this man, who is bothering no one, can't just be left alone. I'm sad that this man, who has built something of which he is deservedly proud, is going to have it taken away. I'm sad that there is so little room in this world for the David Csaky's. Those who don't bend to the world the way it is. Who don't fit our ideas of how people should live and be.

"I'm tired," he said. "I just want to be left alone. I'm not hurting anyone."

Csaky was basically screwed from birth. Mom was a whore and dad was a drunk. Foster homes. Unemployment. Bare survival. For a time, he climbed into the lower rungs of the working class, but a few major setbacks later he lost his grip and it was back to the underclass. The invisible many, who drop out of the bottom into the shelters and prisons and jails and ghettos and all the other spaces the rest of us seldom see.

That's lesson one. People who have lived lives of pain and trauma need a lot more than a job offer and a clean shirt to bounce back. And as a society, we're not offering. Mainly, we're making things worse.

His neighbors want him around. He looks over the neighborhood and makes things safer. People like him. But one complaint was lodged, and the city is evicting. It doesn't make sense.

That's lesson two. Poor people will do what they must to survive, and given that the system has and continues to fail them in a colossal way, it should at the very least just leave them alone when they're not bothering anyone.

Social workers came by on Friday to tell Csaky that he'd get 48 hours notice Monday to leave the home he'd built with his own hands and the community that had embraced him. He was offered shelter he can't use and treatment he doesn't need.

Lesson number three. Offers of help that come with a great big stick in the other hand are unlikely to be well-received. There is probably some solution that would work for the man in the tree, but no one took the time to talk to him about what that might be.

The message to David Csaky was not "we're here to help." The message was "go away."

Deconstructing Patricia

I had the rare treat of following Seattle Human Services head Patricia McInturff on KUOW's The Conversation today. Given that my cold is going bronchial and I'm running on about 3 hours sleep, I did OK. I said "you know" too much, but hit my basic talking points. The city lies. What they say and what they do are very different. The "there is shelter available" line is a lie. These phantom "outreach workers" she keeps talking about seem to only exist in some parallel universe that few of us have seen. And to consistently describe those who struggle to survive outside as diseased, drug addicted, waste-producing, vermin attracting, criminals is to stoke the engines of ignorance and hate. Even when you call it compassion.

If you listen closely, you can hear the moment I decide to ignore Ross Reynolds' very interesting question to spend my dwindling time undermining the City's credibility.

Few realize that, in the absence of an approved policy, the City is continuing to aggressively clear sites just as before, with little to no notice or accountability. Real Change vendors have come in the last two days in a row with reports of returning to camp to find all of their survival gear and other belongings gone. No notice. No retrieval of belongings. and certainly no "outreach workers" or "shelter referrals."

So let's look at all that unused shelter capacity of which she spoke so assuredly. According to her latest newsletter there's 75 severe weather beds at City Hall and 25 for women at the Frye. Our analysis of those numbers shows City Hall Overflow with an average of 9 beds being open, and the women's beds being, on average, at capacity. During very severe weather, she says, there's a no-turnaway policy. What this actually means is that they start packing people into the rec room at the Union Hotel as well. Cool.

Between 2:30 and 5:30 am the Morning of January 5th, more than 2,600 people were counted surviving outside. 140 were counted in the overflow beds, which seems to have pretty much chewed up all that "capacity" she keeps talking about. The notion that they're checking to see if beds exist before clearing a camp, which she actually said, is ludicrous. I mean, how would that work? They clear the camps during the day. No one knows what few beds will be available where until they show up looking for shelter that night.

Let's see. What else.

She did this really cool thing with the phrase "personal property," which to most people sounds like the property that a person has. Not so. It's ID. Perhaps photos. Eyeglasses. Prescriptions. When you get right down to it, the list is really quite small.

An Encampment Workgroup Memo that turned up in one of our myriad public disclosure requests is quite clear on this point. "Any sleeping equipment (sleeping bags, cardboard, tents) found in the ROW may be disposed of immediately." This is obfuscated in the final with some lawyerly language about disposing of any "soft goods" that "may be contaminated with unknown substances."

This remains my favorite phrase in the document.

Interestingly, she did not say that the City now handles reports of encampments on a case-by-case basis, as she told the City Council last month and recently re-iterated in a communication to Nick Licata. This is probably because she got the December 11 email from Customer Service Bureau Director Darby DuComb.

"I am worried that we are getting confused.

TC want us to respond to all clean ups requested by anyone from within the City or from external customers. We are NOT reviewing them on a case-by-case basis, we are responding as usual."

Thanks for clearing that up Darby. TC is of course Tim Ceis.

What else. She seemed positively shocked to hear that advocates discovered language in the proposal that would deputize anyone the city chooses with the power to hand out camping citations.

Let me help. It's on page 11 of 14 in the Rules document, in the Notices of Exclusion Section, under paragraph 6.3.1, related to "Delegation."

6.3.1.2 The authorizing official may also delegate to others the authority to enforce on City Property these and any other applicable written or posted rules, and to issue notices of exclusion for violations.

Seems pretty clear to me. But I'm not a liar.

But the Big Lie is that the Mayor discovered that there were various departments with policies at odds with each other, and in his wisdom, directed his staff to seek consistency and compassion.

The internal documents clearly show that the Mayor's office had directed all City departments to aggressively clear encampments, and that the absence of a policy to guide this meant the gloves were completely off. It wasn't until their secret policy was uncovered that they bothered to consult City legal at all.

But here's the thing. The gloves are still off. Nothing has changed. This is their pathetic attempt to bring the law in line with existing practice, not, as would be perhaps more typical, the other way around. The painting up top, by the way, is by Rose Greenway, and is called The Liar comes bearing illusions, which we bear willingly.

But all in all, this was a good press day. In addition to a good airing of the issue on KUOW, The Stranger's Erica Barnett gets all weepy over Monday's hearing, and the Seattle PI's Editorial Board made some people I know positively giddy today with their take no prisoners 48 Hours to Scatter.

The urge to clean up parks and other areas serving as de-facto squats is an understandable one. No one likes to be faced with the misery of others. Hygiene and public safety issues with the living conditions of the homeless are certainly credible. But there's got to be a better way to address those concerns without making already-suffering human being feel like refuse. ...

City leaders should come up with a plan that focuses on making life for the homeless more, not less tolerable while building more shelters and housing for them.

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.

Seattle's Unsightly Poor

Yesterday’s P-I featured the latest bad news for homeless people in Seattle. Lately, it’s been hard to keep up. Apparently, the Seattle Convention and Visitor’s Bureau rolled out the red carpet for a visitor’s delegation of mucky-mucks to experience the wonder that is our city. They were brought in to rate Seattle as a convention destination.

For the most part, they liked what they saw. Great cultural attractions. Beautiful surroundings. Lots of nice restaurants, bars, and theaters. Awesome shopping. Etcetera.

But there were a few troubling black marks. Three of them, to be precise. For one, they whined about the weather. Too cloudy. And then there was the cost of air travel. Cleveland, for example, is much more centrally located.

Not much you can do about any of that.

But then there were those pesky homeless people. Such a downer. All that pathetic misery, staring at you, making you feel guilty about your four dollar latté. Now that, quickly said some, is something we can change. If we just made those homeless people go away, we’d be happier.

The story occasioned a fire storm of comments, calling for a get tough policy on visible homelessness.

But here’s the thing. Seattle rains money. Business is booming. Here’s what SCVB’s own ultra-slick promotional material has to say:

“Momentum is a word that often describes positive progress in regard to business, sports and our personal lives. There is no doubt that 2006 was a year of great momentum for Seattle and the region.

In 2006, Seattle and King County experienced a record 9.1 million overnight visitors who generated more than $4.3 billion in revenues and we expect this positive trend to continue through 2007. Seattle’s hotel occupancy, rate and RevPAR growth performed in the upper five percent of all major cities this past year. We welcomed the Hotel 1000 and the Pan Pacific Seattle to our hospitality community and their levels of service, product and technological innovation have been well-received by travelers from around the world.

The Washington State Convention & Trade Center hosted nearly 50 major conventions, which brought almost 150,000 delegates from around the world to our city and region. These conventions alone accounted for nearly 330,000 room nights and an economic impact of $252 million. In conjunction with hotel-booked meetings and a vibrant business travel market, many restaurants and retailers realized the financial benefit that meetings and conventions provide.

Leisure travel to Seattle and the region continues to grow into a year-around business rather than the seasonal market of the past. This is a result of the extensive offerings in the arts, culture, festivals, and sports and recreational events that the area provides. Add to this an array of eclectic restaurants, award-winning Washington State wines and abundant shopping opportunities, and Seattle is an undeniable draw throughout the year.

A record 200 sailings from Seattle to Alaska occurred this past year, delivering nearly 400,000 passengers to our city. Recent data projects that between 30 and 35 percent of these Alaska-bound passengers also booked a Seattle area hotel stay prior to or after their cruise. This positive trend will also carry into 2007 and beyond.

Air travel volume also added to the momentum. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport experienced a record 30 million passengers. Airlines increased flights, including British Airways, which added a second non-stop between London and Seattle in summer 2006 in order to accommodate the growing demand from Europe.”

So, lets review. There’s momentum. Positive trend lines all around. No less than three records broken: cruise passengers, air travel to Seattle, and the overall number of overnight visitors. And Seattle’s hotel occupancy rate is performing in the top 5% of all major cities.

But wait! Here’s more from the King County Visitor Profile and Economic Data report that the Convention Center Visitor’s Bureau commissioned from CIC Research, an independent outfit based in San Diego.

“Over the last 15 years King County visitor industry sales have increased three-fold from $1.6 billion in 1991 to $4.75 billion in 2006. During the same 15-year time period, the volume of overnight visitors increased 54% from 6.1 million to 9.41 million. … Visitor spending has accelerated in the last two years with a combined total growth for 2005 and 2006 of 20%, substantially exceeding the growth in overnight visitor volume of 8%.”

There were an estimated 9,410,000 overnight visitors to King County during 2006 – an increase of 3.4% from 2005 (9,100,000). The 9.4 million visitors was a record for King County and continued a growth trend that started in 2003 (see Figure 4). Overnight visitor spending jumped 10% to $4.75 billion. … Visitor spending also generated a total of $419 million in state and local tax revenues, an increase of 10.4% from $376 million in 2005. …

The visitor industry in King County continued solid growth in both overnight visitor volume and spending for 2006. This marks the third consecutive year of significant growth in the King County visitor industry. The hotel sector led the way with outstanding revenue growth of about 17% for the year and total room nights sold of 8.35 million. The visitor industry should continue to experience growth, albeit more moderate growth throughout 2007 and 2008.”

So, clearly, we need to pass more laws targeting homeless people because they’re a such drag on the local economy. We were sick of them anyway. Perhaps we could create camps of some sort where they’ll never again be seen.

The thing about being rich, it seems, is that there is never quite enough.

It's Rude to Gloat, But ...

While the Nickels administration has been fairly effective at describing homeless encampments as dangerous, disease breeding havens for the drug-using criminal class in the print media, and in the Seattle Times in particular, yesterday's coverage of the Real Change Organizing Project protest encampment and rally was, from a City perspective, way off script.

Radio play was remarkably sympathetic and in-depth. Liam Moriarty's excellent KPLU coverage came in addition to a shorter piece within their regular newshour, so that was a two-fer. Our Organizing Director Rachael Myers went head to head with City Human Services Director Patricia McInturff on KUOW's popular news talk show The Conversation. Both delivered their messages like the seasoned pros they are, but the call-ins that followed leaned very heavily Rachael's way. I did twenty minutes on KIRO710's popular Dave Ross show, and was able to deliver some of the deeper context that's been missing so far. The interview on this clip follows Ross' opening monologue on the perplexities of the "pay it forward" coffee craze. There was a nasty bit on Dory Monson's KIRO Talk Show, but that's predictable. Peter Steinbrueck took that one on. A braver man than I. When I checked, the podcast wasn't up yet.

Television coverage was just as good. Q13's coverage was sympathetic in the extreme, and caught a good bit of the amusing Tim Ceis ambush yesterday morning. Michelle Millman at KIROtv did us right, and KING5 did a strong piece as well. While Ken Schram's KOMO monologue on symbolic help to the homeless wasn't part of our coverage, you'll want to watch it anyway. In the print realm, the PI ran a balanced piece with a photo on page one that wasn't bad at all, even if they did completely follow the City's framing. They also won my love and respect by printing an amazingly on-target guest editorial by a former greenbelt camper. The Seattle Times resisted the temptations of pack journalism and blew us off altogether. Guess my corporate lapdog poll hit a nerve.

Cognitive Dissonance

Hate crimes against homeless people is now a crime in Seattle, thanks to the excellent work of Seattle's Office for Civil Rights. I've always had mixed emotions regarding this particular tactic. Being homeless, unlike being gay, black, or a Muslim, is more of an economic status than an identity. But maybe I'm just wishing the world were other than it is.

Given, however, the Bumfights inspired mayhem that has become frighteningly commonplace, where, most typically, teen-aged boys go looking for easy targets to kill and torture, an additional penalty for that sort of violence doesn't seem like a bad thing. It is a stretch, however, to think that this legislation in and of itself will prevent a single act of harassment.

Crimes against homeless and other vulnerable people has more to do with an overall environment of dehumanization that lends itself to hate. Recent treatment of homeless campers in the local media is a case in point.

There was, however, an interesting wrinkle in the legislation that was unanimously adopted by city government this week. According to the brief article that ran in the PI, "The law also makes it illegal to damage the belongings of a homeless person."

This would include, I assume, throwing said belongings away, which has been the City's unrepentant practice during the recent wave of homeless encampment sweeps. Maybe, despite Human Services head Patricia McInturff's opinion that storage of belongings is "impossible," the City will have to find a way, or else.

Typical Seattle Homeless Encampment Scene

The image at right, if you've been reading local press accounts of Seattle homeless encampments, is the sort of scene that takes place hundreds of times a day in the wild frontier of criminality and filth that exists in our greenbelts.

First, Nicole Brodeur plays the dead baby card in her sensationalist "reporting" of last month. Then Craig Thompson, whose recent fantasy genre op-ed in the Seattle PI connected homeless encampments to organized crime and the Asian heroin trade, took the smearing of homeless people to heights that none of us could have foreseen.

"A violent, well-organized, Asian heroin gang took over the forest on the west side of Beacon Hill. They beat up most homeless people they found, especially women, and set up shop. Their command and control center was a camouflaged bunker made of concrete blocks, a wooden frame and a door that could have stopped a round from a service revolver. It was a hobbit hole for junkies, with a killer view of the mouth of the Duwamish."

Ergo, we must eradicate homeless campsites in the enlightened best interest of those with nowhere else to go.

Reinforced concrete bunkers? Weapons? Heroin cartels and meth manufacturers in the greenbelts? Was a shred of evidence presented that these issues have anything what-so-ever to do with the current controversy. No. This is sensationalism at its worst, and is an unconscionable libel on those whose only documented crime is to attempt survival in a city that has gone to war against its most vulnerable.

Thompson's vaguely racist scare journalism — with its visions of Asian gangs running the greenbelt heroin trade — brings to mind another war of several decades ago. In this war, we destroyed villages to save them. In shorthand, this tactic was referred to as "draining the sea." If we attack the places where they live, all those frightening homeless people will have no choice but to go somewhere else.

At least in Vietnam we offered Strategic Hamlet concentration camps as an alternative. Today in Seattle, with shelters well over capacity, we're offering nothing.

If this is what "ending homelessness" has come to in this city, I want no part of it.

The Mayor's Suburban Strategy

Seattle's homeless encampment sweeps have been halted until the Mayor's office can create a policy under which "everyone can be respectful and preserve the possessions of people," says Human Services Director Al Poole in Tuesday's Seattle Post Intelligencer. Poole was amusingly, and incorrectly, identified as the City's HR manager. Who's copy editing over there? That's what I want to know?

Kery Murakami's excellent article quotes one homeless man who was a target of the city's "concern."

At a free-lunch distribution earlier this month in a parking lot under Interstate 5 at Sixth Avenue and Columbia Street, Austin Rusnek, who carried his possessions in a backpack and was eating a sandwich, said he left his camp in Kinnear Park on the west side of Queen Anne one day in mid-October.

When he returned hours later, his tent and his sleeping bag were gone. So were pictures of his children.

"They were the only pictures of them I had," Rusnek, 36, said.

While the halting of Seattle's homeless sweeps is a start, the City response falls far short of the demands raised by the Real Change Organizing Project.

No outreach funds were included in the recent city budget. Adequate alternatives for homeless campers have not been identified. And the Mayor's office insists on developing policy in secret and without the input of human service advocates. In the past week more than 1,000 people have signed Real Change's petition that the City halt clearances until these goals are met.

SHARE/WHEEL, weirdly, has set their sights a good deal lower, and simply wants the city to provide porta-potties and dumpsters to homeless campers. Maybe people are supposed to live in these? It seems we should be able to do better.

Until the city can — with a straight face — answer the question of just where homeless people targeted by campsite clearances are supposed to go, their "policy" will simply be a more polite version of the same message: Get Out of Town.

I was at an event in Everett the other night where an activist said the numbers of homeless people in Snohomish County seems to be rising lately. I have a pretty good idea why.

Governments of neighboring areas might want to tell our Mayor that pushing the homeless around doesn't solve things. It only drives people further from the help they need, and exacerbates homelessness in other communities. Or maybe the Mayor already knows this, and he just doesn't care.

The People Have Spoken.

OK, I admit it. I'm a little obsessed with the panhandling thing. Since Kate Elston made a cartoon of my position in the Post Intelligencer a few weeks ago, I've become this straw man for the opposition to hold up and say, "Well, surely you don't agree with him!" The Stranger's SLOG, following Elston, has me calling Downtown Seattle Association's Have a Heart Give Smart program "a war on the poor," a claim that is overheated at best, as the DSA's lobbyist was delighted to point out. A young appellate lawyer with a degree from Yale who lives and works downtown and thinks he knows more about homelessness than I do (people like him know more than the rest of us about everything) blogs that my position is "absurd," and some Republican poli-sci prof from Houston has dismissed me as the "latte left."

This is annoying.

Panhandling is suffering made visible, and that's why it makes people so uncomfortable. I think most of us could stand to be a lot less comfortable, content, and complacent. Panhandlers have something to teach us about the world and about ourselves.

All of this got me wondering about what else is being said. Are there other downtown yuppies blogging about how annoying it is to be asked for change? I searched the Technorati blog engine for references to "Seattle panhandling" and discovered the answer to be "not really."

• Some guy who describes himself as "politically and socially conservative Catholic who enjoys the silly side of life" goes on for a bit, and dignifies the DSA's Peg Dreisinger's assertions with the term "research." It doesn't take much to convince some people.
• Another low point comes from some asshole Harvard Law graduate, who blogs at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute that New York panhandlers make $60 an hour and don't even open savings accounts. This sends him into a tight-assed little rage.
• Someone on MySpace is planning to be homeless for 48 hours this month, but has already decided that "every chance they get when panhandling they use to get abusive substances." It is also a well-known fact that MySpace is where the English language goes to curl up and die.
• Again on MySpace is a story from Bellevue about a woman pulling up next to someone in a 90s T-bird to ask for a few dollars for gas. Incredibly, she gives it to her. Another soft touch on MySpace, this one from Bothell, discusses karma and resisting the urge to judge. It's a nice little essay. A Capitol Hill MySpace blogger has responded to the P-I article too, and has a thoughtful position as well.
• A guy from North Dakota who moved here four months ago notices a post-Hempfest surge in panhandling. "They're like an annual locust - a plague on the city after the largest "protest-ival" is over," he says. "I'm not sure what bothers me more, the little kids in strollers at Hempfest or the leftover stoners." Being from South Dakota myself, allow me to say, "Welcome, brother."
• A quite lovely post on panhandling as an opportunity to practice compassion comes from a woman in San Fransisco. I think she kind of nails it. This from her post:
  

"i saw a woman tonight in front of walgreens on polk street. she was a slight pile of dirty clothes with a head and tiny feet in socks sticking out. she was sobbing, begging, lamenting. she had lost her shit, basically. her face looked so old and she had gray dirty hair, eyes swollen from crying and splotches. she was holding herself and rocking back and forth. i've been to that walgreens a million times and every time ignored the people begging out front. tonight i gave her about a couple of dollars in change. if a beer is going to make this night bearable for her, then i'm not going to deny her that. how many of us actually use our change anyway. every home i've ever visited has some kind of jar full of change. people stockpile it for years and then cash it in. most of us would not miss it."