‘We’re here to stay’: Activists continue to block removal of Seattle homeless camp

City workers were scheduled to remove a homeless camp near Seattle City Hall on Sunday. Now three days later, local advocates have continued to prevent those efforts from moving forward.

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The camp is located on Fourth Avenue between James and Columbia, where the city posted a notice of the upcoming removal last Friday. After the notice was posted, activists with a group known as Stop the Sweeps Seattle organized mutual aid volunteers to “show up and push back” on Sunday, holding the area for hours and refusing to allow city workers in to remove tents.

The group maintained its presence Monday and Tuesday, vowing to continue blocking the attempted removal until campers are offered assistance.

“We’re here to stay, and we’re not really going to leave until these folks here get the housing and services that they deserve,” one of the group’s advocates said in a speech delivered on Sunday.

Over the weekend, shelter referrals were not offered for the Fourth Avenue removal. In days since, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office has expressed that while the city aims to “do its best to offer shelter as available through the City’s HOPE Team and the efforts of the (Regional Homelessness Authority), we cannot allow tents and other structures to remain in the right of way if they are causing an obstruction or presenting a public health or safety risk.”

“Under the City’s existing procedural rules, there is no requirement for offers of shelter when an encampment is creating an obstruction,” a spokesperson for Harrell noted.

Encampments that aren’t causing obstructions are subject to a 72-hour removal notice, and must have outreach workers present to offer shelter and services. But as Seattle’s Human Services Department revealed in 2020, the city has frequently adopted a broad definition regarding what it defines as an obstructive camp. At the time, it estimated that 96% of removals were not subject to the outreach and 72-hour notice requirements.

Clearing camps out of public rights of way was also a prominent plank in Harrell’s campaign platform, having ramped up removals since he took office. The city estimates that nearly a dozen encampments have been removed as of mid-February.

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Others in city hall have touted programs like JustCARE as alternative solutions to addressing Seattle’s downtown homeless encampments, focused on outreach work designed to offer quick temporary housing and wraparound services that make people living in encampments more inclined to accept shelter and services.

JustCARE made its debut in June of 2021, when 33 people who had been living on the street near Third Avenue and Pike Street were voluntarily moved into available homeless shelter spaces. Of those, 14 were placed into tiny homes through the city’s HOPE Team, while another 15 to 17 were moved into hotels run by JustCARE partners. A subsequent clearance of an encampment at First Avenue and Yesler Way in November resulted in all 31 residents voluntarily accepting offers of shelter.

A separate initiative announced last week by Mayor Harrell will use $10 million in donations from local companies like Amazon, Starbucks, and Microsoft to fund a team of 30 outreach workers operating within the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, tasked with providing homeless campers end-to-end services to get them into permanent housing. That said, the initiative also necessitates the need for hundreds of new permanent supportive housing units, and does not provide additional funding toward that end.

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