Illegal freeway camps cost state $250K every year to clean up

You may have seen makeshift tents as you drive along I-5 through Seattle or the homeless camps under bridges, overpasses, and ramps.

So what is the state doing to clean these camps up and protect the highway infrastructure?

Dave McCormick, the Washington State Department of Transportation’s assistant regional administrator for maintenance, said the state spends $250,000 a year cleaning up illegal camps and 80 percent of those dollars are spent in the Seattle area. The crews remove about ten tons of garbage from the camps every month.

All that trash can make for dangerous and dirty conditions for workers inspecting the bridges and right-of-ways.

“The area is full of garbage or full of human excrement or full of needles. It’s not a safe environment,” McCormick said. “Unfortunately, that’s the work environment that we send our maintenance staff into.”

When the state does empty these camps, workers are protected by police escorts. Social service groups are also given a heads up so they can reach out to the homeless population, offering help or shelter information.
McCormick said workers have been assaulted and threatened while trying to do their jobs.

He said the state also spends another $250,000 a year cleaning graffiti and repairing damage.

Seattle police said a homeless man died Wednesday when his tent caught fire. He was sleeping under the HOV ramp from I-90 to I-5. The fire closed the ramp and so did the hours-long ramp inspection that followed. The fire didn’t do significant damage to the ramp, but many previous fires from homeless camps have.

Currently, the state is installing sheet metal barriers in the most popular homeless spots to try to prevent access, but McCormick said, “if someone really wants to get into an area, it’s certainly hard to keep them out.”