Dear City Council Members,

The undersigned are writing in opposition to Mayor Harrell’s budget proposal to expand the inhumane practice of encampment sweeps. It is abundantly clear that our shelter system is not capable of keeping up with the current pace of sweeps, so it makes absolutely no sense to expand the city’s capacity to do more sweeps, even if the number of outreach workers on the ground is increased. Expanding the pace of encampment sweeps will only work against any efforts to expand outreach and get people inside. We know that because the outreach work that is happening now is already being disrupted by the horrific pace of sweeps under Harrell currently. We therefore entirely reject the increase in funds for encampment sweeps under any circumstances. If the city has extra money to put into combating homelessness, that money should go towards funding the services that will get us out of this crisis, NOT on sweeps.

With that said, we do support the idea of expanding outreach and building out the regional service model that most folks agree we need. Having more folks doing that coordinated outreach is a positive thing, but only if you do not increase the frequency of sweeps. Having more service providers doing outreach, but even maintaining the current aggressive pace of sweeps, will undo the efforts of that outreach. Outreach workers won’t actually be able to offer shelter or housing options that work for the folks they are connecting with, since those options will still be going to whoever is getting swept that day. For outreach workers to successfully place the people they connect with, we need to reduce the pace at which the city is sweeping encampments, and ultimately stop conducting sweeps entirely. The truth is that when we tie outreach to coercive measures like sweeps, where individuals must comply or face the consequence of organized state violence, it makes it far more challenging for service providers to actually build the trust needed to be the most helpful. It can also completely interrupt the process of bringing folks inside when service providers can no longer find their clients after they are displaced by a sweep.

Instead, we should expand outreach while also investing the millions of proposed dollars into standing up the non-congregate shelter options and deeply affordable housing– the resources that people actually want. We specifically  want to stress that we should be standing these non-congregate shelter options up in the more affluent neighborhoods that are most frequently calling for sweeps. If we have learned anything from the train wreck that has been the county’s recently abandoned effort to expand the shelter near the International District, it is that we can’t continue to concentrate our facilities in historically marginalized neighborhoods. The collective responsibility of providing the infrastructure needed to get out of this housing crisis should be shared equitably amongst all of Seattle’s neighborhoods. Additionally, this would mean that folks living outside in these more affluent areas wouldn’t be forced to move to the other side of the city, often severing them from their support networks, just to get a roof over their head and a door that locks. 

Standing up non-congregate shelter options really shouldn’t be that hard to do. There are currently dozens of fully constructed tiny houses sitting in a lot in the industrial district near Georgetown that are being guarded by security so people won’t move into them. Meanwhile, the city continues to sweep people daily, often saying there are no tiny houses available for them. If this city is able to move with incredible urgency to evict houseless folks from their encampments, then why can’t the same urgency be applied to opening those tiny houses up, staffing them with well-paid social workers, and moving people into them? We seem to have millions of dollars to hire more and more members of the sweep crew, as well as three new customer service reps just to listen to housed people complain about encampments. Why can’t we pay people living wages to provide support to the folks who need it the most?

Finally, we also support the use of these funds to expand hygiene and supportive services to folks who will have to continue living outside until we can stand up the needed infrastructure to shelter and house everyone. We appreciate the council members who have recognized that, if they are able to be responsive in real time to the surrounding housed community when it comes to things like cleanliness and safety concerns related to encampments, then it is in fact possible to satisfy those concerns without simply sweeping the encampment to another neighborhood, where the surrounding folks will likely have the same concerns. So we support investments in trash removal, hygiene stations that include bathroom and shower facilities, sharps containers, RV pump-outs, RV safe lots, and community-based, rapid de-escalation response. 

We hope that the council can recognize that these demands are made up of the best-practice responses to homelessness that have been effective here in Seattle and in other cities around the world. We expect our public funds to be used effectively on solutions that serve the public good and benefit everyone. The continued use of tens of millions of dollars annually to violently sweep our most vulnerable community members around the city, further traumatizing them and making it harder for them to exit homelessness, does not even remotely fit this basic criteria for the use of public funds. We expect far better and will remember the decisions that are made this budget season when it is time for the next election cycle.

Please do the right thing. Investing in services, not sweeps.

Signed,