Feature
Nickelsville goes legit
Mayor's panel calls for permanent camp, 'safe zones' for homeless
Peggy Hotes has been with Nickelsville through more than a dozen moves the tent city has made in the past two years. A citizens panel appointed by Mayor Mike McGinn has recommended the city provide a permanent spot for the encampment.
Two years after they first put up tents in a South Seattle field, the homeless residents of Nickelsville got what they wanted Monday when a citizens panel appointed by Mayor Mike McGinn recommended the city provide land for a permanent encampment and stop displacing the homeless.
The ten-member panel, which included Real Change Executive Director Tim Harris, says that individuals sleeping on public property should not be forced to move along if they are not interfering with the rights of others and also called for creating “safe zones” for those sleeping outdoors or in cars.
It’s an acknowledgment, human service providers and homeless advocates on the committee say, that the city does not have enough shelter for the nearly 2,000 people who sleep on the street. Fully implemented, the recommendations would reflect a major policy shift that Nickelsville and homeless advocates have been seeking from McGinn to reverse the park ejections and encampment sweeps that were standard under predecessor Greg Nickels.
“Basically you’ve decriminalized homelessness and recognized that we’re part of the community, too,” Nickelodeon Roger Mathis told panel members at City Hall after their vote on the recommendations. “Kudos to the mayor and his administration. This is everything that we were really hoping for.”
That will only be true, some homeless advocates say, if the mayor’s office can establish a permanent site before Nickelsville must move again and before the Seattle City Council, which is largely opposed to the idea of a permanent encampment, gets involved. Seven of the council’s nine members, a council staffer wrote in an Aug. 6 e-mail obtained by Real Change, wanted the encampment policy panel to focus on permanent housing consistent with the county’s 10-Year Plan to End to Homelessness, “not on measures such as an encampment.”
Deputy Mayor Darryl Smith told the panel Monday that there’s no way the mayor’s office can move forward without the council’s help. But he said he would move on the recommendations as quickly as possible, including e-mailing a list of potential sites to committee members this week to get their help on identifying a site that will work.
After that, he said, the mayor’s staff will write and issue a formal Request for Proposals to find an entity that can manage the Nickelsville site
Comments
great, now the heroin junkies dont have to move ever again….right now there are heroin needles in the “port a potties” at the university sight .. and there a 6 drug dealers who sell on the university ave….then hide out on church property (nickellsville)
ever see a homeless person pick up cigarette butts in the gutter , take them back and break them up and roll another cigarette out of the tobacco unsmoked (right on the only dinner table in the common area), then have another junkie dig into the coffee can sized ash tray for the left over cigarette butts (snipes) ,all while people are trying to eat thier food.. ? the ashes are floating around and landing on peoples foods…
no one washes ther hands with real soap and real water each day . but they touch thier foods and others foods ..
there is constant diahreeaa in the shitters…its literallly a modern sanctioned SLUM!
never do you get healthy foods.. its all expired pork products…fuck hole central revolt in the rental!!! those who are senority claim rights to smoking over every thing else..i have lung problems from breathing second hand smoke.. i was told i could leave if i didnt like it!!!!
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