This week, the Seattle City Council gave Nickelsville a move-out deadline of Sept. 1. Mayor Mike McGinn’s office has responded that, given the failure of the Council to pass legislation to enable an alternative site, they would enforce the deadline and help move willing Nickelodeons inside.
I don’t know what happens next, but if the past four years are any indication, my bet is on Nickelsville.
Getting 40 or 50 or 100 people indoors is a great thing, and every one of those people, I’m sure, deserves a lucky break, but it’s not going to mean the need goes away.
Here comes that number again: 2,736. People. All of them homeless in King County. Counted outside, after the shelters were filled, between the hours of 2 and 5 a.m. on Jan. 25, 2013. It was a day of rain and sleet, with a 5 mph wind and a mean temperature of 45 degrees.
That’s 2,736 unsheltered people, and obviously there are more.
So, Nickelsville is a place to stay for about a hundred of these people. Get them inside, and there’s another hundred people right behind them.
Here’s the thing that I’ve noticed about homeless people over the years. They don’t just conveniently lie down and die. Despite the various attempts, such as the Senate budget in Olympia, to kill them with neglect, they persist in their survival and do what they have to do.
When they come together in an organized community at places like Nickelsville, that is a rare and wonderful thing that is not easily surrendered.
The typical response when these issues arise is that tents are not the solution to homelessness. There is no “pathway” from tents to housing first.
Well, here’s the big secret. There isn’t always much of a pathway from shelter either.
The city’s “Role of Shelter” report describes a system where 26 percent of shelter-stayers have been there for at least six months and often much longer. They tend to be older and disabled, but not so mentally ill, addicted or otherwise challenged to be on the priority tier for Housing First.
Seattle’s human services department has directed shelters to focus more on moving these people through the system, so as to open shelter capacity for more short-term stayers.
While this makes sense, so far no real resources have been added, so it doesn’t mean much. I wish it did. Shelters are no place to live long-term, either.
The self-managed tent cities are doing the city a favor by absorbing demand on an overstressed system.
Not everyone needs a damn social worker. This idea — that one is either a compliant homeless person or service-resistant — is just a way of dismissing thousands of people as the undeserving poor. It sounds great, but it’s profoundly wrong.
The good news in all of this is that the mayor’s office has committed to keeping the city’s 115 winter “overflow” shelter beds open through the summer.
These were scheduled to close June 15.
When I talked to Deputy Mayor Daryl Smith, he said that he sees the people lining up three hours early outside City Hall for one of those 75 mats, even on nice days. No one had to convince the mayor’s office about the need. Now, King County needs to follow suit with their 100 overflow beds at the Administration Building. It’s the right thing to do.