Homeless Camps - What’s Next?

Start with the trash

What can be done to clean up the camps?

The process used to decide what to do must involve the camp occupants; that invests them in the solution, creates buy-in and a sense of responsibility which we need to keep the camps clean once the initial work is complete.”

~ Pat Cole

It’s no secret that the homeless camps generate a lot of interest, frustration, concern, and a whole range of emotions from local folks.  Seems there are almost as many ideas of what to do about them as there are residents of Olympia. 

• Do we keep them as a show of our compassion and recognition of the economic forces that cause homelessness?
• Should we remove them as all we are doing is enabling and normalizing previously unacceptable behavior?
• Are the people in the camps down on their luck and victims of the forces of poverty, or are they freeloaders preying upon our sympathy and empathy?
• Are they mentally ill and unable to care for themselves, or maybe drug and alcohol addicted with few available resources for treatment or the ability to see they need help?
• And where does COVID-19 fit into this equation?

All of these scenarios have an element of truth to them.  There is quite a mix of people living in the camps, various reasons we have the camps, and no simple solutions to what to do about the any of this.  What also seems clear is that we will have homeless camps in our community for the near future. 

Olympia is a compassionate community and major service provider. There isn’t a clear consensus on what to do, there aren’t enough services to house the vast homeless population, and there are both legal and health-related obstacles preventing the removal of the camps.  On top of everything else the pandemic has saddled everyone with a new set of living requirements -- and that includes the camps. 

This population is highly susceptible so closing the camps can only exacerbate the difficulty in preventing transmission of the disease.  In addition, the moratorium on evictions comes into play; once the camps are established it doesn’t appear to be legal to close them. Olympia ran into that problem when they wanted to remove the RVs from Ensign Road, their attorney advised them that taking action would violate the moratorium on evictions.

The Garbage

One of the most troublesome aspects of the camps is the garbage and trash around them.  People are angry and there is a sense that nothing is being done about this. There are efforts being made to clean up the camps. There are a lot of people working on this as well as all the associated issues.  But we’re not keeping up, the current state of the camp cleanliness is not sustainable; it normalizes behavior that is unacceptable.  Additionally, what is increasing peoples’ frustration is that there is almost no written information on what is currently being done -- which makes it easy to believe that nothing is being done.  There are large plans addressing homelessness on-line but little or no written timely information on everyone’s efforts and nothing about cleaning the camps.

The budget for all homeless services in Olympia in 2021 is $2.4M which includes the $840k Home Fund.  This pool of money goes towards a small homeless services staff, the Mitigation Site which is the City’s managed camp downtown, the Youth Shelter, the Plum Street Village and other efforts including clean-up.  What’s been done so far includes:

• In the last month Olympia has delivered and collected eight large dumpsters at different camps.
• There are smaller dumpsters at most sites that get emptied regularly.
• Olympia contracted out some clean ups and has a “Clean Team” for downtown cleanup.

Plus there are volunteer organizations like Olympia Mutual Aid Partners who regularly do their own cleanings.

There is no simple answer to all the large issues of homelessness and many problems we can’t solve from here, but cleaning up the camps is something we absolutely can do locally; that is within our power if we have the political will and foresight to craft a workable solution. In talking to the City’s Home Fund Manager, Cary Retlin, (there is an Olympia Home Fund dedicated to homeless issues) he’s predicting Olympia might have to spend as much as $200,000 on cleanup this year.  Certainly we can do what a number of cities like Tacoma and Oakland are doing, trying innovative ways to clean their camps and keep them clean. 

Cleaning these areas will take a larger, more significant effort than what we have been doing so far, including a large initial cleanup and on-going management to ensure the areas remain acceptable.  It will require participation from all four jurisdictions, community and staff time, and from the people in the camps.  The process used to decide what to do must involve the camp occupants; that invests them in the solution, creates buy-in and a sense of responsibility which we need to keep the camps clean once the initial work is complete.

All of us love this area, enjoy living here, make Thurston County our home, create the community we want and the lifestyle that makes us comfortable. We all have a stake in what happens in and around the camps and we can craft a program that will work.  This is our home; we can do this.  We will do this. 

Pat Cole is a former member of Olympia's city council. As a private citizen he is developing plans to assist with efforts to clean up the homeless camps in Thurston County.