Maybe Start a Betting Pool?

Who is going to blink first - Mayor Jenny Durkin or Board President Chandra Hampson? 

I ask because the homeless situation in Seattle seems to be escalating so what of the homeless encampment at Broadview-Thomson K-8?

- A woman was attacked at Carkeek Park by a man with a knife about a week ago and managed to flee. Police found the man who said he lived in a homeless encampment nearby and was coming down off using meth.

- On Monday, a homeless man was shot and killed outside his tent at the encampment at Cowen Park (which is very close to Roosevelt High). 

Now none of this happened at the Broadview-Thomson encampment but there are many examples of issues that have happened at that encampment.

(To state - I do not think homeless people are necessarily criminals. But I think when you have people in more or less desperate situations and who may have mental health problems because of variety of issues, there might be better places for them to be than next to an elementary school.)

What we have heard from Board members Chandra Hampson, Liza Rankin and Zachary DeWolf is a “demand” for the City not to sweep this encampment until there are homes for its residents. Hampson said she wanted SPS to be “an institution” that acts as it speaks. That’s great but what is their solution? Crickets.

And what about the silence from Superintendent Brent Jones? What is the district’s stand?

Meanwhile, school will be ending soon. And summer typically has more crime than other times in the year. Does anyone at SPS think this encampment will shrink? 

Here’s the latest from Durkan via Publicola (bold mine):

At a press conference on federal recovery funding last Thursday, Mayor Jenny Durkan was asked what she plans to do about the encampment on school district property near Broadview Thomson K-8. 

Durkan spun the question on its head: Since the tents are on school district property, she said, it’s up to the school district to not only remove the encampment and store people’s tents and property but to “stand up their own process” similar to the city’s for doing outreach and connecting people to services, housing, and shelter. 

“We’re working with them so that they can stand up their own process, and I hope that they are able to take that approach,” Durkan said. “I think that if they follow what we’ve been able to do in many places using city properties and city resources, that you can do very compassionate-based outreach and you can also move any encampment that has a particular public health or safety risk.”
Durkan has refused to provide city assistance, outreach, trash cleanup, or other resources to the encampment on the grounds that it is on school district property, not the city’s. 

The school district property is directly next to a Seattle Parks property where other people also live in tents. Staying on the other side of this invisible line has protected encampment residents from city-led sweeps, but it has also meant that the city has refused to help the people living there. The city’s HOPE team (formerly the Navigation Team) has exclusive access to a large percentage of the city’s limited number of enhanced shelter beds and hotel rooms, which they offer to residents of encampments the city is about to sweep.

The mayor noted, without using his name, that former Seattle Finance and Administrative Services director Fred Podesta—who helped establish the city’s rules for removing encampments—is now head of operations at the school district, and suggested that the district, as a “a billion-dollar organization with funds and resources,” ought to be able provide the same kind of services as the city and remove the encampment.

“ school district needs to step up, and we are there to help and assist them, but they cannot shirk their obligations and duties for school properties,” Durkan said.

Of course, the purpose of the school district’s billion-dollar budget is to educate the city’s 54,000 public school students, not to pay for human services or encampment sweeps.

No kidding to that last statement. It’s not serious talk to believe that somehow the district would be able to do this on their own. 

But with both sides fairly entrenched (and Durkan the lamest of lame ducks so why should she care?), what is the answer for both the school and the neighborhood?