“Because we believe a public health and safety emergency exists,” reads the City Council’s letter to Mayor McGinn, “we ask this plan be developed and implemented — and Nickelsville closed — by September 1, 2013.” Dated June 10 and printed on recycled paper, the letter’s reference to a plan gets ahead of itself a bit. The signatories — the entire Council except for Mike O’Brien and Nick Licata — have instead requested the city’s department of human services to come up with said plan, and to make it one that features “outreach and engagement services.”
Mayor McGinn has said he will comply with the timeline. Nickelsville was notified of the eviction notice, the campers told The Stranger, when TV crews showed up to ask for their reaction.
The peremptory tone, and language of emergency, are new to the Council. In 2010, the PubliCola headline was “Council Members to Mayor: Slow Down on Nickelsville,” as Mayor McGinn sought to relocate the self-organized encampment of homeless people. Months later, in April 2011, the Council’s Richard Conlin was still somehow arguing that in fact the Council could “move forward and meet the needs of homeless individuals with greater speed by implementing alternatives other than the Mayor’s plan.”
That greater speed was not evident when, in November 2012, a flooded, rat-infested Nickelsville made television nightly news. Later this spring, Nickelsville again made the news as residents battled with what they claimed were drug-dealing interlopers.
“No one wants simply to displace campers,” goes the letter, whose sole clearly articulated objective is to displace campers. Otherwise, it refers to emergency shelters (which for many of the campers, homeless for years and proud of their limited possessions, would be step backwards) and permanent housing, of which there is too little available to accommodate Nickelsville residents, even if they were granted priority. Nick Licata’s proposal that the city manage the encampment went nowhere, with neither the greater Council nor Nickelsville.
Like the Council, Nickelsville is also run by people wedded to the warm glow of consensus in areas they’ve proven little competence in. And, like the Council, Nickelsville’s first concern is its self-preservation (thus their pushback to ceding any control to the city). Given that the Council has added nothing new to the equation, the likelihood is that Nickelsville will this fall be making its 18th move since 2008.
“I don’t know what happens next, but if the past four years are any indication, my bet is on Nickelsville,” writes Real Change‘s Tim Harris. He means “surviving,” not necessarily “winning.”
Harris tries to give some context, because this isn’t really about the Nickelsville 100, but a much larger number: 2,736 “[c]ounted 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.” Those are all numbers missing from the Council’s letter.
For their part, the Council mentions they allocate more than $30 million each year on programs and services for the homeless. This week alone they voted to add $50,000 to the Fresh Bucks program, which doubles the value of food stamp benefits when used for groceries at Seattle farmers markets. (In its pilot project version, Fresh Bucks had seven farmers market participants; now it will expand to all Seattle farmers markets.)
