Should Seattle follow suit of surrounding cities in banning public camping?

By Nick Blume Mar, 11 2021

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SEATTLE-- Once a clean area, accommodated by fine dining, beautiful Puget Sound, and

the magnificent Pike Place Market is now home to thousands of homeless campers.

On any given day, you will find numerous tents all over downtown, including the residential areas surrounding. It is swarmed by public campers who legally have the right to camp freely in Seattle's public areas and parks. What's concerning is the growing number of tents and people camping in the streets each year in the public spaces that used to be cleared.

In 2020, an estimated 11,751 homeless people were found living in the streets or homeless shelters throughout King County. Cities near Seattle, such as Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, and most recently Mercer Island, have implemented ordinances to ban public camping. These laws were designed to ban public camping in parks and streets and ultimately redirect campers to shelters and places elsewhere.

Whether or not King County Officials aim to develop a similar plan as surrounding cities, the growing number of public campers continues to stand out to residents in different areas.

"I often go on runs throughout the university district and almost always pass by a large number of homeless tents along the way, said Dominic Golob, a Seattle resident and student living near the University of Washington. "In addition, I drive Uber Eats almost exclusively in the U-district area and see these camps on almost every delivery trip."

For Golob, it's not an issue that there are public campers in his community, instead, he fears a matter of protection.

"I believe the community is primarily affected through feeling safe due to an overpopulation of public campers," said Golob. "Almost anytime I walk outside my house, I will see public campers. While this doesn't directly affect me, it harms businesses and those who cannot effectively protect themselves. In addition, multiple break-ins and break-in attempts have occurred in recent months from the homeless population."

Although it's hard to correlate crime and homelessness, there have been numerous burglaries, thrift, vandalism, and assault cases in the recent months around the University of Washington.

Map of various crimes and their locations near the University of Washington and Montlake from Spotcrime.com. The crimes on the map include assault, trespassing, burglary, battery, and theft.

Greg Blume, an employee at the Blume Co. located in Eastlake, had to hire a security guard to ensure homeless people are not camping on the property.

"A few months after the pandemic hit, our company noticed more and more homeless people stationed on the outskirts of the property," said Blume. Instead of calling the police, which we didn't feel would be effective, we hired a security guard to keep people from camping on our property."

Seattle's homelessness issue is not an easy task to solve. Opening more homeless shelters are costly, and criminalizing public camping would further overload our prisons and not help these people get back to their feet.

The city of Bellevue has seemingly coped with the transition to eliminate all public camping since the city council passed Ordinance 6385 Nov. 20, 2020.

"There are many homeless shelters in Bellevue. Some for women and children, less for men, even less for families together, which is too bad," said Michele Schmidt, a Bellevue resident.

"I've volunteered for and donated to many nonprofits that donate funds and supplies to the homeless and in need. The churches do an excellent job at organizing for the homeless and help their members before they become homeless. People that live in organized homeless housing are identified in some sort of way, so it's safer than a Homeless Camp near my home."

Schmidt's concern is how Seattle will deal with the large population of public campers all over the city.

"The way we handle aid to help federally, state, county, including the welfare system has to be completely revamped to lessen enabling and fraud," said Schmidt. "I went into Social Work to help people in need, but I soon learned that the system that's set up doesn't help the most deserving in a constructive way- so sad. People that want help and are willing to contribute should have a way to get a second chance at stability."

Homelessness and the public camping issue in Seattle will continue to grow unless there is a proper focus on reducing the problem at hand. Restructuring how we aid homeless people is a start, and working on getting people back on their feet and into a home.

For more information about public camping or how you can help, visit Seattle Homelessness Outreach or Seattle.gov.