Tent City 4 in Bothell: 'These people are survivors'

Seattle Times reporter Nick Perry and photographer Brian Cassella spent two days and two nights this week living in Tent City 4 in Bothell.

By Nick Perry
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

BRIAN CASSELLA / THE SEATTLE TIMES A wedding celebration is in the works for Laura and Tony Stull, residents of Tent City 4. Leaders at Bothell's Emmanuel Presbyterian Church plan to treat the Stulls, who have been married for about a month, to the kind of ceremony they would want their own sons and daughters to have.

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But should they take their vows in front of admiring friends this summer, it won't be a routine wedding at Bothell's Emmanuel Presbyterian Church. Tony, 21, is a recovering crack addict and Laura, 18, still owns her glittering stripper clothes. The couple is living at Tent City 4, a temporary camp for the homeless that set up two weeks ago on land owned by St. Brendan Catholic Parish in Bothell.

Leaders at Emmanuel Presbyterian offered to treat the Stulls to the type of marriage ceremony they would want for their own sons or daughters, after the Stulls wondered aloud whether their recent union in a Florida courthouse could be "blessed."

The prospect of a camp wedding helped brighten a gloomy week at the tent city, when rain forced campers under a communal tarpaulin and turned earth to mud.

The wedding offer is also part of the mixed reception this new tent city — the first on the Eastside — has had since tents went up May 17. The camp has met with controversy and opposition from some, support and a steady stream of donations from others.

The camp was originally planned for a site on county land near the Brickyard Road Park & Ride south of Bothell. But it moved to St. Brendan after legal challenges and neighbors' opposition threatened to derail the earlier plan and the Rev. Lawrence Minder — the parish pastor — offered the church site. The camp will remain for 90 days while King County officials and advocates for the homeless work on a longer-term solution.

This week the focus was not weddings or weather as people huddled in urgent little groups throughout the camp. It was politics — camp politics.

	BRIAN CASSELLA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Laura Stull, 18, sorts through donated cosmetics and toiletries at the tent city. When she and Tony, 21, arrived last weekend, each had only enough possessions to fill a backpack.

The camp, which has previously checked for sex offenders, has been forced to meet demands from police and neighboring residents for criminal-background checks on its residents, a situation precipitated by two arrests made outside the camp last week. A sex offender was also discovered last week and barred.

Inside the tent city, tensions over how to discipline the camp's residents for procedural lapses and for not quickly taking care of warrants reached the boiling point during an emotional four-hour meeting Wednesday.

By the end of the meeting, at least five people had packed their bags and left, and the camp's organizer, Scott Morrow of homeless-advocacy group SHARE/WHEEL, had threatened to shut things down completely. While four of the campers who had left were back by yesterday, three other campers have been permanently barred — two for allowing a banned man back in to collect his belongings.

Many in the camp resent what they see as heavy-handed discipline. But Morrow said yesterday that all the tent city has to offer is its open and honest word.

"We are going to shut down before we violate that standard," he said.

	BRIAN CASSELLA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Tent-city residents, including Laura and Tony Stull (foreground), listen as camp organizer Scott Morrow speaks at the beginning of the community's weekly Wednesday meeting. Morrow is with homeless-advocacy group SHARE/WHEEL, which is sponsoring the tent city.

Minder, who was at the meeting and who is camping for the 90 days that the tent city is at St. Brendan, said the passion shows people care about the camp.

"These people are strong, they are resilient, they are survivors," he said. "They understand they can find solutions to the many, many problems they face."

A day begins in the camp

The day begins before dawn for many of the campers who are working heavy-labor jobs. A security guard whispers a wake-up call outside their tents at a prearranged time. Campers decided that was a better system than personal alarm clocks, which could disturb others who were still sleeping.

People take on security shifts in pairs all through the day and night, one of several duties campers must agree to before living at the tent city. Campers also maintain the well-stocked kitchen and the five portable toilets with a stand-alone wash basin.

	BRIAN CASSELLA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Resident Sue Bailes relaxes under a tarp, staying out of Wednesday evening's rain. Before coming to the camp, she lived in a car in a Bothell driveway.

Like the security detail, two coffeepots are on duty 24 hours. The coffee and something from the mountainous pile of donated muffins and pastries provides a quick breakfast for many. To shower, some residents travel to Seattle, while others use the nearby Northshore Pool. Churches have given each resident two shower tickets at the pool so far; otherwise it costs $2.

Campers have also been given some bus tickets from SHARE/WHEEL. A low-key black market has evolved for the tickets, and for $2 packets of cigarettes sold by a man who insists he is legitimately selling to members of his "Puff Club."

Tony and Laura Stull are up in time for 6 a.m. security duty. A Bothell police officer wanders up to ask the camp's population (about 55). Police are monitoring the camp from the outside 24 hours a day, sitting with Thermoses through the night and occasionally talking to passers-by or camp members.

An officer brings in donations left by a woman apparently too afraid to make the short walk up a slope to the tent city. A constant stream of local residents who do make the walk yields piles of clothes, bags of food, even an electric grill and a coin box fashioned from a coconut. The tent city is receiving so much that it plans to truck some stuff out to Tent City 3 in Seattle and to social-service agencies.

	BRIAN CASSELLA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Inside the camp's security tent, records are kept of shift changes, new arrivals to the camp and completed duties. Residents take turns on security shifts.

At the front office, the Stulls tease each other with rapid-fire taunts. Tony Stull said he ran away from foster care at age 14 and has led a nomadic existence since, sometimes robbing to feed his habit. He met Laura at an Orlando, Fla., shelter, and she insisted he get clean of drugs before continuing a relationship.

Laura Stull said she was in a drug-rehabilitation center in her teens and has bipolar disorder, but has not been able to afford medicine in a year. Both say they want to start regular jobs and begin saving for a future together.

"This is not me. This is not me," Laura Stull said. "I'm a preppy white girl used to being inside."

The couple ended up in Seattle after a friend stole most of their money in Orlando and they lost an apartment they had been staying in, they said. Before beginning a meandering hitchhiking trip, they spent the last of their money getting married. Then they tried unsuccessfully to find Laura's dad in Texas before continuing west.

The Stulls are like many in the homeless community who have left behind problems in some other place. But some staying at Tent City 4 are locals.

Sue Bailes was living in a car in a Bothell driveway when her boyfriend was locked up for driving under the influence, she said. She told a police officer she had no money and nowhere to go, so the officer dropped her off at the tent city.

	BRIAN CASSELLA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Tony Stull walks through a rainy Tent City early Wednesday morning. He and Laura had to be up for a 6 a.m. security shift. Police also monitor the camp.

She has a two-year college degree and has worked as a cashier and helped people with rental-housing assistance in New York, she said. But these days her bad teeth and appearance make it hard for her to find a job, she said.

One couple that stayed at the tent city for four days this week had with them a 1-year-old, Justin. Mom Tonya was pregnant.

"Most everyone has been cool, although some people don't like a baby crying," said Tonya, who did not want to give her last name, just before she and her husband found assistance to move into an apartment.

Sorting out problems

Most campers attended the Wednesday night meeting, from which the media were barred. When three women with outstanding warrants were asked to leave the camp until they sorted the warrants out, the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bothell stepped in and paid for the women to stay at a motel.

A man said he was sick of the arguing and was leaving permanently, while another woman decided to pay for her own motel room until tensions eased.

They seemed to be ebbing by yesterday.

"It's been a rocky couple of days," Morrow acknowledged.

Yet outside pressures remain. Bothell police want a list of everyone in the camp in order to run background checks, something SHARE/WHEEL argues would violate campers' constitutional right to privacy. It has countered with an offer for an independent third party to double-check the list of residents against known warrant lists.

And the city of Bothell is pursuing a lawsuit against St. Brendan over the tent city, with a hearing set for June 9 and 10 in King County Superior Court.

For the Stulls, there are more important things to think about than politics right now. Like finding a way to stop their tent from leaking. And planning for their big day.

Nick Perry: 206-515-5639 or nperry@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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