Sims is asked to ponder alternate tent-city report

By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Three members of the Citizens' Advisory Commission on Homeless Encampments yesterday gave the County Council their own report that challenged the commission's recommendation that camps be allowed on public or private land.

The dissenters, Shane Davies, Steve Pyeatt and Ron Swicord, said the 22-member commission had been "stacked" to support the tent-city concept. They said 13 of the 18 voting members "either make their living in the homeless industry, had long backgrounds in homeless advocacy or had hosted a tent city.

"It is doubtful that any single commissioner changed their pre-determined position on tent cities" based on public testimony or discussion within the panel, the dissenters said.

County Council Chairman Larry Phillips, D-Seattle, said that far from "stacking" the commission, the council had broadened its makeup to include dissenting voices.

"It's a tried-and-true method in politics that if you come out on the short end of decision-making you scream about the process," he said.

The County Council passed a motion requesting Sims to submit by Oct. 28 his proposed policies for siting and permitting tent cities.

The council unanimously passed an amendment by Kathy Lambert, R-Woodinville, asking Sims to consider the "alternative viewpoint" of the dissenters.

The council also asked Sims to submit a broader set of recommendations spelling out "how the county will take significant steps to help reduce homelessness," after a separate Committee To End Homelessness in King County finishes its work this fall.

The commission spent two months studying the pros and cons of tent cities after Bothell-area citizens objected to Sims' plan to put a homeless encampment next to the county's Brickyard park-and-ride lot.

The tent city instead opened on church property in Bothell and last month moved to a city-owned industrial area in Woodinville.
 
The commission, in its final report last month, concluded that tent cities are not a desirable long-term solution to homelessness and "are, at best, a short-term answer to the immediate crisis of individuals living on the streets, in the woods and elsewhere in our communities."

Thirteen of the 18 voting members supported tent cities on private land, and 11 endorsed use of public land.

Dissenter Pyeatt said 66 percent of homeless individuals have substance-abuse problems or are mentally ill.

"Those 66 percent really can't be addressed by a tent city. They really need to be addressed by a wrap-around of human services," he said.

Pyeatt was a leader of the citizen opposition to the Brickyard tent city. Davies, from the Maple Valley area, manages Windermere Real Estate's Maple Valley office, has worked with the Windermere Foundation and volunteers with Vine Maple Place, both of which deal with housing and homelessness. Swicord says he manages a sales organization for a Fortune 100 company and has been a fund-raising chairman for several local nonprofits, raising more than $1 million for them.

Councilman Phillips, who agreed better mental-health services are needed, said tent cities are in dire need of stopgap measure.

"If we're not going to do this on public land and we're not going to do this on private land, we're back to homeless encampments by onesies and twosies, with people living under bridges and in parks," he said.

In a briefing for the council's committee yesterday, the commission co-chairwomen Holly Plackett and the Rev. Bill Kirlin-Hackett said suburban cities haven't done enough to address the problem of homelessness.

Redmond police officers have been known to take homeless people in need to Seattle shelters, said former Redmond City Councilwoman Plackett. "That's totally unacceptable. I see a lot of work we have to do in our own cities."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com