Quakers close down homeless camp on their University District property

On a recent Wednesday night, a half-dozen Quakers sat in silence in a small library and felt the Inward Light guiding them to what they had to do — close down a homeless camp that for years had operated outside their University District building.

As luck — or providence — would have it, their fears that the encampment had grown too dangerous were confirmed that night when Seattle police responded to a fight outside the building and arrested a homeless man with a switchblade and crack pipes.

The next night, some of the dozen or so homeless regulars returned as usual to sleep under the eaves of the building. All seemed calm.

But that Friday morning, Quakers bearing coffee, doughnuts and bagels told those still around the building on Ninth Avenue Northeast and Northeast 40th Street to leave — for good. They posted notices that Seattle police would be patrolling the area and that trespassers would be prosecuted.

The eviction — which the Quakers will discuss at a meeting tonight — came as a surprise to some, including the homeless.

"It was the wrong decision," says Stanley Rambud, 51, who sleeps in a car across from the meeting house, just north of the University Bridge.

But to the peaceful and practical Quakers, it was clear that some within the camp had become a potential danger to others, including children in a preschool that rents space in the Quaker building.

Closing down the camp, the Quakers said, seemed the best way to reconcile their compassion for people in need with their belief in personal accountability and opposition to violence.

"As Quakers, we recognize there is that of God in each person," says Warren Ostrom, the group's clerk and spokesman. But "there was a change in our welcome" when the homeless repeatedly broke rules. Ostrom emphasized there was no force involved in sending the homeless away.

Still, some worry about the fate of individuals they had come to know.

Seattle origins in 1930s

Founded in mid-17th century England, the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, have a long tradition of pursuing their Christian faith in practical ways — such as tending to the needs of the mentally ill and others in need and educating young people about alternatives to joining the military.

Quakers refer to their congregations as meetings and their churches as meeting houses. The estimated 105,000 Quakers in the U.S. fall into two main branches: about two-thirds belong to meetings led by a pastor, and the rest to "unprogrammed" meetings that worship silently without clergy.

In the Seattle area, Quakers formed a group in the 1930s that eventually became the University Friends Meeting. Its members, numbering about 200, most college-educated, come to worship from around the region, forming the largest unprogrammed meeting in the Northwest.

Individual members began reaching out to the area's homeless in the mid-1990s.

But there were rules: While on Quaker property, the homeless had to refrain from drugs and alcohol, not engage in sex or violent behavior, and be gone during business hours.

Corey Beals, assistant professor of philosophy and religion at a leading Quaker college, George Fox University in Oregon, said that historically, when standards of behavior are violated willfully, Quakers have dismissed members in hopes they would change their ways.

And in this case, said meeting member Martha Lindley from Beacon Hill, there was ample warning. "The folks who had been staying there had to have a level of accountability, and they had been told that consistently," she said.

Geoff Cole, 70, a Wallingford pacifist who began attending the meeting five years ago, says he was drawn to the Quakers in part by their lack of naiveté in approaching social issues.

"They know that some people are going to do bad things, and they don't get suckered very often," Cole says. "It's sort of a tough-love kind of thing."

It started gradually

On any given night in Seattle, at least 1,600 homeless people sleep on the streets, and in the University District, churches have traditionally helped feed, clothe and shelter them.

That a homeless encampment ever got started on the Quaker premises was largely due to the actions of individual Quakers — and not by a formal invitation from the meeting itself, said Ostrom.

"We never decided to provide a place for homeless people to sleep," he said. "They began to sleep around our building, just like homeless people sleep around a lot of buildings in the city."

Quakers worship on the top floor of their two-story building, with regional offices of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a social-justice group, and the preschool renting space on the basement floor.

The AFSC's space abuts the areas in which the homeless had slept, and so employees like office manager Sheri Day became acquainted with them.

Over the years, a series of caretakers who helped maintain the Quaker property had persuaded the meeting to provide a portable toilet nearby as well as a place to shower and do laundry on Saturdays.

In turn, what started as a temporary spot became more established as the homeless put up tarps. Day said the tarps made it easier for some to conceal their behavior — and to break the Quakers' rules.

At the same time, bushes around the building were not being trimmed regularly, and became littered with syringes and other trash.

The building's other tenant took notice.

For 23 years, Lake Union Preschool operated in the building, moving out in the summer of 2004 for unrelated reasons, says owner Esta Modian. As the homeless camp grew, she recalled, her staff picked up trash in the yard before school started. A teacher once found a used syringe.

A new preschool opened in the building last year, and its owner — who didn't return several calls seeking comment — voiced concerns, members say.

"The meeting needs to grapple with whether their commitment to providing a welcoming and stable area for the homeless is a compatible fit with leasing building space to a preschool," Modian said.

"A responsibility"

The meeting ratcheted up its oversight of the rest area last winter.

"We had not been paying attention as we should have been, and that's when we said we've got a responsibility," said Lindley.

She and other volunteers began visiting the homeless in the evening and waking them up in the morning to make sure they left before the preschool opened.

The volunteers grew alarmed by the nightlife and warned the homeless they would lose their privileges if they didn't police themselves.

Lindley was among those who arrived that Friday at 6:30 a.m. to tell the homeless they could not come back.

"There is that of God in every person, but God has limits, too, and boundaries," she said. She noted that one homeless man who left angry that day has since found a job and a place to stay.

"Sometimes it can be a good thing to be disrupted because then it makes you make some changes."

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com

Information in this story, originally published October 13, was corrected October 13. An earlier version of this story mentioned a man named Gene, saying he seemed to suffer from obsessions and compulsions and describing the manner in which he packed his belongings. Due to an editing error, the information was misattributed to Joyful Freeman. Further, Gene said he does not suffer from obsessions and compulsions. The inaccurate information has been deleted from the story.