Mercer Island may host tent city

Religious leaders on Mercer Island want to bring Tent City 4, a roving homeless encampment, to one of the state's most exclusive communities.

Go ahead, make your cracks.

The president of the Mercer Island Clergy Association has already started to hear them.

Bringing poor people to the affluent island could be "the joke of some late-night talk show," said Greg Asimakoupoulos, president of the association and senior minister at Mercer Island Covenant Church.

The island's religious leaders are serious about helping others, he said, and are ready to "push the boundaries" of their comfort zone in a community where the median home value last year was $721,453.

"We don't want to be viewed as the suburb of the city that's blind to the needs of people of metropolitan Seattle," he said.

Members of the association are now seeking "buy-in" from their congregants.

One of the churches could host the camp as soon as early 2008, Asimakoupoulos said.

Bruce Thomas, camp adviser, said camp residents, who are now staying at Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Bellevue, would like to come even sooner than that.

"We don't have a place to go in November, and it would sure be nice" to go to Mercer Island, he said.

The clergy association's members unanimously agreed to invite Tent City 4 to the island a couple weeks ago, though they'd discussed the idea for more than a year and have met with city officials and with the homeless advocacy group SHARE/WHEEL, the camp's sponsors.

The encampment, which currently has 80 people, has moved around the Eastside since the spring of 2004, typically staying about 90 days.

Anticipating that it would eventually come to Mercer Island, city staffers created a draft temporary-use permit based in large part on advice gleaned from the experiences of other host communities.

Londi Lindell, who was Mercer Island's city attorney at the time the draft permit was created and is now deputy city manager, said city officials decided to collaborate with the clergy association and SHARE/WHEEL, rather than fight to keep a homeless camp out, as some cities have done.

"The litigation approach [to Tent City] has not been successful," she said.

So far, Asimakoupoulos has heard some concern from church-run preschools on the island, but religious leaders are working to assure them that Tent City's residents aren't dangerous, he said.

Mercer Island Police Chief Ed Holmes said for the most part, Tent City 4 has been a "nonissue" for public safety in other communities.

Should Tent City come to Mercer Island, police would "try to get to know the residents," Holmes said.

"Even though it's temporary, they're still residents of Mercer Island."

Amy Roe: 206-464-3347 or aroe@seattletimes.com