Homeless encampment returns to Seattle

After 90 days camping on property owned by a Renton church, residents of the homeless encampment of Nickelsville returned to Seattle over the weekend.

Some 47 residents packed up their belongings at Bryn Mawr United Methodist Church, put them in rented moving vans and returned to the South Park-area site at Second Avenue Southwest and Highland Way Southwest. Their new encampment is on state Department of Transportation property, only about 100 yards from the city of Seattle property where some members of the camp were arrested and cleared from the land in September.

Founders of the encampment dubbed it Nickelsville to protest what they believe is a failure by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels to ease the homeless problem. Attempts to contact a spokesman for the mayor for comment Sunday were unsuccessful.

On the Nickelsville Web site, the group asked for phone calls of support to the governor and others in state government to allow them to stay on the property.

Nickelsville began in September when the campers first congregated at the site along Highland Way Southwest where King County plans to build a new jail. After being ordered to move, they went to Discovery Park. They again were ordered to move and by Oct. 10 they relocated to University Christian Church. Nickelsville has been beholden to churches ever since, staying on the property of at least three churches. Bryn Mawr had allowed the encampment to stay for 90 days.

But that time was up, so the campers — or Nickelodeons, as they call themselves — moved back to the grassy location surrounded by blackberries and alder. Concrete culverts dot the lot.

Efforts to contact a church spokesman late Sunday were not successful.

By Sunday afternoon, the aroma of shrimp gumbo and the hint of wood smoke drifted across the camp's hodgepodge neighborhood of dozens of tarp-covered tents on pallets.

The group back at the triangular South Park location near the proposed jail site is an organized encampment complete with rules, zoned areas for different uses and specific jobs for all parties who come to live there.

No sex offenders. No drinking. No drugs. That according to Bruce Beavers, 48, one of the people in charge of camp security. Quiet time is 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. There's a headquarters with information, an American flag and a mail box, should the U.S. Postal Service drop by. There is also a bulletin board with a long list of needed items, which includes everything from toilet paper to firewood and all kinds of batteries.

There's also a guard — everyone takes turns — that meets anyone entering the compound. It makes the residents feel safe.

"It's home," Madlyn, 55, said as she pulled back the tent flap to show an interior with bedding spread over air mattresses. "It's really comfortable."

She later sat beneath a blue-tarp tent, talking with her neighbors as her husband, Calvin, from Louisiana, cooked gumbo in a huge pot. The couple declined to give their last name.

She and her husband became homeless after losing their jobs. He was a welder, and she was a telemarketer. She's just been hired again but doubts she'll make enough to rent an apartment. "They ask first and last month's rent and all that," she said. "It's ridiculous!"

As her husband cooked, he nodded her way.

"There's my precious right there," he said.

At homeless shelters, couples often are segregated by gender, encampment residents said. Madlyn and Calvin decided they would rather stay at Nickelsville and be together.

He cooked on one of three barbecues sitting side by side in what serves as the communal kitchen. A burn barrel in the center of the camp provides warmth.

Toilets at the moment are in makeshift outhouses, with lye-filled 50-gallon drums to catch the waste, Beavers said, and there's no running water. They hope to get porta-potties.

Every time they move, the group gets smaller, he said. "We're about 50 percent below capacity."

But then, once a camp is established, the population begins to grow. It's better than sleeping under bridges, in doorways or bushes, Beavers said.

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com