Time to fold up the tents

Time has come for Tent City to recycle its floor pallets, put away its big plastic storage tubs and fold its tents. The moment has passed for this occupying band of homeless advocates.

Instead of tallying its camp sites, the days of the program should be numbered. This confrontational tactic is consuming more resources, goodwill and political support than it can ever hope to bring to the challenge of sheltering poor people.

Thank you for what has gone before, but the real hope for progress is found in commitments by key relief organizations in King and Snohomish counties to end homelessness in 10 years.

Tent City's bureaucratic and legal tribulations have become its story. Run-ins with city halls in Bellevue, Bothell and Woodinville have long overtaken any political message about the invisibility of the poor and the urgency to house the destitute.

At the same time I am telling Tent City to scram, beat it and go away, I am deeply impressed by the generosity, physical labor and mental energy expended by religious groups and others to make these temporary encampments work.

My mind began to change about the utility of this effort while watching the city of Bellevue and a synagogue duke it out over the details of hosting an installment of Tent City. Way, way too much time, money and heartburn was going into a short-term solution.

These are exhausting, even brave, challenges for a faith community to embrace. Predictably, some members and lots of neighbors will be upset with what they fear might happen.

Tent City has succeeded because of the internal organization of camp members, the operating strictures laid out by city employees and the steady presence of local and county law enforcement — and the generous support of sponsoring groups. Then, in 60 or 90 days, the whole nomadic, anxiety-producing adventure starts all over again.

This is an idea that has turned into an industry unto itself. Thanks, but no thanks.

In Snohomish County, a rekindled plan to help individuals, families and children sleeping in the streets is called Everyone At Home NOW. Next door is the Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness in King County. Both share kindred points of view. One goal is to aggressively increase the amount of long-term and transitional housing available to the homeless.

Perhaps the most compelling part is a commitment to enhanced housing, which is agency-speak for coupling shelter with support services. Help people deal with the unemployment, substance abuse or mental illness that put them on a steep slide to sleeping in their cars or downtown doorways.

The city of Seattle is getting very serious about a welcome form of municipal tough love. Since May, the Downtown Emergency Service Center has run a city-sponsored facility, Connections, on Third Avenue. The homeless have a chance to clean up, get fed and regroup, but the help is offered only to those willing to embrace treatment programs to stabilize their lives.

Seattle has an admirable momentum. More low-income housing units are being built in 2006 and they are being linked to services for independent living.

Twenty-plus years ago, conservatives and liberals whooped and hollered to close down mental-health facilities and deinstitutionalize a lot of folks. One group seemed bent on pinching pennies and the other on liberating the inmates from snake-pit hell holes. Is that enough of a stereotypical shorthand?

Today, the hard-core of the homeless are fending off demons that need sustained attention. Society is not saving a cent when a tab is run on other social costs and law-enforcement expenses from having people stranded on the streets.

Ending homelessness in 10 years makes for a snappy letterhead, however improbable the goal. Being productive — from building more low-income shelters to reviving long-term care for the chronically mental ill — is the point. It is worth the investment and a deadline.

Quarterly skirmishes about the next site for Tent City are not worth the energy-sapping, goodwill-robbing, expensive overhead they represent.

Go away, please.

Lance Dickie's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is ldickie@seattletimes.com