1:59 PM: Signs like that one, posted along the streets on the West Seattle side of the 1st Avenue South Bridge, announce a plan to sweep the area’s sprawling encampments next week. The notices list the dates as Monday through Thursday; no-parking signage in the area is for a much-longer period, Monday through April 18th.
As we’ve been reporting, a sweep/cleanup has long been planned in this area, where Southwest Precinct police say they’ve recovered more than 100 stolen cars. They also said sweep dates were set a few months ago but the plan was suddenly shelved. A city Unified Care Team member told the Southwest Precinct Crime Prevention Council last month that plans were moving ahead, in collaboration with agencies including WSDOT, since most of the area is theirs. We noted WSDOT-vested workers talking with people under the bridge when we went through:
Also notably, when we sent a question about this to our usual city contact this morning, it was forwarded to a WSDOT spokesperson for response. James Poling replied, “This site has been posted with a 72-hour notice. Those who are living onsite have been matched with a housing resource that works for them,” also noting that this response was “on behalf of our partners with the city, KCRHA and outreach partners onsite.”
P.S. Thanks to Lola for the tip on this via a comment; she mentioned Parking Enforcement seen in the area today – while there were none in evidence when we looked, we did note the telltale orange tag on one roadside RV.
5:42 PM: WSDOT’s Poling answered our followup questions – explaining for one that “the WSDOT employee in a vest was posting the 72-hour notice along the site. Beyond that task, WSDOT will not have a presence onsite until site cleanup begins.” Also, regarding outreach, Poling says, “Speaking on behalf of our partner agencies regarding the following, an outreach field team worked several weeks matching individuals who were living on the site with appropriate housing placements, and 30 individuals have since moved inside.”
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