Questions about city response to encampments? Discussion @ HPAC meeting Wednesday

| Delridge | Highland Park | Neighborhoods | West Seattle news

The neighborhoods for which HPAC serves as the community coalition – Highland Park, Riverview, and South Delridge – are also the West Seattle neighborhoods with the largest current concentration of encampments. So this Wednesday night (6:30 pm March 26 at Delridge Library) they will be discussing the city response. From the announcement:

We expect to have folks from SPD, the CARE team, and a discussion with a representative from the Unified Care Team. For those not familiar, they are tasked with doing direct outreach and intervention with our houseless and RV residents. We hope to learn more about their work, their workflow and response times and start a dialogue about more robust ways to bring help getting folks housed in the South Delridge area. While we know this is a citywide, even nationwide issue, we want to lean in as to why we have concentrations of illegal campers here and how we can work together to improve the situation.

The Citywide dashboard from 2024 Quarter 4 notes 2 tent and 3 verified RV sites contacted by UCT in Highland Park. It also gives a relational snapshot of where we are in a list of neighborhoods with unhoused residents. The numbers unfortunately do not reflect the reality what we see around us now.

If you are interested in taking action right away, a current opportunity to help out folks in need is via donation to the Westside Neighbors Shelter.

The library is at 5423 Delridge Way SW.

Kyle March 24, 2025 (8:13 pm)

I don’t think I can attend but maybe someone can bring up that it is the same RVs for over 2+ years. Nothing will change if there are not real consequences. And those consequences should be different the 1st time vs. the 20th time, but Seattle isn’t keeping track of encounters/citations to the same RVs. If you keep giving someone the same choice of move 1 block away or accept help with housing/getting clean and the past 20 times they chose to move one block away what do you think will happen on the 21st time? There is a difference between compassion and enablement.

Solongdelridge March 25, 2025 (4:54 am)

What compassion?
- Kyle March 25, 2025 (8:35 am)
  
  Bring allowed to park indefinitely with no risk of a tow, dump trash on the corner in the neighborhood for 2+ years? Denying services and help 20+ times? Is it okay forever?
  - Jake March 25, 2025 (12:34 pm)
    
    Need safe public RV spots, and public housing Kyle, so it’s not “right” to ignore a growing houseless problem. Many people recently laid off and more people in Seattle are one paycheck away from being houseless.
    - Kyle March 25, 2025 (2:54 pm)
      
      I agree none of this is right, it’s a mess. To be clear, this is a systemic problem with the same RVs for over two years so this isn’t some new ‘down on their luck’ recently laid off’ scenario. Would love at least one safe RV lot and more transitional housing solutions. However, even those will likely and should have folks working on sustainable long term housing solutions and there should be consequences if they repeatedly decline those options in favor of continuing to dump trash and live in the right of way.

KayK March 24, 2025 (10:48 pm)

Thanks for noting your concerns Kyle.

GC March 25, 2025 (11:01 am)

So agree Kyle. It is not compassionate to continue to allow this way of life for them or nearby neighbors whom also have to live with the consequences of this.

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