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FOLLOWUP: Sweep under way at encampment east of 35th SW

April 15, 2026 10:59 am
|      68 COMMENTS
 |   Safety | West Seattle news

(WSB photos)

Back on Monday, we reported on the city notices posted to warn people to clear out of the encampment east of 35th, from the stadium to SW Brandon, by 9 am today, because of sweep plans. We just went over to check, and crews are indeed there now. We saw them from 35th/Edmunds (above) to Rotary Viewpoint Park (1st photo below) to the future dog park on the south side of the stadium lot (2nd photo below).

The encampment was reported to have extended into the woods to the east, and has been the site of trouble, most recently an assault that injured three people, with two hospitalized in critical condition, and an overdose death last week. As for the people who were camping there, when we went through a little while ago, people with filled carts on wheels lined the sidewalk on the north side of the stadium driveway. We’ll be checking with the city later in the day regarding how many people they contacted at the site. Also note, the outside northbound lane of 35th is currently coned off because of vehicles related to the sweep.

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68 Replies to "FOLLOWUP: Sweep under way at encampment east of 35th SW"

  • Mike April 15, 2026 (11:09 am)
    Reply

    Good, it was getting out of control.  

  • Jake April 15, 2026 (11:24 am)
    Reply

    This did nothing. People are still out on the streets. Sweeps are stupid, shame on Katie for continuing cruelty of Harrell’s regime. 

    • Paul April 15, 2026 (12:11 pm)
      Reply

      What do you suggest should be done?  These people feel that parks are their homes, causing the parks to become unavailable for people to use.  The ongoing crime from the majority of the camps is out of control.  It is also clearly illegal to “camp or live” in a park, city ordinance.  Why should all of the neighbors be subjected to the ongoing crime at this spot?  I am always open for solutions, but I have yet to see one provided by anyone that makes sense.  

      • Jon April 15, 2026 (12:38 pm)
        Reply

        Well said! And it’s not as if these people are just living there staying out of the way They’re blatantly out in the open they’re trashing the place cutting down trees and doing a green space damage that will take years to recover

        • wsres April 15, 2026 (5:19 pm)
          Reply

          Yes! Green space damage any of us would be fined for. The people living there need help, or need to be forced into rehab. I am troubled by how we show our youth that it is okay to let our community be destroyed and drug abusers to rot in front of our eyes and do drugs on the sidewalks and in our parks. Three times in the past year I have called 911 because I wasn’t sure if a person laying on a sidewalk (with drug paraphernalia around them) was alive or dead and I was too afraid to get close to them to possibly help because they may have fentanyl on them that could make me or my dog that I was walking sick. Our city leaders need a different/better plan. 

    • Melissa April 15, 2026 (12:16 pm)
      Reply

      Absolutely. It’s a washing machine for these folks. Traumatizing and accomplishes nothing.

      • Mike April 15, 2026 (12:39 pm)
        Reply

        The Pearl clutching is getting old! We can’t let these people just trash the parks

        • Derek April 15, 2026 (4:59 pm)
          Reply

          The pearl clutchers are the ones going the other direction on this, what do you mean 

    • Anne April 15, 2026 (1:10 pm)
      Reply

      Yeah it did something -it moved the meth & other drug  smokers & dealers out-it offered services to folks-which I hope many accepted. Every time in last month or so that we’ve gone by there & the bus shelters on Alaska we’ve seen drug deals happening-drugs  being taken , folks urinating & defecting. Folks passed out in the benches in the bus shelters. Garbage being tossed over the bank or just left out to rot. As I said I hope many accept the services that are offered. 

      • 4thammendment April 15, 2026 (11:10 pm)
        Reply

        I was there, they didn’t make one offer. There’s barely 12 beds available any given day and most people living in camps don’t have id or other documents they need to be nominated in coordinated entry. 

    • Sam April 15, 2026 (8:36 pm)
      Reply

      Definitely shame on Katie for continuing the cruelty 

      • JunctionResident April 16, 2026 (9:12 am)
        Reply

        Consequences aren’t cruelty. One could argue enabling this behavior and letting it fester is cruelty. There’s nothing compassionate about not sweeping parks and letting them live outside, openly engage in drug use, and trash public parks without consequence.

      • Pookie April 17, 2026 (1:22 pm)
        Reply

        Not Cruel. Being a human in a society has boundaries which these drug addicts refuse to follow. Its not “compassion” to sit by and watch someone waste away in a park because someone from the “Stranger” said it is “freedom.”

  • Marcus April 15, 2026 (11:38 am)
    Reply

    Time for manditory housing, manditory treatment and mandatory rehabilitation. The ones who want to be productive contributors will take the deal and the others will flee the city. Let’s try and help these people to a fresh start.

    • jsparra April 15, 2026 (12:12 pm)
      Reply

      Exactly, that’s compassion! Helping, not enabling!

    • Niko April 15, 2026 (12:35 pm)
      Reply

      Completely agree! The “service-resistant” excuse needs to stop

    • Anne April 15, 2026 (1:16 pm)
      Reply

      Mandatory- but can you actually legally force someone to accept drug treatment ? What if they don’t want to stop -we just lock them up in jails-institutions-hospitals & force pills down their throats?  Don’t get me wrong – I do think  this is the only  kind of help that will actually help some folks-but is it legal? 

      • Marcus April 15, 2026 (3:36 pm)
        Reply

        I wrote “those who take the deal”!  And just jail the other ones who are doing drugs and breaking any law. They will eventually flee the city.

      • Jordan April 15, 2026 (3:50 pm)
        Reply

        Here’s what’s happening right now in the real world. Have a friend who is a judge. He told me he had a woman addicted to fentanyl appear before him recently who looked exactly how you would expect. When she learned she was going to jail for violating, she went nuts. It took three officers to restrain her and they had to lift her off of her feet to remove her from court. She was not in her right mind. She detoxed the hard way in jail for 30 days. Cold turkey. She reappeared in court before my friend and she looked and acted like a completely different person. She broke down crying and thanked the judge for sending her to jail. She said it was the only way she was going to change her life and she needed to leave King County because there is too much fentanyl here. That’s where we are. 

        • IDC9 April 15, 2026 (11:08 pm)
          Reply

          This goes to show that jail is the right place for some (not all, but some) of these people to be forced to reckon with themselves and decide to make a change. I hope the woman the Judge told you about is doing well now.

    • B April 15, 2026 (9:16 pm)
      Reply

      In the long run, I think mandatory treatment and rehabilitation would be the kind thing to do.  Instead, Seattle prefers to do the nice thing, which is to allow violent drug addicts and criminally insane people to have free run of selective parts of the city.  They only pull their heads out of their ‘ostrich’ holes when someone dies or public outrage hits a high enough level to warrant some level of reaction.  Law and order just seems like a punchline to sad joke.

      • 4thammendment April 15, 2026 (11:21 pm)
        Reply

        We’re criminalizing people. In reality, what does making things illegal do? It feeds the incarceral system, the jails are owned by judges (many more but, SCORE for instance). We don’t give them any sort of rehabilitation in jails, punitive has never been the solution.  It’s expensive and you’re advocating to imprison people for having an injury that got them prescribed an opiate painkiller.  At least that’s what I hear from people as the reason they were introduced to opiates, my best friend who died years ago and many of my clients here in the west. Pharma companies have lost lawsuits for this exact reason. If you punish your kid by taking away their rights and never giving them the environment to actually heal, then it’s no wonder we have this issue.  Punishing damaged people cause them to move further away from society. I don’t understand why thats hard to understand.. how happy would you be if you can’t even get into the housing (suggesting it’s even offered) because the sweep took your ID or other important docs? Or the only thing keeping you dry and now where to go?

  • JJ April 15, 2026 (11:55 am)
    Reply

    It’s about time.

    • Justin April 15, 2026 (12:10 pm)
      Reply

      Well it was 6 months past about time. But I’m still happy to see it get done. That whole area was entirely out of control. 

  • Seattle Resident April 15, 2026 (11:56 am)
    Reply

    City Parks have operating hours, most posted prominently. Most are closed after dark. Encampments such as this and the trash and heartache that follow might benefit by enforcing existing trespass laws. Unfortunately, most of the people who are staying there will be back in a few days or weeks and the cycle will continue. 

    • Derek April 15, 2026 (12:24 pm)
      Reply

      Trespass and property laws don’t apply when you’re too poor to own land and it’s either private or city owned. So this makes no sense. You can’t force people to never sleep and always be moving.

      • Jim April 15, 2026 (12:34 pm)
        Reply

        I don’t know where you got your law degree there Matlock but you can absolutely be charged with trespassing

        • Derek April 15, 2026 (1:57 pm)
          Reply

          Didn’t say they couldn’t be charged, Magoo. I’m saying the concept of land makes no sense to homeless people because it ignores literally where they need somewhere to sleep and so no matter what it’ll *ALWAYS* be trespassing.

          • HTB April 15, 2026 (2:46 pm)

            How about they take advantage of this city’s generosity and utilize some of the millons of dollars in social services we offer?

          • 1994 April 15, 2026 (11:01 pm)

            They need somewhere to sleep and sleeping in  shelter is *NOT* trespassing….a shelter facility is what the rest of us can afford for the homeless. Homeless people do have a concept of land….I saw in Roxhill Park a homeless squatter tent area with signs NO Trespassing & KEEP Out.  The city & taxpayers can not afford $45,000 to $55,000 (recent estimate put out by the city) a year per homeless person for housing & case management services….there is a limit to what we can pay for. Shelter space is an option that they should not be refusing because other options may not exist. Sleeping in parks is not an option.

          • IDC9 April 15, 2026 (11:10 pm)

            It won’t if we can get them off the streets and into housing that they can call their own. Of course, that is far easier said than done.

      • oerthehillz April 15, 2026 (3:59 pm)
        Reply

        They’re not living there because they can’t afford a house. They’re choosing drugs first, and couldn’t maintain a home even if you handed them a free one.

    • Anne April 15, 2026 (1:21 pm)
      Reply

      Really-? Have the Parks Dept enforce operating hours?? Have you seen how well that works at Alki enforcing hours & laws( like no dogs on beach off or on leash) ??  Parks Drpartment Enforcement is almost non-existent. 

  • MrWest April 15, 2026 (12:24 pm)
    Reply

    they’ll be back out there soon or somewhere else to create a new problem

    • Jim April 15, 2026 (12:32 pm)
      Reply

      I’ve heard of them in some cases grabbing their stuff and tucking it in a secluded area and then coming back once the sweep is done

  • Niko April 15, 2026 (12:32 pm)
    Reply

    Any estimate as to the cost of all this? 

  • Squarely April 15, 2026 (1:01 pm)
    Reply

    How come there are no homeless and open drug issues in other States?What are they doing right that maybe Seattle can follow..

    • WSB April 15, 2026 (1:05 pm)
      Reply

      Yes, there are homeless people and drug issues in other states. One example: We were recently in Seaside, Oregon. There’s at least one tiny-house village there (happened onto it next to a coffee stand), as well as people on the street pulling carts of belongings, as well as people in doorways. Google any state name and homelessness; you’ll turn up a story/organization. Not just blue states … Tried these two states randomly:

      https://opportunityiowa.gov/housing/homeless-or-risk-homelessness
      https://kshomeless.com/

      Not to say who’s handling the problem better or worse. But to say “there are no homeless and open drug issues in other states” – that’s not true.

      • IDC9 April 15, 2026 (11:11 pm)
        Reply

        I would never have thought of Seaside Oregon as having a homeless problem. I hope they are able to resolve it and get the people there the help and housing they need.

      • WSRes April 17, 2026 (8:16 pm)
        Reply

        We travel a lot and it’s worse by a lot in WA, OR and CA compared to ID, NV AZ and UT. 

    • nati April 15, 2026 (4:01 pm)
      Reply

      We just vacationed in San Francisco and things seemed better than here. They have come to their senses in recognizing that housing first does not solve all problems. If you refuse shelter there now  the police have more discretion to enforce no encampments. They are also enforcing their drug laws if people are openly using or dealing drugs in public. Every place does have issues, but the ones with less do seem to just hold people accountable to existing laws whereas Seattle enables. 

  • M S April 15, 2026 (1:29 pm)
    Reply

    The state and local officials are taking our money and don’t seem to be giving us valid solutions. They could start to actually force these individuals through the justice system. But ignoring them just because we don’t have a perfect answer is also not the answer. This sucks for everyone. And, yes lady in the green coat, they do create bad situations. Not just to our idea of a utopian society.I also can’t wait later this week when I ride on the bike path on Marginal Way. I’m guessing that’s where they all moved. I’ve only been in Seattle 5 years, but Marginal way is now the worse it’s been in all that time. People can say they hate Harrells approach, but things had cleaned up.The idea that an individual can just “pull up their bootstraps” and fix their life is as ridiculous as just “giving” a home to someone. If there’s no sense it was earned then they will take it for granted and it’ll be just a waste of our money.TL;DRI’m glad it got cleaned up, but they probably just moved to Marginal Way which is growing fast.

  • Joey April 15, 2026 (1:30 pm)
    Reply

    Good riddance… hopefully stays that way.

  • Nitro April 15, 2026 (1:47 pm)
    Reply

    Are they also actually clearing everything behind the fence? They’ve cut through it and there is a lot more debris, tarps and materials back there in addition to the very visible ones in the park.

  • Lauren April 15, 2026 (3:22 pm)
    Reply

    Reminder for all to report it via Find It Fix It when the encampment inevitably pops up again.

  • snowskier April 15, 2026 (3:24 pm)
    Reply

    Looks like they missed a tent half a block south of Edmunds, still on the grass.  It’s a simple concept that needs to be harshly enforced, you don’t get to camp here.  Not now, not then, not ever.  

    • Shel W. April 15, 2026 (5:31 pm)
      Reply

      Some of the areas south of Edmonds are privately owned vacant lots.

      • snowskier April 16, 2026 (10:27 am)
        Reply

        This wasn’t all the way to those lots.  They just didn’t do a thorough enough job.  Probably a return next week would really help reinforce the action

  • ltfd April 15, 2026 (3:31 pm)
    Reply

    Sweep early & often 😉

    • Sam April 15, 2026 (8:38 pm)
      Reply

      You’re part of the problem sir

  • Fish April 15, 2026 (4:09 pm)
    Reply

    How could we possibly look after the basic needs of every citizen? It’s not like we live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.

  • Rob April 15, 2026 (4:19 pm)
    Reply

    Just in time for FIFA World Cup, so politicians can thump their chests, then it will be back to normal, just like it occurred for the MLB all-star game

  • Sam April 15, 2026 (8:40 pm)
    Reply

    I am ashamed of the NIMBYs in my community advocating for the cruel mistreatment of the least fortunate members of our community simply because they’re “inconvenient” and “unsightly” it’s genuinely sickening 

    • Ed April 16, 2026 (2:37 am)
      Reply
      • Not NIMBY. It’s just that the situation has degraded over the past year or two and the efforts to improve things don’t seem effective. A couple of years ago co-existence with the homeless was relatively peaceful from my experience.  It is in the last year or so where things have gotten out of hand in the following ways.
      • Open drug use walking up to the path to our home and having to clean up alcohol and drugs.
      • Use of stairwell and garbage area of our home as a public restroom
      • Sitting on stairs and blocking the path to out front door and getting belligerent when you have to ask them to move to one side in order to get past.
      • Theft of items from back porch. 
      • This doesn’t start to cover what goes on in the bus stops or the public sidewalk.
    • 22blades April 16, 2026 (6:15 am)
      Reply

      Housing people, caring for substance abuse or helping find mental health outreach is not a license for illegal behavior. When blocks of city streets are darkened or you wake up to the roar of a stolen catalytic converter for metal theft on your way to work is not “inconvenient”. These are real problems that people are dealing with & aren’t being characterized as “inconvenient”.Someone yanked a stretch of drainage piping under the Admiral Bridge.  In trying to report it, I was faced with city departmental dodgeball or endless phone trees. The system is buckling.

    • Joey April 16, 2026 (8:43 am)
      Reply

      I am ashamed of the pearl clutchers in my community who are okay with open blight, violence, drug use and public defecation in our community parks and green spaces because they think the unhoused have more rights than actual tax-paying citizens.

    • Arush April 17, 2026 (2:41 pm)
      Reply

      How is it NIMBY to say that homeless encampments in our parks is a bad thing? I have lived in Seattle for 13 years, and our current encampment problem is worse than any I have seen anywhere else.  It is not okay for people to live in parks, and that doesn’t make me a bad person, or a right winger, to say that. People using hard drugs in public is not okay. People living outside in public places where there are no sanitation services (water, toilets, trash pick up) is not okay. Damaging public spaces, as inevitably happens when there are no services, is not okay. And there IS crime related to encampments. To say otherwise is dishonest. I am not saying that this is a simple problem to fix. It is not. But pretending that encampments aren’t a problem, and that sweeps + services are a bad idea, is just not a reasonable position in 2026. That’s not NIMBY.  It’s believing that we need to do better. 

      • k April 17, 2026 (3:36 pm)
        Reply

        Wanting people to be able to sleep indoors is not NIMBY.  Advocating sweeps and measures that push people out of sight or into other neighborhoods without resolving the underlying problem–lack of adequate shelter, is a “not in my back yard” response.  If you’re okay with humans–even ones with substance use issues–living outdoors as long as it doesn’t impact your local park and favorite places, that’s a NIMBY response.  If you’re okay with people having unmet needs as long as they’re incarcerated so you don’t have to see it, that’s a NIMBY response.  It’s about the proposed “solutions” in this thread, not the desire to have people living indoors.

  • Mark B April 16, 2026 (6:12 am)
    Reply

    Well that didn’t take long. Two tents are back this morning with a news camera set to film. 

  • DavisWS April 16, 2026 (8:56 am)
    Reply

    Thank you Councilmember Saka for being proactive in cleaning up the homeless encampment that has had so much violence over the past couple of months. It’s nice to have leadership that is proactive in areas that affect us. You’re a good man, please keep up the good work.

  • Dp April 16, 2026 (3:03 pm)
    Reply

    GOOD GOD!!! They are right back at the same park. Big group of them. Going to be camping again. Drove by a couple hours ago 

    • Jort April 16, 2026 (3:52 pm)
      Reply

      So we agree that the “sweeps” aren’t effective at reducing visible homelessness? 

  • Ihhh April 16, 2026 (3:37 pm)
    Reply

    I would appreciate more information on a few points:

    1. How many people were living in the encampment, and how many accepted the sheltering options offered by the city?
    2. Beyond shelter, what additional services were provided, such as rehabilitation support or job placement assistance?
    3. When will the damaged park infrastructure be repaired, including fences, graffiti, and landscaping such as plants and trees?
    4. What ongoing monitoring will be in place to ensure that the encampment does not return and city ordinances are followed?

    I hope the park can return to being a safe and welcoming space for the community, and that the spillover effects of violence and open drug use are addressed.
    What made this situation particularly concerning for me was seeing children from the nearby daycare being escorted by a security guard to access their playground, as well as witnessing open drug use at bus stops along Alaska on a daily basis. People experiencing homelessness need our support. Part of the taxes we pay are intended to fund that support, not to enable conditions that are unsafe or unsustainable for the community.

    • WSB April 16, 2026 (3:45 pm)
      Reply

      I already have the followup requests out and the city staffers have said they’re working on it. Not necessarily all your questions, though; mine were the basic, how much stuff was removed, how many people were there, how many were placed in shelter, and what next.

  • John April 16, 2026 (3:52 pm)
    Reply

    They are right back there…..SO TIRED of this nonsense!  There needs to be a permanent solution.  

    • WSB April 16, 2026 (7:34 pm)
      Reply

      We drove by about an hour ago and did not see any tents at Rotary Viewpoint. People, yes. Will be going by again after the community meeting we’re currently covering.

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