Jeez, his letter is awful. HPAC fails to see houseless people as people with legitimate homes and needs for stability. Their pseudo-concern that everyone have safe shelter is followed by a call for "aggressive bag-and-tag." Fuck, we're talking about human beings, not waterfowl.

@4 It sounds to me like the "aggressive bag-and-tag" is referring to the violent campers and meth dealers that have been ejected from Nickelsville and now live in the greenbelt.

That part I do not disagree with. And neither do the current residents of Nickelsville, obviously, since they kicked those people out of the camp in the first place.

Tim and Dan, this Ben Steiner guy is a keeper. Time to start paying him.

#4, why don't you go live there, dirtbag?

I'm not typically surprised when "journalists" (you really can't often call people that anymore) side with the housed, privileged status-quo and frame the un-housed people lacking in social and financial capital as dirty, dangerous, non-compliant parasites who "deserve to be housed, but NIMBY." But I am saddened to read it in the Stranger.

Really, you think the problem here is that the homeless people are becoming too visible with the problems of their homelessness? That their problems are now affecting people with homes? And not, say, that developers keep tearing down affordable housing to create rich, shiny new neighborhoods? That our government keeps cutting funding for social services? That we live in a classist society in which upward social mobility is all but statistically impossible? That higher education is priced as an unobtainable luxury? That once folks lose housing they are routinely dehumanized and disempowered until they learn to either internalize this message, or find permanent housing in a jail or cemetery? That this city, like so many others, has a history of terrorizing and neglecting people experiencing homelessness, rather than protecting and empowering them?

I just want to be clear: you think the problem is not that 9,000 Seattleites don't have access to permanent housing, but that people with houses have to see and live near the people who don't?

I guess being progressive is all about fixing what's broken in our society until you reach the people for whom society truly does not work--till you get to the parts where it really is broken and most needs you to step out of your comfort zone and do something new. Then you just get yourself a latte and click through to something more fashionable?

The most important job you have as a journalist is problem definition. And I see who you've let define this problem. While you've printed the housed people's letter here (I notice you don't put "community group" or "action committee" in quotes, the way you did with Nickelsville's Security Council), you don't give residents of Nickelsville a chance to speak for themselves, offering them no rebuttal in this "report." You name "important" people like the mayor, but refer to Nickelsville's security system as "vigilante," when in fact it is well-organized and well-intended.

Nickelsville is a politically-minded group of Seattleites who have worked hard to draw the attention of the housed to the plight of the marginalized. That they are drawing the attention of their neighbors tells me that they are succeeding at overcoming the invisibility usually forced upon them, although, as usual, the media only pays attention when the housed people are offended or the unhoused are accused. Now that the housed residents of Highland Park have become aware of the major obstacles facing their unhoused neighbors, they should be putting their efforts toward alleviating their suffering, rather than toward evicting them to go suffer somewhere else. They can no longer claim not to know, only not to care.

I'm deeply disappointed by this letter from the "action committee," which seems to be taking little action by way of its most vulnerable residents, and by this reporting from the Stranger. I hope you'll all take a long, thoughtful look at how you are framing this problem, and who you are casting in the roles of aggressor and bystander, citizen and interloper, entitled and not. Please rethink who is deserving of attention and service from the City of Seattle, and whose health is truly at risk.

Here is a hint: the people desperately at risk and in need of improved city leadership are not the ones with indoor plumbing and rooves over their heads.

And I will concede that OED probably has omitted "rooves" and moved onto the more current "roofs," but it's still "rooves" in my brain so we're going to go with that for now.

#11 & 12 heatherly - Do you have any idea what the demographics are of the Highland Park and Riverview neighborhoods? HP and Riverview are not upscale, high-income, all whitey-tighty neighborhoods. The residents of those two neighborhoods have their hands full, and then some, just trying to keep their neighborhoods from sliding backwards into 1980's-90's shit. HP and Riverview residents are NOT in a position to play some game of 'Save Nickelsville' because they are to busy working their asses off to stay housed themselves. Highland Park and Riverview are not a land of fancy houses with quaint little cafes, multiple restaurants and boutiques on every corner. They are neighborhoods full of small, very modest houses and basic apartment buildings with a three or four convenience stores, a gas station and a tiny little Greek food joint. Oh, and one coffee cart, that has to move and shorten their business hours because a bunch of thugs have taken over the corner where the cart was in operation.

Do you, Ms. heatherly, really want to help Nickellsville residents? Then get your butt down into one of those tents at NV and then start rallying the troops to get them relocated into a neighborhood that is stable and has the demographics with the time and financial resources to set Nickelsville on a better course, or better yet, are able to push on the City Council and Mayor to come up with a better solution than illegally placed tents atop pallets on City owned swampland.

@ 13:
"HP and Riverview are not upscale..." They are compared to neighborhoods made of tents and plywood structures, with no plumbing or power. They are also rich in social capital; their neighborhood association and housed status buys them press coverage (see above) and the attention of local government, while persons without homes rarely possess these things and are not empowered to use them even if they did. The housed community could certainly change the lives of Nickelsville residents by acknowledging them as residents of their same neighborhood (they do live there!), rather than treating them like outsiders, like "others," like sub-human parasites who need to be removed.

"Do you, Ms. heatherly, really want to help Nickellsville residents?" Yes, which is why I've decided to devote my life to working for social justice, and have returned to college as an adult to build a career that will allow me to design community and individual interventions, and work for changes to policy-level, structural inequality. I've also spent some time at Nickelsville getting to know the residents, and pitched in to help their fight when and however I'm able to. I think that these efforts, combined with public discourse, are a far better strategy for empowering Nickelodians and their unhoused colleagues city-wide than your plan to simply displace them into other neighborhoods.

What, exactly, are you doing to help the most vulnerable members of our community?

@14:
Good grief. Spoken like a person who seems to think that a handful of people in Highland Park and Riverview trying to better their neighborhood via association and citizenship somehow have endless oomph and clout downtown. Clearly you have not been around the city power structure long enough to realize that the Highland Park neighborhood is hardly some political powerhouse. News flash kiddo, they are to busy working to provide the basics of life to play the grown up version of Disneyland that you see in the upscale parts of this city. However, contrary to your naive beliefs, it is clear that Nickelsville residents and there supporters have proven themselves to be very organized and powerful. How else do you get to set up an illegal, major encampment on City property that is violating every land use and health law and be allowed to remain there for two years with the Mayor and City Council down at 5th and James turning a blind eye? Trust me, Nickelsville and the homeless via the hundred-and-one Non Profits, Share-Wheel, churches and politicos have a lot of power in this city. You yourself are going to make a career for yourself in this field less. I do hope you take your credentials elsewhere in this great state as the City of Seattle cannot continue to be the magnet and only lifeboat in all of Washington.

As for what I have been doing to help? Hows about that good old notion of paying taxes work for you....I have been paying City, County, State and Federal taxes for 35 years at a job that is very hard on both my body and my mind. A LOT of my HARD earned money has gone into the tax base that funds social services. That is what I have been doing to help the homeless, veterans, transients, addicted, mentally ill, lazy, bums, young 'life-stylers' & Rainbow Family types. That is right, in my world they are not one group called 'the homeless' as I have been around long enough to realize that the individuals that truly are in need of societies and MY help are getting shoved aside by the all losers as categorized.

Meanwhile, I do hope Nickelsville lands in YOUR neighborhood and YOUR doorstep. And that you can experience first hand 24/7 what really goes on. And that you get to experience some of this really neat stuff that goes on when you have 75-100 people with issues consolidated into one mess and feeding off of each others issues. Maybe you will be lucky enough to have a few of the exiled residents set up camp in a greenbelt near you where they can then rip your anything that is not bolted down out of your yard or house? And, most importantly, that you put your money where your mouth is via having made mortgage payments for your housing and are not some fly-by-night renter that picks up and leaves the 'hood at the first sign of hassles emanating from Nickelsville.

If you really want to see 'the homeless' situation in Seattle solved get cracking at seeing to it that a Nickelsville or equivalent is set up in Madison Park, Laurelhurst, Magnolia, Seward Park, View Ridge, Queen Anne, North Admiral, Leschi, Madrona and most importantly in the City Park closest to each City Council member, KCE Dow Constantine and Mayor Mike McGinn. Picking on and singling out truly lower middle-class or poverty prone neighborhoods like Highland Park to CONTINUE to carry the burden will only keep the problem off the minds of the real power brokers.

Well, your last response seemed condescending and insulting (Protip: never call anyone kiddo if you want them to listen to what you are saying. No one responds well to it, not even actual kids), and the assumptions you made about me were all incorrect. The fact that you bothered to make so many assumptions about me at all detracted from your logical credibility. It's kind of putting me off this conversation; however, I'll make one last effort to communicate my position. I hope that you can listen with the intention of divergent reasoning; that is, I hope you will consider that even viewpoints different from your own might contain valuable truths and be worthy of respect. There is more than one right answer.

In terms of actually trying to help: having a job doesn't qualify you as some sort of beneficent helper; in fact, many residents of Nickelsville also have jobs. Most who don't desperately want one. That you have been so regularly employed while so many struggle to become or remain so is evidence of class privilege. You know what would qualify you as a helper, though? Helping. As in, applying some effort beyond what is necessary to maintain your own life to improving quality of life for the underprivileged. It needn't be in the form of financial help, although that's often useful. In general, it seems that problems like rampant homelessness (and other forms of wealth inequality) are caused not by a lack of money being spent on the problem, but on structural inequalities. You could apply time or attention or activism to learning about, exposing, and reforming these. Or, you could just bake some cookies and take them over. Or you could make a donation of toilet paper to the camp. What's needed is compassion, and you can determine what form that takes. Just, please, focus some of this energy on compassion.

Similarly, my (very simple) point about the neighborhoods in question is that even if they are not considered affluent by your standards, they are affluent compared to marginalized and homeless persons. I'm simply suggesting that they use the same resources they are using to demand that Nickelsville be moved to instead push for *support* for Nickelsville and other communities of homeless people.

I don't know how many times I can tell you that I've personally spent time in Nickelsville, chatting with and interviewing residents, sharing meals, attending their nightly camp meetings, and doing ethnographic field work to experience "what really goes on." You might try visiting them yourself. They even have a website you could read if you wanted to know the truth about who they are and what they do. As it stands, you are very misinformed. Nickelsville is not an illegal encampment. In fact, they were directed to their current location BY THE CITY when they lost their space in the old Lake City firehouse 2 years ago. At that time they proposed several locations to move to which would serve their needs and not cost the city any money. Each and every single location was rejected when nearby business owners and residents freaked out (publicly and at length) at the prospect. They insisted the people of Nickelsville and their lack of privilege be sent somewhere else, somewhere that could "handle them," somewhere Not In Their Back Yard. Sound familiar? This whole process was documented here on the Slog, and you could Google it if you wanted to understand how Nickelsville got where it is today, and how it's been treated by the public at large.

Nearly all public attention towards homeless camps in this city has been to insist they be kept out of sight (and out of mind); to insist that they are dirty and diseased (again, go visit them yourself); to insist that they are criminals (a grossly untrue stereotype of persons experiencing homelessness, unless you count that homelessness and its symptoms are frequently criminalized); to generally villainize the people suffering from homelessness and imply that persons not suffering from homelessness, who suffer only from *having to see and know about homeless people* (the HORROR!), are somehow the victims of the homeless situation. It's ridiculous.

It's worse than ridiculous; it's cruel and compassionless and maligned. People DIE from homelessness, and frequently. Wealth inequality is manslaughter. Having homeless folks camped behind a greenwall of vegetation near your house is an inconvenience, at most. If you choose to look at it that way. You could look at it as an opportunity to interact with folks who have a very different experience of life--who have been denied opportunities for health and wealth and happiness that most of us take for granted--and to maybe figure out a way to apply your time and talents to leave the world a little better than you found it. You could start with problem definition. While there are many right answers to social problems, asking the wrong questions will rarely lead to any of them.

Like, instead of asking what we can do to get the homeless people out of our neighborhoods, lets ask what we can do to get them into homes (and neighborhoods) of their own. Let's ask what's not working in our city that so many people don't have access to permanent shelter. Let's ask why developers are allowed to determine how land is used in our city, tearing down affordable housing to build high-end apartments and condos. Let's ask why the city can afford police drones and expensive traffic projects, but not basic social services. Let's all use our collective voice to demand that our city officials represent our interests by attending to these problems, instead of whining that we have to give them attention ourselves. If we can afford to spend time complaining, then we can afford to spare some attention, and these vulnerable citizens can't afford to live without it.

http://usm.maine.edu/sites/default/files…

“I’ve gotten drugs here before,” 16 year old Hamilton said. “Not marijuana; let’s just leave it at that.” Even Real Change is wiling to say it the way it is: http://realchangenews.org/index.php/site…