SEATTLE HOMELESSNESS

	July 28, 1999
	Jim Compton of KCTS, Seattle, reports on a local judge's ruling that the homeless cannot be ousted from camps and settlements until the city provides realistic shelter alternatives.

JIM LEHRER: What Seattle is doing about the homeless. Jim Compton of KCTS-Seattle reports. JIM COMPTON: Californians Mike and Angela Driskell parked their battered camper just a block from Seattle's new half billion-dollar baseball stadium, which is due to open in July. While they look for jobs, they live beside railroad tracks in a dangerous part of the city with their two-year-old son and infant daughter. How old is Elizabeth? ANGELA DRISKELL, Homeless Mother: Six weeks. JIM COMPTON: Six weeks. How's she doing? ANGELA DRISKELL: She's doing wonderful. JIM COMPTON: Though they found housing two days later, their story symbolizes Seattle's frustration. The city estimates that there are about 5,500 people homeless in Seattle and that no more than half of them find beds in emergency shelters. That means that at least 2,000 people sleep out every night. The city spends $8 million a year on services to the homeless, mostly for shelter. The lobby of city hall and the basements of county buildings are opened in cold weather. But homeless numbers are mounting, and merchants complain their presence hurts business. For several years, the city attorney has confronted street people with firm enforcement of laws banning aggressive panhandling, sitting or sleeping on sidewalks and sleeping in parks. MARK SIDRAN, Seattle City Attorney: We have a lot of people who -- on the street who are addicted to alcohol or drugs or are mentally ill, and these people need help, not just shelter. We need to be able to offer them treatment and services and if necessary, I think, intervene in their lives. JIM COMPTON: But now a municipal judge has challenged Seattle's policies, saying that she will not allow convictions of the homeless under trespass or nuisance laws until the city provides them with a place to live. HON. JUDITH HIGHTOWER, Municipal Judge: What I said was when the city can provide enough shelters, then the city can prosecute the homeless. JIM COMPTON: Judge Judith Hightower has called the aggressive enforcement a campaign to drive the homeless from the city. HON. JUDITH HIGHTOWER: We keep pushing homeless people out of areas that they have found shelter in. We keep destroying or, you know, in the name of progress and, you know-- I understand, you know, new business, new housing developments, I mean, the bell town area-- we keep moving people further and further out of areas where they had space. JIM COMPTON: But city attorney Mark Sidran rejects her approach. MARK SIDRAN: Judge Hightower is one judge, and she's entitled to her opinions. JIM COMPTON: Sidran says that in some cases the law must be used to intervene in the lives of street people. MARK SIDRAN: I'm the city prosecutor. I'm not the mayor and I'm not the county executive. So my primary responsibility and span of control has to do with these law enforcement issues. I believe very much that the criminal justice system also has opportunities to basically try to coerce people into doing what may be in their best interest to do. JIM COMPTON: Homeless advocates like Anitra Freeman say battle lines are being drawn between helping or arresting the homeless. ANITRA FREEMAN, Homeless Advocate: People are being ticketed in the parks just for being homeless. If you walk through the parks with a backpack and a three-piece suit, you will probably not be ticketed. If you walk through the park looking ragged and wearing a backpack, you will probably be ticketed for camping, whether you were doing it or not. MAYOR PAUL SCHELL: These are our urban refugees and how can we not help them? JIM COMPTON: Mayor Paul Schell says Seattle is victim of its own success. MAYOR PAUL SCHELL: In many ways we are probably the richest city in the country right now on a per capita basis, especially if you include our high-tech center on the East side of the lake, but the fact that we've got longer food lines than we've ever had before, more people looking for places to stay, everybody's paying the cost of success in increased housing prices, increased transportation congestion, and this can't be. We need to find a way to be sure that everybody has a chance to share in the prosperity. JIM COMPTON: For almost a decade, homeless advocates have been challenging Seattle to create some sort of transitional facility to get the homeless off the streets and into jobs and permanent housing. When the city turned to a consultant to evaluate the problem, he was told there is a homeless emergency. And the consultant reported that the concept of temporary housing was not just feasible, but urgently needed. DAVID BAMBERG, Architect: Last night 2,000 people slept out on the street; tonight 2,000 will sleep out. And if this were -- if this were, you know, Kosovo or Oklahoma a after the tornado, this is an emergency. JIM COMPTON: Consultants looked at putting the homeless in surplus cargo containers or under a big plastic tent like a circus big top. Another plan to house the homeless in tents has become known as the tent city option. Because of its overtones of depression-era Shanty Town, the so-called Tent City Plan has become a test of the city's willingness to bend the rules on behalf of the homeless. Architect Jan Gleason, who led the study, said some in city government just can't swallow the idea that Seattle might have some people living in tents. JAN GLEASON, Architect: It's unsightly. It has bad connotations and memories from other difficult times. I think it's also an issue that cities would like to ignore the fact that there are so many homeless exist. JIM COMPTON: Seattle has rich history of homeless encampments. At the height of the Depression, Seattle had one of the nation's largest Hoovervilles, a self-policed and self-governed colony of 500 shacks that became a city within a city. Seattle Historian Paul Dorpat says Seattle embraced its homeless. PAUL DORPAT, Seattle Historian: They had hundreds of people living in these sites and they were -- after there was initial resistance in the early part of the Depression, basically the city accepted it and even helped to service it. They had their own sheriffs, their own mail system, and especially among progressives, it was seen as a kind of noble experiment in self-help. JIM COMPTON: Six decades later, new homeless encampments have risen in Seattle to demand that the city provide more housing. Seattle's homeless advocates first challenged the city to furnish more shelter in 1990 by camping out in a muddy field near the Kingdome. And in 1998, 40 squatters occupied a vacant field overlooking the downtown financial district and appealed that they be allowed to stay on public property. City officials ordered the tent city bulldozed and five were arrested. Although the charges were dismissed last month, an attorney for the protesters said a potent legal issue is emerging. STEVE MUELLER, Attorney for Homeless Activists: One of our arguments is the city's pattern of law making makes it so that you could argue that people aren't allowed to be anyplace at particular times. They're not allowed to be in parks, they're not allowed to be on the streets at certain times, they're not allowed to be in other places at certain times. So if you're not allowed to be anyplace, where is it legal to be? JIM COMPTON: Judge Hightower warn that unless there is shelter available, enforcing trespass and nuisance laws against the homeless is dangerously punitive. HON. JUDITH HIGHTOWER: This is not an appropriate way to use the criminal justice system. The crime of criminal trespass, being in an area he was not allowed to be in, that is a crime technically. But do you -- do you think the legislature really intended for people to go to jail because they had nowhere else to stay? JIM COMPTON: City Attorney Sidran says that talk about housing is a red herring. MARK SIDRAN: We've allowed the issue to be framed as an economics of housing issue and not as the public health issue that I think it is. We have everywhere in Seattle signs in the window that say "Help Wanted" and people on the street holding signs that says "Please Help." Now, there's something wrong with this picture. And I think what's wrong with it is that public policy around the issue of homelessness has been captured by the rhetoric of the economics of housing. JIM COMPTON: Meanwhile, George Olebar, who has been on the streets for two decades, has an agreement with a Seattle business that he can sleep in their doorway after hours if he leaves it clean. He says he would turn down a free apartment if offered. GEORGE OLEBAR: Everyone that stays here know this is George's spot. Each of us got a different doorway, each and every one of us that are here. We've all got our certain doorways and if I come here and there's somebody here at night, I just tap him and I tell him, "you're in my bedroom." JIM COMPTON: Now Seattle's principal homeless advocacy groups have committed themselves to erecting another tent city. Alert to the political timing, they say it will coincide with the World Trade Organization summit here in November when the city will welcome many world leaders. A spokesman for the homeless said they hope the city's support can be negotiated by that time, but they will go ahead in any case.