Services Not Sweeps to Hold Rally on Aug. 2, Hoping to Ban Winter Sweeps

by Lauryn Bray

Services Not Sweeps is organizing a rally on Aug. 2 from 12 to 2 p.m. at City Hall to move the City Council to ban encampment sweeps during extreme weather and winter. Services Not Sweeps is a coalition of service providers, community members, and folks with lived experience advocating to ban encampment sweeps during winter and extreme weather events.

According to the Services Not Sweeps website, 82% of the 943 sweeps conducted by the City in 2022 were "obstruction" sweeps, meaning there were no requirements for the City to provide people with shelter or services. Unfortunately, a majority of sweeps are done without the provision of replacement housing because there just isn't enough room in shelters for those in need.

"Most of the time, people don't get into the shelter that they're seeking to get into when they're being swept," said Katie Jendrey, an outreach houseless service provider organizing with Services Not Sweeps. "But on the same side of the same coin, sweeps are really the only route to get into shelter at this time because of the way they're allocated to people being swept over the rest of the population." Jendrey speaks on behalf of herself and not the coalition.

Sweeps are also expensive. The City budget increased funding for Seattle's sweep task force, the Unified Care Team, by $13.5 million during the last budget session, bringing total endowment up to $37 million.

And it's not just Seattle, either. Other cities also spend millions of dollars on clearing encampments. A February 2020 report from The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Office of Policy Development and Research found that among the four of the nine cities they studied (Houston, Chicago, Tacoma, San Jose), sweeps cost between $3,393,000 and $8,557,000. While San Jose spent the most money on encampment sweeps, it only had the second-highest cost per capita. Tacoma spent an estimated $3,905,000, equaling $18.30 per person.

However, perhaps there are less costly solutions. According to Housing Matters, an online resource for research and information to promote solutions for advancing affordable housing, a 24/7 mobile crisis intervention program in Eugene, Oregon, called Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets (CAHOOTS) saved the police department $8.5 million between 2014 and 2017.

It is important to note this research was conducted prior to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in its aftermath, things look much worse. HUD's Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) provides Congress with updated statistics of the condition of homelessness throughout the U.S. In 2019's AHAR, HUD reported that the total number of homeless people in the U.S. was 567,715, with 356,422 people sheltered and 211,293 unsheltered. HUD's AHAR from 2022 reported that 582,462 people were homeless in the U.S., with 348,630 sheltered and 233,832 unsheltered. According to these numbers, in 2022, more people were homeless and fewer people were sheltered than in 2019.

Services Not Sweeps is asking for an extension to the existing ban on winter evictions. In 2020, the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance banning evictions during winter months. This ordinance also prohibited the City from conducting encampment sweeps in winter.

For social service providers working with populations experiencing homelessness, policy like this guarantees that providers and clients can continue working together. One of the biggest frustrations for providers — aside from seeing people displaced in these sweeps — is that people don't always get referred to a shelter that provides services that address their needs.

"Even if people are going inside after sweeps, nine times out of 10, we see them back again," said Jay Jones, an organizer working with Services Not Sweeps, speaking on behalf of himself and not the coalition. "We'll help someone out after a sweep, and then we see them back on the street and they're like, 'Oh yeah, you know, they just shoveled me halfway across the city to a new place and I did talk to the case manager for a month. And all my friends are out here, so I just came back out here because I was having a terrible time.'"

According to Jendrey, a major reason why service providers find people back on the streets after connecting them with housing providers is that for many people, the choice of accepting housing means abandoning their community.

"There's nothing person-centered about the shelter system — whether it be the shelter itself [or] how the resources are managed and allocated," said Jendrey. "People don't want to leave each other and they don't want to leave their chosen family. They don't want to leave their pets. They want to work with service providers and they want permanent options, like hygiene stations. They want better ways to address their health and lower barrier access to services."

While people like Jendrey call for the envisioning of a new future of communal living, others like Jones argue that for now we should just use what we've got.

"I would love for us to reimagine how housing works in our society, but in the meantime, let's take a look at all of the resources that we do have and just use them efficiently. I think that would be very helpful," said Jones. "The City is so focused on moving in such a way that [it] prioritizes housed people's comfort over the needs of people living outside."

If you are interested in supporting the effort to ban encampment sweeps during winter and extreme weather events, attend the rally at City Hall on Aug. 2 from 12 to 2 p.m., or visit the Services Not Sweeps website to find alternative ways to support.

Featured image by Jordan Somers.