OPINION | City Officials Believe the Only 'Good' Homeless Person Is a Dead Homeless Person

by Megan Ramer

On Aug. 7, members of our Seattle Mennonite Church were forced by the City of Seattle to conduct a sweep of humans who were camping on an unused plot of grass on a property we own. We acted with as much grace and compassion as we could, and still we caused great harm.

Many of these neighbors had been swept repeatedly from Jackson Park, Lake City's Mini Park, and other public lands. They were gracious as we shared the bad news, and grateful to us for the respite they experienced for a few weeks. While camping on our property, staff at God's Li'l Acre day center were able to refer an unprecedented number of our neighbors to housing. The stability afforded this group for a few weeks meant they were findable by those helping them navigate the impossibly long and complicated process of going through a housing referral and finding shelter. Every time camps are destroyed, people partway to housing risk getting dropped out of the process altogether.

Under Mayor Harrell, the City's Department of Construction and Inspections threatened our church with escalating daily fines if we did not forcibly displace these neighbors from our property. The mayor seems to be using the loophole of code and zoning violations to prevent people from helping people.

The mayor and his Parks Department argue that camps of unhoused people are "obstructions." In a recent case of "obstruction," City employees climbed down into a ravine next to Lake City Way and swept a camp that was not visible from the street. When those who were swept relocated to a nearby park, they were immediately swept again. Same reason.

Humans don't disappear. After we were forced to evict our neighbors from our private property, many of them were swept and swept again from public properties. The same humans endured a total of five sweeps in three weeks. There are almost never any beds available in all of north Seattle. The few beds offered, if any, are almost always downtown in single-gender congregate shelters. For a whole host of reasons, these simply don't work for the vast majority of our neighbors. And regardless, there's never enough of them. Simply stated: There are not enough shelter spaces or available housing in all of Seattle for all the unhoused humans who are being swept every day, sometimes in several locations at once. Those in the middle of a housing referral have nowhere to be while they wait. If these humans aren't allowed on public property, and private property owners are fined for not sweeping them, where are they supposed to go?

Recently, I presided over the annual dedication of our Lake City "Leaves of Remembrance" in Mini Park. We laid 12 bronze leaves, one for each beloved who died on our streets in the past year. We named three more who died after this year's leaves were engraved. Family members traveled from across the U.S. and Canada to gather and grieve these 15 beloveds. We laid those memorial leaves with the sanction of the City. Less than a week later, the City showed up to the same park — unannounced — to sweep the living homeless folks who had been there just a few days, after being swept from another spot.

I can't help but notice that, according to our Mayor, homeless folks are welcome in Mini Park so long as they are dead. And the City's policies are contributing to the acceleration of those deaths. How can we stand by while this carries on? I know that I cannot.

I invite my Seattle neighbors to join me in supporting the Services Not Sweeps campaign, and to call on the mayor to prioritize services, shelter, pathways to supportive housing, and other solutions-based approaches for our unhoused neighbors. Let us join together in loving our (living!) neighbors as ourselves.

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Megan Ramer (she/her) is lead pastor of Seattle Mennonite Church in the heart of Lake City. She seeks to participate in God's vision of a Just Peace for all creation, and is therefore dedicated to breaking unjust rules.

Featured Image: Homeless tent encampment in King County in 2021. (Photo: Andrew Engelson)