Olympia officials announced a plan Thursday night to address and remove long-standing homeless encampments in Percival Creek Canyon on the city’s west side.
About 50 people gathered at Olympia City Hall to learn more about a plan to address the camps, which run from Capitol Lake to U.S. Highway 101. Officials also answered questions about homelessness in general.
Olympia City Manager Jay Burney said the recent fatal shooting in the area did not spur the gathering, which was the result of discussions the city has had with concerned residents north of the canyon since last January.
“We’ve been working on a plan for Percival Canyon for the better part of the year,” Burney said.
The plan is focused on a section of the canyon that runs between Capitol Lake and the bridge that accommodates Cooper Point Road traffic.
City officials already have alerted those in that section of the canyon that they will have to move by the end of next week, and by Sept. 4, that section of the canyon will be closed. Anyone who tries to return to the area could be arrested for trespassing, city officials said.
That section of the canyon was once home to 30 people and now that number is down to 10, said Darian Lightfoot, the city’s director of housing and homeless response.
Once the area is closed, a city-hired contractor will move in and clean up the debris.
“We’ll do our best in partnership with the Olympia Police Department to monitor the site to make sure people don’t go back,” she said. “It is a large canyon, so people will go back, but we’ll do our best to be down there and monitor and keep people from really setting up and establishing a camp within the encampment.”
Some who have been asked to leave will be able to take advantage of housing, such as the shelter at Unity Commons, as well as 60 more units of housing that are expected to come online in October in the same area as Unity Commons. Some, too, will be transitioned from the shelter to the recently acquired and renovated Olympia Inn on Capitol Way, Lightfoot said.
Some, too, will relocate to other parts of the canyon, which totals about 90 people, Lightfoot said.
What will happen there?
“For the time being, we’re going to be providing outreach, we’re going to be connecting with people, we’re going to be having hygiene services and just trying to stabilize it until more housing units come online,” she said.
In addition to Burney and Lightfoot, Paul Frailey with Olympia police and Matthew Morris, chief of the Olympia Fire Department, also fielded questions from people attending the meeting. Here are some of them.
Questions and answers were edited for length and clarity.
Are we succeeding in changing people’s lives?
Lightfoot : First of all, that is what we want. Deeply. Our team’s mission statement is that housing is a human right, and we are trying to not just get people into shelter, but to move people to wellness; for people to be thriving neighbors and residents with purpose and hope — that is what we want, but it costs so much money and takes so much time.
And so we have more of a phased approach, where we’re like, let’s get people inside, working with smart, talented, connected people, with behavioral health services like our tiny home villages. This is getting people inside, finding stability, getting people laundry and a shower and a locked door. Then once we’re there, we can try to figure out, OK, what can we do to move you to wellness.
What steps do you have in place to prevent people from moving into Evergreen Park?
Frailey : We’re not going to allow any camping in city parks. We do have park rangers that proactively patrol every single park in the city, and whenever they find anybody setting up camp, they call us and we address it immediately.
What is the city doing to attract more mental health experts who can help the homeless and others who need that assistance?
Burney : We’ve been talking to our state delegation at length about both the need for more longer-term funding resources for cities to be able to provide housing and drug addiction and mental health resources that just don’t exist in Thurston County, and I think most of you know we have a crisis response unit that works out of the police department.
Probably one of the most frustrating things they do is they get to a call where someone’s had a mental health crisis, they stabilize them, and that’s the best they can do, and then they have to go on to another call, and they may come back to the same individual, because we don’t have resources and places for them to go for long-term care and treatment, so there’s certainly more work that needs to get done on that front, and we’re going to continue to lobby at the state level for more of those resources.
What’s being done about firearms in the canyon?
Frailey: We do know that there are firearms down there, and that’s why we make sure that we have a presence with any of our partners who are down there doing outreach, responding to fires and things like that. We’ve got some new technology that some of you may have heard of called Flock, which allows us to detect stolen vehicles that are moving around the city. We’ve recovered several of those already that have stolen guns in them, so we’re really prioritizing addressing gun violence.
What are you going to do about RVs parked in the area?
Frailey : We actually work closely with parking enforcement and homeless response regarding those RVs. It might look like nothing’s being done, but it does just take a little bit of time. So they do have to move every 24 hours. Obviously we don’t have parking staff on standby 24 hours a day, but they will get out there, issue their tickets and go with homeless response to make sure we’re offering resources at the end. The vehicle can actually be towed after they have received three tickets for these violations.
A few years ago we had 150 RVs parked in the city of Olympia. Last I heard it was down to nine RVs in the city of Olympia right now.
What’s stopping people from driving their RV around the block every 24 hours?
Lightfoot : That is what people do, but the goal of the 24-hour ordinance is to prevent a large encampment. It’s not for congregation, because we don’t have a place for people to go. We feel like people moving from site to site doesn’t allow people to set up, to really settle in and congregate at one time. So what you’re experiencing we understand because we don’t have a safe parking program. ...
Some neighborhoods are impacted more than others, but we do feel like it is a success going from 150 RVs down to nine. We understand that it feels like a lot because those nine are really circulating and draw attention and noise. We do have a plan to try to shrink that and to get people inside (housing). And I think of those nine RVs, all of them are on the housing list, and so when something becomes available for them, they’re ready to go inside.
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