A RESOLUTION related to addressing the needs of people living in the I-5 East Duwamish Greenbelt and in the adjoining neighborhoods; accepting the Seattle Human Services Department’s East Duwamish Greenbelt Encampments Outreach Assessment; and approving the City’s operations plan to physically improve and maintain the Greenbelt and provide a healthier and safer environment for all.
The Report The Human Services and Public Health Committee Agenda Item seven Resolution 31705 related to addressing the needs of people living in the I-5 East to Amish Greenbelt and in the adjoining neighborhoods. Accepting the Seattle Human Services Department's East, two Amish Greenbelt encampments, outreach assessments, and approving the city's operations plan to physically improve and maintain the greenbelt and provide a healthier and safer environment for all. The committee recommends the resolution resolution be adopted with a divided report with Councilmembers Backshall Harrell, Burgess and Gonzalez in favor and councilmembers. O'Brien and so want opposed. Councilmember Bagshaw. Thank you. I've got a number of things I want to I would like to say quite a bit about this, but we want to do an amendment first. Sure, we do have an amendment, I believe. And who would like to describe that amendment? All right. That's nice. Councilmember Gonzalez. Okay. Thank you. I have a small amendment. It's to section three. Section three. My amendment would require two things. One, it would require that the city pursue, in the spirit of ongoing coordination with the Washington State Department of Transportation, that it would pursue formalizing that agreement by identifying both short and long term maintenance, activation, infrastructure opportunities that promote public safety. And so this is essentially would require the city to pursue to pursue some type of memorandum of understanding or other type of agreement that would essentially memorialize the need to go back and do regular assessments of the I-5, East L.A. greenbelt. And really, the intent here is to make sure that that we're keeping ourselves honest and that we're keeping our our partnering jurisdictions honest around the needs to make sure that we're keeping keeping the area safe and clean for those who continue to stay in that area and for also the infrastructure safety needs of the area as well . So that's the first part of it. The second part is addressing my concern around neighborhood impacts for both the sheltered and unsheltered people who live in surrounding neighborhoods and what that means when how we exacerbate or or minimize their public health and safety, when we are displacing people from an area as large as the I-5 East L.A. greenbelt. So this would require the executive to lay out in the agreement how each of the parties to the agreement will handle significant displacement concerns that impacts surrounding neighborhoods as it relates to public health and public safety. Thank you. Councilmember Gonzalez. So Councilmember Huizar, Gonzalez has moved to amend the resolution 31705 by substituting a new Section three. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor of the amendment? Both I. I opposed. The ayes have it. We have an amended a resolution. Councilmember back. So you have the floor? Yes, I certainly do. Thank you and thank you. I would like very much for you to listen to me for 7 minutes and then I will step out when this meeting is over and listen to you. Susan, I want to say thank you for what you wrote to me. And I want to take us back a few months on May 31st. This council, after a number of conversations and some struggled with some language, adopted a resolution that described outreach protocols for persons that were living under I-5 in what we call the East Wyoming greenbelt. At that time, we agreed that people living in the greenbelt should be given real offers of outreach and real offers of housing, not just be scooted from one place to the next. The results of our outreach were documented and they were reported to the Council. And I want to say thank you to Brian and to others that worked with the Union Gospel Mission. I went out there with you. I saw what you were doing. I met the people that you were working with. And I really respect the way that you treated people. And not only with respect, but truly with helping them. Move up and move on. The mayor earlier today talked about income and racial inequality. That's well-documented. We don't do we do not debate that. And what we're talking about today is a resolution that will promote a project to help clean up the hazardous areas underneath I-5. I want to talk just a moment about that and then I'm going to talk to you about what we're doing next. So the assessment of the Union Gospel Mission Outreach Area have been distributed to all of us. And the final outreach report from you. And we got another update again today. And the operations plan for addressing the numerous public health and safety hazards really included moving people now so that that hazardous area, as defined by ACLU and many others, could get cleaned up. None of us on the council believe that this is the end. It does not solve the problems that residents have. It does not solve the people's needs underneath the greenbelt right now. But what we do know is that the conditions under there need to be cleaned up. And I agree with you. What we need is more housing. So let me go back without being interrupted, please, and talk about the variety of options that are coming forward. What we are voting on today is a resolution. The resolution helps move forward the mayor's plan that they have negotiated with Washington. But that is just a beginning. We have already started and are continuing no negotiations with many of the people who have our advocates, who are supporters, who recommend that we take care of people and that we stop the sweeps. And I am one of those people that believe and are working hard that we must stop the sweeps. And we're starting a variety of options. We're going to have permanent housing. We've got about a thousand more units that are already planned, including 1300 spaces negotiating this coming year with landlords, 500 more spaces with families. I'm talking with the county and with other cities about how having having modular is put on private property so that those places can be people can move in and have safe housing, they can have warm housing, they can have their own places. So we will have a number of permanent housing options that will be increased this year. We're going to be increasing 24 seven shelters. We will have more authorized encampments. We're going to have more money for addiction and have a system wide plan with help for accessing mental health as well and detox centers. Housing and the services that people need must be tied together. And like we talked about last week, my belief is that these have to be expanded. The options have to be expanded this year, and it has to be moved nimbly and fast. Chasing around people from one side to the other does nothing for any of us. It doesn't do anything for the people who are being moved. It doesn't do anything for the neighbors. So I urge us to pass this resolution today and address with the hazardous areas underneath I-5. And as I say, we will have in my committee on Wednesday another conversation. And really building on the principles we will hear from the Encampment Task Force. And I want to say thank you again to all the people that worked on that with us to really help those who need it. And we will move our community forward. But today, we're voting on a resolution, and I urge us all to pass this. Thank you, Councilman Bagshaw. Do any of my colleagues have any further comments on this resolution? Council members want to see where it comes from. What if you couldn't give them the garbage you were reporting as you could have given them containers for sharpies and they could have kept the mess down. Thank you, ma'am. That's right. Yeah. Break is all going to. Be reasons why. So I'm going to ask that you refrain. Right now we have a public comment. Please refrain. Thank you. Customers want the other floor. Thank you. Tell the families that. Don't you let everybody do that. I'm going to ask you one more time and then I'm going to call you disruptive and have you removed. I'm going to ask you one more time and I say you're disruptive. Please have this person removed. I'd like to have it removed. I don't. I Harrell. I don't think they should be moved. I think they're there to disrupt the status quo. And that's why. We find this disruptive. And that asked should be removed. Thank you. Okay. And anyone else speaking during this non public comment section, I'm going to have you removed. Okay. Yeah. Do I just want to crush this? We've got to wait for our real time. Yes. Let me get pretty language on this. So here we were. We've got a. Now this is what we do. Customer response. You have the floor right here. How far back? Give it up for our customer and. Thank you, prisoner. I believe it is disingenuous to tell people that they have to find permanent housing and that permanent housing is the solution if there is nowhere they can afford to go. Yes, everybody agrees we want permanent housing. Nobody is, you know, stupid. But the problem with resolutions like this is that. As members of the public said, it has dressed up as something different, but it is ultimately about sweeps and the experience of sweeps everywhere. But especially in these Duwamish, greenbelt has been that it will continue to be a failed policy whenever the greenbelt has been and is trapped. The reality is hundreds of people are left with nowhere to go. Sometimes they lose their tents and possessions, sometimes not, and then they set up camp somewhere else. In this case, in the ad. Then the city repeats the process all over again. Millions of taxpayer dollars are spent and all that is achieved is misery. It is inhumane and ineffective. We should sweep trash, not people right here. I vote no to get housing in this city. Premiere. Yes. Street. And actually, I would like to I would like to echo Susan's comments that Susan Russell's comment, you know, there's a lot of common sense solutions that the city council could help sponsor in order to keep the green belt green. Like all the ideas you said, porta potties, you know, safe needle disposal and so on. I don't think we are short on ideas. What we are short on is a political will to stop simply talking about homelessness, but actually implementing solutions that we know will work. I vote no on this resolution. But for all the council members, including Councilmember Bagshaw, who say that they are passionate about transitioning people to permanent housing, I look forward to your support. For the permanent housing solutions in my budget amendment for a thousand homes using the money that was set aside for the police precinct. I also want. To add it is quite stunning how the majority of the council went along with the violation of the basic rights of members of the Seattle public. People have been waiting here for 3 hours, some of them for hours, and they have these green cards that give them numbers. And they were prevented from entering chambers during the mayor's speech when he announced his priorities for how to use taxpayer dollars. These are taxpayers city council, and they were prevented from entering chambers to listen to the mayor's speech inside chambers. And I think that this this type of egregious violation of the public, the right of the public should not be tolerated. And I urge members of the public, let's continue building a very strong movement so that not only can we defeat these kinds of attacks on our rights, but also win tangible gains like the money for a thousand affordable homes. Are there any we have rather resolution 31705 that's been amended. We are discussing, I mean, for the Commons. Councilmember O'Brien. Thank you. I am going to vote against this resolution. I want to highlight the reasons why if you look at the assessment in the summary section under section one, it talks about the the number of folks that were personally engaged by the Union Gospel Mission Outreach Team of 357 folks. And then we looked through the housing, shelter and services provided. There were 28 people. Of those 357 who were either moved into a recovery program, including housing, transitional housing or assistance with alternative shelter arrangements. For those 28 folks. That's great. And I want to commend Union Gospel Mission for working with working with anyone who's outside and helping them find resources. And that is exactly the type of work we need to do. My concern is the gap between the 357 people that we're outreach to and the 28 folks that received housing. That's a huge number of folks that didn't get housing. 45 of those people were assisted in relocating to other authorized or unauthorized encampments, which is consistent with what we what I hope to become city policy when when we find an area that's unsuitable to live in. But there are hundreds of people that are not accounted for. And almost certainly the majority of those folks simply moved to other places. That may be acceptable or maybe not. And I don't believe that that is the best policy that we should be doing. I think it's a waste of the city's resources to be moving people around until we have a permanent housing or at least acceptable places for them to be. Specifically, I also want to talk about what's going to happen next. If we adopt this, the operational plan in section two of it, it talks about site work in a phase one where they're going to do final notification based on the encampment outreach assessment. At that time, it sounds like there are 118 people remaining based on the conversation in committee last week. It sounds like that number is down closer to 50 right now. I believe I heard that some of those folks still may get into housing, but based on the past pattern, I suspect a number of those folks remaining highlighted in phase two when they go to cleanup and debris removal will have to leave at that point and will simply not be given another place to go. And so we need to continue to work on better solutions for folks living outside. There's a lot of good work going on right now, and hopefully in the next few days, a few weeks, we'll have a commitment to it. I believe that a lot of good work was done in eastern Miami's greenbelt, but I also think we fall short of what we should be doing. Thank you, Councilman Brian. Councilmember Herbal. Thank you. I, too, have some concerns about the level of assessment and outreach that has been done to the population of folks living in this area to date. I'm concerned that in voting in favor of this resolution, it sends the message to the executive that this is a sufficient amount of access to alternative places to stay. It seems clear to me that what was offered to the population of people in the East trash greenbelt, the shelter beds was was not sufficient to meet the needs of the people living there at the time. There's a good reason for why people don't accept services that are offered to them. And I don't have enough information to to know about. Whether or not there were resources available to meet the needs of of folks living there. And and again, I think the work that so many of us have been focused on about creating future policies for how the city manages its own public land. I again, I think it's so important that we that we get it right, that we don't want to start off by endorsing a through this resolution, a set of expectations that don't, in fact, meet our policy goals. So I will be voting against this resolution as. Well and of course, memorable. Any further comments from any of my colleagues, if not council members? Thank you. I think it's fair to say that we live in a very complicated world and sometimes we face challenges that are very difficult. And this is one of those situations I think we can all agree that the city has tried to the best of its ability to balance our obligation for public health and safety, with our desire to provide a compassionate response to individuals who are living outdoors. And I think the city staff and union gospel mission have done an admirable job in this area. However, the East Room is greenbelt. So-called jungle is an inherently dangerous location. I think we all remember just 227 days ago, on January 26, when five people were shot, three seriously wounded, two killed. And on September 9th of this year, just 17 days ago, at least three individuals in the jungle exchanged gunfire involving four weapons, three automatic pistols and a rifle. Thankfully they were bad shots and no one was injured. But we could very easily be sitting here since January nine, excuse me, since September nine, trying to explain why the city did not act to clean up this inherently and extremely dangerous location. We cannot afford to look away from the city's public safety and public health obligations. We cannot ignore those facts. And so while the circumstances are difficult and while some individuals have said yes to housing and others have said no, the city has an obligation to act to protect residents of our city. And I'll be supporting this resolution. Thank you. Caspian Burgess, any further comments from my colleagues and I'll I'll pass on this and will vote raise our hands with respect to our vote voice as well. So those in favor of adopting the resolution as amended, please vote I and raise your hand. I ask those opposed. Please vote no and raise your hand. Oh, no. The motion carries the resolutions. Adopt and chair will sign it. Please read the next report of the Planning, Land Use and Zoning Committee.