A Camp Grows in Burien

This Opinion is shared with permission of The Burien Voice on Facebook. Originally posted on August 25, 2024.

[NOTE FROM EDITOR: Letters to the Editor and Editorials do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Burien-News or Daniel Media.  If you wish to submit a story, photo, article or letter, please contact us.  We look forward to hearing from you.]

A Camp Grows in Burien.

A homeless camp that popped up in the alley by Starbucks on SW 148th a few weeks ago is getting worse by the day. A reader who works nearby estimated it to contain as many as 20 people, with high turnover among the residents. Vehicle traffic and behavior at the entrances suggest that drugs are being bought, sold, and/or used there.

Children have been seen in and around the camp.

Since its creation, the camp has been problematic for nearby business owners, who see it impacting their and their customers' sense of safety. At least two businesses have experienced incidents of theft or assault in recent weeks, as reported to me by one of the owners.

Just across the street, on the north side of SW 148th, is an office occupied by REACH and LEAD, who contract with King County to provide outreach, case management, and various referral services to homeless people throughout Burien. Their clients include people who are staying at the Starbucks alley camp, though I don't know how many clients they have there at this time.

Last Thursday afternoon, around 4 PM, an employee at one of the shops along the alley observed a vehicle parked outside the fence on the east side of the camp for between 30 minutes and an hour. Two women emerged from the vehicle and passed a couple of boxes around or through the fence to specific residents. The witness estimated the boxes to be about 12 inches by 20 inches and 8 inches deep. He couldn't see what was in them.

The witness left his business, walked over, and confronted the women, telling them they were on private property and asking them what business they had with the camp. They told him they were with the REACH organization and they had clients in the camp.

"So you're SUPPORTING these people?" he asked.  

"Yes," they said.

The witness, who was visibly unhappy but wasn't physically threatening, informed the women they were on private property and told them to leave or he'd call the police and have them trespassed and their car impounded. They promptly left without arguing.

I know this witness personally, and after the incident, he contacted me about it. I got his permission to post it here, but before I did that, I contacted Lisa Daugaard, director of the LEAD program, and Chloe Gale, manager of the REACH program, to get their thoughts. I wanted to know if they knew who these women handing out the boxes were and could tell me exactly what they were doing at the camp.

(NOTE: The two organizations, LEAD and REACH,  are separate, but LEAD contracts with REACH to provide outreach services for some of its clients.)

I reached Ms. Gale late on Friday afternoon. She said she didn't know who the two self-identified REACH workers were and that it might be hard to find out before my story ran, since it was the weekend and many of her staff would be off. Nevertheless, she said she'd make inquiries and try to find out. As of Saturday afternoon, though, she was not able to identify any specific REACH employees working with people at that camp on that day.

I reached Ms. Daugaard about the same time. She told me she didn't know who the two women were but said they might have been REACH workers doing contract work for LEAD. She acknowledged that LEAD does have clients at the Starbucks camp.

Both Daugaard and Gale told me that outreach workers sometimes provide food to individual clients in homeless camps or on the streets as a way of creating and building a relationship with that client, a relationship that is ultimately intended to move the person off the streets and into stable housing. This is typical for outreach workers, they said, and I know that to be the case.

Ms. Gale said that REACH doesn't deliver large quantities of food intended to feed an entire homeless camp. She emphasized that her staff typically work with individuals, not encampments, and when they have an interaction with a client living in a camp, they try to do it in a low-key way at a distance from the camp or in another private location.

Ms. Gale said that even supposing she can track down the outreach workers and find out what was in those boxes, she might not be at liberty to tell me what it was but said that, based on the box size I described, it could have been box lunches. I explained to her that if she's not able to tell me what was in the boxes, some readers will draw their own inferences as to what it was, and one of those inferences could be "drug paraphernalia," which service provider agencies often refer to euphemistically as "harm reduction" or "safer use" supplies.

She said that REACH sometimes does give Narcan to drug users but that, again, that was done on a one-to-one basis and included education on how to use it. REACH does not hand out Narcan in quantity at homeless camps, she said.

Both women seemed to want to frame the discussion around what a big, complex problem homelessness is, and they wanted to tell me about the good things their agencies are doing to help homeless people. I responded that the business owners by the Starbucks camp don't especially care about that. They just want the camp gone.  

As far as Burien as a whole goes, I think most people don't care whether homelessness in America is ended in 10 years or 100. They just want to see the camps in their city shrinking and then disappearing. But instead, the camps only seem to be growing, and an army of taxpayer-funded "helpers" is growing right along with them, thanks to virtue-signaling politicians like Dow Constantine, King County Executive, who are always ready to spend someone else's money to make themselves look compassionate.

This is a complaint I've made dozens of times to dozens of homeless service providers and politicians over the years. I've spent hours describing the problem to Ms. Daugaard alone.

"You're enabling these camps," I've told them. "You're helping them grow and attracting people with all these addiction and behavior problems to come to Burien and nearby communities where they know they'll be tolerated, or even coddled. Once they arrive, they can either wait for an apartment that might never come or just hang out indefinitely on the streets, or in these awful camps."

These providers are mostly well-intentioned people, no doubt. They truly believe they're trying to make things better. But they just don't seem to be getting it. They don't think like someone trying to run a legit business next to drug camp or a parent who can't take their kid to the park anymore because there's a schizophrenic in a tent near the swing set.

That needs to change.

–David

‍

Reply from Lisa Daugaard from Purpose Dignity Action - PDA:

Thanks for the conversation, The Burien Voice. Both my office (Purpose Dignity Action - PDA) & REACH agree that these encampments should be resolved, by making appropriate placements for those staying there in shelter & housing (with case management), so folks don't just move down the street. Our two organizations have collaborated on fully resolving (down to trash removal) nearly 40 encampments in this way since 2020. But that requires resources that haven't been made available in Burien since 2021 (when PDA's CoLEAD program, which was funded with temporary COVID relief money, ended when that funding ended). From 2020-2021, we moved nearly 100 individuals living in Burien parks into hotel shelters in SeaTac & Seattle, and then many on into housing. We would be glad to do that here! We just aren't holding the resources necessary to make it happen.

In the meantime, we can work with the individuals in this encampment who’ve been referred to LEAD on their specific issues/needs, & if we can locate shelter/housing options that can work, these individuals may be able to move on. That’s been accomplished for numerous LEAD clients over the past year, but only through sustained advocacy for housing and shelter openings.

‍

Reply from Robyn Desimone - Business Owner:

This is a LEAD client. She’s been in the streets for more than a decade. How can the program have failed her? Lisa Daugaard

‍

Andrea Suarez, a homeless outreach provider, expressed her concerns about endless enabling:

My thoughts are this …. I met a man named Carlos last week who asked me for food and water in Belltown. I not just pointed him to 2505 Western Ave for one of 3 free hot meals a day but walked him there. As we acquainted he told me he was a ex con with a murder in the second degree charge and was eventually let out prison here in king county. He is required for life I presume to check in with the DOC and as he admitted “procrastinates” giving him open warrant status. As life turned out for him this created a homeless life choice and eventually got swept from a right of way. LEAD saved the day and he’s been in 3 different housing projects over the years as leases stand up or down or in one case he was kicked out but then transferred. Carlos needs to be held accountable and get a job which he agreed that he needs to be more responsible. I ended up buying him a fully loaded burrito at my new favorite place Bang Bang Kitchen as take out and gave him my card for follow up. My point here is that it’s just too easy for Carlos and the enabling deflates him of any psychological drive. He’s coddled and free loads vs. as we say in sales to “stay hungry” which fuels accountability, independence and personal success. Not sure how this all ties in but I’d just ask that we more strictly require accountability otherwise we will have more losses like Ruth Dalton and her dog Prince. Carlo’s admitted to me he is a very violent man if triggered.

In general the entire suite of supply (services) available to those in need creates demand. There never seems to be an end.

‍‍

‍[NOTE FROM EDITOR: If you wish to submit a story, photo, article or letter, please contact us.  Even if you wish to remain anonymous, please include your name and phone number so we may contact you privately.  We look forward to hearing from you.]

‍

‍

‍