For safety’s sake, church elder asks City to renew policies to allow tent city

Published 11:47 am Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Brocc Snyder has seen many homeless people in the more than 15 years he and his wife have ministered in Auburn.

People, he said, without money to rent a place or own a home, living far beyond the footlights in makeshift tents, in abandoned cars, down by the river or on the Muckleshoot Indian Reservation.

Life on a precipice.

“I’ve talked to many of these people who live in tents out in the wilderness, and they’re being ripped off,” said the Auburn-raised Snyder, a 1967 Auburn High School graduate. “People come in and tear their stuff up. Some are being attacked. I recall a week or two ago a homeless lady was shot in her own tent in Seattle.”

Sixteen homeless people have died in King County since Jan. 1, Snyder said. More than 10 of those, he noted, were victims of events over which they had no control, including accidents or murders.

Snyder, who lives in Enumclaw, said he is part of a group that includes pastors and Auburn residents, all united by a common desire — that every resident should be safe.

On Monday night, he brought a plea to the Auburn City Council.

“Auburn once allowed for encampments — now known as tent cities — to help out the homeless, or people going through transition periods, or people just having a tough time getting by. I believe that time has expired, and I would like for the City of Auburn to renew the policy for encampments here in Auburn,” Snyder said.

No, he said, it will not be easy to bring such a thing off, given the common fear of tent cities, which are too often associated in the mind with crime, alcohol and drug abuse or sexual offenders. But his experience, he said, has taught him that a tent city is the cheapest, quickest way to bring homeless people together.

Snyder told the council that he has been researching and working with Share/Wheel, the Seattle-based housing and resource organization that set up the first tent cities in Seattle in 1990.

“They have half a dozen or so different daytime, nighttime, not just encampments, but overnight shelters for women and children. Their strategy is to empower those people to govern themselves and control that environment,” Snyder said.

He lauded Share/Wheel’s management of the encampments.

“It’s kind of like a mini Auburn: (the residents) have their own council; they make their own decisions; they rotate these people so there are no cliques going. They have a code of conduct that is strictly enforced. There’s no leeway — you break the rules, you’re gone. Because all of the people who live in these encampments need (rules),” Snyder said.

“A lot of them use public transportation to go back and forth to work. … Sure, there’s Work Source, and a lot of people like to go to Work Source,” Snyder said. “But if you’re living 10 miles out by a river, and you have to hoof it or ride a bicycle, you’re going to miss the opportunity to get a job. You are going to miss the opportunity maybe to save money to rent an apartment and buy other things.

“What I am asking for is please, please, give us the policies that allow us to put in an encampment to house the homeless residents of Auburn and keep ’em all safe,” Snyder said.

Michael Hursh, director of administration for the City of Auburn and its police and fire chaplain, works closely with Auburn’s homeless population. He said Wednesday that the City already has ordinances related to encampments in the municipal code, indeed, has had them for years.

Hursh said Auburn’s Veterans and Human Services Division provides direct resources to many of the local non profit agencies and works closely with them, not only to offer a variety of services throughout the community to help its at-risk and vulnerable populations but also to provide direct services to people just coming into the city and looking for help. Help, he said, that takes the form of referrals and direct delivery of services to match the need.

“This is not a new conversation,” Hursh said. “There are a number of groups that initiate, organize and manage tent cities in the area; some do it better than others. Our number one concern is people’s safety. Our number-two concern is quality of life. Regardless of the living conditions that you are in, what is the quality and standard of the living arrangements? And that’s where we would need to be very seriously involved with any organization wanting to manage a living arrangement … And there certainly is a lot of public education that would need to happen around any serious attempt to formalize any encampment under the existing ordinance.”