Response to Kitsap Sun article by Kai Uyehara, Decrease in homeless encampments changes Kitsap's strategy to reach unhoused population published on 9/25/2024

The conclusion drawn by the Kitsap Sun article by Kai Uyehara, Decrease in homeless encampments changes Kitsap's strategy to reach unhoused population that the HEART team’s updated job is to reach the “last handful of homeless campers who haven’t accepted services yet” is a gross misunderstanding of what the recent law and policy changes have meant for the unhoused people living in and around Kisap County. The county’s own data, referenced in this very article, from the flawed but useful Point-in-Time count shows with abundant clarity that there are no fewer people living without shelter now than there were when the HEART team was formed two years ago. The only thing that has changed in that time is that communities have been destroyed and people are more vulnerable. 

People seek community for safety, comfort, and because we’re biologically driven to not be alone. The new laws and policies which make it illegal to exist unless you own or rent a house or property have done nothing but destroy these communities which also make people easier to reach and work with while making many services easier to provide - food, litter mitigation, toilet services, and connection for referrals. 

The job for Derrick Means, Kitsap’s new HEART director is definitely different than it was for his predecessor, Jarrod Moran, two years ago but absolutely not because there are fewer people to work with. Just as many people are now harder to find and more vulnerable - lacking in the little stability and comfort an established place to live creates. All this while access to resources has not improved at all in that time. There are no more houses, no safe parking locations, no sanctioned tent encampments or tiny homes, no increase in housing vouchers.

As someone who has spent over a decade working to bring resources to people and make connections that can help them find the services they need to pursue their goals and find stability and security, I have never encountered a single person who just doesn’t accept services. That phrasing places the onus on traumatized and vulnerable people who are often sick and have extensive and specific needs. When people don’t accept services, it is because the services being offered are inadequate. This is a common excuse bandied about that directs attention away from the failure of service infrastructures to meet the needs of our community members, sometimes intentionally and sometimes out of ignorance and misunderstanding.

The Sun’s article highlights the HEART team’s first sweep at Veterans Memorial park in Port Orchard while miscategorizing the people who were living there, some of whom had been established, waiting for services on wait lists, for up to four years. Fentanyl has made homelessness in general more dangerous, but the situation at Vets park was very stable prior to the sweep. There had been one significant horrible incident in the leadup to the sweep, but housed people are violent and horrible to their families and neighbors too without being vilified and dehumanized unless they’re actually arrested for crimes. I was there in the park with the people at Vets and fellow volunteers for over half a year and the residents were welcoming and cooperative, helping to clean not only their own trash out of the park but trash that had accumulated in the woods for years. Vets is, ironically, an ideal example of a stable valuable resource in the community - a place where people can be and feel safe, have a sense of home. From there, they can better engage with resources that will get them into housing, into treatment, and back to setting goals and working toward what they need to reach those goals.

Clearing encampments uproots people and communities, displaces them away from resources and services they are familiar with, disconnects them from community members and family looking for ways to provide assistance, forces them to set up again elsewhere if the available resources fail to meet their needs, and generally destabilizes the entire region making it less safe for everybody. We’ve seen this change in demeanor acutely as volunteers of the county’s Severe Weather Shetlers. Sweeps certainly do not make it harder or less likely for people to use drugs, they don’t make people feel more safe. People are put on edge because sweeps destroy the thin veil of security they had been able to develop for themselves all while framing them as bigger failures and losers for “not accepting services.”

Any resources offered to people as they are evicted from whatever homes they’re able to build as they’re being swept and evicted can and should be offered to them without threat of displacement. Before sweeps began, Northwest Hospitality volunteers had been able to work with people because we knew where they would be. We could bring them water on hot and smokey days and make sure they knew the severe weather shelter would be opening on snowy and icy days. We had volunteers helping to manage trash and eliminated about 60,000 pounds of trash, with the cooperation of encampment residents, in 2021 alone. Now all that trash is scattered around our county, left to pollute Kitsap because people can’t access the resources to help dispose of it as they get displaced every single month or even week. 

The lack of encampments is not a long-term victory. It is a deceptive mask over a broken system that is failing vulnerable people more now than it ever was. People are still there. Some compassionate people in our community refuse to ignore or overlook them, working even harder to find and connect with the people who have been forced to hide. I have no doubt that the new HEART director is one of these compassionate people, just as his predecessor was, but the tools and methodology of the HEART team, the policies and laws they are encumbered to follow, will continue to fail our people.

Carl Borg saying that people “are not ready for services yet” is perpetuating a horrible myth and lie - the people who “aren’t ready” have not been offered the services that meet their needs. We do not have services in this county or in this state for the most vulnerable, often people with mental and physical healthcare needs. In my capacity as an EMT years ago, I would drive people to Yakima, Everett, or even Portland for a bed at a mental healthcare facility. More recently, we have worked and failed to connect people with beds as far as Texas that can meet the specialized needs of people in our community. Saying that people “are not ready for services yet” is a copout that does not recognize the failures of our infrastructure or put pressure on the people who should be improving it. The mayor of Bremerton promised us solutions over a year ago and we have seen nothing from him despite a clear vote from the city council that they want sanctioned encampments and tiny homes. That’s just one example of too many to count - this problem is not being prioritized and one of the reasons is that we keep putting the burden of success on our vulnerable neighbors by saying they aren’t ready rather than recognizing that we are not offering the services they need.