West Seattle Mutual Aid Party🎉 Updates!
West Seattle Mutual Aid Party🎉, a partner of NW Hospitality, usually reserves their regular updates for their volunteers and supporters. However, here are snippets from their weekly updates from the last few weeks.
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6/8/2023 - … two friends who received temporary housing after the big Youngstown sweep last year are being returned to the streets. Neither has a path forward toward permanent housing. One of these individuals was one of our first ever contacts when we started this work a year and a half ago. They were evicted from a tiny house village where they had been a resident for a year. Thankfully, they were able to reconnect with other neighbors and will be staying temporarily with them in their RV while the current RV resident goes in for a surgery next week. It’s disheartening, and a stark reminder that our community needs to support solutions for long-term, permanent, supportive housing.
Image is of a birthday cake. “In positive news, we were delighted to be able to have a birthday party, with delicious cake, for one of our friends living in a RV. It was great to spend some time connecting with them and each other outside of our regular Saturday distro.”
6/12/2023 - Our teams connected with 29 people and we gave out two dozen loaves of home baked bread. We consistently get told by new folks joining how well organized we are 🥰 and a lot of it is having processes in place before things get too messy and in return for putting in that time and energy upfront, we have the ability to do things more asynchronously as well as get people plugged in more quickly. A big piece of it is the supply depot where we keep almost all of the supplies, it's organized into a section for clothing, non-food supplies, water, and then a section for food, we have handcarts and areas where we put empty crates and where we put our tables and even a spot to hang up our clickers to help us keep track of how many folks we saw.
6/19/2023 - Two spots we regularly visit are on the city's sweep list again for this week. Sweeps are always a cruel and traumatic waste of city resources, but these feel especially asinine. One is an area that is regularly swept, and the residents know this and try to take special care to remain clean and conscientious of other neighbors, even sweeping the sidewalks regularly. The other spot is where a friend lives who has been working with the city for months to get housing inside. He is currently on the city list for a tiny home spot and just waiting for an opening. Why sweep now?
7/3/2023 - One highlight this week was a comment from one of our friends who didn't need anything from us this week except for some conversation and companionship. They remarked on how they look forward to our visits because we treat them "like a human being." It was a reminder of how important this work is, and that the work is not just about getting much-needed supplies to those who need them. It's also about being consistent with our services and centering the relationships we make with our friends.
You can follow West Seattle Mutual Aid Party🎉 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MutualAidParty
And you can support them through NWH here or through their Patreon here.