Good afternoon, my name is Dan Strauss, I'm the city council member from here in District 6. Born and raised in Ballard, I'm honored to represent Ballard, Fremont, Green Lake, Greenwood, Finney, and many other micro-neighborhoods here in the city.
I'm going to start this press availability by thanking James.
Without James, we would not have been as successful as we have been to this day.
This was done in partnership with the Ballard Alliance, Mike Stewart with me here, with Chloe Gale from Evergreen Treatment Services Reach as well.
This is a new way of doing encampment removals, and this is a system that works.
I need to be very clear that I don't control any department in the city, and so what I can do is set the table and marshal the plan, and that's what we've done here.
We've had the Mayor's Office at the table, we've had Human Services Department, Seattle Parks and Recreation, again Evergreen Treatment Services Reach, the Ballard Alliance, and with me up here today are the housing providers, the shelter providers that have been able to move people off the streets, out of the parks, and inside to a place that they can feel safe.
This is my community.
I'm not insulated from the situations that occur throughout our community.
I feel it firsthand and that's why I've worked urgently to this end.
This today is the midpoint.
This might be the first time you're interacting with me about this, but this is the midpoint in a four-year plan.
We've been working for two years to get to where we are today, and there's two years worth of work continuing.
The reason that we were able to remove the encampment at Ballard Commons now over the last two and a half months is because the shelter availability has come online.
The city council funded this shelter availability a year ago.
It should have come online earlier in this year, but I'm not here to point fingers.
I'm just glad that it is online now and that we've been able to find success.
The reason that this is a new way of removing encampments is because we're using a human-centered approach.
We're giving the time to build trust between outreach providers.
We're giving the time for them to get people inside.
We're finding and creating adequate shelter and housing.
And those results result in people getting inside rather than displaced.
I understand why people's first reaction to this was that this was a sweep.
because that's the way and because encampment removals that have gone on for the past number of years have been with short duration of posting without the ability to create trust between the people who are being served and the people with the resources and this creates a situation of tension and conflict rather than meeting everyone's needs to get them inside so that parks and public spaces can be used as designed.
I've long said that our parks and our Our libraries and our buses should not be our homeless shelters because we need homeless shelters to be at the scale of our crisis.
I'm going to give you a little bit of a timeline of how we got to today.
I'm going to talk about the long-range plans after I talk about the short-term work that has been done here today.
In August, again, and this is in partnership with the Ballard Alliance, with James at REACH, with Chloe at REACH, in August we created a census of everyone living in and around the park.
In September, we created a needs assessment to understand what type of shelter and what type of resources folks needed.
We spent the time to pair them with the shelter availability coming online.
Some people needed to move together in groups.
Some people needed to be kept apart.
And we were able to take the time to get people inside.
So again, August, we created a census.
September, a needs assessment.
October, November and December we've been moving people inside.
This encampment removal has been going on for over the last two and a half months as compared to the old way of doing business which would take about two days.
That's why we're seeing a different success.
The timeline from here on out is that the park will be closed for six months to a year to do remediation.
to complete backlogged maintenance work.
I was successful in getting the funding for the playground that was proposed in 2019 that was put on pause by the pandemic.
This is our opportunity to build back better, to keep the plans moving as we emerge out of this pandemic.
When the park reopens, we will have an activation plan so that we can bring enjoyment for everyone living around here.
And this is for people who are down and out and for people who are up on their luck.
I'm excited to be able to speak about the partnership that I've had with Reverend Britt Olson at St. Luke's.
Over a year and a half ago, almost two years ago, Reverend Olson and I began discussing how we can bring family affordable housing to downtown Ballard.
And I've been working with the St. Luke's Episcopal Church to bring them city funding for family affordable housing.
When I ran for office, there were no dollars spent in District 6 for that NOFA in 2019. And while we don't know the results of this upcoming NOFA that will be announced tomorrow, I can tell you that Reverend Olson and I have worked strongly together to make sure that they have a competitive application for a competitive process.
This park, again, will be closed for six months to a year to allow these developments to occur and also, honestly, to allow the space to breathe.
We need to have a clean break from how things have been so that we can build the future that we want it to be.
Two years from now, we're gonna be standing in this very same place with a very different situation around us.
We'll have family affordable housing as long as we get the funding tomorrow.
We will have market rate housing, St. Luke's will have a new church.
We will have a new renovated park that will meet the needs of all Ballard residents.
It's very, I'm just very happy and thankful that this has gone on the way it has, being able to meet people's needs with a human-centric approach so that we're not displacing hundreds of people into the community.
Last year, there was an encampment removal here that did not use the approach that we use today.
And before that time, there was not an encampment at the Leary Triangle.
There were not encampments throughout the neighborhood.
And that's when they started popping up.
So using the tactics of working together, creating a census, a needs assessment, and pairing people with the shelter that they need and will accept is how we got to today.
I've got a few other speakers up here and then I'll close us out at the very end.
We have Mike Stewart from the Ballard Alliance.
We have Chloe Gale from Evergreen Treatment Services Reach.
and we have Reverend Britt Olson from St. Luke's Episcopal Church.
With us also here today is Catholic Community Services, Low Income Housing Institute.
I'm going to look around just to make sure that I am, who else am I missing here?
Oh my!
Jen Adams of the Scott Vehicle Residency Outreach Program that has done amazing work throughout our district.
These folks have been part of our program to get people inside, and I want to thank our housing providers and our shelter providers.
Without anything more, I will turn it over.
Mike or Chloe?
Mike Stewart from Ballard Alliance is up next.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you very much council member.
Good afternoon.
My name is Mike Stewart.
I'm executive director of the Ballard Alliance.
For those of you that don't know the Ballard Alliance is a neighborhood business district improvement organization that represents hundreds of businesses in Ballard and thousands of residents as well.
And so For the last four years, the Ballard Alliance has partnered with REACH to provide homelessness outreach services in Ballard.
This unique engagement has provided for a really deep understanding of the needs of unhoused individuals living in the central area of Ballard, including Ballard Commons Park.
And the council member mentioned that earlier.
James with REACH has been nothing short of phenomenal in terms of developing the relationships and the knowledge base and the understanding of those individuals and their individual needs in Ballard Commons Park.
That was tremendously helpful.
And because of the strong relationships developed with those unhoused residents in the park, REACH and the Alliance were able to provide detailed knowledge and outreach services to the city, the community and provider teams, it was critical to planning for a successful transition into appropriate needs-based housing and shelter options.
The strong partnership between the mayor's office, Councilmember Strauss, REACH, key city departments, and the Ballard Alliance provided an intensive and thoughtful outreach process that demonstrated an approach that we hope can be implemented in other areas of the city in the months ahead.
We are very, very appreciative of the city's intensive work over the last eight weeks plus to address the needs of unhoused individuals in Ballard Commons Park, and at the same time, address the needs of the surrounding businesses and residents.
That, to me, is a very critical piece.
We look forward to the rehabilitation of Ballard Commons Park, which is a vital amenity to the community that provides much needed green space within, as you can see, a very dense residential environment.
Thank you.
Hi, everyone.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you for having me here.
I'm really excited to be part of this group of really tremendous changemakers in the Ballard community.
My name's Chloe Gale.
I'm a co-director at the REACH program of Evergreen Treatment Services.
We've been providing homeless street outreach for over 25 years.
and we believe in a neighborhood strategy to change the homelessness crisis in our community.
We want to build solutions with communities and we want to be very local in our strategy.
We've been here for four years thanks to the business alliance here and we're going to continue to be here.
So our providers have been in this community and we will stay in this community because we know that the work is not finished and that Ballard still has a critical homelessness need.
I'm not here today to celebrate the empty pavement you see before you.
I'm really here to celebrate and talk about the community that's been living here and share something about their lives and the change and the impact that we've made over the last four months.
The business community here in the Business Alliance and Mike Stewart particularly, their leadership, they helped innovate this neighborhood model and invested in our program four years ago.
Recently when the park needed to be closed, They 100% backed our policy of having no displacement when we work with people living in the community.
And I would say it has been the backing of the business and the local community members and Council Member Strauss that has really made a significant difference in this particular location.
We know that people need to have adequate relationships, they need to have time, and they need to have the resources that meet their needs.
So James, as has been mentioned many times, came here nine months ago and got to know every single person living in this park.
He met with 10 to 15, 20 people a day for months and months and months.
He built trusting relationships and he put his self on the line by saying, if you trust me, I will move you inside.
That took months and months of engagement.
He created a list back in August of 85 individuals who've been living in this park.
As you know, many for up to a year have been living in this space because this is where they feel safe and this is their community.
And it was a very significantly impacted group.
Over 20% had significant medical conditions.
There were five people that had had recent surgeries and significant cancer diagnoses.
There were four people that required ADA accommodation because they had lost their mobility and they couldn't function independently.
These are not easy to find in our shelter system.
Over 80% had mental health and significant behavioral health conditions that they were living with that they wanted support and care for.
So the first individuals that we moved inside off of this group were the people with the highest medical needs.
One gentleman that's been living here for almost a year had had a stroke two years ago and had no mobility on his left side and had a frequent seizure disorder.
James worked with him for months to help stabilize his medication and he was the first person to move out of this into a Lehigh facility downtown where he is now getting work to move inside to permanent housing with a caretaker.
Another person came from a family where all of his siblings are also disabled and living outside.
He had severe COPD and emphysema and he needed to have a plug-in so he also moved to an indoor facility where he could live with his CPAP machine and have his own space to take care of his breathing needs.
And a third person who had prioritized to move inside had recently, she had come with a stage four cancer diagnosis.
And she decided at the last minute that she wanted to move back with her family in Kentucky.
So James arranged for her to get a train ticket back home and she's now reunited with her family.
A second point I want to make is that our goal at REACH is that people have permanent housing.
We are not trying to move them into warehouses.
We want them to move forward into a permanent stability where they can heal and recover.
So we really embedded a lot of permanent housing strategies into our approach here.
There were two people who happened to get off a waitlist during this process and James helped them with all of their paperwork and move them into a program on Capitol Hill.
A second couple found their own apartment and we were able to get them move-in money to move in right away into another apartment.
And then there are five individuals here that through the Regional Homelessness Authority, we've been given a lot of permanent vouchers and five people, we completed all their paperwork and they are on their way to getting permanent supportive housing.
Our REACH housing navigators will now work with them in their temporary housing placement until we can get them permanent housing.
Finally, I just want to talk about the complexity of the shelter supports that we have in our community, and it took many, many providers.
The City HOPE team, I want to acknowledge, was here every single day helping to help us find shelters and find good matches for folks.
The DESC Health Through Housing facility that recently opened, which is a county program, stepped up also and gave us a few for people particularly with very high mental health needs because they are very skilled at housing folks with those conditions.
Lehigh, of course, has had many tiny homes, and that was where we were able to put a lot of our folks, and that was a really positive space for folks coming in.
And then I want to name Catholic Community Services here.
Their outreach provider, Denver, actually was here on the ground almost daily with James as well and did a lot of work and coordination.
And then they have excellent shelters that are really enhanced and can care for some of our people with the highest needs.
I want to give one example of this one approach because Ballard is really a very family and community centered region of our town.
I know that people come here and stay here because they feel safe.
One gentleman has been on the street for over 10 years and had had a lot of violent attacks against him because of his gender identity.
He had been harassed and abused and he had come and landed in the park.
He's been here for over a year.
Because there was a community people here where he felt safe and taken care of and he felt that Really loved him and took him in he had been to other shelters and had fallen back out again because he did not feel safe and James worked with him every day over the last three months and When the city came up with an opportunity to move a whole group of places people into a tiny house village he James worked to move his entire community all at once.
So 10 individuals together who considered themselves a street family were able to move together as a community.
We've heard back from this gentleman that he is finally feeling really safe there.
So I just want to name that we will still be here in Ballard.
I think that there are significant challenges in this community.
One is that there have not been a lot of resources for people to go and the people love Ballard and they don't want to leave Ballard.
And so we also have seen people shuttle around and try to stay here.
I want to say Ballard is really stepping up and that we're going to see a tremendous amount of more housing resources, including what's going on here.
on this corner that there will be new brand new housing facilities to take people inside.
And I'm really grateful for that effort that's coming in into this community.
Thank you.
Hello, I'm the Reverend Canon Britt Olson.
I'm the priest at St. Luke's Episcopal Church.
I also go by the title vicar of Ballard.
I've been here seven years.
They saved the preacher for last just in case I go too long, but I'm going to try and be short.
I think there's some lessons that all of us have learned together as a community as we've really worked together to provide the kind of support and assistance and approach to our neighbors in this neighborhood to create safety and security and sustenance and shelter.
These are essential needs for every person.
And we've been over 35 years helping to provide some of the sustenance for people who are in need, who are poor, who are hungry, who are lonely.
And it is a delight and a pleasure and privilege to be in partnership with so many different aspects of our larger community to provide the really necessary big picture work that leads to shelter and that leads to safety and security for this neighborhood and all the people who live in it.
So it's been a privilege to be part of that.
What you're hearing is that relationships coupled with resources equals transformation.
Relationships are built when people have conversations with one another, when people take the time to get to know one another past divisions.
I never thought I'd be a priest part of a business alliance, but I'm really proud that St. Luke's is part of the Ballard Business Alliance and we pay dues that help provide for the most amazing outreach worker, James, that you've heard.
He is an amazing person.
And so that is a part of our partnership.
I didn't know I would be part of a partnership with the city council member.
And that is part of the essential work that we need to do as a community to work together across all the different facets of our community to build what we like to call it St. Luke's, according to Martin Luther King Jr., the beloved community, where people are fed and body and mind and spirit.
where there is safety and security for all who live here, and where there is hope, where there is a chance for a new life, a chance for a transformed life.
This is a good start.
I know that all of my colleagues and partners and neighbors here know that housing and shelter and sustenance and safety are a good start, but mental health services and addiction recovery services are essential if we are going to continue to address the long-term needs of our most vulnerable neighbors and family members and friends.
And we hope to see an increase in those services as well.
But for today, we are grateful, grateful that a neighborhood can work together and make transformation.
Thank you.
I'll give you a few more comments, wrap up, I will be brief.
I want to also just acknowledge we have Assistant Chief Muniz from the Seattle Fire Department here representing Chief Scoggins.
Kenny Stewart, President of International Association of Firefighters, 27 Seattle Firefighters, was also planning to be present.
There's unfortunately been a death in the Seattle Fire Department family and so I want to also share my condolences to you, Assistant Chief, and to your entire department.
What you've heard here today, and let me also kind of set the framework, which it takes a long time to change how bureaucracy works.
And that is why this is the product of two years worth of work and why it has not gone faster.
We do know that to create lasting solutions that stand the test of time, it takes a longer amount of time to get them up and running.
And I believe that the solutions we have and the plan that I've been working on and will continue to implement will stand the test of time.
I will say that I've been able to speak to residents during my office hours about this plan for a number of months.
I've been able to speak with many of our neighbors about this plan and I do hold office hours every week and if anyone wants to meet with me I'd be happy to meet with you.
I want to really share that we are not again here to celebrate an empty park.
We are here to speak about how we were able to meet people's needs and get them inside.
No matter what their lot in life may be, these are people, and we need to treat them as such, and that's why a human-centric approach is so important.
Success is not clearing a park.
Success is getting people inside.
Success is changing the way our neighborhood looks, feels, and operates.
I was happy to be part of the activation plan of City Hall Park before the pandemic that was rolled back in just a month of the pandemic.
But in that situation, we were able to create a welcoming park for everyone, for people who are down and out, and for people that were working in the courthouse.
That's something that I look forward to doing here.
had we used old policies we would have displaced a hundred people into the neighborhood of Ballard and instead we moved people inside.
We know that shelter is not the answer and that housing is the answer and that until we can get the housing that we need we do need to rely on shelter.
The shelter throughput into affordable housing is what reduces our need for shelter.
This is the first year the city has met our benchmark of investing $200 million a year in affordable housing.
This and the regional authority on homelessness and this way of approaching homeless encampments is what gives me hope.
We can't only just, when we talk about housing and the $200 million that will build affordable housing, that will buy existing buildings, that will get our housing stock to the level that we need it, we also need high acuity, high needs shelter.
We can't just rely on low needs shelter because the people with the highest needs are the hardest to house and the ones that need the most stabilization.
And that's why we need high acuity shelter.
I'll end by saying that this doesn't solve the homelessness problem in Ballard.
There's still more work to be done and there's still more work that I will be doing.
Our next, we have already, my office is able to focus on about two, two and a half places at one time.
We have a staff of four and we have found that focusing intently on one place, two places, two and a half places at a time, we're able to see changes.
We're able to feel the results of our work.
And we've been focusing on 8th Avenue, Leary Triangle, Maritime Academy areas, and the Ballard Commons Park.
As this work begins to change course, we will begin to work on Woodland Park.
We already have our meetings set up.
And just by reference, we've been meeting multiple times a week for months to get to where we are right now.
And so while I don't have a timeline for what will occur in Woodland Park, we've already begun working there.
The success there will be determined by our ability to get people into shelter.
The reason that we have had success here is because we were able to bring a large amount of shelter on at one time.
I want to thank all of the city frontline workers that have made this possible, because they have been on the front lines of this.
I want to thank the Parks Department, the HOPE Team, Human Services Department, and the Mayor's Office.
And I want to thank James.
James has literally saved lives in this park.
There have been deaths here and there could have been more.
And James has literally saved lives in our community.
It's important that we, it is important that we don't take pity on people and leave them unforsaken.
We must meet their needs and bring them inside.
Thank you.
Yep, thank you.
Happy to take questions and questions can be directed at anyone.
Compliment what?
Yeah, I'm going to go 12341. I think the big question a lot of folks living in this neighborhood are going to have is what's good.
What's the stop?
The homeless are coming right back, setting up tents right here over in that park.
What's what's the long term plan?
This is an area that will be receiving intense focus again.
I don't control Seattle Police Department or the Parks Department, but it is my understanding that there will be an increased presence here to make sure that because especially in the park, no one's allowed in the park.
It's trespassing if you're in the park.
We will have intensive focus here.
That's my understanding.
I don't control those departments.
But once the park's open?
That, I mean, we'll come back.
Yeah.
So let me just answer that.
For when the park reopens, again, we are going to have an activation plan.
We're going to be meeting people's needs.
It's a place that if you intervene with somebody right when they set up a tent, it is easier for them to find a better place to live.
Jonathan.
Council Member Strauss, I'm asking a question on behalf of a neighbour who couldn't be here.
He says we never would have been in the situation if the city prevented the homeless from moving into the parks.
Why are these city leaders like Council Member Strauss now trying to take credit for a problem they enabled or made worse with their failed policies?
How would you like to respond?
Thanks, Jonathan.
The situations that we've experienced here at the park have been existing since before I took office.
In my first seven weeks of being in office, there were seven encampment removals within a quarter mile of where we're standing today.
What you might be referring to, Jonathan, is the CDC guidelines regarding encampment removals that were due to the pandemic.
Again, that's a federal guideline.
I'm a city council member.
That's the highest level of government.
I'm the lowest level of government.
Thank you.
Frankly, this is all possible because of these new shelter resources and people crossing the family.
How is this sustainable?
I mean, there are, there are sweeps going on every week, you know, in your district that are, that are people, would you describe people with?
How would you resonate this?
The way we replicate this is bringing together a table of people who are working together and making sure that we have the shelter and housing that we need to meet the scale of this crisis.
And so that means that we do need to tie the level of shelter and housing that we have available to the number of people that are living outside.
The way you replicate what we've done here today is by bringing together the business community, the neighbors, the outreach workers, and then making sure that we have the shelter and housing to meet the needs of our residents.
And again, this is the first year that we've been able to meet our $200 million a year benchmark in funding affordable housing.
I hope that will continue.
That is due to the jumpstart payroll tax.
I had one left.
Hey Dan, I voted for you.
I also voted for you.
So my question about the narrative, so we're talking about homelessness a lot, right?
But I also am part of the groups for cleaning the neighborhoods and kind of seeing the first hand what people end up residing in the homeless camps.
And for me, it almost feels like it's maybe not so much homelessness, but mental problems, drug addiction.
I'll disagree with you on that point, which is that we need to get people into housing to stabilize them.
If you try to stabilize someone and solve for their mental health or their addiction on the streets, they won't be stabilized.
They will continue to fall through those cycles.
What we do know is that when you bring somebody inside and stabilize them first, with housing first, we are then able to intervene in their mental health or chemical dependency issues.
And that's so very true, especially with permanent supportive housing that we have around the corner from here, where an individual is provided a studio size space, which is not much space.
But on the base floor of that building are the mental health providers, are the case managers, and those people are insured to be able to stay in that unit.
And so they are able to be housed, and if they fall back into chemical dependency, if they fall back into mental health issues, they're just falling downstairs to their caseworker or mental health professional, rather than falling back onto the street into the situation that we have today.
I'll take one more.
and i'm i know we've got a lot of residents here i'm happy to talk to you all after press i just want to make sure that since we have the press here if you have another question let me quickly ask one more question then how much is this cleanup and outreach ultimately costing the city and will this model be replicated the playbook replicated at other encampment sites in valley
I sure hope that this model is replicated not only here in Ballard but throughout the city.
I don't have the final costs for you Jonathan because we haven't gotten to work yet.
What I can tell you is that we had two million dollars put in for citywide for parks rehabilitation.
I added another million to that because I know the impact that District 6 has felt.
That is again three million dollars citywide for parks rehabilitation.
Sorry was there another part of that question?
How much it's going to cost to clean up, but also this outreach up to this point, to have all these people put into shelters and housing, how much has that cost?
Do you have a ballpark figure so far?
I don't like taking numbers off my cuff, so let me get back to you on that.
Thank you.
Thank you all very much.
I look forward to continuing working with you.