Most residents moved to hotels as city dismantles Deschutes Parkway homeless camp

City work crews piled tents, sofas, bike parts, and other objects as a crane dropped them into a dumpster at the Deschutes Parkway homeless encampment on Wednesday morning.

This marshy wooded area was home to more than 70 people in recent months, many of whom left before the city’s Wednesday, Dec. 8 deadline to sweep the camp.

The city’s decision to dismantle the camp came after increased pressure from private landowners and several violent incidents in October, including two nonfatal shootings and the death of a 47-year-old man who appeared to have been beaten.

There was no visible police presence, although several officers at one point walked down the running path by Capitol Lake.

Just a handful of residents remained on Wednesday, loading belongings into vans with help from dozens of volunteers coordinated by Olympia Mutual Aid Partners (OLYMAP).

Fifty people have been placed in short-term hotel stays, according to Kim Kondrat, the city’s homeless response coordinator. Most of those people checked in Tuesday night, although Kondrat spent the morning making reservations for several more residents who remained on-site Wednesday.

The city has agreed to pay for those rooms until Jan. 3, Kondrat said. City staff will conduct daily check-ins, and Kondrat is hoping to enroll those who are not already into case management.

In addition to the city’s efforts, an independent GoFundme campaign to purchase hotel rooms for those who didn’t get rooms through the city has raised over $4,000.

Others have relocated to other encampments, according to Tye Gundel of OLYMAP, the outreach group contracted to provide case management and site support for Deschutes, Wheeler, and Ensign Road camps as part of the county’s “scattered site” program.

“What we’ve seen historically is that people usually go to already established camp sites,” Gundel said, name-checking camps along Wheeler Avenue, The Jungle between Martin Way and Pacific Avenue in east Olympia, or camps on the west side.

Gundel estimated about 10 people moved to an encampment in the woods near Providence Hospital. The dispersing of campers poses a challenge for outreach workers serving the 30 former Deschutes residents currently enrolled in case management with OLYMAP.

“It’s a totally different thing to provide services in one spot versus dispersed,” she said.

Other problems could arise as the established camps may not want new arrivals and a sudden influx could cause tension, Gundel said. If those camps balloon in size, it also makes them more likely to get swept in the future, she said.

Gundel said she shares the concern the city has about recent violence, but also said the people most affected by the violence are the residents, and the sweep won’t solve those problems.

Despite their disagreement over the decision to sweep the camp, Assistant City Manager Keith Stahley, who was on-site Wednesday morning, praised OLYMAP for doing an “extraordinary job” preparing residents for the sweep and organizing volunteers for the move.

Throughout the morning, volunteers drove vehicles with belongings to hotels and storage facilities at the Union Gospel Mission. OLYMAP also rented a U-haul that will serve as temporary storage until people figure out where they are going.