Homeless could lose proximity to resources, safety as Bremerton plan heads for a vote

BREMERTON -- A team of volunteers serving Bremerton’s homeless community cut a ceremonial toilet paper ribbon to open two portable toilets on MLK Way Thursday. After conversation with the city administration and elected officials for months on how to legally install such a facility, the team rented land on the block, bought the toilets and set them out -- just days before the Bremerton City Council is scheduled to vote on an unauthorized camping ordinance that would see the encampment cleared and separated. 

The council’s proposed ordinance, now on the agenda for a vote Wednesday, would outlaw camping in parks, and on streets in any park and on streets, sidewalks and the space between streets and sidewalks. But rather than clearing the homeless campers and leaving them with nowhere to go while the city lacks overnight shelter space, a list of undeveloped city-owned parcels will be attached to the ordinance, mapping out areas where the law against camping will not be enforced.

But with the long holiday weekend ahead and no list attached to the proposed ordinance yet, advocates and people living in the MLK Way encampment, as well as another on nearby Broadway Avenue that has grown in recent weeks, are left wondering where they will go, how far their new encampments will be from centralized resources and how safe the sites will be.

“When you have a crisis, you have to solve it by solving the actual issues, which can't be done by hiding people,” Kimmy Siebens, a nurse and volunteer who's worked with the homeless community for years and played a lead role in the toilet installation, said late in the week. “If we disperse this to the rest of the community, it's just going to be chaotic for everybody.”

Siebens and her team are demanding the city give homeless campers 20 to 30 days to relocate to undeveloped parcels after their locations are identified, a timeframe not included in the ordinance as written so far.

“We just found out and we have exactly one week to get ourselves out and they still haven't told us where we're going,” said Kevin Naughton, 42, who camps on Broadway, behind the Starbucks at Sixth Street and Warren Avenue. “The city has not talked to us. We're the ones that are on the street right now.”

More: On MLK Way, the frustration and futility of trying to address a complex problem

Homeless campers like Naughton and his tentmate Stacey, who wished not to share her last name, are worried about the safety and compatibility among neighbors at the new encampments once their current ones are dispersed.

“A lot of these people I've become quite friendly with and quite close to, we all try to get each other's backs,” said Stacey, who said she only grew close with her neighbors after months of camping. “We don't want the people that are all hyped out on drugs and all crazy and acting all ridiculous. We want people that are respectable and quiet.”

Moving to a new parcel would undo the environment campers have created, Stacey and Naughton said. It could cause problems between homeless folk if someone chooses to camp near them in a new location whom they don’t get along with.

“We're creating a community of respect and taking care of their neighborhood,” Siebens said. “It actually is helpful to have smaller groups that work more cohesively together, but then when you are relying on community member volunteers who have full-time jobs like me as a nurse full-time in Seattle, then how hard is that going to be for me to go to like 10 different places when I'm the one providing the resources?”

Siebens’ team consists of volunteer nurses, doctors, prior addicts and gang members, mental health and substance use disorder professionals who work to fill in the gaps they see from the city in servicing homeless folk, connecting them with resources and providing in-field medical care, navigation to detox, treatment, and housing opportunities.

“There is not going to be a designated area where the city is helping people (to relocate for camping),” Siebens said. “However, we the citizens are volunteering time and giving our own money and we need this support from the local government.”

“We want to clear all of this up too,” Siebens said, “but we want to do it in a humanitarian way.”

Related: In Silverdale, a county team continues to address encampments in compassionate way

For others in the neighborhood, however, the collective encampments are becoming unsustainable and an enforceable ordinance is needed right away.

Paul Meigs owns Discount Tire and Wheel at the end of MLK Way, a the street's intersection with Park Avenue, where he can see straight down the tents gathered on either side of the road.

“I've cleaned up human feces about 12 times in the last six months,” said Meigs, who's installed cameras all around the shop. “I don't leave anything outside at night anymore.”

Meigs wants to see camping outlawed in the city limits altogether. Others who've helped those going through hard times in Bremerton also agreed that the time has come to address the encampments that have grown rapidly this summer.

“I think it's a good thing to move an encampment away from schools and community centers,” said Capt. Dana Walters of the Salvation Army, an organization that currently provides numerous daytime services to homeless residents, just across the alley from the MLK Way encampment and a block from the Marvin Williams Recreation Center.

Amanda has been in and out of treatment for her substance addictions after several major traumatic events happened in her life. Amanda, 39, wished not to share her last name for safety concerns. She’s been staying in the MLK Way encampment when she’s out of treatment, sharing a tent.

Amanda has been having trouble sleeping, like many inside the encampment, due to fighting heard early almost every morning. Accessing drugs and falling into addiction is easy to do there, she said.

Amanda agrees with the proposed plan to relocate to an undeveloped area, as long as there is direct communication from the city about the details of the ordinance and the availability of necessities, like a toilet, drinking water and a barbeque she and her homeless neighbors can cook on at all times.

“Some of these places are going to be so far out there, there's not going to be stores and things that we might need to use,” Stacey said. “If you don't have a vehicle, if you don't have the means to get around, how are you going to do that if you're out in the middle of a forest somewhere because they don't want to look at you?”

Accessing services at the Salvation Army like showers and laundry can already mean waiting in line for hours, said Naughton, even with the building a block away. Without money, Naughton has to use bus tokens provided by the Kitsap Resource Center and the Salvation Army, but they’re often not enough to bus between jobs and appointments, let alone between potentially farther removed camping spots and resources within the city center.

Accessing the Salvation Army’s provisions like breakfast and lunch, shower, laundry, clothing, bus tokens and on-site healthcare could become a difficulty for homeless campers as well, Naughton worries.

Preparing to serve new homeless encampment locations, Siebens and her volunteer team are requesting $10,000 from the city for toilet maintenance and hand-washing stations, costs that include renting land to place toilets, weekly toilet emptying costs, “sharps” containers costs and fencing costs. They are also asking for funds and a designated city employee to coordinate dumpster and trash pick up and waste removal from RVs.

“I think anytime you have people living in tents without direct access to sanitation, whether that is by their choice or someone else's, that it presents problems,” Walters said. “There's just a myriad of reasons that people are there, but whatever the reason is, they’re still a human being in a tent without access to basic needs.”

Siebens plans to also pursue legal action to force the city to include language in the proposed ordinance defining incontinent persons as disabled, and thus considered exempt from infractions for unauthorized camping. And if a list of campable undeveloped locations is not attached to the proposed ordinance soon, considering that Wednesday's vote will come just two days after Labor Day weekend, Siebens intends to pursue legal action as well.

If the ordinance is enacted, Siebens said, she’ll have to move the newly christened portable toilets to the next, most useful location.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Unauthorized camping ordinance worries Bremerton's homeless community