Truckloads of trash, belongings cleared from Bremerton streets where encampments were

A block of MLK Way and nearby city streets in downtown Bremerton, where large homeless encampments developed over the past few months, now stand empty after bulldozers and dump trucks accompanied by public works crews and police officers cleared tents, belongings and refuse left by homeless campers on Saturday morning.

By 6 a.m. Saturday morning, before city crews arrived to clear the streets in a driving rainstorm around 8 a.m., Dawn Michele Wilson and other homeless advocates drove to the encampments with a truck to help collect items. There were still a few people camping on blocks of MLK Way, Broadway Avenue and around Eighth and Ninth streets, a few days after homeless encampments had mostly been abandoned after receiving notice on Nov. 1 from police and officials that Bremerton’s unauthorized camping ordinance would be enforced.

Campers were still around “for one reason or another, a lot of it is PTSD and trauma and mental health and they get overwhelmed and stuck and then just freeze,” Wilson said. “We knew that there are always those that kind of fall behind, and so we were just down there trying to solve any last minute crises that we could.”

Wilson helped collect provisions that advocate groups like Rock the Block had gathered from community donations, such as camping stoves and tents that could be redistributed to homeless individuals later.

As city crews cleared MLK Way mid-morning, a bulldozer had to be paused suddenly at one point, when a man was noticed sleeping under tarps near a pile of pallets.

Then the crews, coordinating with police, blocked several streets, starting on Broadway, and cleared 11 truckloads of items and trash from the streets, Bremerton Public Works Director Tom Knuckey reported. Crews collected a few items deemed valuable under the public works field policy, like a wheelchair, walkers and bikes, that will be held in storage.

“It's night and day from what it had been,” said Knuckey Monday.

"There was a significant effort that went into coordinating with the homeless folks ahead of time to ensure that they knew where resources were available," Knuckey said.

As police moved through the encampment, no arrests were made, Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler said Monday. When campers moved out of the area as crews swept through, the Salvation Army had been hosting about 45 homeless individuals. By that night, there was still capacity in the 75-bed shelter, Wheeler said.

“The day the Salvation Army closed their doors (last year) our streets began to fill up,” Wheeler said, citing the shelter's closure last spring after operated year-round since the pandemic. “The day they reopened, that’s the day they began to be clean again.”

But for homeless advocates like Kimmy Siebens and Wilson, clearing the encampments to move the city’s homeless population into a shelter is like changing the bandage on the long-festering wound of a housing crisis.

Siebens said the root causes that led to the encampments wouldn't be solved without more affordable housing, mental health care and substance-use treatment.

“They shouldn't be forced to live out of one backpack because they're on a waiting list for housing for over eight years,” Siebens said, referencing the Salvation Army shelter’s policy that guests are only able to store enough belongings that fit in a contractor bag.

“Clearing an encampment doesn't solve homelessness, it just moves them along somewhere else,” Wilson said. In the days since the city’s unauthorized camping ordinance went into effect, “So many of them just scattered into the wind and I have seen them everywhere. Every time I go to the grocery store or drive across town, I see them just wandering aimlessly because they don't know where to be.”

Since November 1, there have been about 40 people staying overnight at the Salvation Army, reported Capt. Lance Walters. During the daytime shelter operations, there have been almost double the people taking advantage of the space to eat meals and rest.

After the streets were cleared of encampments, the city raked away the refuse and sent street sweepers through, Wheeler said. In the coming days, police will continue to enforce unauthorized camping across the city and especially where encampments once were. He said police will likely will move on to other encampments, like one that has developed near the Warren Avenue Bridge, and prepare to clear them.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Largest homeless encampments cleared from Bremerton streets Saturday