The Jungle, Part II - Amazon S3



Seattle’s Homeless Jungle

In terms of homelessness, there is at least one thing most everyone agrees on. For the more than eight thousand homeless in King County there are not nearly enough shelter beds. Bill Hobson is Executive Director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center, an organization that provides services, including shelter for homeless adults. He’s on the front lines of the fight to provide shelter for the homeless.

Actuality 1: (12 secs)

Bill Hobson: “The amount of shelter bed availability is still not nearly enough for 2,000 people – men, women, and children who are forced to sleep outside because they can’t access shelter.”

However, very few agree on where the more than two thousand without shelter should go. While the issue is argued, every cold winter night hundreds of homeless are turned away from shelters that have reached capacity. And hundreds of others have already resigned themselves to sleep outside. Instead of wasting their energy searching for an empty cot, they scour alleys, bridges, bushes and greenbelts to find the best protection.

Ambience 1: (40 secs) Begin AMBI #1 & 2 during the middle of previous sentence. Sounds of walking around

in the Jungle over muddy trails and through a loose chain-link fence. Cars can be heard in the distance.

Over two thousand without shelter have to go somewhere, and for nearly 80 years many found that somewhere to be a controversial place called “the Jungle”.

The Jungle is in south Seattle and bordered by I-5 and Beacon Hill. It’s 100 acres of dense ivy, muddy slopes, and hundreds of broad leaf maples at the end of their life cycle. A quick walk through and one will also find that it’s a place filled with invasive freeway noise, rats, garbage, spent condoms, and human waste.

Fade out Ambience 1 during Simon’s intro.

Simon has been homeless for 13 years. He states that despite its deplorable living conditions, the Jungle offers one feature highly valued by the homeless.

Actuality 2: (20 secs)

Simon: “Up there they can do what they want without being interfered with by other people; people in mainstream society. Up there they can practice their freedom in the truest sense. A rugged individualism you’ll find up there.”

The lack of rules and oversight makes the Jungle appealing for the homeless, but this also makes it a target for frequent sweeps by the Beacon Hill community and local government.

Craig Thompson lives in Beacon Hill and just two short blocks from the Jungle. Since 2000 he has been active in finding a way in which the homeless and his community can live harmoniously. He is keenly aware of the tough position communities like Beacon Hill are in because of the county’s lack of appropriate shelter.

Actuality 4: (20 secs)

Craig Thompson: “It’s a dilemma that we’re in right now because on one hand we cannot allow, as a city, to have our woods to be overtaken by homeless encampments that then become criminalized. But on the other hand, we don’t have a place for these folks to go.”

Tent City, a self-governing mobile encampment, is an alternative. Communities tolerate Tent City because the roughly 100 residents must obey a strict Code of Conduct, with rules including no drugs or alcohol, no fighting, no panhandling and no visiting tents of the opposite sex. It has not proven to be a perfect solution however, because, like the Jungle, the reason it appeals one group is the reason why it repels another.

Charles and Matt collect cans during the day and sleep most nights in the Jungle. They tried out Tent City and have a very specific reason why they don’t stay there anymore.

Actuality 6: (9 secs)

Adam: “Why would someone choose to live in the Jungle as opposed to Tent City?

Charles: “What it is is privacy.

Matt: “We want to be left the hell alone!”

For Charles and Matt the lawlessness of the Jungle is a catch-22. While ensuring they won’t have anyone telling them what to do it inevitably attracts dangerous people and situations.

Actuality 7: (22 secs)

Matt: “There’s bozos down there. There’s enemy people down there.

Charles: “You see guns. You see knives down there. People get beat up. I’ve seen a girl out there naked, she was prostituting, and she was about to get beat up. She was screaming for help and I had to go over there and help her. She was running around…

Matt: “You clobbered that guy.”

Charles: “Yeah, geez.”

Given Charles’ and Matt’s depiction of enemies, weapons and violence, one might think it strange that anyone would choose to live in the Jungle. All the homeless people I talked to expressed that they would spend as little time as possible there. Most people without a home, a family or shelter just want to find a place where they can rest.

Actuality 8: (17 secs)

Charles: “You got people down there who just need a place to go and sleep. When I see them they ask all kinds of questions – where can I go, where can I sleep, and stuff like that. It’s not easy down there in the weeds trying to find a place to sleep.”

SOC OUT: (2 secs)

For One World Report, I’m Adam Vaughn.

Actuality List

1. Bill Hobson: 4:55 – 5:36

2. Simon: 7:10 – 7:40

3. Simon: 0:37 – 0:42 & 0:45 – 1:02

4. Thompson_Inside: 8:50 – 9:45 (Already saved as ACT_3_Thompson_Dilemma.WAV)

5. Robert: 17:56 – 18:03 & 19:06 – 19:11

6. Charles & Matt: 6:40 – 6:44 & 7:08 – 7:14

7. Charles & Matt: 8:55 – 9:25

8. Charles & Matt: 2:35 – 3:11

Ambience List

1. AMBI_1_Jungle.WAV

2. AMBI_1.2_JungleExpansion.WAV

Tent Quotes

ROBERT

• “Everything is self-contained.”

• “Before I cam here I was under a cedar tree. It started getting cold. I cam here and got hot good almost everyday. They furnish the tent and give us blankets. It’s a lot easier here. Here it’s like our own city. It’s our own community.”

• “Every Wednesday everyone has to go to a meeting. Every camper votes for whoever they want. We are a self-governing agency. It’s all the fellow campers that vote for you.”

• “I’m trying to get back in society but it seems like society wants to keep me here.”

• “I lived there and had my own place under a tree. It was good. But I struggled to get everyday needs. I came to Tent City 3 and it helped me get my needs.”

• “We have to watch out. If at any given time someone does something wrong Tent City 3 would be closed in a heart beat.” (Some are not waiting for the residents to do something wrong to get the authorized camp shut down.)

• “…you are free to do whatever you want in the community – hopefully legal.”

STEVEN –

• “By definition it is a squatters’ camp and not a homeless camp.”

• “They always cite their Code of Conduct that will not be broken. But in actuality, the first line should say, “Don’t let us catch you. As long as it’s in their tent they won’t get caught. Drinking is a constant problem.”

• “This is the thing putting the community at risk. High-level sex offenders were found in the camp. When they are found they can’t detain them. They have to let them go and then they are loose in the community.”

• “These people are like this because they have personal problems they have to deal with. They need the help to resolve them. It would be like taking flunking students, putting them in a room and telling them to come out when they are ready to graduate. You can’t do that. These people have to have the services required to resolve whatever issues they have. Because of those issues they want to drop out of the system. They end up under bridges or wherever.”

• “We agreed that shelters without service is not a solution. Tent City provides a safe-haven and nothing else. You are enabling them to remain homeless. You are never going to solve the problem unless you solve the problems. You are just going to make it worse if you keep enabling this.”

• (Adam) “Do you think Tent City might be worse because it provides a false sense of security and they are not dealing with their real issues?”

(Steven) “I wouldn’t say they’re worse but they are both unacceptable. When people just find a place to set up an encampment it is unacceptable. And putting people in a parking lot is unacceptable. Just like having a cold and the flu, you’re sick in either case. The system here no though abuses them more than helping them.”

SIMON

• “I have lived under the bridges and the Jungles and place like that but it’s become dangerous over the years… I think it’s because of the crowding and influx of the people. It’s become a lot more aggressive. People have become a lot more aggressive and desperate… There’s an increase in crime in the homeless environment.”

• “We were homeless and we to find somewhere to go. It was cold. So that meant an immediate change, a bed a shelter, something.”

• “…the longer you’re down here, the harder it gets to get out. Because you have to explain what is this absence in my life? Well, I had an alcohol problem, I had a drug problem, I was incarcerated, I was on probation, I incurred legal difficulties, I was sick physically, emotionally, mentally, and all these things take up time.”

• “If you don’t want them on the streets and they enforce these things, they have to go someplace. You say, “Well, I don’t have any money. I’m broke. I’m dirty. I have to use the bathroom.” “Nope, you can’t use the bathroom; these are for customers only.” It just doesn’t seem fair to me for people who aren’t allowed to stand on the street and can’t have their homeless shelter under the bridge or the Jungle. If they can’t use restrooms without paying, to me that sounds unfair and inhumane.”

• “No one wants to live mostly aggressively pan-handling, defecating on the streets and things like that. I don’t think keeping people out on the streets is going to be the solution.”

TIM HARRIS (INT_1)

• “The reality is that there are many more people who are trying to survive than the shelter system can accommodate, and the people have to be somewhere. Tent City is one way to do that. It is one way to meet safety. Another type of encampment is along the greenbelts and forming communities there. Obviously it is not the best situation to have, but they have to survive and be somewhere.”

• “I do have a problem with a “zero-tolerance” policy with encampments. Don’t systematically abuse people who are trying to survive. This is a survival response and we have to provide them with alternatives.”

TIM HARRIS (INT_2)

• (Adam) “What would your policy state?”

(Tim Harris) “First, I would not displace people unless I knew where that person would go. I would then create a department with people with outreach skills and the knowledge of the services available and engage people well ahead of time. Finally, if they weren’t really bothering people I would leave them alone.”

• “It’s only worthless if you de-value survival itself. These are people who are looking for shelter when it’s cold. In the absence of the adequacy of those services we need to do this.” (In response to claims that Tent City is not helping the homeless.)

CHARLES & MATT

• (???) “The problem with the Jungle is we got Asian drug gangs in there and we try no to get tangled in that.”

• (Matt) “I try to stay out of there. We have a problem in there. We try to stay out of that neck of the woods because it’s got too much trouble in there.”

• (Charles) “You got an assortment of people in there. You got people using different drugs – mostly crack-heads down in there. You also see prostitutes down in there… You get a different array of people down there with different ideas and thoughts. I don’t know what it is, just the minds of different people, but when you mix that with all the drug use you got crack-heads, people on heroin, prostitutes, it’s not good… You see guns, you see knives, people want to beat you up. I saw a prostitute out there once naked. She was naked, screaming and she was about to get beat up. I had to go over there and help her”

• (Charles) “But mostly you got people down there who just need a place to go and sleep. It’s the middle of the night and they don’t know what to do. When I see them they ask all kinds of questions – where can I go, where can I sleep, and stuff like that. It’s not easy down there in the weeds trying to find a place to sleep.”

• (Charles) “What it is is privacy.”

(Matt) “We want to be left the hell alone!”

(Charles) “We don’t want to go into the shelter system because you get a mix of people and it’s mandatory, they got rules and regulations, people are sick and get the flu…”

• (Matt) “How do you fix the Jungle? Blow it up!”

• (Matt) “We’re like roaches, man. We move to where they ain’t!”

(Charles) “We move to the next spot. We have to stay close to the labor hall.”

• (Charles) “I’m not here to help the community because I’m there.”

(Matt) “If we get out act together we can be part of the community!”

(Charles) “Ha ha. Oh, no. Yeah, right”

• (Charles) “I remember when I wasn’t homeless I didn’t know what it was. I understand the public. They have every right to say whatever they want to say. But us being homeless we have the right to whatever we want.”

• (Charles) “We know a few of the girls down there. The smoke regularly. The smoke crack. They smoke away and smoke until they’re finished. And when they’re done they have to find more. They’re tweaking and stuff like that. I know one girl down there who’s younger than me. She smoke but now she look like she’s 60 years old. Her teeth are rotted away. Her face is skinny. She loves that rock man.”

PATRICIA MCINTURFF – EXEC DIR OF SEATTLE HUMAN SERVICES DEPT

• “Most of the shelter money that is spent in Seattle goes through my department.”

• “We want to be compassionate, humane…”

• “We in the city will be responsible to find a shelter for them. We think this addresses the neighbors concerns…, but we also want to provide care for the homeless…”

• (Adam) “What are some of the specific public health and safety concerns you have for the Jungle?”

(Patricia) “There is a perceived increase in crime. It’s hard to tell if it’s real or just perceived. Also, there’s human waste and rats. Also fires. People have been burnt. Public health and safety concerns as well.”

• “We want to end homelessness. We want them to get the services they need, whether it’s mental health, veterans… People aren’t going to get out of homelessness just because we move them out [of an encampment]. You need to get the services they need.”

• “We can do better than people living in this situation and with no place to cook food.”

BILL HOBSON – EXEC DIR OF DOWNTOWN EMERGENCY SERVICE CENTER

• “Most shelters are crowded. A psych doctor once characterized these shelters as not unlike the backboard of a psychiatric hospital from the 30’s and 40’s. I think that’s a fair characterization and comparison. There not nice environments.

• “In reality, none of them [Tent City and encampments] should become the answer to institutionalized homelessness. We should be putting people up in apartments.”

• “SHARE does a great job managing their encampments. I’ve never hear a sponsor complaining. Encampments are a little bit different. No one really is in charge. There are no rules of conduct. They are radically variant of safety dependent on the people involved. Most I’ve visited are pretty bad. Sanitation is a problem. Dealing with human waste and garbage is a challenge for us with even two people. When you have ten or fifteen people and they’re there night after night it’s difficult.”

BILL KIRLIN-HACKETT – W/ INTERFAITH TASK FORCE AND CACHE

• “The Tent City is a good example of the kind of work it takes to live outside. The homeless run themselves. They govern themselves. In encampments in the forest it is less likely to get that commitment. It still takes an enormous amount of personal responsibility to run their camps. People have no idea how hard it is to live outside. At the same time they don’t have the agreement Tent City has.”

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