The homeless/transient camp at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds has doubled in size since this summer. I am adding the descriptor “squatters camp” because that is what this is. The occupants of the tents and RVs, whatever the reasons for their circumstances, are squatting. They are taking and using camping spaces, bathrooms, water and sewer utilities and trash collection services without paying for what they are getting.
But almost all of them, maybe all of them, are capable of paying for all or some part of their way. Starting this summer a collective decision was made and word passed through the camp that Governor’s eviction moratorium to address fallout from the COVID crisis meant they could stay without paying. Nobody could could tell them to go.
During my first visit three months ago, the spokesman for the largest faction was cooking steaks for everyone and boasted how he and others had plenty of money to pay but were not going to pay a cent since they could not be evicted. (A female camper complained to the Board of County Commissioners that this man was using his power over the camp’s food supply to punish people who displeased him and was also involved in drug dealing. She requested anonymity. The Commissioners spoke her name out loud in public meeting and she had to flee to the camp in fear of reprisal. Yes, these people watch the BOCC’s Zoom meetings and cruise the Internet where they see stories published here.)
The occupants of the camp are mostly those who will not live in organized shelters. They will not observe rules against drug and alcohol use. Some of them have been thrown out of shelters for their aggressive behavior. They want to keep their pets instead of accepting the charity of a warm, dry bed. They don’t want the accountability that comes with supervised communal living. Some are just criminals. Those “bad apples,” as one of the occupants of the camp called them on my latest visit, “are smearing the rest of us.”
But “the rest of us” are also squatters escaping accountability on various levels.
They have their many problems, many of which are deserving of sympathy. But they also bring big problems with them, problems that get dumped on other people.
Please see our earlier stories for the costs this sprawling camp is imposing on the surrounding neighborhood, the Fairgrounds Association and the camp manager who never signed on for anything like this. He and another helper are caring for, picking up after and cleaning bathrooms for this constantly expanding encampment that has rendered the Fairgrounds unusable and undesirable for anything else.
Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, then launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our "About" page for more information.
Sad. Poor leadership is always such a recipe for disaster. Some of our local leaders really do care…about feeling good about themselves and all their caring, but they do nothing to actually solve the problem or to help people. It’s very selfish and self absorbed compassion, basically just virtue signaling.
There really is no excuse for bad behavior in a civilized society.
Rich or poor, there are certain basic norms of human behavior.
It seems obvious that the persons squatting at the Fairgrounds have violated many of those norms.
Giving them a pass because they choose to live on the streets is unacceptable.
Bad behavior should be dealt with so that it does not recur.
We live in a society that has decided not to euthanize “undesirable” people. Consequently, as a society, we must acknowledge that we have people living among us who are unable to support themselves: they are mentally ill or impaired or they are physically impaired, resulting in a societal recognition that they must be provided for. In this country, in colonial times, families cared for their own [I have seen a number of early wills in which parents address the care of an adult child, naming a sibling as caretaker together with instructions for financial care, and in the alternative the community, through town government or orphans courts, would pay a community member to care for the infirm.] In the period after the Civil War to the 1940s many counties had poor farms for the indigent who were able to work enough to raise their own food, and institutions for the severely mentally ill such as Western State Hospital. In the 1970s a series of US Supreme Court cases limited society’s ability to put “undesirables” into institutions, locked away. They must be free of government constraint unless they are a danger to themselves or others, not just annoying.
Washington state has been lousy at caring for the mentally ill, 47th as of 2018 according to the Western State Hospital History site. The state entity in charge of services to the mentally ill, the poor and homeless is Washington State Department of Social and Health Services [DSHS]. It happens that DSHS just built a beautiful and very expensive new building to house their services, found at:
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/os/office-communications/media-release/port-townsend-dshs-offices-move-ahead-labor-day-weekend
"DSHS serves a variety of customers from this location, including through its Community Services Office, which offers public benefits such as food, cash and medical assistance. Beginning Thursday, Aug. 29, [2019] the Mobile Community Services Office will be on-site at the current location to help provide seamless services during the move. Other offices moving to the Evans Vista location are the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Developmental Disabilities Administration and Home and Community Services, none of whose clients should expect a disruption in service. The state’s Department of Children, Youth & Families is also relocating to the new site. The Employment Security Department is relocating to a different building in Port Townsend.
" “Although we are relocating, we are pleased DSHS will still have a presence in the Port Townsend community and we’ll continue to provide people with much-needed services,” said Judy Fitzgerald, assistant secretary of DSHS’ Facilities, Finance and Analytics Administration. “We are happy we could collaborate with Jefferson County Health Care to create a win-win for rural residents in the county.” "
This building is surrounded by empty space and woods below, but is serviced by all city utilities. I suggest that the fairgrounds encampment be moved to the space just behind and below the DSHS building, set up with utility connections for the RVs [a temporary trailer park, just until the city and county and DSHS find a more permanent location] with designated spaces for vehicle living and the tented and mobile construction workers’ temporary toilet/shower trailer for their use. This way the very people we hire to take care of the problems raised by the fairgrounds encampment will have them right there, just outside their windows while they work diligently finding housing, food, and other necessities of life for their clients.
As for those that are not impaired and are not DSHS clients or potential clients, the city/county need to designate places where those that live in mobile vehicles [cars, RVs, etc.] can legally park and provide enough public restrooms and showers for their use. [For example, in PT quite a few park along the park behind Henery’s Hardware] and, for those who are without any shelter except a tent or sheets of plastic, a safe place to camp and sleep without being rousted out. The cops should carry cards with maps of these locations to hand out and locations where free meals and food and help are available. The cops should police these locations to provide security not harassment. [It is my impression that frequently the local cops are providing this service. I don’t know if there is an official policy or not.] (‘Cop’ shorthand for PT police/JC sheriff- no disrespect intended.)
Joan, your comment implies there are two reasons for homelessness, one being joblessness or other economic deficiency, and two being mental illness. Eric Johnson, in his fine KOMO TV Documentary on the homeless problem in Seattle, disagrees. After exhaustive research and across the board “lot sampling” of the tent dwellers, Johnson came to the conclusion that almost all are addicted to hard drugs. I sincerely doubt Port Townsend’s “homeless” are any different, as Jim Scarantino and others have made note of all the used syringes on the ground surrounding the Fairgrounds tent city. I contend most of the Fairgrounds drug addicts came here because of: 1. a readily available drug supply, 2. a sympathetic liberal/leftist population, 3. ample targets for burglary and other property crimes and 4. a small town police force with limited resources. And may I add another: Incompetent, useless city “leaders” who care more about the rights of no-load drug criminals than the honest, taxpaying citizens they have sworn to serve and protect.
Saltherring, as far as the point I was trying to make in my comments, drug addition is included in the mentally ill and who is responsible for “helping” or treating them unless they commit a crime. In this state, as I understand it, addiction or being under the influence of drugs is not a crime. My reading of recent court decision advances indicates that even the possession of small amounts of drugs is in a gray area as to criminality. My suggestion for shelter for the drug addicted that want help would be to use the one or two old dorms just inside and to the left of the gate at Fort Flagler. The cost of rehabilitation is known as they are the same as the ones at Fort Worden. Perhaps the Jamestown S’Klallam would be interested in having a place for their prospective clients to have a peaceful place to live away from temptation while being treated at their new facility in Sequim. They could be bused back and forth.
Those who appear normal but whose brain disorder prevents them from working from schizophrenia to PTSD to bipolar and so on, and are financially dependent on social security, receive an approximate monthly allotment of $803 cash and $150 in food stamps. One of the easiest solutions for these people, as well as the temporarily homeless is living in a trailer/RV which can be purchased used for under $10,000. The amount of funds that are allocated in this county to study the problem of homelessness could buy a lot of trailers.
There are a lot of RVs in Jim’s pictures. In the past RV dwellers have rented spaces at the fairgrounds and at Fort Worden for the winter [Don’t assume that all of those people in RVs are addicts.] The county, for a number of years now, has not allowed anyone to create a new RV court to rent spaces to low income. It is in Jefferson County code. The Washington state legislature, a couple of years ago, passed laws intended to prevent this kind of exclusion by zoning, but no one has challenged the County or the City of PT, which has similar restrictions.
Those that want to do something about the people at the fairgrounds and the other homeless need to make the County and City spend money on actual housing instead of paying consultants to study it over and over again. The people who are paid to help the people and solve the problem, one by one, who work in the new DSHS building below the first roundabout, need to do their jobs, even if it means attending every commissioners meeting and every city council meeting until they find solutions for the homeless among us.
After all WE have decided, have we not, NOT TO EUTHINASE THEM [although passively letting them freeze to death or starve, is a solution that we seem to have accepted without holding anyone accountable.]
[And by the way, prisons are a hell of a lot more expensive solution. Check out the cost of housing, at McNeil Island, sex offenders who have served their sentences but are too dangerous to let loose on society. Now imagine the cost of poor farm type institutions to house the addicted.]
P.S. I am not in favor of letting the current Lord of the Flies situation at the fairgrounds that Jim describes continue. When someone is killed there, or seriously injured, the City and the County [consequently us taxpayers] will owe the deceased family a lot of money for their/our neglect.
Possession and use of heroin, Methamphetamine and other dangerous drugs are still illegal in Washington state, although in some jurisdictions police and the courts have been negligent in enforcing these laws. Hard drug users in other states see this and move here, where they can do as they please and prey on the public.
And one of the ways drug criminals (yes, they are criminals) prey on honest citizens is through public sympathy, where foolish socialists force the public to subsidize the worthless and criminal lifestyles of habitual drug users through welfare programs that allow addicts the opportunity to lay around and shoot drugs while honest, law-abiding citizens pay for their food, housing and medical care. Hard drugs will kill you, and we do hard drug users no favor by subsidizing their addictions.
I recommend a helping hand up to those homeless who need short term assistance getting back on their feet, institutional assistance for the mentally ill and prison or work camps for drug addicts.
Guess the bluffs were full so onto the fairgrounds.
Totally agree, DSHS could be more involved in helping change the laws to make this stuff illegal, C19 or not.
Tragic news of a fairgrounds death today. While we wait for news of the cause, I wonder if this event will be enough to create change, or will we simply expect to see the coroner added to the services the county, city and fairgrounds provide?