Mud and cold rain. Life in an always damp tent or unheated RV. Puddles for a front porch. No place to hide from the wind, or escape the sounds of fighting, incoherent muttering, screaming and partying in the growing squatters camp at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds.
Drawn by a free place to camp with bathrooms and free food, and no hassles to move along, people from outside the county are coming. In three visits this week I saw newcomers every day. The camp has more than doubled since September. There is now a satellite camp to the Northeast of the main encampment.
Some of these shelters are improved tent sites, with rain tarps covering several smaller tents inside. Some tents have wooden entrances and sides fashioned from pallets or picnic tables. Some have wooden furniture inside. And some are just cheap pup tents sagging with rainwater or collapsed by wind in the boggy, rutted field.
The people living here share bathrooms and a SaniKan. The bathrooms are frequently trashed, with piles of human feces on the floor to be cleaned up by the woman who tends the facilities for the Fairgrounds Association. So to keep this from happening bathrooms get locked at night and people must use the SaniKan, which then gets smeared with feces. Camp staff say they’ve heard people laughing about this disgusting form of vandalism. 
The Fairgrounds Association is providing these facilities so people don’t defecate in the fields or in buckets in their tents. Whoever is ruining the bathrooms is ruining them for everyone else and making life miserable for camp staff.
Neighbors have complained of people from the Fairgrounds defecating in their front yards and driveways. That has occurred despite the availability of the Fairgrounds’ facilities.
Yet, there are a couple people in the camp who are holding down jobs, who don’t suffer from mental illness, who are not chronic drinkers or addicts. I spoke with one of them on his way to the bathroom in the morning. “It’s hard,” he said, and wanted it known that not everyone here is causing problems.
Only two people out of maybe more than 100 are paying, though a significant number have incomes. They have decided to exploit the Governor’s COVID moratorium on evictions to get a free place to stay with hot water and bathrooms and garbage pickup. The Governor’s moratorium expires at the end of December. The chances that this camp will be empty after that are slim to none. These people are settling in and building a village of sorts. They will also likely receive support from politically connected non-profits who can be counted on to oppose any effort to evict them and restore the Fairgrounds to what it was.
Two PTPD cruisers at squatters camp, 12/8/20
A few have left. A van was abandoned in the middle of the camp. One woman is now wandering the streets downtown. But more and more keep coming and the camp keeps growing.
Police are out there several times a week, sometimes multiple times each day. Neighbors report seeing ambulances coming and going frequently. There have been fights. At least one man was arrested. He’s back after spending only a night or two in jail.
Port Townsend Free Press has previously reported on the crimes and sense of insecurity spreading into the neighborhood. A persistent problem has been the theft of mail from mailboxes. Stolen mail has been found on the foot paths in the area. A woman who lives across the street who has had her mail stolen several times says she spent a couple hundred dollars to purchase and install a locked mailbox.
When I was there on a cold and rainy December 8, the Dove House drug and alcohol outreach worker was present. They have someone at the camp Tuesdays and Thursdays. OlyCap has two brothers who spend the night and someone during the day to provide some sort of security, though they have no authority over anyone, and there are no rules to be enforced. Bayside Housing is delivering one meal a day. Hot Thanksgiving dinners were delivered by the folks who do the holiday meals at the Tri-Area Community Center.
On this day a Port Townsend police officer and the Department’s navigator were dealing with a very drunk woman. Another police car had pulled up one of the muddy tracks and that officer was talking with other campers. The poor drunk woman couldn’t be helped. She collapsed several times on the ground as she staggered around the camp. I believe this woman was identified in a Peninsula Daily News story as also suffering bi-polar disorder. She appeared to be the same woman in the photograph.
There are people here who are getting no help, anywhere. Judson Haynes, the Port Townsend Police Navigator–their social worker–says most offers of help are refused.
As it is, we can’t do much to help them. Port Townsend does not have much in the way of in-patent mental health facilities. We don’t have any detox facilities that can handle the crushing need we already had before this camp started attracting people from outside the community. As this camp grows, and the problems mount, our community’s inadequacy to serve and help the mentally ill and addicts will inevitably generate more severe problems. Already there have been multiple overdoses at the camp. I saw heavy drinking in the middle of the day on one visit. The camp manager says he sees drug and alcohol use all the time. A neighbor reported to us a loud party over this past weekend in the large complex of tents that drew people who were not living in the camp. A Port Townsend Free Press contributor who knows a couple people in the camp believes drug dealing is being done out of at least one of the RVs and he has been offered stolen property in exchange for cash.
Neighbors have reported seeing discarded needles and that children have encountered people shooting up on the trails. Another neighbor reports to us that he has observed a drone hovering over the campground. Private drones are prohibited; this may be a police surveillance drone.
A man in a high quality RV is living here, and paying his way, while he works on his boat (his RV is next to police cars and between squatters’ RVs in the photo above). Another tent has people who fell through the cracks of the mental health system and have nowhere to go. I met a man who claimed he was a talented mechanic and was looking for work (he said had a retirement income, but also was squatting).
Port Townsend’s homeless are a diverse group. Most of them are suffering from mental health problems and/or addiction, with a lesser number being “Bohemians” who choose this lifestyle, criminals with open warrants and, last, those suffering economic catastrophe or escaping abuse. These latter two groups are not part of the chronically homeless, but the people most receptive to accepting help and getting back on their feet. See “Knowing ‘The Homeless'”, PTFP 8/24/2018.
As I was leaving, a third Port Townsend police car turned into the entrance as a cold, wet night fell on the sprawling squatters camp in the muddy fields of the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. Hours later, while finishing this story, a neighbor across the street reported seeing another ambulance heading for the tents.
Related: “Squatters Camp Grows at Fairgrounds: Photo Essay,” PTFP 12/1/2020
“Fairgrounds Neighbor’s Plea to County Commissioners about Dangers from Homeless Encampment,” PTFP 11/23/2020
“Transient/Homeless Camp Grows at Fairgrounds,” PTFP 10/29/2020
“Lines Form in Battle for Future of Fairgrounds,” PTFP 9/9/2020
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.
Harken back to the Great Depression, when residents of the Harbor Island “shantytown” named it “Hooverville”, which became a common name for shack towns all around the US during this time, as Americans set the blame for the Depression…rightfully or not…on President Hoover.
We in Washington State continue to experience our own economic downturn, as owners of small businesses close their doors forever, turning their customers and employees away. While there remains no proof that masks and “Socialist” distancing protect anyone from exposure to the ChiCom Virus, Pinhead Jay Inslee and other leftist Democrat governors continue their open warfare against small privately-owned businesses and landlords, while Republican-governed states allow business as usual or with limited restrictions.
Perhaps the squatters who have taken up unlawful residence at the JeffCo Fairgrounds should name their new burg “INSLEEVILLE”?
This is for the falling down drunk lady in Jim’s story. And so many others.
I knew someone that could have been her. Her name was Ann. She came to work for me in 2013, one of those people from outside the area, Poulsbo, that some want to stay outside the area. She simply wanted a better life after a life of struggle I didn’t at first know about. She eventually rented a converted garage in town and became one of the very few who could do the multi faceted job needed at my business. Over time I began to notice little things, high and happy moods then not so happy moods. Then bursting into tears. A past room mate called me and warned that Ann was an alcoholic a few months in.
Still Ann did the job, and even with small glitches out preformed all others. She loved the place I have here for locals and visitors and was a real people person. Over time I learned the alcohol was self medication for what I came to find out was depression at a level I didn’t know existed. Ann was a regular at Jefferson Mental health. As I came to know her as both friend and employee I went with her several times to see doctors and counselors.
Over several years her condition deteriorated, part alcohol I am sure, but more the mixes of medications prescribed to her to try to help her. There were periods where she was functioning well and feeling ok. On one visit to a doctor after a drinking incident at work ending in paramedics being called, she simply told the Doctor that her sister had cheated her out of committing suicide. Her sister had similar problems and did end her life. Ann saw the effects on her parents those 30 some years ago and could not be so selfish as to put her 90 year old father through her own suicide. Mostly she just wanted the debilitating pain to end.
I ended up taking over many days and adapting my business model a bit. Ann would call me in the morning and say she was not able to come in. Other days I know she should have called but soldiered on and worked. The bottom line for me was that people loved her and her sales were good. Other work details suffered. After a point you just don’t turn someone out into the street. Ann would have been the lady falling down drunk at the fairgrounds. A person. Someone’s child fallen through the cracks. Ann and I did holidays together, neither had family near. She continued to deteriorate until I had to find someone to step in for her. I had little else to give and was frustrated and tired from not being able to “fix” things.
Her moods went lower and lower over the years with some periods where medications seemed to work, leading up to the end. I tried to let her know I wasn’t leaving her behind, I was there to help but had to keep the business running.
There were several episodes involving the PT police, I will take this opportunity to thank them all for their kind service. It can’t be easy. Jefferson Mental Health is overwhelmed and do what they can. Thanks,
During a blow up Ann came to blame me for replacing her, she was of course thinking she would be fine in a day or two. I didn’t talk to her for a week after a one sided argument she apparently needed, I figured she would level out a bit and we would work on how to live on early Social Security, perhaps in a new trailer on my property.
A friend came in one day during this time and told me Ann had passed. The official cause of death was a stroke. She was found sitting in bed. Her friend had cleared out everything and Ann was already ashes to be sent home to Wisconsin to be with her mom and sister. I don’t think a stroke was the cause. I don’t know how thoroughly anyone looked into her cause of death. She was to most, just like the lady at the fairground, just another one who fell between the cracks.
I spent 24 years at Pike Place Market selling my craft. I saw lost people regularly. And a few who beat the odds. The root cause is usually mental illness. I always told Ann her injury could have been a hip or knee that kept her down. Her injury was in her brain. I couldn’t save her from that. It seems no one could with the resources available. Years ago writing about Pike Place I observed you couldn’t help many people there. Sometimes you can barely help yourself. These are tough times. Tougher for some. All those people at the fairgrounds have value. The cracks to fall between have always been wide. They seem to be wider now.
Separating the predators and those choosing the lifestyle from helpless victims seems a first move. How “we” do that is the question.
This is for Ann, and the lady at the fairground and so many others. Because
“there but for the grace of God, Go I”
Thanks Jim, for making us pay attention and perhaps start to work on some solutions. There are so many solutions needed, and so many different needs.
Her name was Ann Speaker. She became a kind of hero to me. Few will ever know the courage she had to get through impossibly difficult days. God Damn the cracks.
The people at the fairgrounds are being used to destroy a neighborhood in Port Townsend using the EXACT same methods deployed in Seattle, Olympia and elsewhere. Taxpayer funds are funneled to non-profits to provide services which attract transients, drug addicts and mentally ill persons. Since these services rarely include stable housing, their clients are released into working and middle class neighborhoods. It’s the same EXACT same pattern every time and it’s really getting old.
The destruction of our cities and neighborhoods is intentional just as the Covid-19 excuse for the destruction of small businesses is intentional. Using “the homeless” as an invasion force is a variation on weaponized migration – a war crime. Anyone who knowingly participates is complicit in multiple types of criminal activity including drug and human trafficking.
Solutions: Stop the catered meals. Cancel the Welcome Wagon. Stop supporting the offending non-profits with your money and volunteer time. Affluent folks have the option to do their virtue signaling activism and then move on to a gated community when the situation deteriorates. Many of us don’t have that option.
Make sure everyone at the fairgrounds knows they are NOT welcome here unless they are willing to pay rent (if they have an income). Who instigated the rent strike? I wouldn’t be surprised if the campers are being pressured to support the rent strike. Identify the troublemakers and possible ways to encourage them to move on.
I would ask Marie what is the end game in your estimation, if this is a targeted and planned campaign instead of very poor planning? Who benefits with the destruction of neighborhoods and small business? I did hear yesterday that a Seattle City Council person was trying to pass a law that crimes like shoplifting would not be prosecuted if committed by those needing food or housing. That does seem to target small businesses.
Many now almost worship Regan. I was in Seattle at the Pike Place Market almost daily when funding for mental health was cut. The streets filled with people cut loose from institutions.
It seems to be similar these days, with the addition of lack of affordable housing, slipping purchase power in wages, and those folks now in the mix at places like the fairgrounds. Perhaps it should be called Kamp Karma.
In one way or another we are all paying the price. Obviously those living close by much more. In Hadlock near the sheriff’s office there is a squatters camp with all the problems. Some are unfairly paying the price for those not using funding wisely. Both residents and those without a place to go. Where do we spend the money, and how wisely is it spent. Fort Worden comes to mind as an example with different circumstances. Wasted money should be a crime.
Here is a quick story to illustrate another route and the down side. A young woman from Germany was in my business surrounded by all the handmade woodcraft. She was almost in tears and didn’t want to leave. I spoke with her and she explained that she had not done really well in school in Germany. Some who did better were moved on to higher education. She ended up with a job drilling holes and the like in a woodworking factory. She felt she had no path out. She would always be taken care of with healthcare and housing. In her mind she would rather take her chances of total failure here.
As always no solid answers. What is the end game and motivation in what you describe Marie? Who benefits?
Without some consistent funding nation wide it seems whack a mole is what many areas will play that attempt to care for those in need. Like affordable housing, if it is provided, they will come.
Have you been to Olympia recently? Have you seen the devastation caused by the transient camps? Do you want Port Townsend destroyed? If the answer is YES – then you are on the right track with the growing encampment at the fairground.
I witnessed the deterioration of Olympia over a 25 year period. For many years I was involved with homeless shelters and participated in many housing related meetings and projects. The same policies that were failing 25 years ago in Olympia (also Seattle and many other places) are being implemented in Port Townsend.
The police, non-profits, governments and volunteers are ALL involved in enabling anti-social and criminal behavior. There is no longer any respect for equal protection under the law. It’s considered OK to disparage law abiding citizens and destroy their neighborhoods. This is cultural / legal / ethical problem and no amount of money will fix this moral depravity.
As for the money – in Washington State there are multi-millions every year sloshing around in a system which involves taxpayer funded grants to non-profits. Most of the non-profits provide “services” that rarely include housing. It’s not unusual for these same non-profits (which are not providing housing) to be investing in commercial real estate.
Any long term solution will involve redirecting these scattered resources into state or regional residential treatment facilities for addicts and the mentally ill. This will free up local resources to deal with the temporary setbacks of functioning adults who are just down on their luck.
Who benefits you ask, Harvey? Why, the Globalist power brokers who have spent decades attempting to destroy our nation, our constitution, Christian churches and our way of life. Their allies, the Democrat Party and the RINO wing of the Republican Party, are heavily funded by George Soros and others (including Chinese Communists) to decimate the heart and soul of our republic, the middle class, by multiple means. Port Townsend need look no further than their own city for evidence of what is happening across the country. Small businesses locked down for an illness no worse than our yearly bout with the flu, increasing street drug use and the crime that comes with it, an influx of out-of-state “homeless” who are allowed to squat in middle class neighborhoods, bringing crime, hard drug use, mental illness, garbage, filth and dependency on the local taxpayer. In time these “Insleeville” camps will begin to spawn out into the Tri-Area, Quilcene and rural Jefferson County, bringing their heroin, meth, crime and filth with them. These are not people down on their “luck”. They are, for the most part, hardened drug addicts, few of whom with any desire for long term help with their addictions other than the free food and medical care gullible liberal politicians throw at them.
So who benefits, Harvey? Why of course, the liberal and leftist politicians who use “homelessness”, a “plandemic”, oppressive taxation, election theft, myriad government regulations and constant attacks on our constitutional rights and freedoms to destroy the American middle class. It’s about CORRUPTION, POWER and the ability to CONTROL the masses after you’ve weaponized government to shutter their businesses, wreck their neighborhoods, compromise their medical care, neuter the police and the courts, close their places of worship and steal their constitutional rights, starting with the first and second amendments.
Listen to the addled old fool who the media claims has won our presidential election. I sincerely doubt Joe Biden could find his own way out of his basement yet he’s already demanding that we wear masks for 100 days after he is inaugurated. That and he’s promising to terminate our constitutional right to keep and bear arms by means of successive executive orders. The people pulling this old fool’s strings are wasting no time, are they? How long until UN “peacekeepers” are marching through our streets? Wake up, people.
In World War 2 Japanese American Citizens were sent to camps in the most desolate places and housed there. Now, we let people squat anywhere they wish. I just doesn’t seem right to me. I’m still waiting for the shoe to drop that causes a lot of deaths. Somebody better get their s**t together and the sooner the better, before this situation really get’s out of control.
The question who benefits was asked because I think motivation is always key. Thanks for all the points of view. I am aware of these points of view. You don’t see them much in print.
As to Hadlock the place I mentioned isn’t really a squatters camp, a person rents vacant land to many people bringing all the problems the Fairgrounds brings. This has gone on for several years, Very near the Sheriffs office, who need probable cause to deal with what all know goes on. I have seen them do what they can. I have been directly impacted. How many places out of town is this happening?
Thanks for all the points of view. Throughout history controlling the masses has been the norm. The masses seem very divided on solutions, and root causes. Good discussion. We are left with offenders and victims occupying the same spaces. I mentioned my friend Ann, because before current events I was aware of system failures for those truly helpless and in need, as are many.
There’s an incredible amount of naive’, and misguided compassion in Port Townsend. True, a few do need help, and they should receive it, and get them off the street.
You see the thing is, many well intentioned folks never have lived, or even visited the dark side of the moon in order to understand what I’m talking about here.
This larger group of the, “homeless by choice” are being enabled by these well intentioned, compassion driven folks.
The larger number of the “homeless by choice” are having their life-style being provided to them by the well intentioned, yet naive’ members of the community and their well-intentioned organizations.
Helping is doing something for someone else that they are not capable of doing for themselves, and this is a good thing.
HOWEVER… Enabling is doing things for someone else that they can, and should be doing for themselves, and there is an incredible amount of “community enabling” being done in Port Townsend.
True fact Mike, and well put. Seems the dynamic of not being able to evict some from the Fairgrounds is a major, purposefully created, mismanaged problem. Thanks to the staff there.
Saturday morning Dec 12 as I was opening up a bundled up woman approached from across Adams Street. She was mumbling and talking to herself. I learned the – don’t make eye contact and go about your business tactic from being at Pike Place all those years. She had spotted me and did come up to me after fishing her drivers license out of her pocket. She showed it to me. For no reason that I understood. I politely said yes. that’s you and moved along doing what I had to outside. She moved along as well. She was harmless to others. All are not.
Stop and think about her future. Cracks. Deep and wide. We have to remember “there but for the grace of God go I”. Those who take advantage need to be separated and understood, and habitual criminals treated as criminals. It may get back to legalizing most all substances and taking away a kind of economy. Then what? There is an industry “fighting” the “drug war”.
If you cater to them they will come. Who is qualified to judge who is who? Who is beyond help? After that what is the mechanism to deal with all kinds? People like you and I talk and talk. Some well intentioned are in the trenches. Bless them. They paint with the broad brush of kindness. I very much know the dark side on the street. On several fronts here in PT, I wish I thought there was a reasonable ending in sight.
People take advantage. From the streets to City Hall. To the FWPDA.
If there were programs where especially women could get hands on learning to build their own tiny homes in the vacant buildings at the fairgrounds, then there could be a more viable solution to the homeless problem. Similar to Habitat for Humanity and Bunker Roy’s Barefoot College, giving the education and tools would make people take care of and take pride in what they have created. Then those people could be teaching others.
In the inner cities, the marginalized Black people are growing real food in the middle of food deserts. I know at least one very skillful person who is homeless, through no fault of his own, who can be teaching others to build real tiny homes and other basic living skills.
As for ruining the bathroom facilities for others, the people who are caught need to have the cleaning supplies to clean up that mess and be made to maintain the facilities as their community service. If Mohandas K. Gandhi and his wife cleaned the latrines to teach sanitation to the people in India, then surely these ‘homeless’ people can find their self respect and follow in the footsteps of this great soul.
From Bethany Smith of the Old Alcohol Plant: In reference to “A GRIM EXISTENCE AT THE FAIRGROUNDS”, Bayside Housing & Services is only providing one meal a day to the Fairgrounds encampment. These are meals are being subsidized by OlyCap and prepared by the staff in Spirits Bar & Grill at the Old Alcohol Plant (OlyCap was the non-profit that provided Thanksgiving dinner to the encampment). According to our records we have been preparing the same number of dinners each day, around 35 and we expect to continue providing dinner until the end of December.
PTFP response: 1. Several individuals at the Fairgrounds stated that Bayside was delivering three meals a day. We apologized for the inaccuracy. 2. The group that prepared and served the Thanksgiving meal at the Tri-Area Community Center delivered dozens of meals to the Fairgrounds. Jim Scarantino, the author of this article, was at the Tri-Are Community Center helping with the Thanksgiving meal that day.