Third Nickelsville encampment relocating to Central District

A resident checks out the Jackson site (Image: Nickelsville Works)

Central District residents around 22nd and Cherry will get some new neighbors today as a third Nickelsville encampment moves to the Central District. Neighbors in the area received notices at their doors this weekend informing them of the relocation of the Skyway Nickelsville Neighborhood Encampment to 612 22nd Avenue.

In August we reported that the West Marginal Way Nickelsville encampment was moving after five years at that location. The group split into three, with two encampments settling in the CD. A third moved to Skyway.

The Skyway encampment will be hosted by the Cherry Hill Baptist Church, located across East Cherry Street from the lot where the group will now camp. The notice says that the encampment will have about 35 residents, with the potential for up to 70 people to stay on site. The notice also says that the residents “will be moving to other property within three months.”

Nickelsville residents must obey strict rules to live at one of the encampments. Residents agree to nonviolence, treating property respectfully, foregoing the use of alcohol, and generally acting as good neighbors. The notice encourages neighbors to stop by for a visit and take a tour with a Security Worker.

 

 

22 thoughts on “Third Nickelsville encampment relocating to Central District

    • I second that! The presence of these folks may just help increase the public safety in the area!

  1. I walk west on Jackson a few times a week at night to get home and I feel safer because of Nickelsville residents. It’s nice to have more people in the neighborhood, especially really friendly ones.

  2. Our near unanimous acceptance of homeless camps in the CD is really interesting and fairly unique. We are suggesting that these new residents possibly improve our safety and enjoyability of our community. There are only a few dissenters to this opinion. That is radical. I don’t believe you will find that degree of acceptance in very many places – certainly not in any other Seattle Neighborhood.

    Is it that the problems we face with crime, poverty, dinsenfranchisement, and other factors cause us to look at people in more basic or realistic terms? Do we understand more what an actual threat is vs our fear of what a threat might be?

    I think the typical Blue Ridge resident would find fear in having “homeless camps” in the area. And three homeless camps moving in within months? Wow! Get the pitch forks and torches out. Can you imagine it – in Redmond? In Ravenna or Maple Leaf?

    But here – we actually want these people. It is amazing. We are different.

    • Your theory of acceptance is based on two replys to the CD News. I suspect a greater amount of people who live here do not like living on a social service plantation and have either given up or are waiting for other to voice concerns. Our business district was begining to come back and this move by LIHI and the city was deliberate. We are the city’s containment zone for criminals and social service dumping. for a while we were becoming a neighborhood with a retail center, thats dead now. We loose again with some starry eyed sense of safety and guilt tripped acceptance while the city and other areas of the city laugh behind our backs as suckers, while enjoying the pleasure of resturants, shops and other urban social amenities safe from impacts of an overbundance of crime and social service development. Meanwhile the Sharon Lee’s of the world skim off $176,000 in admin funds and laugh at what fools we are to buy their line. Question for you pine beetle, how long do you think those who have written in favor of this encampment, have actually lived in the neighborhood and where did they move from?

      • We are not suckers for accepting people who need a place to camp. How on earth do you imagine to know what other neighborhoods think of us, and why would we care anyway? Where is your compassion?

      • Agreed. This appeared like a yelp review of a restaurant opened a single day with a dozen reviews by friends of the owners.

        We’ll share the love but other neighborhoods need to share the load.

        The existing encampments have resulted in a couple of stories such as one of threatened assault of cd residents by a pair of unruly bus passengers and a young lady followed and harassed on Jackson. Neither can be proven to be Nicholsville residents but they were in the immediate vicinity. Since when have the homeless made an area safer?

  3. Pingback: Nickelsville encampment on the move again | Q13 FOX News

  4. There have been several stories here over several weeks, and, I have only seen won case (peeing) that was directly connected to a CD McSchwinnville camp.

    Harrasment on busses in the CD is standard, it has nothing to do with McSchwinnville. Metro drivers are shot and assaulted. Metro riders are robbed beaten and raped. Being near a camp is not at all relevant or attributable.

    The fact is that the vast majority of input is from CD residents is possitive and accepting. And – coming from me, the person who is about the most negativistic and proud of it jerk on the forum here – that’s a big dea. Now, I do have a negative scew potential on the thing, but, in the end, my analysis is these people are fairly normal by our local standard and they do not degrade the community. There is a strong chance that they enhance the community.

    That said, Eyes is probably correct that there is an negative impact on business development in the short term. However – the financial pressures driving gentrification are becoming so great that resistance to business development will soon be crushed. Note all the brewer, pizza joint, and restaraunt start ups. As Georgetown, becomes the new Fremont – the little guys will be looking for the next affordable town center to build. Columbia City is about maxed out. The CD is the logical place.

    This march forward for the CD is innevitable. For now, however, I chanllenge you to find the negative or possitive impacts made by these new residents. Very little has been said or documented. I have to assume that means the impacts are minor.

  5. Actually, I would go so far as to say that Metro is a big negative impact in terms of transporting criminals to and from the CD and actually functioning as a part of the drug trade and sex slave trafficing. Yes, people, it does exist right here, stop shielding your fragile minds.

  6. Megan, it would be great if you could do some follow-up on the camps we are now hosting in the CD. Not because I think they are increasing crime or anything else, but because I think a lot of people don’t understand who is actually hosting them, how they are paid for, and how the whole process works – John

  7. JohnS, I agree that knowing the hosts and sources of funding would be good, along with the ongoing conditions. The issue is more complex, and I am one that will never jump for joy that this type of housing is being supported as an appropriate solution and in such a well-heeled area of the world. Scattered site public housing would likely be a big piece of the solution. All of Seattle should share the responsibilities.

  8. I went to the camp this morning to meet with the members and find out what they need. While it might be a humorous exercise for some to wonder from their comfy chairs about how this camp affects us as a community, or point fingers at other neighborhoods for not sharing the “burden”, the truth is these are people who need our help. Actual people living in makeshift tents who are trying to get by. Please, stop by and meet with them, they are friendly and welcoming, see them as *the people they are* and help if you can.

    They are in need of coats, hats, scarves, gloves, hand warmers, blankets, sleeping bags, food, and firewood. Please join me in helping our neighbors. Let’s show the rest of Seattle how it’s done in the CD!

    • Yes Chris Sharon Lee should dip into here $178,000 take home check and buy these people that she brought here what they need. She is using them as a pawn to get the funding from the city she needs to build a building on the site there staying on. Wake up, $178, 000 is excessive and parasitic suck of tax dollars. Ask her to pay!

  9. When eating, I like to mix my pees and carrots and just about everything all on one fork load. In a discussion, I like to try to seperate the pees from the carrots. Otherwise we can never come to any conclusions or even an agreement on what we disagree about.

    I can say eyes – that I generally agree with your positions, and, have allowances in most cases that even when I hold a different specific opinion on a specific point – I don’t disagree with your generalizations.

    In this case however – I want to seperate some issues so we can explore the impacts of Mcschwinnvilles on the CD.

    Your point about homeless politics is agreed on by me. Actually service organization politics in general tends to get hijacked by grafters as does general politics, regulation, school funding, and so many other things. The social contract itself is under constant attack by selfish people. And most of us are to some extent or another those selfish people. We enjoy the tax exemptions as if we deserve them and because “everybody else does – your a fool not too.” We expect somebody else to pay. It is sad to see so many of us acting like the 1% is somebody foreign to us and are responsible for the ills of society. It is us that gave Roger Jobs, Bill Gates, et. al. the money – freely of our own choice for shiny gadgets. Same with big oil, Boeing, etc, etc. We give them the money because we want the cushy stuff in our big houses. Yes – It may be a bit overgrown with it’s fancy new chicane and some beat up cars, but, your house and most of our homes are fat city, even by European standards. Certainly on a global standard. Heck, even the McSchwinneville shanties on Jackson are headed towards plush on a global scale. Generally – we are fat and wealthy and shockingly unhappy considering our great fortune. Yes – if you are reading this on your computer – your a fat cat to some extent. Most people are no so fortunate as you. So stop blaming everybody else.

    Now then. Politics aside. I am interested in the impacts of these encampments on the CD. Not accusations and rumors. What actually have these people done for or against us whether passively or actively. The biggest evidence to date is that their simple existance on the street passively improves our neighborhood. Isn’t that fascinating? Or is it more interesting that I (we) think that is a big deal, as if people are expected to have a negative or irrelavent impact? Or, am I wrong – are these people a negative impact and we should go get our pick handles and do some Steinbekian work overs on folks and drive them back to swamps in West Seattle where they belong.

    It’s interesting. I’m suppriesed by the lack of dialog.

  10. you just don’t see the whole picture LIHI just got millions from the city to build on the jackson street site now the cd has to make room so they have some place else to go and after its built they will do it all over again

  11. There are two pictures. I’m not mistaking one for the other. The problem with discussion is that some cross eyed people get everything mixed together and are unable to discuss interesting facets of a complex world.

  12. i was wrong they did move the skyway camp here..looks like the city does have plan for the homeless they are going to put them all in tents in the cd ..i do feel sorry for anybody living next door, wait until you see this show..i lived in the one in highland park once so i do know what this neighborhood is in for…they are going to leave in 90 days,,have the other ones left in 90 days …is there anyway of knowing if scott and sharon are going to keep rounding up people from all over and dumping them in every vacant lot here and calling it nickelsville..well yes there is ,look at the track record,of course they will until people do something

    • Do the camps actually create need? Is there a need? Who are these people really? Are we to take their statements at face value or do we assume that many of them have an angle to spin on the situation or their life such that the story is just a story and we either need to investigate or make generalist assumptions about them being slackers? It’s not easy to support something at look at it straight on when we don’t, won’t or can’t trust people. Perhaps all we need is a charismatic figure to help us choose sides. Have any of you ever read Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck or are you all illiterate? It is simply a must read. I think it pretty well explains everything not explained by the rest of the Steinbeck lineage. It’s hardly worth talking to people who don’t read the classics. There would be no basis for dialog other than fleeting moments with no backdrop. Not that anybody is here reading or commenting. It’s strange. Like a literary vacuum. I expected the CD to be a little less ignorant, hushed, diminifiled, and slow.

  13. It’s an all time favorite. An era we should never forget. Where communists knew who they were and what they stood for. Today most of us stand for very little. Principles have been hammered into pie shares.

  14. Pingback: The new Nickelsville: Three camps in the Central District | CHS Capitol Hill Seattle