As lease deadline approaches, Seattle homeless camp may have nowhere to go

SEATTLE – A plan to move a sanctioned homeless encampment in Seattle appears to have fallen apart at the last minute, eliciting finger-pointing from public officials. Leaders of the encampment say barring a quick resolution they will move to an unsanctioned location on Saturday.

More than 100 people, including 17 children, live at Tent City 4, a self-managed community outside the Seattle Mennonite Church in the Lake City neighborhood, where they’ve been for the past year. Their lease expires Saturday. In February, SHARE/WHEEL, a nonprofit that administers the site, began planning a move several blocks away to the site of the Lake City Community Center, which closed in 2023 due to a fire and is unused.

The nonprofit coordinated with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and met with neighborhood residents multiple times in community engagement sessions. But SHARE/WHEEL said the authority put the brakes on that process last week, saying a lease agreement was not ready to be signed.

Dozens of people, advocates and those living in Tent City 4, spoke Thursday at an authority board meeting where they criticized officials for letting the sanctioned encampment’s lease expire without finding an alternative location.

“We did step-by-step everything that we were asked to do and did it to the best of our ability and in the manner and time when we were requested to do it,” said Ivan Gerdes, a resident and leader at Tent City 4.

Kelly Kinnison, CEO of the Regional Homelessness Authority, said at the meeting that the community center was Seattle’s property and thus up to the city to approve its use as a sanctioned encampment.

“After review of the community input, all of the community input and the other aspects of the site, the city has determined the site is not suitable for the next site for Tent City 4,” Kinnison said.

Mayor Bruce Harrell said during the board meeting that he had not been involved in the process to find a new location for Tent City 4, and objected to the idea that it was solely Seattle officials’ decision not to approve the new location.

“I just became aware of this issue like yesterday, to be honest with you,” Harrell said. “Decisions like this and addressing homelessness should be a regional decision.”

Later Thursday, Harrell called Megan Ramer, pastor at Seattle Mennonite Church, the current host of Tent City 4, to ask if her organization would allow the sanctioned encampment to extend its stay. Ramer said she told the mayor the organization running it had asked her not to.

“We are not extending the lease agreement because they had asked us to stand with them and hold that commitment,” Ramer said.

Anitra Freeman, board member of SHARE/WHEEL, said when her organization signs a lease for its sanctioned encampments, it’s a promise not just with the host but the entire neighboring community that they will only stay for that duration.

“If we didn’t keep our word, if we just said, OK, now we’re going to stay another month or two, the next place we have a neighborhood meeting to say that we were going to move there, we’re going to have 100 people showing up saying, ‘You lie. We know that you lie,’ ” Freeman said.

SHARE/WHEEL operates two sanctioned encampments that are partially funded by the Regional Homelessness Authority. The other, Tent City 3, is located in the University District.

For the past two decades, both have moved every few months or years, depending on how long the hosts are willing to have them. Since then, Freeman said, they have never stayed longer than they said they would.

She said that if a resolution is not reached by Saturday, Tent City 4 would move, likely to an unsanctioned location.

“If we have to, we will move to public land,” Freeman said. “We’ve done it before. And somehow people figure out how to solve the problem when it’s right in front of them.”

A group of 23 elected officials – including King County Councilmembers Rod Dembowski and Teresa Mosqueda and Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck – sent a letter to Seattle and Regional Homelessness Authority officials calling on them to allow Tent City 4 to use the Lake City Community Center location for the next six months.

“The situation we face today is the direct result of process failures by the City of Seattle and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. It is unacceptable for the burden of these decisions to fall on the people who live in and care about Lake City – including the residents of Tent City 4,” the letter said.

Alexis Mobley, a mother of an 8-month-old boy named Maximillian, has lived in Tent City 4 for the past year, within a few blocks of a food bank and a day center where she can bathe her son. The proposed location at the community center would also be within a few blocks.

“A lot of our kids are in school. You know, there’s day cares around there. There’s parks where I can take my son and he can play with no issue,” Mobley said. “But if we move, I lose all of that connection.”