What's next for 'The Field' homeless encampment?

SEATTLE --  City leaders call it one of the worst encampments crews have ever seen.  The cleanup is still underway at “The Field” in Seattle’s SODO neighborhood—more than a day after the campers were moved out.

It sits on the South Royal Brougham Way and Airport Way South in Seattle.  Regardless of where you live in the Puget Sound, chances are you’ve driven by it or even over it on the highway.  While The Field has been shut down, there’s still plenty of work ahead.

Despite the anger and yelling coming from the homeless and protesters, signs went up and this homeless encampment called The Field in SODO was shut down.  The city offered campers vouchers, beds in shelters and other services.

“They include overnight shelters. They include sheltering situations that have more in the way of services. Though the number of those opportunities are a little more limited than the overnight shelters,” said Finance & Administrative Services Operations Director Chris Potter.

Some didn’t want any part of it.

“I’m going to stay here until the last person gets out,” Weelah Thor.

But eventually everyone had to leave and the left behind a big mess.

“We are very careful to store things like identification and documents especially.  We’re getting very few phone calls to recover that property and very few visits to our storage facility,” said Potter.

The storage facility is at one of S-DOT’s locations.  Right now, it’s housing wheelchairs, bikes, and bins full of bags of belongings from homeless encampment sweeps.  The belongings are only kept there for 60 days and thrown out if not claimed.  The service started in 2008, but the city says people aren’t really using it.

“Some people say it’s too hard to recover belongings. We’ve heard some people say it’s just not worth it. The things we’re recovering are things they left there because they did not want them,” said Potter.

So now city officials will take another look at whether the storage service is worth it.  But that’s just one issue, the major cleanup of the countless rats, piles of human waste and needles awaits.

“In a site that is complicated as a much debris as royal brougham. We use heavy equipment, front loaders or the thumb on a backhoe in order to remove the material and put it in dumpsters,” said Potter.

While the cleanup continues, some of the homeless move to other unsanctioned encampments nearby.

“You’re not getting rid of them. They’re just moving down the street, around the corner, and it’s going to end up in your backyard,” said one homeless man says who moved from Florida to Seattle because of the services offered here.

City leaders say they don’t believe sweeps are a never-ending cycle.  Officials hope some people actually take advantage of the services offered and end their cycle of homelessness.  As far as cleaning up other unsanctioned homeless encampments, it depends on which encampment is deemed the highest priority.  So the worst of the worst when it comes to sanitation or crime.  Wherever it is, the homeless residents will get at least a 72 hour notice.