Fear and uncertainty inside 'The Jungle'

SEATTLE -- Brandie is used to uncertainty.

She and her fiancé of nine years watched everything they worked for slip away after an injury left him unable to work.

“We didn’t save. We didn’t have a nest egg. No savings account to fall back on,” she said.

“During his injury I couldn’t keep up with working, taking care of him, and paying all the bills. So slowly and surely, one thing at a time, down the hill until my car was repossessed and then it was the house and we lost everything.”

The couple moved from homeless camp to homeless camp – staying just long enough to feel a sense of stability before the city would force them to move, she said.

Eventually, Brandie set up a tent inside “The Jungle.”

Now, she faces uncertainty once again as the city moves forward with an effort to close the notorious homeless camp down for good.

“What are we going to do? We have to go, you know? If every person here is willing to lay down in front of a bulldozer and say, ‘We’re not leaving,’ then I’ll lay with them. Absolutely,” she said. “But I don’t think that will happen because they’re just – they’re scared. And I’m scared, too.”

Following a deadly shooting inside “The Jungle” in January, city and state officials vowed to close the decades-old camp and help get the 300 or so people living there into services. But there has been plenty of disagreement about how to go about clearing the 3-mile long, 150-acre area underneath and along Interstate 5 – referred to by some officials as the “East Duwamish Greenbelt.”

In recent weeks, outreach workers with the Union Gospel Mission have worked to contact as many people in “The Jungle” as possible, but so far only a small fraction have agreed to accept help.

“We’ve got to be doing our best to reach into their world, as messy as it is, and be able to reach in a say to them, ‘Hey. There’s a city out there that still cares about you. We want to bring solutions to you,’” said Jeff Lilley, UGM’s president.

Earlier this week, the Seattle City Council and the Mayor’s Office agreed on a slightly altered approach to clearing the camp after some council members expressed concern that the timeline to do so was too short.

Under the new approach, council members would be given a three-day notice before anyone is removed from the camp by force. The time would allow them to review each case and make sure outreach efforts have been made.

But many in “The Jungle,” like Brandie, hope the city will change course.

On a recent afternoon, Brandie and a small group went tent-to-tent, handing out fliers warning residents of the impending “sweep” and encouraging them to stand up against it.

“We’re tired of being swept around from here to there and all around,” she said.

Brandie wants the city and state to turn the area into an authorized homeless camp and provide services that would make it a more stable environment.

“It doesn’t have to be dirty,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be unhealthy or unsanitary. We want to be able to provide people with what they need: Port-a-Pottys. Not necessarily a shower or anything like that, but maybe a dumpster for garbage, or a way to dispose of stuff like that.”

Brandie is not alone.

Tim Harris, the founder of Real Change -- a weekly newspaper sold by the city’s homeless -- also said he would like to see “The Jungle” become a more regulated environment.

“Come in with some trucks and remove the piles of trash. Sanitize the place somewhat. Deal with the public health issues. That would be money well spent,” Harris said.

He recalled a cleanup of “The Jungle” in 1994, which was covered in the first-ever issue of Real Change. He said the camp has only gotten worse in the years since.

“There were a fraction of the people living here that there are now. I would say that since 1994, the number of unsheltered people in Seattle has approximately quadrupled,” he said.

Harris said the city should look at the camp as an asset, not a problem.

“This is a place that people who are unsheltered, who the shelter system doesn’t meet their needs, have been coming for more than 40 years. There’s a reason for that. There’s overhead shelter. It’s out of the way. It’s close to downtown. We should treat this as an asset – a place where people are coming who need help – and figure out a way to offer them something that’s better than a place to camp out in the dirt."