PORT TOWNSEND — The city of Port Townsend will continue to contract for cleanup and provide portable bathrooms and dumpsters to a homeless encampment located in a city right of way near the Department of Social and Health Services building.
The city’s 2025 budget includes a $25,000 contract with Leland Construction for on-call cleanup services and $12,000 for portable bathrooms and dumpsters.
City staff and the city council discussed the open-ended issue of unsanctioned encampments at Monday night’s council meeting.
“This is part of an ongoing situation that perhaps started with people living at the fairgrounds,” said Emma Bolin, the city’s planning and community development director. “When the fairground closed, a lot of those people may not have been eligible for various reasons to go to the Caswell Brown Village or other shelter sites like the American Legion shelter.”
After moving from the fairgrounds, Bolin said, lots of people moved to the future site of the Evans Vista project. When the city began its work on the site, which included forestry thinning and surveying for the future site of the affordable housing project, those camping there moved again.
Bolin said the process is like a game of musical chairs that no one wins. The right of way currently occupied by the encampment is adjacent to a city-owned property designated as a wetland, which is a critical area, Bolin said.
The issue presented itself as a Planning and Community Development (PCD) responsibility as the city’s code compliance officer, KT Labadie, is required to hold property owners accountable for nuisance compliance. The responsibility extends to holding the city to compliance on city-owned lands.
In order to avoid having to do nuisance compliance on themselves, PCD requested funds from council earlier this year for an on-call cleanup and abatement crew.
The city funded $12,000 for the crew, who worked to remove trash from the wetlands, Bolin said. The Jefferson County Trash Task Force also worked to remove additional remnants, she added.
“We have cleaned up the wetland, but a lot of the same impacts have shifted,” Bolin said. “We continue to struggle with safety and sanitation challenges for people living there, as well as citizens and first responders.”
The city also allocated $8,433 from funds received towards portable bathrooms and dumpsters in 2024.
“What we don’t have budgeted is staff time,” Bolin said. “This year alone, there was a sizable amount of staff time, about 15 percent of the city staff spend one week per year just doing encampments abatement, which is coming from multiple departments, since nobody has this in their job title.”
City staff time and expenses cost the city $42,700 in 2024, according to an agenda document.
The work requires equipment from streets, a division under public works, to move trash, Bolin said.
“We had one person who actually created a shelter out of earth,” she added. “That grade had to be redistributed.”
Expenses also are incurred in paying for dispatch and police response, Bolin said. It is the most geographically heavy response area, she said.
“A lot of these people don’t qualify for some of our low-barrier shelters either due to drug use or restraining orders,” Bolin said.
Some are limited because they have pets, she added.
“We seem to be evolving from a reactive and uncoordinated response,” Bolin said. “Where we want to be is a proactive and coordinated response that transcends what the city resources can provide.”
The city is progressing in its coordination, Bolin said, but is still in a reactive place.
“We know that unsanctioned encampments, such as what we have right now, could have some really chilling repercussions, as we’ve seen in the past,” she said. “Nobody wants that.”
The agenda item was framed as a discussion without recommendation for action.
The city has placed a large priority on affordable housing, Bolin said.
“How can we be proactive towards a zero barrier option?” she asked.
Ozzie Anderson and Scott Swantner, who own property adjacent to the encampment, provided public comments at Monday’s meeting.
Anderson said he is glad the conversations are taking place at the city, adding that the portable bathrooms have helped with human waste, but the dumpsters are less successful. Still, he said he’s glad that the waste management option is there.
Anderson fishes in Alaska during the summer.
“I came home to 15 people living on the property, new trails, trees getting cut down, campsites, fire pits, endless amounts of waste,” Anderson said. “I had to personally evict everyone. They did comply. I’m just really discouraged that every time I go to Alaska I come home and have the same giant disaster on my property.”
Anderson said he’s found it difficult to manage the cleanups on his own.
“I encourage you to try to come up with some creative solution, but I understand it’s really complicated, with no clear answers,” he said.
“It’s a terrible problem to be homeless, a terrible problem for our community that we have so many members of our community who are homeless. It seems to be getting worse all the time,” Mayor David Faber said. “As we know, homelessness is fundamentally a housing problem and addressing housing is a long-term problem. We can’t just snap our fingers and have it go away. There isn’t a place for us to put those people.”
Faber said he would like to see public agencies take a greater role in providing housing in the next generation, but he acknowledged the city’s current capacity is anemic. The city relies on non-profit partners, he said.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
