Homeless camp's return in Ballard sparks renewed safety concerns among residents

SEATTLE — The return of a homeless camp to a Seattle neighborhood is raising crime and safety concerns, but few neighbors are surprised that the RVs, trash, and drug dealing are back.

About a dozen recreational vehicles, as well as a few cars, are lined up on the streets surrounding the Office Max on NW Leary Way in Ballard. Seattle has a 72-hour time limit on street parking but people in the area said the homeless have been in place for more than a week and a half and many are uneasy with what they see.

“I feel less and less safe coming around here,” said Megan, who didn’t want her last name used. “There is loads of trash. There's loads of food. There's loads of drugs. There are needles everywhere."

Sean, who works nearby and also wanted his last name withheld, said every morning he shows up for work there are fires in the parking lot.

“It's hurting everybody. Businesses and residents,” Sean said. “Just a lot of traffic coming through the area, a lot of unnecessary hand-to-hand transactions, especially with that RV right there."

Bruce Drager, who does homeless advocacy work and previously founded Greenlake Homeless Advocates, was checking in with the people who live in RVs along Leary Way on Monday. Drager said city policies to clear out these encampments are only perpetuating the problems.

“You can't just keep sweeping them around from one spot to the next because then you're just going to move the drug use,” Drager said. “That's what they are hoping to do is appease the public enough, mollify them enough by just moving them rapidly enough that any one area doesn't get inundated for a protracted period of time, and that's sort of the game they play."

Others have seen the pattern as well.

“They've been back for about a week and a half now and they will probably clear them out in another week, but then they will come back,” Sean said.

Drager said the city will sometimes clear a camp to quickly respond to complaints without solving the underlying problems, and shelter is not offered in all situations.

“For a short period of time, they were getting to the point where they were sweeping without even warning people,” Drager said. “None of them were offered any transitional housing so they are scattered."

KOMO News reached out to the office of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell to ask about the Unified Care Team (UCT) and its involvement at the Leary Way location. A spokesperson said they are monitoring the site and placed it on a regular trash route to help minimize additional impacts.

“Our outreach teams have visited the site multiple times to make offers of shelter and resources to the people living there, and parking enforcement officers continue to tag vehicles that are not complying with the 72-hour parking rule as part of their standard enforcement process,” the spokesperson wrote. “At this time, the site is not scheduled for resolution but continues to be evaluated for next UCT actions.”