Welcome to Nickelsville

B.J. reports that many homeless have returned to the greenbelt in the weeks following the sweep, an observation seconded by Julie Stephenson, the director of CityTeam Ministries, a shelter that abuts the greenbelt. It's just that they have to be cleaner now. "I'm like a Boy Scout," says B.J. "I tell everyone to pack everything in and pack everything out."

The two-day sweep was expensive: $27,866 for staff, a rented tractor, portable toilets, safety equipment, immunizations, and dump fees. According to Eisinger, it's about half of what the city spends to house 75 people during the entire six-month season at its emergency winter shelter in the basement of City Hall.

"It's shocking and frankly baffling in its counterproductiveness," Eisinger says of the sweeps. "It creates a zero-tolerance policy for people sleeping outside when the city is well aware of the fact that the shelters are full and that there are several thousand people without shelter on any given night."

The city says it provides outreach and shelter beds for the people it boots from the greenbelts, but shelter operators say that simply displaces some of the 2,600 people still in need of a place to sleep. "If the sweeps issue has done anything," says Hobson, "it has forced us to think more about where we're going with the 10-year plan. Maybe we should reexamine the whole idea of shelter. I hope it forces us to do that."

Meanwhile, Ceis says that in the next couple of weeks the city will be cleaning up the greenbelt on Beacon Hill's west slope, an area called "the jungle" for its remote location and reputed lawlessness.

Predictably, Seattle's progressive neighbor to the south has already created its own Nickelsville-like experiment. In 2001, after a months-long standoff with a group of homeless people camped under bridges downtown, Portland city officials agreed to let them build a permanent place to live outside, but required that they move seven miles north to the grounds of a leaf-recycling facility.

Dignity Village still exists today, though it hasn't quite reached the utopian status imagined by its founders. Residents live rent-free on a city-owned 1.2-acre patch of asphalt, but are expected to pay utilities and liability insurance as part of a Memorandum of Understanding negotiated with the city. The agreement, which also caps the encampment's population at 60, expires in 2010.

They have running water and solar-heated showers, but use porta-potties instead of actual toilets, as a sewer system proved cost-prohibitive. Residents of Dignity Village—a nonprofit with its own governing board—share a phone, computers for job searching, a cooking area, and a community room with a wood stove. Many of their semi-permanent structures were built "green" with salvaged and environmentally friendly materials, an effort assisted by nearby universities.

"For a certain percentage of the homeless population, it's a good place to live," says Sally Erickson, homeless program manager for the City of Portland's Bureau of Housing and Community Development. "About a quarter of the residents move into permanent housing, a better percentage than most shelters." (Seattle Downtown Emergency Service Center spokesperson Nicole Macri confirms that percentage is higher than most shelters experience here. But she cautions that success rates depend on the size of the shelter and the availability of transitional or permanent housing in the area.)

Although it receives some private donations, Dignity Village has required substantial financial help from the city, which since 2001 has spent about $200,000 on site improvements, including electrical and water lines, drainage, paving, and fencing. This year, the city covered the $11,000 the village owed for liability insurance when residents couldn't come up with the cash.

"They've really struggled with paying the bills," Erickson says. "They initially told us, 'Give us land. We'll be self-sustaining.' But they've actually needed more help from the city. And they haven't gotten the kind of community support that they'd hoped for."

While Dignity Village has been a good place for some to get back on their feet, "it's certainly not for everybody," cautions Erickson. "It's pretty rough: It's hot in the summer; there [are] no shade trees out there. And it's cold in the winter. It's far from services. You have to be able to take the bus, live independently, get along with neighbors."

Two-year resident Joe Palinkas concurs. "Services are a major inconvenience," he says. "The closest store is two to three miles away." But Palinkas, who moved to Dignity Village because he was with a girlfriend (most shelters don't admit couples), calls the encampment "a major success in giving a stepping-stone for people to help themselves and better themselves."

Dignity Village is a safe place to "get your stuff together," Palinkas boasts. "Everybody looks out for everybody. Everybody's required to do security here. Two hours a week; it's a mandatory thing."

In total, residents are required to do 10 hours of work per week, divided among security, cleanup, attending meetings, cooking, or securing donations. And there's a Survivor-like rule which states that if you don't pull your weight, or if you violate the village's no drugs/alcohol/violence policy, you "get kicked off the island," Palinkas says.

To Nickelsville organizers, he offers this advice: "Keep it clean and sanitary. That's one of the biggest concerns people bitch about. If it's private land, go for it. Do what you can do until they run you out. If it's city land, I'd say go for that too."