People displaced from cleared Fourth Avenue bridge camp move to downtown church lot

Temporary tent structures that consist of wooden frames and canvas from old billboards have filled a corner of the parking lot at First Christian Church in downtown Olympia.

Inside those structures, a handful of people who just days ago were living under the Fourth Avenue bridge have named themselves the “New Hope Community.”

The arrangement at First Christian came to fruition in recent days, after a plan for the city to set up a second sanctioned camp on city-owned property in west Olympia fell through late last month.

The city has long said it would clear the camp under the bridge, according to The Olympian’s previous reporting, due to safety and environmental concerns. It delayed a plan to clear the camp in September, citing an offer from First Christian Church to partner with campers to establish rules, hold weekly meetings, and facilitate other churches’ and nonprofits’ work at the camp.

At the time, the city council voted to delay clearing the camp “until a comparable, safe and appropriate alternative location is available.”

Interim Olympia City Manager Jay Burney told The Olympian in a phone interview Wednesday that the city, the coalition of religious leaders Concerned Clergy of Olympia, and First Christian were looking at a piece of city property where they could relocate camp residents.

Meanwhile, over the last several months, residents of the camp under the bridge have, as planned, been meeting each week, First Christian Pastor Amy LaCroix told The Olympian. The city, city attorneys, and 21 camp residents had even signed off on a list of rules for the new site, she said. She described the property as an unused, empty lot off of Fourth Avenue.

But, by late December, the city couldn’t find an established social service provider that would manage the sanctioned site, Burney said. And the city still felt it needed to move forward with clearing the camp because of environmental concerns.

“I think we’re all pretty disappointed, no one more disappointed than the residents,” LaCroix said of the city’s plan evaporating. Some camp residents moved out from under the bridge immediately after learning the site fell through, she said.

The city offered a fallback plan: Keeping the residents of the bridge camp together and moving them to the city’s mitigation site at Olympia Avenue Northeast and Franklin Street. Capacity had opened up, Burney said, that wasn’t available in September.

Two of the 15 people who remained at the camp under the bridge moved to the mitigation site, and advocates were working with two others to find a place for them.

But LaCroix said the mitigation site wasn’t a good alternative for the group now living at the church, who think of themselves as a family and want to hold each other accountable for their sobriety. She believes the city is doing the best it can, that the mitigation site is a step above unsanctioned camps or living in the woods, but it’s big and harder to manage.

“Having a clean and sober community is very important to them,” LaCroix said of the small group of new residents at her church. “None of them felt they could do that at the mitigation site.”

Last week, she said, she met with city representatives, and it became clear the church taking in the majority of the camp residents with the city’s support was the best option, under the circumstances..

LaCroix immediately started talking to her leadership council and, the day before the camp was slated to be cleared, the First Christian congregation met and decided it would commit to allowing six tiny homes in their parking lot for the next 18 months to house camp residents, LaCroix said. Eleven people — five couples and one single person — moved into the temporary structures by Monday morning.

The city will provide garbage service, portable bathrooms, and help with costs for infrastructure such as electrical upgrades and fencing, Burney said.

The next phase, LaCroix said, is transitioning from the current, temporary structures donated and built by a community member, to tiny homes by working with the city, faith communities, and the community at large. She said they’ll engage with neighbors during the process.

“The city continues to say this is a crisis and we’re in an emergency situation when it comes to the houseless in this community,” Burney said. “And it takes the community to solve this. Partnerships like this and Westminster Presbyterian Church are great examples of how we can come together as a community to help solve this problem.”

A man known as Opie Taylor, who lived in the encampment under the bridge and is now president of the New Hope Community, described the transition as “sudden,” but sounded overall hopeful in an interview Wednesday.

“We’re really blessed they’re willing to give us the shelter we need when everybody else turned their backs on us,” he said.

This isn’t a novel commitment for First Christian, which has hosted the Family Support Center and Camp Quixote in the past, and currently hosts a shelter for Interfaith Works. It’s already having preliminary conversations about bringing in wraparound social services for the New Hope residents.

New Hope Community members will now adapt the rules they created for the city site so they make sense in the new arrangement, and the church will provide accountability for the policies, such as visiting hours, curfews, and quiet hours, LaCroix said. The self-governance is modeled after Camp Quixote, which began as a movable tent community hosted by churches and is now a permanent tiny-house village on Mottman Road Southwest.

“They’re accountable to us, and we’ll hold them accountable to their rules,” LaCroix said of the New Hope community.

These people who lived under the bridge and now live at the church, LaCroix said, have been working hard and don’t deserve the negative narrative that’s circulated on social media and otherwise.

“This group is committed,” LaCroix said. “They’re good people, they want to be good neighbors, they want to be reintegrated into the community at large.”

This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 8:05 AM.