As Ensign RV residents scatter to surrounding streets, Olympia plans site for RV safe lot
On Tuesday, a planned sweep of vehicles camped along Ensign Road in Olympia was undercut by a letter from the Attorney General’s Office, warning it would violate Gov. Inslee’s eviction moratorium enacted because of the pandemic.
Some of the recreational vehicle residents left anyway. But they didn’t go very far.
Sitting in the passenger’s seat of his RV, Ace Person gestures to the three other RVs parked along Pattison Street, across from the Intercity Transit complex in east Olympia.
They also came from Ensign Road, he said.
Dora Love, 32, lives with Person and their 2-year-old daughter in a 1966 RV that Person fixed up after he bought it from a friend for $600. Prior to that, they were sleeping in tents just off Interstate 5. Since acquiring the RV, they had moved from getting shooed out of Safeway parking lots to a modicum of stability on Ensign Road.
They left Ensign Road on Tuesday, when the city’s planned sweep morphed into a voluntary move that, they say, only felt sort of voluntary.
“Leave, don’t leave, you’re fine, we’re gonna ticket you, you can stay, but you’re gonna get in trouble if you don’t leave — it’s confusing,” Love said.
Early Tuesday morning, Olympia Police Department vehicles blocked off the street to facilitate the posting of “no parking” signs, as well as to make room for a car that drove around to fill up the gas tanks of those who chose to leave. City staff also offered gas cards and replacement car batteries in exchange for leaving.
It was a confusing situation: First they were told they’d be towed, then maybe ticketed, or maybe not. Eventually, Love and Person got the message, took the help offered, and left.
It felt like a bribe, Love said.
“We’ll give you gas if you move your vehicle now, otherwise you’ll get ticketed.”
In response to an inquiry from The Olympian on Wednesday, Assistant City Manager Keith Stahley clarified that the city will not ticket the remaining vehicle residents on Ensign Road.
Meanwhile, the city has identified a site where it plans to to allow RV parking.
County funds Olympia’s plan for a Safe Parking Lot
On Tuesday, the Thurston County Board of Commissioners approved allocating $530,000 to the city of Olympia to help fund a Safe Parking program, where people living in RVs and cars can park. The county has funding available from multiple sources, including annual state funding for homeless prevention and federal coronavirus relief funds.
In its request to the county, Olympia identified a city-owned parking lot at the intersection of Martin Way and Carpenter Road as the RV parking site. The parcel, which falls within Lacey’s Urban Growth Area, is connected to an Olympia Police Department pistol shooting range. It’s also right next to a county-owned site that was identified by the county for a proposed mitigation site, then tabled after rising cost projections in 2019.
This site is a fully paved parking lot, County Commissioner Tye Menser said. And because it’s for RVs and not tents, the cost considerations are less.
Stahley declined to offer more information about the city’s proposal on Thursday, saying it’s still in the planning phase, but he anticipates presenting the full plan to the Regional Housing Council in November. He did note the site is not large enough to accommodate all the RVs that were previously on Ensign Road.
It’s somewhat unusual for the county to provide such a significant amount of money to a project with such few details. While the vote to allocate funding was official, the details still need to be hammered out and contracts signed, which will need to happen before Olympia actually gets the money.
Menser told The Olympian that the urgency of the situation on Ensign Road was a factor in greenlighting the funding with such little information.
“The opportunity to use an already set-up site that Olympia was willing to contribute with money that we had stockpiled to deal with an immediate, emerging problem like the Ensign Road RV situation, the stars seemed to align there to just take action,” Menser said.
In other words, sometimes it takes a crisis. Menser acknowledged the county has not done as much as he’d like to lead on addressing homelessness, and he saw this a chance to make something happen.
“It’s taken a long time, but the gears are starting to finally turn in the right direction,” Menser said. “I’m hoping we can turn a corner to where we start to have adequate shelter space and wraparound services to start to meet the need, or at least get closer.”
Commissioner Gary Edwards was the lone voice opposing the plan, citing the location and his belief that Olympia has “mismanaged” homelessness.
“I am adamantly opposed to them moving out into the county, I don’t care whose property it’s on,” Edwards said at Tuesday’s county meeting.
Edwards suggested putting the safe parking site on the Capitol Campus instead.
What is safe parking?
Safe Parking programs, as The Olympian has reported, are lots that allow vehicle residents to park overnight. Multiple churches in Seattle have operated safe parking lots for the past decade. Many of these churches also offer facilities such as bathrooms, showers, kitchens, and electrical outlets to those parking. A good deal of them have rules about who can park, and many do not allow RVs or campers.
Lake Washington United Methodist Church in Kirkland has operated a safe parking program since 2011, and hosts between 30-60 cars on any given night. It’s open 24/7 and allows car residents to use the church as their mailing address. There’s no time limit on how long people can stay.
However, like many church-operated safe lots, it does not allow RVs, or single adult men.
The city of Seattle has opened and closed two safe parking lots for RVs since 2016. One safe lot in Ballard operated for just a few months and got only 11 people housed despite costing $35,000 per month.
The city then opened a “vehicle safe area” in the industrial SoDo neighborhood, which closed after three people died there in 2018, as The Seattle Times has reported.
This story was originally published November 1, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
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