Mayor calls Olympia hotel occupation ‘domestic terrorism,’ council condemns Sunday action
Olympia city officials on Tuesday roundly condemned the actions of the group Oly Housing Now, which staged an occupation of the Red Lion Inn on Sunday that ended in seven arrests.
City council member Dani Madrone said she was “appalled.” Mayor Pro Tem Clark Gilman said he was “disappointed” and confused. Others used adjectives such as “reckless,” “uninformed,” and “infuriating.”
The latter term came from council member Renata Rollins, who co-founded a homelessness advocacy group and has been vocal about supporting harm reduction approaches to homelessness. She called the group’s actions “short-sighted, ego-driven, and counterproductive.”
Rollins said that several of the group’s demands were for policies that that city is already practicing — such as providing bathrooms and dumpsters and not sweeping encampments — and that Thurston County already has put a significant amount of federal aid into homeless response. (The amount is $12 million, according to Thurston County Public Health Director Schelli Slaughter.)
“The group’s demands made no sense,” Rollins said. “They read like they were copied and pasted from some other community’s struggle because whoever penned them had no context for what’s actually going on in Olympia and Thurston County.
“This wasn’t activism, this was nihilism,” Rollins added. “And it caused so much unnecessary preventable harm.”
Olympia Mayor Cheryl Selby had more pointed words.
“I’m calling this crime an act of domestic terrorism,” Selby said at Tuesday’s city council meeting.
Selby said the organizers “exploited and victimized the very group they claim to want to help” and “should be held accountable to the furthest extent of the law.”
“This created an active crime scene that necessitated a police response appropriate to the scale of the actions of these terrorists,” Selby said.
Selby and other council members also expressed sympathy for the hotel staff and appreciation for the hotel management, noting that the county and local nonprofit Family Support Center have paid for rooms at the hotel to house homeless families during the pandemic.
This is the second time Selby has used the term “domestic terrorists.” The first was over the summer, when a group vandalized her house with spray paint. She later apologized for those comments, calling them an “overreaction” after the quote appeared in national media accounts.
Several members of the public responded to Selby’s characterization on Tuesday, calling it inappropriate.
“I don’t appreciate how the mayor called them terrorists,” said Nolan Hibbard-Pelly, who said he participated in the action by holding a sign outside the hotel. “I don’t think calling housing activists or people that spray paint your house [terrorists] is really appropriate.”
Tierra Watkins said that while she understood why the council condemned the group’s actions, she thinks the protest centered the urgency of the housing crisis and compared the verbal and police response to recent events at the state Capitol in January, such as when demonstrators broke into the Governor’s Mansion grounds.
“Why is it treated like domestic terrorism when actual acts of domestic terrorism like at our governor’s mansion at the state Capitol take place and don’t get the same type of treatment?” Watkins said.
More on the FEMA Funds
Rollins said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding referenced by the group’s demands only recently became available. In fact, the funding, which county officials have said they’re looking into, is actually a reimbursement program that began in March 2020 but was recently expanded under the Biden administration.
After former President Trump declared a nationwide public health emergency in March 2020, FEMA began offering funds to municipalities to secure non-congregate shelter for people 65 and older or those with chronic underlying health conditions that put them at high risk for complications, according to a FAQ on FEMA’s website.
The initial terms of the “non-congregate sheltering” program required local public health departments to apply for reimbursement every 30 days, subject to approval by FEMA “regional administrators”. FEMA reimbursed municipalities 75% of the costs of securing shelter, not including wraparound services like case management or mental health counseling.
Several other states including North Carolina and Delaware have also been approved for FEMA reimbursements for non-congregate shelter programs that utilize hotel rooms.
In December, FEMA changed its policy for the state of California to continue funding 75% of the shelter cost throughout the duration of the pandemic without requiring the state to re-apply each month, according to an announcement from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Then last week, Biden’s executive order allowed FEMA to reimburse 100% of costs associated with COVID response dating back to the beginning of the pandemic until Sept. 30, 2021, and including non-congregate sheltering.
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
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