Olympia announces plan to clean up camps along Deschutes Parkway this week
The city of Olympia has announced that it will clean up 10 properties along Deschutes Parkway that are occupied by campers. The work will begin Wednesday morning and continuing Thursday and Friday.
City officials say they made the decision to clean up the area because of the waste accumulation and environmental impacts at the homeless camps.
“We have been working with the property owners for several months to facilitate this clean up, and I will be happy to see this project move forward,” Assistant City Manager Keith Stahley said in a statement. “The amount of trash and debris that has accumulated is concerning. Working with Thurston County, we hope to create a Scattered Site Support Program that will allow us to maintain this camp and others in a more sanitary condition going forward.”
The Olympian reported last week that the new “scattered-site” idea developed by the Regional Housing Council over the past several months would fund dedicated case managers assigned to three sites: tent encampments at Deschutes Parkway and Wheeler Road, and the Ensign Road RV settlement.
It also would pay for sanitation efforts such as regular garbage collection, RV septic pump-outs, portable toilets, hand washing stations, and keeping streets clear, The Olympian reported. The case manager would work with residents to get them into Coordinated Entry (the county-wide system that sorts people for housing assistance based on their level of need), obtain identification cards, and work with residents to create codes of conduct and self-governance mechanisms.
The city has hired Advance Environmental, an Olympia company that cleans up solid waste, encampment debris and biohazard material. They will focus on garbage removal while “respecting the personal property of persons camped on the site,” according to a news release.
Olympia adopted the One Community Plan in 2020 to address homelessness in the city. The plan resulted from a community work group, which listened to residents from across the community and produced a series of strategies for responding to issues such as waste at the encampments, according to the city.
This story was originally published April 4, 2021 at 10:56 AM.
