City conducts second sweep of RVs, homeless residents on Ensign Road
By 11 a.m. Wednesday, the majority of large RVs and lived-in vehicles had been removed from Ensign Road between Providence Lane and the Providence St. Peter Hospital service road.
The clearing was the last move set in motion when the hospital asked the city of Olympia to remove the parked vehicles and tents the summer of 2020 to ensure emergency vehicles had easy access to the hospital and the road. At the time, Washington state was still under an eviction moratorium, but that expired on Oct. 31, 2021. Those living in vehicles on Ensign Road were notified of the plan to clear the road on Nov. 15, according to a press release from the city’s homeless response coordinator Kim Kondrat.
Tye Gundel, program coordinator for Olympia Mutual Aid Partners, said that figuring out exactly when the residents on Ensign Road had to move has been difficult. Originally, all the residents were going to be moved during a first sweep in December. Then that changed to half of the group, and the remainder were officially notified on Friday of Wednesday’s move.
Gundel said the city decided to go with a staggered approach, rather than a hard-line sweep to remove every resident at once. This way, case workers could work more closely with residents to determine next steps.
Two of the larger RVs were moved from upper to lower Ensign Road after former residents left, leaving parking spaces open farther from the hospital. Gundel said there’s still one household that’s planning to move further down.
Everyone else — around 13 or so households — were moved to the Super 8 motel to stay for the next two weeks. The motel is currently housing residents of the Deschutes encampment and is expecting more to come, so the city is actively searching for another hotel to house residents from Ensign Road.
Though the move wasn’t enforced for Ensign residents who didn’t have a plan once the two-week motel stay was up, Gundel said almost everyone on upper Ensign Road chose to leave. But Gundel said as far as she knows, only one person had a plan for where they’ll stay.
The city of Olympia offered to buy RVs and other vehicles in hopes residents would use that money to get a jump start on next steps. Gundel said the idea is that if a resident was living in a non-moving vehicle, they could maybe use the money to purchase a moving one, or find housing somewhere.
“It is an incentive to get people to move, including folks who don’t necessarily have other options lined up,” Gundel said.
With room in shelters hard to come by and difficulty staying connected to people who are homelessness once they’ve been dispersed, Gundel said she’s not optimistic that there will be options for the Ensign Road residents in two weeks.
“The most likely outcome will be that they’ll be back on the streets,” she said.
This story was originally published January 13, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
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