Submitted by Kevin Glackin-Coley, Tacoma Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness.
The Tacoma-Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness decries the violent attack on a group of people experiencing homelessness in Tacoma’s 6th Avenue Neighborhood Thursday night, which resulted in one person dying and several people being hospitalized. This was not an act of violence among people experiencing homelessness but rather an attack by housed people on the residents of a homeless encampment.
This attack underscores the reality that our community must ensure that there is sufficient housing for all people. This is a public safety issue for the entire community. If people have safe places to stay, it will create a safer community for all of us – unhoused and housed alike.
We understand the tensions that exist in neighborhoods where people experiencing homelessness establish encampments. However, these tensions cannot be used as a justification for acts of violence, but rather as a clarion call to individuals, organizations and local, county, and state officials to take the necessary steps to ensure that there are safe, warm, and dry housing options for all people.
The members of the Coalition, consisting of organizations and individuals throughout the County, remain committed to working together with all interested parties to develop these necessary housing options.
Ron Morrison says
I think the tiny house movement might be a workable solution plus basic productive minimum wage jobs. I think coaching & or leadership and perhaps mental health & advanced nurse providers
may also be needed. The problem I see is from the perspective of the homeless, it is much easier to GIVE UP and just slowly die than it is to summon the energy and determination to rise and find a way to a healthier and better life. It is also hard for communities to summon the interest and dollars to encourage and help those who are so discouraged to become adequately self sufficient.
Ruben Botello says
The best way to protect the homeless is, to house them regardless of their ability to pay rent. Provide them with decent housing and other basic services most Americans take for granted.
Ruben Botello, Founder
American Homeless Society
Dave Shaw says
With all of the businesses closing due to COVID and governmental-imposed restrictions, why not provide temporary housing for the homeless. Most of those locations have bathroom facilities, and would get homeless people out of the elements.
Now let’s hear all the reasons this “can’t be done.”
Ruben Botello says
It can be done, and everyone knows it. The problem is, at the upper levels of government and society, where well-off human beings with the political muscle, to establish these basic provisions, would rather see the neediest among us suffer and die needlessly on the streets than, to help them obtain their life-sustaining needs, even during the hardest of times. They are so cruel and inhumane, as homelessness spirals all around us, like the pandemic.
Kris Quinn says
I’ve heard about this attack, but do not know the details yet. I hope it didn’t happen at the new tiny home community on 6th and Orchard. Wherever it happened, it was outrageous. Homeless people are suffering so much more than those who are housed at this time of Covid.
We must get people into housing now. Empty buildings can be repurposed, as the previous writer suggested. More tiny homes can be built.
We must show compassion for the homeless by housing them and providing services for them.
And, getting to know our homeless neighbors would bring us to a place of understanding, not hostility and hate.
P Rose says
I first became aware of Tacoma homelessnes in the early 1970’s, and found numerous building ordnances blocking tiny house/shelters. The shantytowns/Hoovervilles of the early 1930’s that developed on the tideflats inspired the restrictions that are still current.
There are ordnance laws against encampment shelter homes that fostered the NIMBY* concept that exists today. Every which way one turns to help, they get blocked.
*Not In My Back Yard
P Rose says
depts.washington.edu/depress/hooverville.shtml
What we were left with was “Not In My Backyard” syndrome that is strong and active today.
P Rose says
Here’s another…..history repeating itself?
tacomahistory.live/2017/12/08/burning-hollywood/
Joanne says
Have you seen what the homeless people did at peoples park? They left them Santi-huts and garbage cans that they didn’t use. When they finally got them all out of there they had to excavate the soil so the kids would be able to use them again.