The homeless community of Seattle Washington has taken a hard hit over the past few months due to shelter closures. Fifteen Seattle shelters are being closed due to spending cuts, displacing over 300 homeless people and families. The lack of funding is due to the loss of federal funding through a FEMA grant.
Many homeless feel their safety is now at jeopardy without the protection of the shelters. These shelters provided a sense of security for individuals who would otherwise be forced to sleep on the streets. Fear of moving to the streets has been elevated reports that six homeless living on the streets have died in the past 2 months.
The homeless community and activists have banded together in protest of these closures and are seeking funds to re-open the shelters. They are currently staging a "sleep-out" in downtown Seattle. Many are stationed outside the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the hopes of growing attention to their plight and the potential for receiving a grant to replace the one they lost.
Activists argue shelter is a basic human right, and thus these closures are inhumane and must be reversed for the protection of the homeless community of Seattle.
If you are interested in helping homeless in your community, please visit these sites to see how you can start making a difference:
http://www.sharewheel.org/
http://www.backonmyfeet.org/
http://www.upwardboundhouse.org/
Hiya,
ReplyDeleteI know it's a bit confusing ...
SHARE [1] closed the all 15 of its Self-Managed Indoor Shelters serving 300 on Monday because we ran out of money for the bus tickets they require.
The homeless men and women from the Share Indoor Shelters, staying together and sleeping together for safety, staying organized and trying to get the funds to re-open their shelters _are_ the advocates! Like any group of individuals we have some people comfortable about speaking into a microphone and some that will run from just the thought of a camera.
They arrive at the Share Gates Shelter at 7pm, set up mats and blankets, establish security shifts, sleep safely, and in the morning clean up our site and leave by 7am. They have their honey bucket on a mobile trailer across the street. They also have teams of campers take care of all the blankets, washing and drying them all takes about 4 hours.
Tent City 3 (the one I'm in) with a hundred campers and Tent City 4 also with a hundred can keep on operating without bus tickets and remain open. Tc3 and Tc4 are alternating sending 15 campers every night to help the Indoor Shelters run _their_ current, new, emergency shelter; the Share Gates Shelter, which is located on the sidewalk at 5th and Mercer. Yep, that does, just happen to be, the sidewalk just outside of The Gates Foundation headquarters. It is also the former site of the first SHARE Indoor Shelter in 1991 and an easy walk (sans tickets) to downtown Seattle. We're homeless, not stupid.
A year ago Share asked the City Council of Seattle for the missing 50K in 2011 for bus tickets. The City managed to come up with an additional 21K for SHARE. Then in Aug FEMA decided to cut 100% their 42K.
We have talked with met with both of our Senators and Rep Dicks about what they may be able to do about FEMA's internal decision to alter the math they've been using for over a decade.
Of course we would be willing to accept a donation from The Gates Foundation. We have asked to sit down and talk. They say to the press that they have "committed" 100 million dollars in the "Tri-county" area to "solve this problem'. They just managed to avoid the largest provider of shelter in King County. We don't think asking for 0.005% of that bucket of money to get the tickets to re-open our 15 Indoor Shelters is asking too much.
Cheers,
Lantz
[1] Seattle Housing and Resource Effort