By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
With the exception of the modern, lightweight tents, and the setting up of camp in a parking lot, and the surrounding area looking nothing like the sands of the Sinai Peninsula, Seattle’s self-contained moveable homeless community known as Tent City could almost be a scene from the years the ancient Hebrews wandered the desert.
Yet while the parking lot beside Temple Beth Am in Seattle’s Northend does not even bear a passing resemblance to the Negev, it took no stretch of the imagination for this Reform congregation to get behind the idea of hosting the campsite shelter that has moved from one location to the next for the past three years. Temple Beth Am is well known for its Social Action Committee and it’s commitment to tikkum olam, the Jewish tradition of healing the world through compassionate actions. It’s natural, therefore, that it would be the first synagogue to host Tent City.
Sandy Voit, Temple Beth Am’s executive director, said the initial impetus for inviting Tent City to spend the month of July with them came from Associate Rabbi Beth Singer, who began working on the plan more than a year earlier.
“She was the one who first made the contact with Tent City,” said Voit, who added that this could be “a great thing to make this connection and show our support for trying to work on problems of homelessness.”
The idea grew from there.
“This is a Temple project now,” said TBA Social Action Committee member Sally Kinney. “It was gotten together by some SAC members, but it is a Temple project now. I haven’t heard from anybody else that they have hard any adverse reactions from our temple community — not one. People have been signing up to cook and to do this and that. We’ve had only acceptance and, ‘Yes, we should do this. It’s the least we can do.’”
Tent City III has established itself in the space to the left of the temple proper, in the area where neighboring University Preparatory Academy houses its buses during the school year.
Utilizing that particular space was one of the reasons for the timing of the offer, which covers the entire month of July with an extra week or so tacked onto either end to accommodate the schedules of the places they are coming from and going to.
Voit said the timing is ideally suited to the schedules of both the temple and the neighboring University Prep. Not only are the school buses not in use at this time of year, but since the rabbis take their vacation around now, B’nai Mitzvahs are not scheduled for the month, so they do not need the overflow parking.
Kinney said she has had nothing but positive impressions since becoming involved.
“We had an initial meeting with them and were quite impressed with the residents who came. When they looked at the site where we would have them, they seemed to like it,” said Kinney. “They are, as far as we know, the only shelter that is self-governed. They do their own security patrols, they govern themselves — they vote people into positions of authority. They kick anybody out that is not adhering to their rules for conduct and they can assure their congregation hosts that that is the case.”
Beth Am also consulted the administration of University Prep and members of the neighboring P-Patch community garden. Kinney said both groups were supportive of the plan and that U-Prep has been very cooperative, making the task of bringing the encampment there easier.
“University Prep is [letting] them use their showers, so they won’t have to bus downtown or to the nearest hygiene centers,” she said. “They are going to be provided electrical cables and provided water both from the temple and from U-Prep. The P-Patch people really kind of like Tent City being there,” she added, “because they’ve had some vandalism. Tent City residents will serve as a kind of security patrol for the whole neighborhood — it’s just one of the things that they offer.”
In addition to a place to pitch their tents, Temple Beth Am’s congregation is providing the residents of Tent City with dinner and a movie once a week for the duration of their stay.
“We had gotten together a couple of times before that and decided what we might be able to offer them while they were with us,” Kinney said. “We’ll either do a potluck dinner with the Temple members bringing things, or we’ll just cook for them. We’ll rent a movie and we’ll either show it at University Prep or just there.”
SHARE/WHEEL (Seattle Housing And Resource Effort and the Women’s Housing Equality and Enhancement League), which jointly operate the year-round encampment, call it Tent City III as a reminder of the two short-lived and controversial homeless camps that preceded it. The first was established on Thanksgiving 1990, on the site where Safeco Field now stands. On its first day, it had two tents and 12 people but grew in less than a week to 125 people inhabiting 15 tents and cars. Then-Seattle Mayor Norm Rice responded by opening a 100-person shelter in what was then a Metro Bus Barn near the Space Needle and the encampment was dismantled.
The second Tent City, established in a period of confrontation with the city administration in 1998, lasted just two weeks before it was ordered bulldozed by former Mayor Paul Schell, who had the residents that would not voluntarily leave arrested. The third Tent City was established on the grounds of El Centro de la Raza in Beacon Hill, near the site of Tent City II on July 16, 2000.
Jim Norton — known as “Ticket Man” because, he says, he barters for bus tickets — is one of the residents who worked on setting up the shelter complex on June 22, when they made their move. Norton says this is his second time coming to live in Tent City and his third move with them.
“This is a good deal,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of people around to keep track of things and help you — talk to them, socialize — a little bit of everything. I’ll probably stay here for two years. I’m looking at going back to school starting on the 30th, trying to get my welding certification. It’s a good deal all around, I think.”
Noting that this is the first time that Tent City has been hosted by a Jewish congregation, he added, “It’s pretty cool. We’re moving up in the world.”