By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Tent City 4, one of two traveling homeless encampments in the Seattle area, will spend the summer on the property of Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue. This is the roving camp’s second visit to the Eastside synagogue in the past two years. The 50 to 100 residents will be moving to the site in early May.
“They had contacted us because they wanted to come back and they liked being with us,” says Temple B’nai Torah’s Rabbi James Mirel. “When they asked, we really didn’t hesitate too much. We had to vet it through our leadership, but it was pretty straightforward…. It’s something that we really do enjoy doing.”
People at the temple who have been laying the groundwork for this visit for the last several months say they expect none of the friction with neighbors or the City of Bellevue that marred the first time the self-governed homeless group was invited to pitch their tents at B’nai Torah.
In 2005, the Bellevue City Council reacted to controversies surrounding the presence of the homeless camp by adopting a series of stringent land-use regulation permitting processes that limited Tent City 4 to 40 residents and a 60-day stay. The Tent City, which has been operating with few problems since 2004, is hosted primarily by area religious communities and Seattle Housing and Resources Effort and Women’s Housing Equality and Enhancement League (SHARE/WHEEL), which administers both this and Seattle’s Tent City 3. Some of the religious congregations, including B’nai Torah, sued the city and challenged the rules, principally on First Amendment freedom of religion grounds.
The lawsuit was settled with a consent decree in which TC4 and its supporters acknowledged that Bellevue was within its rights to adopt these code changes. In return, the city agreed to extend the period TC4 could stay in the city to 3 months, but limited them to one encampment within city limits per year. TC4 returned to Bellevue in February 2006 for a 90-day stay at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church and to the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection last summer.
“If you go back in time, the city did not have an ordinance that dealt with temporary encampments,” explains Temple B’nai Torah’s president, Jackie Frank. “The city, through the consent decree, agreed on what the rules would be for temporary encampments. The reason why it was somewhat controversial was that it was the first time for the City of Bellevue, and we had to work through the process. The rules for encampment were established through that initial process, so in a sense we broke the ice, which has made it much simpler this time. [The City of Bellevue] staff has been fantastic. They’ve been very gracious — planning staff, police, fire, the utility departments.”
Rabbi Mirel says the congregation has also adopted a more proactive approach to dealing with their neighbors, including the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle, which has served to avoid problems they had with the surrounding community the first time Tent City came to stay.
“I asked that the committee go and actually invite the major Jewish organizations to co-sponsor it with us, so that it wasn’t just Temple B’nai Torah. So the Jewish Day School, our neighbor, is a co-sponsor, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, Jewish Family Service and the Puget Sound [Jewish] Coalition for the Homeless — those four larger Jewish organizations are actually co-sponsoring it with us. Obviously we’re hosting, we’re going to be doing most of the work, but this time it’s more of a community effort and not just Temple B’nai Torah.”
People at the Jewish Day School emphasized that they are not participating directly in hosting Tent City in Bellevue this summer and preferred to say they were supporting, rather than ‘co-sponsoring’ the visit. Nonetheless, Head of School Tom Elieff says they have no problem with the encampment this time around,
“JDS has a very strong and active community so there are always concerns when there are any type of changes on or near our campus, whether it be our own construction or Tent City next door. Understandably, parents want to know what’s happening and we’ve been able to keep them apprised as we receive information from TBT,” he says. “TBT has had well-coordinated communication with JDS for the past couple of months as it’s been planning for Tent City 4 and we have the benefit of experience — when we receive questions, we’re able to reflect back on the previous Tent City at TBT, which went completely as planned without any type of incident. We know better what to expect from the program.”
Frank says he believes the Jewish Day School is also viewing the encampment from the perspective of how they can use it as a chance for learning and as a mitzvah opportunity for their students.
“This time we definitely took the initiative to say, ‘Please come and be part of it,’ and they appreciated that,” Mirel adds. “They may have learned something from the experience…. We’ve learned something. I will say that our relationship is a lot more positive in a lot of different ways, and this is probably one example of that.”
Frank says that ultimately, the congregation hosting Tent City needs to be about helping the homeless people who stay in the encampment.
“Basically, they’re looking for a place to stay – [a] safe, predictable place to be,” he said. “With all of the controls and the rules and the screening that they do, in terms of how they self-govern, we’re happy to help out. For us, it’s kind of living our values. We’re serious about social justice, and this is a great manifestation of our own stated values. And it’s a great experience. We’ve had people join our congregation because they felt that we were serious about those values and we were acting on them.”