Olympia to Declare Homelessness a Public Health Emergency

Above: An encampment on the corner of State and Washington Streets, across from Intercity Transit, on a recent Saturday morning in downtown Olympia. On any given night in Olympia, approximately 130 people can be found sleeping in doorways and on the street within an 81 block area of downtown.

The main causes of homelessness are related to economic and family stability

By Janine Gates

Little Hollywood

https://janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com

The homelessness situation in Olympia has reached crisis proportions.

At its July 17 meeting, the Olympia City Council is expected to present on first and final reading an ordinance declaring homelessness as a public health emergency. 

Doing so will allow the city to move forward on financing and other efforts to tackle the issue.

The ordinance outlines how the experience of being unsheltered is traumatic and endangers public health. Individuals living out of doors are exposed to harmful weather conditions, communicable diseases such as hepatitis, tuberculosis, respiratory illnesses, malnutrition, and violence.

Medical conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and asthma are exacerbated because there is no safe place to properly store medications or syringes.

When a person’s health is continually compromised by unstable conditions, health care services are rarely effective. Inpatient hospitalization or residential drug treatment and mental health care rarely have lasting impacts when the person is returned to a homeless environment.

The cities of Seattle and Tacoma, Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles have already passed similar resolutions in order to provide expedited emergency services and shelters for unsheltered individuals, families and unaccompanied youth.

Above:  From a parking lot near Intercity Transit on Saturday morning, volunteers with Joyful Hands Ministries make pancakes and other breakfast items to serve street dependent individuals and others in need in downtown Olympia.

Street feed coordinator Dee Hampton said that close to 300 people were fed. “For this time of the month, that is about average. We have seen over the last year or so such an increase in our homeless population,” she said.

“My heart is always overwhelmed by how many of our families love to give donations to help us continue feeding them even though they give a dollar or 50 cents. They give what they have because they are so thankful we are there for them each week. That is a story that I want to share…the thankfulness and love we receive back from our homeless community,” said Hampton.

Olympia, Thurston County Statistics

Anna Schlect, City of Olympia housing program manager, discussed the most recent Thurston County Point in Time homeless census data with Little Hollywood. 

Each January, Thurston County conducts a “point-in-time” count to capture the number and characteristics of people living without a home. The census began in 2006.

The 2018 Thurston County Point in Time census conducted in January identified 835 homeless persons. 

The definition of homelessness includes people living in emergency shelters, transitional housing and substandard housing.

Of that number, 320 were unsheltered individuals, living out of doors, in cars, under bridges and highway overpasses and other places not meant for human habitation. This number marks a 56 percent increase from 2017.

According to a Point in Time homelessness related survey, the top four reasons for homelessness are job loss and unemployment, eviction and loss of housing, family rejection, and domestic violence.

Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed said they lived in Thurston County before becoming homeless.

Rent Increases

Not all people experiencing homelessness sleep outside. 

“Oftentimes, people blame homeless individuals as though it’s their personal failing that causes their homelessness,” said Schlect. 

“Looking at the data, homelessness rises and falls with the economy. It shows that homelessness rose to a high point in 2010, which was also the high point of the recession in Washington State, and that it started dropping with the recovery. But in the last couple of years, it started spiking up sharply again, in sync with rent increases.

“In a parallel study called the Assessment of Fair Housing, we did a survey of nearly 1,200 people. Of those who are renters, half said they experienced a rent increase of an average of $100 a month in the past year. So that’s a very significant pressure on low income households,” Schlect said.

Little Hollywood recently met an employed Olympia woman who is paying $925 a month for a poorly insulated, two bedroom apartment on Olympia’s westside. A stable and responsible tenant, she and her pets have enjoyed living there for five years.

Unexpectedly, her landlord recently raised the rent $575, for a total monthly rent of $1,500, starting August 1. She is unable to make that financial leap.

Reflective of the data, her story is not unique.

Next Steps

On July 18, the council’s Finance Committee will present an oral report on estimated costs and funding for the ordinance. That meeting will start at 5:30 p.m. and be held at Olympia City Hall, 601 4th Avenue East.

The ordinance would stay in effect until June 2021, at which time the city council would determine if conditions warrant keeping the public health emergency measures in place.

Little Hollywood often writes about homelessness issues, past Point in Time census events, and unsheltered, street dependent, houseless individuals. For more information, go to Little Hollywood and use the search button to type in key words.

Olympia Police Worn Body Camera Conversation Begins

By Janine Gates

www.janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com

Cities large and small across the country are having the conversation about the use of police worn body cameras, and now the conversation has begun in Olympia. 

A whole range of events, actions and emotions around issues of racial injustice, implicit bias, and community policing and accountability were brought home for South Sounders, in large part due to the shooting last May of two African American young men by an Olympia police officer.

Many cities across the country and in Washington are already using body cameras, also called body cams, to varying degrees of success. Some cities have stopped their use due to burdens related to cost, records management, and the inability to respond to public records requests.

At the Olympia City Council meeting Tuesday evening, Mayor Pro Tem Nathaniel Jones read a statement he wrote about the city's commitment to police worn body cameras. The statement received council consensus, and gave the city’s new Ad Hoc Committee on Police and Community Relations much needed direction on its role exploring the issue.

It stated in part that the city intends to move forward with police worn body cameras when it develops plans, policies and revenues that will ensure the program is successful. All those elements are currently lacking.

“It is important that our program includes protections for citizen privacy, effective management…and clear expectations for officers regarding camera use,” said Jones, who acknowledged that the technology currently lacks such standards.

The Ad Hoc Committee has always had a two part mission: one, to engage the community in dialog about police issues, and two, determine how best to engage the public on the implementation of police worn body cameras. It has held several community forums, establishing a template for holding several community forums, but disassociating the topic of body cameras until now, near the end of its temporary tenure.

With the city council now expressing its clear commitment to body cameras, the group will now turn its attention to establishing a process for the issue, holding a public forum on February 18, 5:00 p.m., in a location still to be determined. 

Body Camera Issues, Technology, and Cost

The Ad Hoc Committee learned more about the issue of body cameras on Wednesday night from Laura Wohl, administrative services division manager for the Olympia Police Department. Wohl said she has spent the last five years studying the topic and educated the committee on the policy issues and costs regarding the technology. The group is also collecting information from non-police related sources.

Aspects of the issue include managing a network of additional staff and technology needed to process the camera video, using and managing software designed to ensure confidentiality of some subjects, storing that data for the required 90 days, and understanding the legal status of information captured. 

Wohl said police worn body cameras have been shown to improve reasonable behavior by both the police officer and the person they are having an interaction with, and have decreased the number of complaints about officers.

According to current state public disclosure laws, all police interactions are considered public, and police do not have to notify people that they are being recorded. Traumatic and potentially embarrassing events are recorded.

Wohl admitted the numbers were rough, but each body camera and software would cost about $1,000, with an annual cost of $10,500 for replacements. Initial camera implementation costs would be about $85,000.

The annual cost for the program would be about $472,000 when video storage costs of between $200 - $600 per month per officer are factored in, as well as three additional full time staff to maintain the system.

The redaction process to protect the privacy of some individuals would take an estimated 30 times longer than a video that does not need that work. Preparing video for the criminal justice system is another issue, as it takes time to prepare the videos for discovery, review, prosecution, and defense.

Wohl then extrapolated the work and costs needed to process video if, for example, five officers show up for one incident.

Wohl said that the Olympia Police Department received 3,602 public records requests in 2015. Responding to public records requests of video would place an undetermined amount of time and expense on the department.

Lt. Aaron Jelcick briefly mentioned the state’s body camera issues and programs in Poulsbo, Seattle, Spokane, Bremerton, and Bellingham. There, and in other cities nationwide, each city has had to outline sticky policy issues: 

What kinds of calls should be recorded? When are cameras turned on? Can an officer turn off his or her camera? How is citizen privacy protected? What if the officer sees something that the camera didn’t?  Should officers be allowed to view the camera evidence? How can the videos be used? Should detectives and SWAT team members be issued body cameras?

To provide perspective, Lt. Jelcick said that the City of Spokane phased in its body camera program over a period of 18 months, hosting over 70 community presentations with over 160 groups, and is still having issues meeting the requirements of Washington State’s stringent public records law.

After the discussion, Ad Hoc Committee members were impressed by the depth of the issues and engaged in a healthy conversation about the information they heard.

Given the somewhat overwhelming information provided, committee member Clinton Petty questioned aloud whether or not Olympia really wants or needs body cameras.

In response, Lt. Jelcick said that he believed that body cameras are going to be part of the uniform of most, if not every, law enforcement officer in the country.

“I think we are going in that direction….I think the issues in Washington State will be resolved at some point with the disclosure and technology issues, so that it won’t be cost prohibitive….I think Washington is at a difficult time to implement this technology. We recognize that and as we go through this process, part of the discussion may be, ‘Yes, we want body cameras, no, this isn’t the right time to do it’ until these issues are resolved, but I believe these issues will be resolved.…I don’t think the work that we do will be for naught…the technology will get better and better and it will get easier to process this video….” said Jelcick.

He said that every department who currently has body cameras has started with pilot programs, with cameras on just two or three officers to start, to figure out the work and cost involved.

Committee member Clinton Petty admitted, “There’s a lot more than I ever thought there would be to it.”

Editor’s Note: While writing this article Thursday morning, multiple calls were in progress involving the Olympia police department, including an attempted suicide, a man with a history of cardiac arrest experiencing chest pains, and a blocking collision as the result of an alleged stolen car/hit and run incident on Cooper Point Road and Black Lake Boulevard near the entry to Haggen’s grocery store. Several suspects, possibly four, in the stolen car fled and multiple officers were dispatched to the scene, who worked to track the suspects fleeing in different directions. One officer witnessed one suspect flee to a nearby homeless encampment and change clothes.

For more information about the City of Olympia Police Department, the Ad Hoc Committee on Police and Community Relations, and other Olympia police related news, go to Little Hollywood, www.janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com and type key words into the search engine.

For more information about the Ad Hoc Committee on Police and Community Relations, go to www.olympia.wa.gov