Camp Second Chance (C2C) just got another extension from the city of Seattle from its pending eviction from a gravel parking area on Myers Way S.

Julie Moore, speaking via email for Seattle’s department of Finance and Adminstration (FAS), says that the drug- and alcohol-free homeless encampment of about 25 people won’t be evicted from the city lot they illegally entered on July 23rd (five days after accidentally moving onto a site that was partly private property) until later this month “due to coordination with the overall encampment cleanup schedule,” she says.

“We do not have a set date for cleanup at this time, but will follow the City’s encampment cleanup process and post notification 72 hours in advance of the scheduled cleanup. HSD will provide outreach services to those living at the encampment.”

Moore says that as in prior encampment evictions, prisoners from the Dept. of Corrections will clean up the site after C2C is gone. She says the city also contracts for cleanups with the Hughes Group, Belfor USA Group, and Cascadia Cleaning & Removal, and Bio Clean Inc (for poopie, though this particular encampment has porta potties—which, incidentally and due to a miscommunication between the city and the Honey Bucket company, were accidentally removed and then returned a few hours later on Tuesday).

Pressure has been growing on Seattle Mayor Ed Murray over the past week to spare the camp, after SW broke the news on Monday morning that the city had posted eviction notices at the camp which would go into effect Tuesday morning. By Monday afternoon, the chairs of the public health and human services committees on both the city and council councils had publicly requested the mayor allow C2C to “remain for up to three months to locate a new host site to continue providing their important assistance,” in the words of county councilmember Jeane Kohl-Welles.

The options for how the camp might find a new home are limited. Last year the city took the unprecedented-but-overdue step of amending city law to allow for three homeless encampments directly sponsored by the city, but those three already exist. In our editorial earlier this week, SW urged the mayor and city council to increase, or uncap entirely, the number of sanctioned, supported homeless encampents it allows.





