Devin Silvernail, founder of Be:Seattle, teaches a group of renters about local legal protections for tenants in one of the organization’s Tenant Rights Bootcamps. Photo courtesy of Be:Seattle

Pierre Funalot found the man at Third and Bell, the heart of Belltown.

Once the playground of silver screen starlets who watched films in secluded theaters and used underground tunnels to escape the masses, Belltown has become a study in stratification. Expensive new apartment towers afford the wealthy access to farm-to-table brunch in the morning, an urban dog park in the afternoon and a tucked away speakeasy at night. Meanwhile, homeless and low-income people gather around the entrances of corner stores or RapidLine bus stops.

People rush past them, saying “no change.” Or they ignore them altogether.

This man had a broken leg. He was in pain. Funalot approached and offered him a pair of new socks.

“He broke down in tears in my arms,” Funalot said. “It was the nicest thing that had happened to him in a month.”

Recalling the emotional moment, Funalot said, “that’s why we do this.”

Funalot is an intern at Be:Seattle, a scrappy nonprofit founded by tenants’ rights and homelessness advocate Devin Silvernail. Be:Seattle’s mission is deceptively easy to articulate for all the work it takes to accomplish.

“What we do is we make people feel good,” Silvernail said.

The members of Be:Seattle organize around three primary programs that help people on the streets and, ideally, keep people off of them.

First, they gather donations for the Sidewalk Pantry, where they bring items to people living rough. At the doors of local theater productions and events, they collect socks, menstrual hygiene products and backpacks to hand out.

Second, they partner with establishments to make life a little easier. In “The Pledge,” they ask members of the business community to open their doors — and hopefully bathrooms — without expectation of a purchase. These locations are then mapped in a handout for folks who need a break.

Be:Seattle also hosts Tenants’ Rights Bootcamps, where they coach renters on Washington State law and teach them strategies for interacting with landlords. This is, they say, a prevention mechanism. Many folks end up sleeping outside following an eviction.

Ultimately, Silvernail hopes that people who receive necessities feel cared for, that sitting in a café with a cup of coffee lends a sense of normalcy to their day and that people living at the whim of capitalists in a booming market have the tools to navigate it.

Be:Seattle accomplishes these goals through a simple, grueling and humbling strategy: Asking.

The organization receives its funding through individual donors rather than grants doled out by institutional grantors. It doesn’t have a lot of cash to buy socks or other sundry items requested by the people with whom they interact. Silvernail relies on relationships with comedy clubs and performance venues across town that gather up items explicitly for homeless people. He and his team of three interns pick them up and distribute them across town.

The Be:Seattle team has given away 1,556 items since mid-February.

The approach is simple, Silvernail said, explaining that “we meet them where they’re at.”

That phrase is thrown around a lot in service provider circles. It’s often meant in a metaphorical sense, indicating a willingness to mold offers of help in such a way that they meet a person’s individual needs. Caseworkers identify barriers to housing and work with their clients to take them down rather than offering proscriptive terms for help.

Be:Seattle means it quite literally.

The team spreads out through Belltown, the University District and Capitol Hill. They find people and give what’s on offer, but also get to know their regulars and try to tailor future deliveries.

Sidewalk Pantry is one aspect of outreach to support people living on the margins. The Pledge is another.

Taking the Pledge

The Pledge invites members of the business community to open their doors to homeless neighbors by offering whatever they can. That may be access to a bathroom, a free cup of coffee or a pastry.

People get to feel like, well, people, said Emilie Jetha, a Be:Seattle intern.

“The Pledge is really useful,” Jetha said. “It lets people have a cup of coffee like a normal person and not feel excluded.”

“The Pledge is really useful,” Jetha said. “It lets people have a cup of coffee like a normal person and not feel excluded.”

“They’re not just giving away items. They’re giving the time of day,” Funalot said.

Forty businesses have signed up to offer respite to homeless people. Be:Seattle offers them a sticker in their window to indicate what folks can expect, and the outreach crew hands out maps highlighting participating businesses when they go out for their field work with Sidewalk Pantry.

Jetha and Audrey Le Bras foster relationships with businesses by asking. They go store to store, describing The Pledge and inquiring if a business wants to take part.

Forty businesses have posted these pledge stickers to show they welcome people experiencing homelessness. Photo courtesy Be:Seattle

The pair have become skilled at taking rejection in stride and committing to follow up if people just need more information to be convinced. Corporate chains are hard, they learned, because decisionmakers are rarely on hand and can still be vetoed by people at the main office.

But there are types of businesses that tend to say yes, Jetha and Le Bras found.

“Vegan places, vegetarian places and bike shops,” Le Bras noted.

Eight of the 40 businesses that have taken the pledge are bike shops or café-bike shop hybrids. The majority of the others are cafés.

Success begets success, and the number of businesses willing to sign on to The Pledge began to increase rapidly in mid-2018. Be:Seattle brought in 14 new businesses between June and August.

Know your (tenants’) rights

In its scramble to combat the homelessness crisis, local government has implemented programs not just to get people indoors, but to prevent homelessness in the first place. Diversion, as it is called, is much cheaper than sheltering someone while they work through the consequences of homelessness.

Be:Seattle does its own form of diversion in its Tenants’ Rights Bootcamps.

This is old hat for Silvernail, who was a tenant advocate in San Francisco before he came to Seattle. As Seattle begins to look ever more similar to its neighbor to the south, Silvernail believes that it is critical for renters to know not just what their landlord can and can’t do, but also best practices to better their odds should they find themselves in a dispute.

He and members of the team meet with tenants in buildings across Seattle, informing them of local and state rental laws and giving them tips.

Keep every communication between yourself and your landlord in writing. Have a smartphone? Take a photo of your rental agreement to keep it handy should the need arise.

These bootcamps were a bit shocking for Funalot, Le Bras and Jetha. The three are students at the Paris Institute of Political studies, better known as Sciences Po, one of France’s most prestigious universities. While they enjoy the vibe of Seattle and the friendliness of the West Coast, rental protections here don’t rise to the level they’re used to.

Nor does the unspoken social contract between landlords and tenants.

“There are so many things that wouldn’t happen in France,” Jetha said. “They just wouldn’t.”

Beyond imparting information, Be:Seattle organizes tenants to make demands of landlords. The act of giving people a voice has spread, with groups going out to rally in support of others facing eviction. Renters in the Tiki Apartments in Tacoma, threatened with eviction after a new owner bought the building, came out in force to support tenants at the Merkle Hotel who faced a similar fate.

Asked how that kind of pressure, backed with little beyond the ability to publicly shame an owner acting within their rights, can be effective, Silvernail responded with a Frederick Douglass quote:

“‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.’”

While Be:Seattle has mantras that center on impact and hope, its core strength comes from another source: The team’s revolutionary temerity to ask and keep asking.

Ashley Archibald is a Staff Reporter covering local government, policy and equity. Have a story idea? She can be can reached at ashleya (at) realchangenews (dot) org. Follow Ashley on Twitter @AshleyA_RC

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