Invest in fairgrounds for homeless campers | Letter to the editor

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To those who are impatient to evict the homeless campers at the fairgrounds: Take a breath. 

Consider these facts:

1. Every camper evicted from the fairgrounds is a camper who has to sleep somewhere else. That means every nook and cranny around town – the beach, waterfront, downtown next to businesses, public parks, green spaces, private land, parking lots, lawns, brush patches. Tents will proliferate in the public spaces.

2. Police and city service time devoted to this population will increase dramatically.

3. Access to social services will be tougher for campers. Issues like despair, mental health, poverty, hunger, addiction, will go unaddressed.

4. There will be few facilities for the hygiene and health needs for these people, including garbage removal.

5. Since shelterless people have to carry everything they own on their backs when forced to move, support agencies will be overwhelmed, and campers will be forced into conditions of continuing desperation just to meet their most basic needs.

6. To be forced to move is a serious trauma. This population already suffers a disproportionate burden of trauma, according to social psychologists. Eviction would inflict simple unnecessary cruelty on vulnerable people. In winter, it could mean deaths.

The fairground’s location has costs and troubles. It also has advantages and benefits for the campers and, in balance, for this whole community. 

Until a better location is found, we should invest in keeping the site open. For the longer term, investment should focus on lifting folks out of despair, into housing, and removing obstacles that keep them from lifting themselves.

Douglas Edelstein
PORT TOWNSEND