Above Photo: Photos by Genesee Martin A crowd of more 200 attended the first People’s Assembly on Saturday, Feb. 27.
The first People’s Assembly drew several hundred attendees to City Hall on Saturday, many carrying signs and flyers with slogans concerning healthcare and housing.
Dozens of organizations, advocates, activists and union workers participated, as well as councilmembers Kshama Sawant, Lisa Herbold and King County Councilmember Larry Gossett. Sawant organized the all-day event with the help of several different advocacy groups.
The People’s Assembly included three hours of speeches, panel discussions and workshops designed to organize and educate people about tenant, immigrant and workers’ rights. More than 200 people filled seats and lined the walls, with dozens more sitting on the floor of the Bertha Landes Conference Room to hear speakers.
“Homelessness is clearly emerging as the most social misery for which we need to prioritize solutions,” Sawant said.
She said she supports the mayor’s declaration of a civil emergency last year and every dollar being spent to support homeless services. She said that many people were experiencing homelessness due to a multitude of problems, such as domestic violence, job loss, illness and foreclosure, and haven’t been counted because they’ve been able to stay with friends or couch surf.
“We know that it is a myriad of issues, but we — I do and I hope everyone here does — believes that this problem is completely solvable,” she said.
The People’s Assembly was a call for action, attendees signing a petition to urge the city council to allocate $10 million in emergency funds to provide immediate shelter and services for the 4,505 homeless individuals counted during this year’s One Night Count in Seattle.
Additionally, speakers talked about the lack of funding for essential services, such as mental health, drug addiction and mitigation for people suffering a crisis.
Sawant said in her opening statement that she had introduced a bill for the $10 million last year but it failed with only two votes in favor. Former councilmember Nick Licata was the other proponent.
Sawant also said she had introduced a bill to expand shelter space based on recommendations from the King County/Seattle Coalition to End Homelessness in its 10-year plan to end homelessness. Ironically, since the coalition’s creation, homelessness has skyrocketed in what many are calling a failed endeavor.
Sawant said policies and systems in city administration often prevent funding from reaching services it’s intended for, either being blocked or diverted to something else. She invited members of Camp Dearborn to speak, many from the homeless encampment reporting promised funding awarded by different city offices never came through, including a pledge by the mayor’s office to increase funding to expand the camp.
One Camp Dearborn member said Sawant had set aside funding last year for the city to collect trash for the encampment. While the money was there waiting, she said the city never came through with collections.
“We want to keep our living space clean, but we need the old trash removed. We need bins for trash, recycling and compost,” she said.
The Local 8 hospitality union representing hotel, food service and restaurant workers joined Sawant in calling for rent control and affordable housing.
“The majority of our members are women, immigrants, people of color, who work an incredibly hard job, and the hospitality industry tends to be very low-paying and also majority nonunion,” said Local 8 representative Natalie Kelly. “We’ve been doing a survey of our members about their housing and transportation issues.”
The survey showed that while individuals who had been in a union-supported job for many decades were doing fine, newcomers with less experience were finding it very difficult to live in Seattle.
Kelly said one worker was living in an apartment with 15 other people because the arrangement was the only way they could afford to live in or near Seattle, to be close to where they work. She said average rents were as high as $2,000 per month and the average cost to move to a different apartment was between $2,000 and $3,000. The cost of relocating often forced people to stay in place as long as they could, but many were found themselves experiencing homelessness when an emergency caused them to be unable to pay rent.
Herbold supported the call to end homelessness, saying studies show that when there was a 10 percent increase in rental costs in other metropolitan cities, there was a corresponding 15 percent increase in homelessness. She said the city needs to focus on getting people living outside into some kind of shelter, especially families with children.
Sawant said there have been several victories to date, including a push for the $15 minimum wage and the Carl Haglund law, which prohibits landlords from increasing rents without a 60-day notice and improvements for any significant problems with a unit.
In addition, $2.5 million had been added to the mayor’s $5 million civil emergency declaration on homelessness. However, Sawant said $1 million of that $5 million was being spent on sweeps of illegal homeless camps instead of on providing services or shelter.
A summary spending plan outlines that $1,089,037 is being used for, “…regular, coordinated cleanups of unpermitted camp sites; outreach and case management.”
“As the city gets wealthier, more and more people are becoming homeless, and with every passing decade at the same time, we’ve seen a gutting of funds for social services, mental health services and to deal with drug addiction,” said Sawant staff member Adam Ziemkowski in his introduction for the councilmember. “Homelessness is a clear example of the contradiction that exists under capitalism. So much wealth, but such bone-crushing suffering alongside of it. But all of that suffering, every tear down to the very last shiver in the middle of the night in winter, is completely avoidable and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am a socialist.”
Sawant called on everyone to organize and support real change, including amending legislation banning taxation of millionaires to rent control. In addition, funding will be sought for mental health services and treatment beds for people fighting drug addiction, instead of continuing the cycle of arrest and release to a life on the streets that many people face.