Officials evict homeless from flood-prone area

After evicting people from 30 to 40 tents at a homeless camp at Kent’s Mullen Slough, the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks has set up a monitoring plan to make sure no one returns to the flood plain area.

Representatives from the department began posting notices on Oct. 1, telling residents of the makeshift community they had eight days to vacate the 40 acres of property owned by King County.

In late August and early September, DNRP crews discovered the homeless camp near a Highway 167 overpass and the Kent-Des Moines Road.

“People said that they were living there for years, but we didn’t know if that was true,” said Doug Williams, of DNRP.

He was skeptical because the area has a history of flooding due to the rivers and seasonal streams connected to the Mullen Slough.

The area was completely under water in February, Williams said, so he believed campers might have left and come back.

“That was our primary concern. We couldn’t have people camping on this property that was prone to flooding,” he said.

So DNRP representatives contacted the county to find out what their options were for removing the homeless encampment. The department formed a task force with social service agencies and began doing outreach at the camp and locales the homeless frequent.

The DNRP enlisted the support of Sound Mental Health, Valley Cities Counseling and Consultation, the vita of Kent and Catholic Community Services to create a resource list to give to the camp residents and homeless they encountered.

By Oct. 8, removal day, there was just one individual left at the homeless camp, who was apparently intoxicated by something, as reported by Sound Mental Health staff.

Cleaning up after the homeless camp was a “pretty significant undertaking,” said Williams.

There was a significant amount of garbage, a number of tents, clothing, empty cans and bottles. The area required a full day to do the clean up.

Kathryn Boyer was familiar with the residents of the Mullen Slough camp. She is a coordinator of homeless services for Sound Mental Health.

“Everyone who we met with was chronically homeless,” she said, meaning they’d been on the streets for more than a year.

Boyer describes an intricate trail system around the tents, with almost cul-de-sac like arrangements of groupings.

The agency’s PATH, or homeless outreach, team has known about campers in Mullen Slough for several years. However, according to the agency’s spokesperson, Steve McLean, no outreach was done previously because of reports of unsafe campers with weapons and dangerous conditions.

“On Sept. 14, four staff went to the identified area at about 8 a.m. and spent about three hours outreaching camps in the woods owned by King County, as well as city owned property adjacent to the county property,” McLean wrote in an email.

The number of people living at the camp was not known, but what crews found is interesting.

There were many homeless residents with cats, signs of dogs and children’s accessories, but no children were discovered in the camp, Boyer said.

She believes, along with others, that the camp residents just picked up and moved to another site in the woods.

“They were pretty upset about being moved,” Boyer said.

Agency team members tried to warn camp residents about the impending evacuation in mid-September, but they were met with disbelief by the campers.

The general consensus was that the campers had been there a long time and not evicted, and they didn’t feel flooding would impact them, Boyer said.

A lot of the campers, agency team member were familiar with and had previously connected them to services to the extent that the homeless individuals wanted to be connected.

Boyer wants the public to know about the lack of housing that exists for some of the people in the camp because of certain circumstances.

“There’s just a real lack of options out there for housing,” she said, listing off specifics.

McLean echos her sentiments, explaining the barriers for many in homeless camps.

“Often there are barriers such as multiple evictions, no credit history, lengthy criminal history, or they are in a couple without children, have a pet, have a substance use issue that disqualifies them from housing,” he said. “Many people who are in this situation know from trial and error that there isn’t a program out there for them.”

For now, because the eviction from Mullen Slough was so upsetting to campers, Sound Mental Health reps have scaled back outreach to the familiar in-town locations they typically encounter the homeless from outlying camps.