By
Stephannie Stokes
Seattle Times Project Homeless reporter
Olympia has one of the largest encampments of people living outside reported in the state to date and the mayor wants it cleared. But with at least 275 homeless residents and little shelter available, the mayor said the task is too big for the region to handle on its own.
The city is looking for assistance from an uncertain partner: the state.
Mayor Dontae Payne said the encampment locally known as “The Jungle” shows the bind many local governments are in — wanting the people they force out of tents to end up in something more permanent, but not having the money to pay for it. During the pandemic, the state pumped millions of dollars into a program that allowed local governments to do so for encampments around highways and bridges. Although it was successful in getting many indoors, state lawmakers cut the funding significantly last year amid a budget shortfall.
That’s largely left homelessness efforts up to cities and counties, who are also struggling with their own budget deficits as federal pandemic relief funding has come to an end.
Payne said he expects to meet with Gov. Bob Ferguson on Tuesday to make the case. It will be a test of the state’s willingness to reengage with homelessness response efforts at the local level after a sharp scaling back.
The governor’s office confirmed he did have a meeting scheduled with the mayor but said they were not able to respond to questions by deadline.
Payne said he thinks the encampment warrants the state’s attention for other reasons. One of them: the more than 20-acre site, near Interstate 5, includes state land in addition to city and private property.
The Jungle is the last major encampment in Olympia, Payne said, and it has been growing for 10 years. When he last visited the encampment, he said some residents had permanent-like structures for shelter. The encampment felt like a small neighborhood, he said.
Now that the city has created a list of the 275 long-term residents, officials want to ensure they offer each person a chance to get shelter or housing, Payne said. But that’s where they’re running into a problem.
“Those units are just simply not available,” he said.
The state has given Olympia permission to house people in shelters funded through its former encampment clearing program. The program helped create more than 100 shelter beds at an old hotel in Lacey and 60 in tiny homes in Olympia.
However, those shelters already have people in them from previous sites the city cleared, so the city would have to wait for beds to open up in order to move people from The Jungle.
“We’re looking at potentially having to do a handful of people at a time as units become available, which is not a pace that I would consider to be acceptable,” Payne said.
City officials have guessed that could take 18 to 24 months, an estimate that Payne calls “modest.”
Thurston County and the city of Lacey are working with Olympia to get people out of the site.
The state’s encampment clearing program launched in 2022 for efforts just like this. Four counties participated, including Thurston County, which received more than $27.8 million in state money. King County also saw roughly $50 million in state help. Over the course of a few years, the program led to more than 1,700 homeless people coming inside at a cost of at least $143 million statewide, according to the state Department of Commerce’s data.
When state lawmakers proposed slashing the program’s budget, homelessness advocates rallied to save it. They praised its high rate of getting people to accept and enter shelter, and how few people returned to the street after.
Still, state legislators cut the budget by 40%, with all remaining money going toward supporting people already in shelters from the program.
The state’s decision came a year after the U.S. Supreme Court gave local governments significant leeway to enforce camping bans. Since then, with resources spread thin throughout the state, the most common process among local governments is to clear encampments regardless of whether they can offer shelter or housing nearby.
Payne said Olympia has done that in the past. But the city watched how that pushed the problem to other parts of the city and county. If they were to force the 275 residents out of The Jungle without any option to come inside, he thinks that would just cause more issues for the city.
He doesn’t know how many other local governments are in a similar position to Olympia but he said he plans to start finding out and hopes to advocate for a more coordinated response to homelessness at the state level.
“We just don’t see that kind of collaboration,” he said.
Stephannie Stokes: sstokes@seattletimes.com. Stephannie Stokes is a reporter for Project Homeless at The Seattle Times, where she reports on poverty issues throughout the region and state.
