3234 17th Ave. W. occupies half a block in the trendy Interbay neighborhood, but it is not a prestigious address. In fact, it does not even warrant a mailbox. Instead of concrete condos or live-work housing mushrooming from the spot, rows of crayon-blue and khaki-green tarps stretch over camping tents pitched on wooden platforms. For some 60 people, single men and women, couples and at least two families with teenage kids, right now, these tents are home. And something more – a haven.
On the afternoon The Connector dropped by, Tent City 5 was almost a ghost town. The people who live there don’t sit around idly, explains, Charlie Johnson, a member of the elected council that oversees operations and enforces the rules there.
“A lot of them work or volunteer, so in the day, the place empties out,” he says. The undeveloped plot that lies under the latest of the Seattle area’s sanctioned encampments for people attempting to escape homelessness is leased for a year, with an option to extend it for a second year.
Most of the people who were there in the middle of the afternoon were reorganizing their communal kitchen, at that point a set of aluminum-tube frames on a large stage, the covers blown off by a recent windstorm. The encampment, like two others in Seattle and on the Eastside, are under the auspices of SHARE, which stands for the Seattle Housing and Resource Effort (though it takes some digging around their website to find that out).
Residents form an Executive Committee that is responsible for site security, resident identification and donations management. The five members are chosen for 30-day terms. They enforce SHARE’s Code of Conduct, which prohibits alcohol, drugs,
Tent City 5: A Home is Not a House