On September 10, in the aftermath of the Bite of Seattle shooting, over 30 major companies, business leaders, and associations in Seattle signed a letter to Mayor Katie Wilson and members of City Council, urging them to take stronger action on public safety, in part by increasing SPD funding. The signatories include Microsoft, Starbucks, Nordstrom, the Seattle Mariners, and Zillow, along with the Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA).
The GSBA also wrote a second letter in collaboration with the Cal Anderson Park Alliance (CAPA), calling upon the mayor, city council, and Parks Department to confront rising drug use, homelessness, a lack of investment in public maintenance, and violent incidents in Cal Anderson Park. The letter ends by calling upon the City to increase police presence in the park “where appropriate.”
Stone Soup Crew, a mutual aid organization that provides community service at the park, responded to the letter asking the City to take a different approach.
Dueling letters
The first letter came after a series of high-profile violent incidents, including the Bite of Seattle shooting and another in Belltown that left three dead. The letter calls for increased surveillance, more police investment, stronger enforcement against homeless encampments, and a greater crackdown on drug use. Among those 30 signatures was that of GSBA president and CEO Ilona Lohrey.
The second letter, written and signed by Gabriel Neuman of the GSBA and a few Capitol Hill residents and business owners, called for improvements, such as regraveling pathways and removing litter; the rest focused on how homelessness and drug use around the park affects businesses along the Pike-Pine corridor.
SSC’s response
Members of the Stone Soup Crew visit Cal Anderson Park on Wednesdays to serve hot meals, distribute clothing, and share hygiene supplies and survival gear to unhoused people.
SSC wrote a response addressed to all parties in the GSBA’s joint letter and to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. It was critical of the GSBA and CAPA for demanding increased SPD activity in Cal Anderson Park, along with the letter's lack of acknowledgement of the current Trans refugee crisis in Seattle.
“Many arrive isolated, without support systems, and [struggle] to navigate housing, food, medical care, identification, transportation, and basic life in a new city. For some, without community organizations like ours, they would be substantially more isolated and less able to function,” said Elle Cree, codirector of SSC.
SSC made it clear that the group wants unhoused people to be safe, and that while it believes it is important that the second letter discussed outreach largely as a mechanism for connecting people to services, SSC feels that human infrastructure matters, that outreach efforts and data collection do not capture the humanity of this issue, and that unhoused people are more than a statistic on a graph and need people who recognize them and provide support when government systems fail them.
The GSBA/CAPA letter stated that no systems connect resources to the unhoused, pointing to the Salvation Army’s outreach services as inefficient, and citing it as the only example. SSC found this comment to be of concern, as it does not recognize the work it has been doing in the area, along with others, such as Transgender relocation organizations. Additionally, SSC asked that the Salvation Army’s outreach role in the city end, given concerns about its history of supporting anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives. SSC challenged the KCRHA’s allocation of millions of dollars in public resources to the Salvation Army and whether that produced results. SSC believes it is of great concern that no investigation has been made after raising the alarm and that this money should be accounted for, with full transparency.
In its letter, SSC formally demanded an immediate meeting with the addressed parties and officials with authority over the park, contracts, funding, outreach, and public safety; no increase in SPD presence as the default response to poverty, substance use, or unhoused people; and a Cal Anderson community advisory body with guaranteed representation of the unhoused, Trans refugees, SSC, harm reduction providers, neighborhood representatives, and businesses.
GSBA response
When asked about the letter, Neuman clarified that it was not the GSBA’s intent to increase police presence in Cal Anderson Park but to decrease the response time to incidents such as one on the Fourth of July weekend, in which 50-100 people created a bonfire on Bobby Morris field involving wood and multiple Lime bikes and scooters, which ended up doing $4,000 of damage to the field. Neuman explained that his letter was intended to get Seattle Parks and Recreation to invest in the infrastructure of Cal Anderson Park, including cleaner bathrooms with bins to properly dispose of needles; better management of the shelter house, such as having an overseer to unlock it for community events; and groundskeepers to water the grass more often.
Asked about why he stated there was no community presence in Cal Anderson Park, he clarified that the claim referred to community organizations that receive direct aid from the City, with the Salvation Army being one of the few contracted to help connect the unhoused with resources, adding that he believes the Salvation Army’s outreach role should end and that the money instead be given to groups such as SSC.
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