Another Bellingham encampment will soon be cleared. Here’s how service providers are stepping in
How can we come together to support the unhoused individuals living at the West Bakerview Road encampment in Bellingham?
That was the question approximately 50 service providers, city leaders, law enforcement officers and community members focused on Friday night at a collaborative meeting held ahead of another impending encampment cleanup.
“We want to gather all the resources in this community that are available to these people and help them before they get moved,” said meeting organizer and Mission for Missy nonprofit founder Hanah Warthan.
The encampment at West Bakerview Road and Northwest Drive has seen significant growth in recent months. It has quickly become the next big point of focus for resource allocation in Bellingham after dozens of unhoused community members relocated there when the city cleared its largest and most well-known encampment behind Walmart in November.
The city has been working with property owners near the encampment for the past several months to clean up and secure their properties amid “escalating public health and safety concerns and a growing list of criminal activity allegations in and near it.”
Now owners of the impacted properties are cooperating on a cleanup later this month, according to the city.
“City staff will be officially notifying folks in the encampment on Jan. 16, and the cleanup will happen the following week,” city of Bellingham Communications and Community Relations Director Melissa Morin told The Bellingham Herald.
Community members at the meeting said they wanted to work together with the city and law enforcement to help ease the transition for the impacted individuals.
“We want to make the cleaning and transition go as smoothly as possible for everyone including the business owners and property owners who have been impacted by this encampment,” Warthan said.
Still, service providers echoed concerns about clearing the encampment with no immediate housing solution.
“Until something gets better, this is just a rolling problem we’re pushing down the road,” said Jeff Holmes of the organization Misfits MADE.
Anticipating a date for the clearing, community members agreed they could help the encampment residents now by continuing to offer services in the coming weeks and by simply walking alongside folks as they are faced with finding another place to go.
Hannah, a Bellingham resident who lived unhoused locally for several years and whose last name The Herald is omitting, spoke about her personal experiences of being cleared from private properties and trespassed. She said supplying things like trash bags and carts to encampment residents ahead of the clearing would help them transport their items.
“You’re having to move everything over and over and over again. You wonder why these people have all these things or are collecting all this trash — well we have our stuff taken from us all the time,” Hannah said.
Meeting attendees spoke about potential long-term solutions to homelessness and encampments, even proposing the idea of leasing the impacted land from the property owners and using the area for another tiny home village.
“We can offer partnership, cleanup and a 30% reduction in crime in the area,” local homeless advocate Markis Dee Stidham said at the meeting. “What I’m asking now is for partnership with the city, county and nonprofits to come under one common flag to build this village.”
Homeowners and neighbors of the Bakerview encampment said they have compassion for those experiencing homelessness and expressed their support for another tiny home village in Bellingham. But they said they had concerns about having one in their neighborhood, where they have lived for 15 years.
“I can talk for a long time about how this has impacted our neighborhood. Gunshots, explosions, smoke, fentanyl overdoses in front of my kids. Our concern is the safety of the community,” said one neighbor on the condition of anonymity.
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