Cycle of Illegal Camping

Recent review of homelessness in the City of Bellingham:

City of Bellingham FAQ update re homelessness

City states that the biggest challenge was Camp 210 (...) people disconnecting with service providers.

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Question: why would people abort local services? Has anyone reviewed the service providers and public feedback of these agencies, whether their standards of practice ACTUALLY meet the category of SPECIAL NEED unhoused population, and what those needs are?

Campers who chose to camp at City Hall stated they refused services or were refused services for (...)

Service providers are not providing viable services if people are unhoused and unsheltered and unable to access or use existing services. Campers in this predicament are constitutionally protected by law to occupy public space when local sheltering is not available to them. What determination process is used to match a person to the correct sheltering for their SPECIAL NEED?

*IMPORTANT*
Why is Base Camp not AVAILABLE to a person? What standard determines that availability? (Bed count? Risk assessment of the setting by the guest? Risk assessment of the guest for the setting?) Where is a person directed to go who does not FIT a shelter setting? Who records data of this guest? Who purposefully relocates them to the appropriate sheltering setting when a service is not available to them? Is this an issue of ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL when our city planning director himself has educated the public and stated that with homelessnes, there are many demographics and multiple housing needs, and there is no one-size-fits-all housing type (in answering why we have enlisted a hefty contract with LIHI to build locally in Bellingham).

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*Winter 2020*
Campers chose to go directly to City Hall for help and assistance where they made the claim that they were mistreated at local shelter(s), mistreated by local government law enforcement for the unruly conditions of camping with no structural clinical aid or support. The crisis management afforded the campers stems from local outreach of the community as well as continuum care programs extending connection points through service providers. These agencies have been unsuccessful in determining a course of action beyond their offerings of shelter which to-date have not sheltered this population successfully.

Protest hostilities were responded to with forceful vacate of the site. No resolution was deployed to oversee the safety of these unhoused citizens with SPECIAL NEED. Where do these campers go? Who should they connect with? Who is the city liaison providing communication to oversee their need? It has been reiterated that Base Camp is not suitable for the SPECIAL NEED demographic for reasons articulated by campers and outreach providers repetitively. Where is our legal representation for this group who by WA state law and our very constitution have the right to occupy their space legally and safely? Who are these individuals seeking shelter and why are they so cumbersome to our city providers? The biased general consensus is that they are all "lazy" "drug addicted" "free-loaders" banking on the naive charity of the community which Lighthouse Mission Ministries pulpits as "toxic charity" enablement of homelessness.

What truly "enables" homelessness is illegal vacate notices and vacating of campers whose stability is compromised without relocating them to an adequate setting to provide the NEEDED services they lack. So what services do they lack? What is it they NEED (?)