The homeless and their activists on one side, homeowners and concerned parents on the other, and the Jefferson County Fairgrounds caught in the middle. Lines are forming in a struggle for the future of this piece of open land in the heart of Port Townsend. The homeless contingent wants up to five acres turned into either a temporary or permanent encampment. Nearby homeowners on all sides of the Fairgrounds, the Lynnsfield community on the forested hills above, the apartments at the south edge, North Beach and the neighborhood squeezed between the Fairgrounds and San Juan Avenue, are organizing to stop what they see as a a power grab that would hurt their communities, home values and their children.

Currently, a sizable number of people identifying as homeless have claimed the right to live at the Fairgrounds for free. Relying on the Governor’s eviction moratorium, they are refusing to pay rent or other compensation to the Fairgrounds Association. They use the washrooms and trash bins and have run a long cord across the open field to a refrigerator in a tent set up against the fence at the back of the apartments just outside the Fairgrounds.

The story of how they got there is a convoluted tale compressed into the time since the Governor’s COVID declarations started putting those housed by COAST in the American Legion basement out on the street or into a hotel, and then, for those who could “congregate,” into the Oscar Ericksen Building at the Fairgrounds. Some have moved back to the American Legion basement, while others are squatting on the Fairgrounds property.

During this time there has also been a contingent of those who can’t or won’t “congregate.” These are people who have difficulty in society (e.g., some combat veterans), women who have suffered violence, people who would rather keep a pet than accept housing, and people who refuse to follow rules and choose to continue abusing alcohol and drugs.

They are not a homogeneous group. Port Townsend’s homeless population, according to a city employee who wrote for us in 2018, is composed mostly of those suffering from substance abuse and mental health issues. Some of these people can be very violent. There are also the “Bohemians” who choose this lifestyle and exploit the community’s compassion and free services, criminals on the run and, last in number, people who have lost housing due to rising rents, unemployment, domestic abuse, and other emergencies. See “Knowing the Homeless,” PTFP, August 24, 2018, and also, “Knowing the Homeless: The Individuals on Port Townsend’s Streets,” PTFP, September 27, 2018.

In the homeless tent encampment at the Fairgrounds, I met people who told me they had overcome addictions, a military veteran, people who had job skills and incomes but could not afford rent in Jefferson County, and people who maintained neat camp areas and cooked for those less fortunate than themselves. I saw the more resourceful people caring for some damaged, fragile individuals. I saw a young man with a large garbage bag cleaning up trash. I saw a man who may have severe mental health issues, dressed in a winter coat on a hot day and with a nine iron on his shoulder.

On the basis of two visits at different times of the day, the homeless seem to be getting along with the paying campers. On a morning visit, I saw a family with children rolling out of their tent while not far away a group in the homeless encampment were brewing coffee.

There are different groups at the Fairgrounds, says housing activist Barbara Morey. Some live in rather decrepit trailers and vehicles in the middle of the field. Several woman have moved away from the tent campers to be off by themselves. “It’s a way of life, of survival,” says Morey. And while she does not know of any needle use by the homeless at the Fairgrounds, she says she does not know all of them, especially recent arrivals.

There are indeed recent arrivals. On my second visit I saw RVs and trailers backed into spaces where before people had been living in tents. A woman I spoke with at length is gone, chased out by a man whom she told the Board of County Commissioners in a public comment is a drug dealer with people working for him. I had also interviewed this man at length. While we were talking a dog ran by with a large steak in its mouth and he had to chase after it. He was cooking steaks for “the community” that night. The long electrical cord running across the field went to a refrigerator in his tent. The woman who fled says he is the point of contact with the local food bank and uses food to exert control. In another letter to the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners, in which she related her reasons for fleeing, she said she had gone to bed “without even a morsel” when she got on his bad side.

Drug use among the homeless in Port Townsend is a serious problem. In a 2018 photo essay for this site, Sky Hardesty documented bags of dope in the homeless camps at Kah Tai Park, and reported how drug dealers were using the homeless to move drugs though our community. In a recent essay here, Gabrielle Guthrie shared how the homeless have peddled illegal drugs to children in Jefferson County.

Though Morey says she walks her dog every day at the Fairgrounds and has seen no evidence of needle use, discarded needles are a concern for neighbors who convened an outdoor meeting of about 25 people in a driveway on August 27. They won’t walk their dogs on the Fairgrounds, they say, because of discarded needles in the grass. They say that since the homeless moved in they have also seen discarded needles scattered near the Fairgrounds and on trails leading from the Fairgrounds. They report that two young girls walking their dog on one of those trails came across a man shooting up in the middle of the day.

A recent letter to the BOCC from a neighbor northeast of the Fairgrounds reported multiple instances of the honor box for their small farm being vandalized and stolen and having to call police for a man who passed out on their property. They wrote of hearing from neighbors of sexual acts and defecation in public, fights, drug use, and other thefts. The Fairground in the last week reported to police that its overnight cash box had been stolen.

At the August 27 meeting, homeowners talked about three overdoses among the Fairgrounds homeless population, one requiring a helicopter evacuation. They talked of a trailer that burned down, of fights, loud arguments with threats of violence, open substance abuse, shouting matches and conflicts with neighbors outside the Fairgrounds. One woman related how blaring music at 3 a.m. drove her to her balcony to plead for it to be turned down. She got no response, so she dressed and drove around to the gate. At the fence behind her apartment she found the source of the noise inside a tent. The occupant did not respond when she shouted at him. He was passed out.

Since that meeting, one of the participants has reported to me that the area is experiencing thefts from mailboxes and stolen packages have been found ripped open on trails leading from the Fairgrounds.

Parents are worried that the proximity of a large homeless population poses a risk to their children. If the homeless population becomes a permanent fixture, there is concern that youth activities, like 4-H, will be lost.

A permanent homeless encampment would also pose very substantial challenges for the Jefferson County Fair when it resumes after the COVID closures.

Even the more stable homeless campers I met know there is a significant problem with other homeless who use drugs and engage in criminal conduct. “We’re not like them,” they told me. They say that the washrooms are locked at night because a homeless woman had moved into the ladies room and wrecked it–after it had just been remodeled.

I am not naming any of the individuals on either side. I was allowed to attend the meeting with homeowners on the condition, set mostly by one woman, that I take no photographs and use no names in anything I wrote. I won’t name the homeless individuals who shared their addiction and recovery stories and who leveled accusations against other homeless. I don’t want them risking retaliation from people who could easily be set off. (I have received direct threats from quite dangerous homeless individuals after writing about their violence in Kah Tai Park. I don’t want to put anyone else through that by using their names, especially people living in vulnerable circumstances.)

The neighbors, some of whom own the apartments within a dozen yards of the homeless encampment, are angry that no one from the County and no homeless activists had come to ask them how they feel about a huge change to their neighborhood.

At the end of the meeting they discussed how to get organized and shared contact information for County Commissioners and the mayor. One woman said she will be getting the police reports that could show how crime and emergency calls have increased since the homeless took up residence on the Fairgrounds. They lamented that “the homeless are more organized than we are.”

There are a number of proposals to create a permanent camp at the Fairgrounds for the homeless. “We want five acres,” I was told by the homeless group who met with me. “We need access to bathrooms for personal hygiene. We can put RVs over there, tents here We need electricity.”

Morey, who led what was essentially squatting by homeless on the Fairgrounds in 2015, says she is working with others on the City-County Joint Task Force on Affordable Housing and Homelessness. She has submitted to that group a proposal to lease a section of the Fairgrounds to Bayside Housing for eight months, with the installation of at least 12 “wooden tents” and spaces for RV living and tent camping. The “wooden tents,” Morey said, are already being fabricated. They are in the nature of stripped down tiny houses.

Is any deal to lease any portion of the Fairgrounds for a prolonged or permanent homeless camp at hand? “No,” says Sue McIntire, Jefferson County Fair manager. Morey acknowledges, in less definitive terms, “Negotiations are ongoing, but we’re not making much progress.”

County Commissioner David Sullivan. who has been engaged in discussions with the Fairgrounds and homeless activists said at the August 31 BOCC meeting and repeated at their September 8 meeting, that nothing has been agreed upon. “The Fairgrounds people have good hearts,” he said. “They have helped the homeless in the past. But this is not their mission.”

At almost all the meetings this summer, the County Commissioners have discussed the deteriorating situation at the Fairgrounds and the coming onset of winter. Sullivan has said some of the pressures on the Fairground may lift as adverse weather and muddy fields drive campers away. But the discussions continue, and there is increasing pressure to find a solution for what happens after October 1 when the Governor’s eviction moratorium expires and the Fairgrounds can evict those who are now claiming its property as their own.