Shauna Curphey - Writing

It Takes a Village
Homeless Women's Forum calls for action
Real Change, December 1, 2000

By Shauna Curphey

Homeless women practice the art of invisibility. Women on the street at night fear being rousted, assaulted, or raped and conceal themselves in overlooked crannies. Women heading to work or to find a safe place to rest camouflage themselves to afford more dignity.

Practicing the art of obscurity means that homeless women are not heard when decisions are made that affect their lives. The Women's Housing Equality and Enhancement League (WHEEL) reaches out to Seattle's dispossessed women, empowering them to raise their voices and demand more than what the street allows.

WHEEL, a grassroots organization of homeless and formerly-homeless women, supports displaced women, works with providers, and pressures city officials to end the horrors of life on the street. The group hosts a Women's Empowerment Center on Mondays at Mary's Place, a day shelter for homeless women. Women come to the center to partake in a meal, share their stories, and start the work of rebuilding their lives.

Talking up change
At a recent lunch at Mary's Place, the women spoke about life without a home. Since many voiced concern about being in the paper, their names are not included here.

One woman mentioned that there is no safe place for women to go when they are still addicted to drugs. "Police think that's the King County Jail," she added in disgust.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she remembered her friend, who was raped and murdered just after she lined up a space in rehab. Another woman quietly said that she was raped and physically abused while homeless.

The first woman added, "If you don't make it into a shelter, you're out there, hanging on with a bad element, smoking crack to stay awake because it is safer to stay awake."

Another woman described how hard it was while she was still trying to hang on to her home. "For some reason, when you hit the street, the poverty landscape changes... paying rent, that is real poverty."

Others join the discussion, revealing they can't stay with their partners in most shelters; they can't quite overcome illnesses because they have no place to rest; they ride the buses rather than sleep outside alone.

While these stories are painful to recount, the telling melts isolation and stirs the embers of community. Homelessness becomes bigger than their own private hell; it's a public policy issue. The women ask questions, get angry and get organized. Ideas launched at the Women's Empowerment Center and other WHEEL gatherings evolve into demands for action.

Once a year, WHEEL hosts the Homeless Women's Forum to tell the truth about homeless women, celebrate progress, and recommend specific action to the city government at budget review time. This year, WHEEL spotlighted Tent Village, an encampment of homeless men, women, and children that has found a temporary home at El Centro de la Raza in Seattle's Beacon Hill community.

A city clothed in controversy
The women of WHEEL invited the suits and social workers to El Centro to share a meal with them on their turf, outside in a tent adjacent to Tent Village. On November 15, nearly 300 city officials, service providers, reporters, and homeless men and women filed past the village, lined up for chicken and rice, ate lunch together, and listened to homeless women tell their stories and state their needs.

WHEEL wants the city to allow the encampment at Tent Village. El Centro de la Raza has served as host for the encampment since last summer, but at the risk of paying $75 a day in fines. The organization applied to the city Department of Construction and Land Use for a backdated Temporary Use Permit to avoid the fines. The city is expected to respond in early December. WHEEL also seeks a new home for Tent Village when it leaves El Centro de la Raza on January 16. The encampment has seen 13 locations since its inception earlier this year.

Tent Villager Crystal Kiley put it simply: "I like to sleep quietly, safely, watched over." She is grateful for Tent Village because she can sleep at night without police forcing her to get up and move on.

Another villager, Louisa O'Shea, added that Tent Village is her haven from the disorienting daily shuffle from shelter to shelter.

"I have a home. I have a place to live. I have a tent and I live in it," said O'Shea. At Tent Village, she can go to work in the mornings without dragging along all her belongings.

Nearly 50 women stay at Tent Village.

Mayor Paul Schell explained his opposition to the encampment in a letter to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last summer: "Let us not accept the temporary cloth solutions of tents. Other communities have tried, and encampments have not worked because of neighborhood and public safety concerns and lack of a clear connection to long-term stability for shelter residents."

WHEEL contends that Tent Village doesn't preclude long-term solutions. Residents must participate in upkeep, including security watch, trash pick-up and other duties. WHEEL supports Tent Village because it provides safety in numbers, allows couples to stay together, affords a place to store belongings during the day, and contributes to community building among homeless people.

WHEEL views Tent Village as an emergency measure, a single plank in a larger platform to end homelessness. At the forum, they announced the details of their full agenda for the coming year. Shouts of "right on!" and "Amen" drifted up from the women in the audience as WHEEL member Anitra Freeman said, "The pilot program is over. It is time for Seattle to commit resources to the full effort."

WHEEL's platform includes:

Funding for a new shelter program for chronically mentally-ill women by Christmas 2000.
Support for a women-only severe weather shelter at First United Methodist Church downtown.
Development of a day shelter for working women and a 24-hour drop-in center to meet the needs of women who miss curfew at current shelters because they work late shifts or swing shifts.
Development of more respite shelter for women who are ill or recovering from surgery.
Support for doubling the number of church-based shelters and developing a community shelter board.
Community support for Women in Black, a project of WHEEL that mobilizes women in the community to bear witness when a homeless person dies alone outside.
Opposition to Safe Harbors, a computerized tracking system proposed by the City of Seattle to gauge homeless people's use of resources. WHEEL opposes Safe Harbors as a misuse of funds and an invasion of privacy.

Despite their differences on issues like Tent Village and Safe Harbors, in recent years WHEEL has worked effectively with the city to address homeless women's needs.

In June 1998, in response to the serial murders of several homeless women in Seattle, Mayor Paul Schell pledged that Seattle's homeless women and children would be off the streets by that Christmas.

Alan Painter, director of the City of Seattle Community Services Division, said the commitment was sincere, but at the time, the mayor did not know the full extent of the problem. Though Schell didn't fulfill his promise, Painter points out that the city has made progress on the issue, citing 175 additional units of shelter and housing.

"There's a lot to celebrate," says Painter of Schell's administration. "He's putting down the funding to make it real."

WHEEL also celebrates these achievements, but will continue to push for more until the mayor fulfills his promise.

In many ways, WHEEL has shown the way. When the mayor made his pledge, WHEEL called for a public process to plan the use of the $500,000 Schell committed to the cause. This demand led to the creation of Community Action for Homeless Women, a group of service providers, city officials, and homeless women who work together to find solutions and ensure the solutions stay funded.

At their 1996 forum, WHEEL called for an evening drop-in center for women and for a permanent housing project for homeless women over 45. WHEEL's work with the city and service providers turned their demands into reality. In 1998, the Women's Referral Center opened its doors, providing a central location where women could find emergency shelter and information on other services. In 1999, Dorothy Day House opened, providing permanent homes for 40 homeless women over 45.

Ten years ago, Seattle had no shelters specifically for homeless women. WHEEL's annual forum lets the community know what the progress means to those on the street.

Speaker Cynthia Ozimek described her life at Hammond House, which opened in 1998 to provide shelter to 40 women each night: "At these simple wooden tables, all are welcome, and if these walls could speak, they would whisper lost sighs and stolen moments and fragile lives. If these walls could speak, they would sing a song so rapt with life that anyone who heard would know that homeless women have hearts no less beautiful for their lack of shelter."