Seattle Press on Line - Tents are Folded but Struggle is Just Beginning

Tents are Folded but Struggle is Just Beginning

By Tom Herriman

May 03, 2001 -- The city rescinded the fines against Trinity United Church and the tents of a few score homeless people have been folded and trucked off to a new host church. But Rich Lang, pastor at the elegant old Romanesque church on 23rd Avenue NW in Ballard, says the small congregation has been changed forever by their battle with the city and their neighbors.

The city Department of Design, Construction and Land Use (DCLU) had demanded the church close the encampment and imposed $75-a-day fines. Several neighbors of the church complained bitterly about the presence of the homeless in their midst for six weeks.

But Lang said "Our commitment to struggle to end homelessness has been energized, solidified and deepened" by the struggle.

"The hard line position DCLU took is unfathomable," Lang said. "DCLU was very aggressive and intimidating. They not only fined us, but made thinly veiled threats they would try to force out our tenants...several non-profit organizations that rent office space from us...an insidious kind of economic pressure... to force us to back off."

But Lang said the stakes in the fight affected more than just Trinity. "To allow the city to fine us would be to open the door to an assault against churches that minister to the poor. Food banks and shelter programs all over the city could have been threatened."

Attorneys for the church argued that a recent Federal law, the Institutional Land Use and Religious Persons Act of 2000, protects the church's right to do whatever it wants on its property as long as public health and order are not endangered. The city didn't buy that argument, Lang said. "They'd never heard of the law. They caved because of the enormous public response...tons of e-mails to city officials, protesting the punitive actions against the church and the homeless. We had not even begun to organize our PR campaign. The outpouring of support was tremendous."

Lang said there were no problems or incidents during the time the Share/Wheel encampment occupied the church parking lot. "There were no complaints except along the lines of one neighbor who said that people coughing in their tents kept him awake at night. I mean my God," Lang exclaimed, "these are people sleeping outside in cold, damp Seattle spring weather. Of course they are coughing."

Lang insisted, "Health and order was not violated. There was no compelling public interest to close the encampment. If FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Administration] had asked us to put up tents to shelter earthquake victims, there would have been no question about a tent city at all. We would have been heroes."

Lang wants to see churches all over Seattle make a commitment to shelter a person or family for six months, to help them stabilize their lives and wrap a new support system around them. He said that's one of the proposals he expects to come up at a city-wide church-sponsored conference on homelessness at St. Mark's Cathedral April 28.

A commitment to end homelessness is a huge undertaking and the problems of the poor are enormous. "But that's nothing new for the church. We've been working at it for 2000 years."

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