The following is Part Three of organizer Jon Gould's campaign diary, documenting the fight to save the Pacific. Parts One and Two detailed the planning process and the actual occupation which involved hundreds of Seattle's homeless. Next month's issue will bring the final installment of The Battle of the Pacific Hotel.
Keeping the Group Together
The week-long occupation of the Pacific Hotel surpassed the expectations of its organizers in every possible way. The September 1992 takeover had lasted longer, involved more people and received more public attention that anyone had predicted.
As a result of the occupation, Operation Homestead's (OH) membership grew. When we resumed OH meetings in our usual meeting spot, there were no empty chairs around the table. Additionally, many of the new members of OH were homeless. This swift growth meant an increase in resources and in responsibility.
Immediately following the eviction, OH's main challenge was to find a way to keep such a large and diverse group together. If we wanted to continue to exercise the power that resulted from the occupation, we needed participation from many people.
The first few days after the eviction were crucial to maintaining the community that had formed in the Pacific and enabling that community to continue its work. As the homeless people from the occupation sought ways to meet their need for shelter, the solutions they found were not always solutions that enabled them to keep contact with others from the Pacific. As much as the takeover brought people together, the eviction threatened to divide us.
Meeting and Reunion
Two days after the eviction, we held a meeting at the Pike Market Senior Center. On the street, we displayed one of the banners that hung from the Pacific during the occupation. The meeting was a reunion. People who had never seen one another outside of the Pacific mingled and shared stories of what they did during the eviction.
The meeting began with reports about the people who had been arrested. All but one had been released (he refused to provide personal information) and we collected bail money to free the final homesteader. The main discussion of the meeting concerned what to do next.
While everyone agreed that we would only have enough power to find a shelter space and force the sale of the Pacific if the group remained together and grew, there were different ideas and opinions concerning what our priority should be.
We debated several propositions: setting up tents near City Hall or at Seafirst Bank branches, reoccupying the Pacific, occupying another building, and finding a secure self-managed shelter space.
Eventually, we reached consensus that a shelter space would both meet the immediate needs of the homeless members of the group and keep the group together to continue the campaign to save the Pacific Hotel. With that, we focused our energy on a campaign for a self-managed shelter space.
Outreach and Site Search
The campaign for a shelter space began with simultaneous outreach to members of the occupation and a site search. We made flyers for the streets and the shelters announcing our new campaign and inviting occupants of the Pacific to join the effort. After a week, a small core group of homeless from the Pacific was working on the shelter space campaign.
Because OH was not in the business of operating shelters, we formed a partnership with a local organization that specializes in opening self-managed homeless shelters, SHARE (Seattle Housing and Resources Effort). SHARE successfully operated three shelters in Seattle and had a good track record. Their relatively stable funding source and insurance underwriter added the necessary stability. For months, however, SHARE had been struggling to find hosts for additional shelters.
After the occupation of the Pacific, the issue of shelter space for the homeless was more visible than ever. Three hundred homeless people had just been evicted from a vacant building in a city with a documented shelter crisis. Therefore, out of mutual need, a partnership was born and a simple agreement was signed by OH and SHARE members.
We wanted a nightly space for 50-100 people in a downtown location. Churches and labor unions who owned their buildings and had auditoriums met the criteria for space. As SHARE had already approached all the downtown churches, we focused our efforts on labor unions.
In August of 1992, OH had assisted a local labor organization in planning a large labor rally to protest the use of a non-union contractor at a downtown condominium development. Although OH's role in the rally was small, we made enough contacts and allies to know who in labor to call for help.
The IBEW
We called around and got a warm reception from Bob Gorman at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 46. The IBEW building is located at 1st Ave. and Cedar St. in the Denny Regrade and contains about 40 offices and a large auditorium.
The Executive Board of IBEW Local 46 invited us to make a presentation to them about shelter space. Our proposal was simple: we wanted to use their auditorium nightly from 7pm-7am. Shelter residents would provide screening and security and would clean up in the morning and set up the auditorium for daytime meetings or activities. Shelter capacity would be 50 people.
After our presentation, the members asked us to leave so that they could discuss our proposal. In a half an hour they called us in to say that they would recommend to their membership that the auditorium be used as a shelter space. They also asked us to make a presentation at the next membership meeting, in a week.
Members of the Local 46 Executive Board helped us prepare our presentation to the membership. They suggested that we emphasize that many of the homeless who would stay in the shelter were workers. The Executive Board also suggested that we stress the shelter's relationship to the campaign to save the Pacific Hotel.
Union members would be more likely to support the shelter if they saw it as a necessary step in an organizing campaign. What a pleasure it was to work with people who understood the importance of solidarity!
After our brief presentation to the Local 46 membership, the members voted. The result was unanimous support for our proposal to use their auditorium as a shelter. Linking the need to our larger goal, the members decided to make the auditorium available until the Pacific Hotel reopens.
Community Notification
Siting of low-income housing, shelters and social service facilities never fails to raise the ire of certain cranks who routinely oppose anything that involves services to poor people in their neighborhood.
As neighborhoods with vocal opponents of increased services go, the Denny Regrade in 1992 was somewhat of a champion.
Gentrification in the district has resulted in a rise of classism. Fifteen years ago, the Regrade contained the city's largest concentration of affordable housing. Today, it is the highest rent district in Seattle.
We knew that community notification about the shelter would be an issue in the Regrade. City policies encourage notification, but are vague on the details. We decided that our responsibility was simply to notify the neighbors and the community council. We would not seek approval nor allow community groups to block the shelter.
After all, the shelter would receive no public funding and was in a privately owned space. Our host, the IBEW, agreed. For them, the issue was simple: It was their building and they could do whatever they wanted. Besides, they reasoned, unions were in the neighborhood years before the condo-crowd. While we were waiting for our insurance policy to begin, I asked for a spot on the agenda of the next Denny Regrade Community Council meeting to discuss the shelter. While in the Men's Room before the meeting, I heard two men discussing Operation Homestead.
"Did you hear that Operation Homestead is coming to the meeting today?," said one man.
"No," replied the other. "What do they want?"
"I don't know, something about a shelter in the neighborhood. I hope it doesn't take too long. We've got elections tonight, you know."
The community council meeting was festive in nature, with annual elections of officers and a proud presentation of their plan for a neighborhood P-Patch. The outgoing president seemed relieved after the elections. As soon as the new president was elected he said, "Here, you chair the meeting. You're the President."
Near the end of the meeting, I raised my hand. I introduced myself and informed the group of the future opening of the shelter. One person asked when it would open and I replied within a month. That was the end of the discussion.
The Shelter Opens
The shelter opened the night before Thanksgiving, November 25, 1992, almost two months since our eviction from the Pacific Hotel. The opening had all the excitement of the occupation of the Pacific, but this time we did not have to worry about being arrested.
In fact, our hosts, members of IBEW Local 46, were there to celebrate with us. Before we could focus on creating a system to manage the shelter, however, we had one more test to pass.
Several critics of shelters in the neighborhood raised a stink about the shelter, contacted the press and landed articles in the two major daily newspapers. The critics complained that they had not been notified about the shelter and whined about their neighborhood being saturated with social services (they should have thought about that while they were demolishing the affordable housing).
The record showed, however, that we had indeed notified them at their community council meeting.
Local 46 maintained their commitment to the shelter. They were not going to be told what to do (or not to do) with their building. The union appeased the opponents by agreeing to attend monthly meetings with neighborhood representatives to discuss any problems stemming from the shelter.
After two months of such meetings, and with no adverse effects from the shelter, the group decided to hold them on an "as needed" basis (which reflects, by the way, the usual pattern in these types of conflicts).
Internal Organization
In order to ensure that the maximum number of residents from the Pacific had an opportunity to use the shelter, we opened the shelter only to participants in the occupation. The shelter had a capacity of 50 persons.
As word of its opening spread, enough former Pacific residents accessed the shelter so that we reached capacity. Homeless people from the Pacific routinely filled the IBEW auditorium.
As the occupation of the Pacific had been an opportunity for leaders to develop, so was the shelter. The absence of some of the leaders of the occupation gave an opportunity for others to assume more active roles.
A Help Group composed of residents coordinated all of the activities of the shelter: screening new residents, ticket distribution, blanket washing and clean-up. SHARE provided on-going support for the shelter.
Residents posted rules and information in Spanish and English. Shelter residents and union members held monthly meetings to discuss issues arising from the shelter.
The opening of the IBEW shelter positioned Operation Homestead to continue and escalate the campaign against Seafirst Bank to force the sale of the Pacific Hotel.
Since the takeover, we had focused most of our attention on finding and opening a shelter. Now, for the first time since the eviction, we had our own place (and this time we had a willing host).
The IBEW shelter would soon become the headquarters of the campaign to get back into the Pacific Hotel and many shelter residents would soon tirelessly apply themselves to that effort. Big campaigns are won by the accumulation of small victories. The opening of the shelter was one such victory.
Next month, the final installment of the history of the campaign to save the Pacific Hotel will discuss Operation Homestead's campaign to pressure Seafirst Bank to sell the Pacific.