Aberdeen’s TASL camp closed Friday

Crews were tearing down the fence at the homeless tent camp adjacent to Aberdeen City Hall on Friday morning, the first step in the closure of the city-run “temporary alternative shelter location” (TASL) effective at noon Friday.

A Bellevue-based company started dismantling the fence surrounding the camp, ahead of the noon closure, due to a scheduling requirement by the company.

“Otherwise we’re not touching anything else until after noon,” Aberdeen Mayor Pete Schave said Friday.

Public Works Director Rick Sangder said the camp’s portable toilets and garbage dumpsters were to be removed after the closure became official at noon.

“Occupants will have the weekend to remove their possessions,” said Sangder. “Monday, we will begin the process of moving the campers along and dealing with the remaining garbage.”

The end of the state’s eviction moratorium, which forced the city to continue the camp during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowed the city to close the camp. The camp opened in July 2019 as an alternative shelter for homeless who were evicted from the Chehalis River camp earlier that summer.

“The moratorium ended the last of June,” said Schave. “We immediately went and gave the campers complete notice of what the plan was, and then gave them this amount of time to try to grasp it and make arrangements.”

Schave added that, when the moratorium’s end was looming, he reached out to the Coastal Community Action Program (CCAP) to work with campers on living alternatives.

“For the last two months CCAP has stepped up their efforts,” said Schave. “I asked them a few months ago to reach out to campers as best they can, and they’ve been spending at least two times a week down at the camp trying to do the best they can to make arrangements.”

There was some confusion about the closure at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. Council member Tawni Andrews was the first to mention the closure, stating during the committee of the whole, “What I don’t have is a report from the TASL committee and I wish I did on the closing of the TASL.”

Council member Tiesa Meskis said, “I echo council member Andrews in that it would have been nice to come to this part of our meeting with a report from the ad hoc committee on homelessness on the TASL rather than hearing it from our community.”

City Attorney Patrice Kent, whose last day of employment with the city was Wednesday — she had given notice she was moving on weeks before — acknowledged the misunderstanding.

“I understand your frustration and apologize for not working with you on the notice. It was my understanding that our direction from the council was as soon as the eviction moratorium was lifted to immediately take action on the closure, which was first initiated in April of last year,” Kent said. “I had heard periodically that as soon as the eviction moratorium was lifted then we, the staff, were directed to close the camp.”

Schave said the council did vote in April 2020 to close the camp effective May 15, 2020.

“So the council was all in favor of closing the camp way back then and we weren’t able to because of COVID,” he said.

Word of the proposed closure then made its way to the state Attorney General’s Office, which informed the city it could not close the camp while the governor’s eviction moratorium was in place.

The camp has cost the city around $20,000 a month to operate over the course of two years, the bulk of that spent on security. The camp’s footprint was shrunk earlier this year as usage dropped to just over 20 campers, and Schave said the cost had been reduced to between $17,000 and $18,000 a month.

“Fortunately, the state Department of Commerce put out some CARES Act funds and made them available for this type of use,” said Schave, which helped cover costs over the past year during the eviction moratorium.

DAVE HAVILAND | THE DAILY WORLD A Bellevue-based company removes the fencing surrounding the homeless camp adjacent to Aberdeen City Hall Friday morning. The camp, known as TASL, was closed at noon Friday.

DAVE HAVILAND | THE DAILY WORLD Remaining Aberdeen TASL residents gather their belongings as the fence surround the city-run homeless camp is taken down Friday morning. The city closed the camp Friday at noon.

DAVE HAVILAND | THE DAILY WORLD Residents of Aberdeen’s TASL camp prepare to move Friday as the noon camp closure approaches. This photo was taken from the third floor City Council chambers at City Hall.