Seattle Govt Orders Volunteers to Stop Giving Aid to Homeless

Posted on January 11, 2022 by DJ Heal

We Heart Seattle is a volunteer team that decided it was time to take action in addressing issues facing the homeless population in the city of Seattle. The efforts started off small. They were mostly aimed at picking up the large amounts of trash left by and around homeless settlements. The group claims to have picked up over 320,000 pounds of litter and garbage. They’ve also been able to get nearly 70 people the resources needed to get off the streets and turn things around. Unfortunately the city of Seattle does not approve of the group and their efforts and they have been told to stop giving aid to homeless people.

Andrea Suarez of We Heart Seattle got invited to a zoom meeting with Seattle Councilmember Dan Strauss and a number of other city leaders. Suarez said, “Having cleared more than 100,00 pounds of trash and housing at least five people from (Strauss’) district, I assumed the call would be to thank our volunteers and include us in further outreach efforts.”

Instead she was caught off-guard by the ambush, as she puts it, from the government. She was even told by REACH officials that her group’s efforts were “disruptive and confusing to the hard work of REACH and the Human Services Department has already been doing in Ballard Commons and Shilshole Avenue.” “I’m still asking myself, ‘when did volunteerism become disruptive?’” Suarez said in an interview with The Dori Monson Show.

The city’s main complaint was that the effort violated protocol and local laws on how camps should be handled and essentially destroyed. Suarez also points to union turf disputes between Seattle Parks and Seattle Public utilities about who picks up what trash from where. These disputes lead to the large accumulation of trash found in and around homeless encampments.

Despite the city coming down on her and her group she has no plans on stopping the good work she is doing for the homeless of Seattle. “I’m going to keep volunteering.”, she said. Her efforts cost nothing from the state or taxpayers while the official preferred response costs millions and have managed to lead to very little assistance reaching those who need it.

This is far from the first time the state has ordered volunteers to stop giving aid to homeless people in need. There are countless stories every year about people being harassed, fined, and even facing jail time simply for helping others without going through the state and its bureaucracy.

We’ve highlighted a couple of these previously here at Voluntaryism In Action. One is a story about the government stalling food donations in the middle of winter. Another about a carpenter in Toronto who was building shelters for free for the homeless being told to stop what he was doing.

We here at Voluntaryism In Action firmly believe the world would be a much better place if the state would simply get out of the way of the people, especially in their efforts to give aid to those who need it the most.

Quit Helping or Go to Jail

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Editorial Team

This article, "Quit Helping or Go To Jail," was written by our volunteer David Day.

Living in south Louisiana was difficult in 2005, specifically because of two names: Katrina and Rita. These two hurricanes have had lasting effects that no one could have ever imagined.

If you wind back the clock a little bit, in 2005 the invasion of Iraq by the United States was still in full swing, and many of the engineers with the Louisiana National Guard were deployed oversees. So, when Hurricane Katrina made landfall and decades of corruption and mismanagement surrounding the government’s levee systems came crashing down, many people died and many more lost all their worldly possessions. Louisianans were left with nowhere to go, and with no timeline as to when things would be “fixed.”

I witnessed friends and family volunteering 12-to-16-hour days doing things like cooking, cleaning, and providing essentials.
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At the time I was a freshman in high school living in a little town outside of Lake Charles, LA. While I did not personally know anyone who was affected from Katrina, I knew that I needed to help. My family and I decided to volunteer at the Lake Charles Civic Center which was the primary hub where the city was taking in those affected by the storm. In some sense it was a typical setup: there were rooms with cots lined up in rows, making a grid that spanned the entire Civic Center, but in another sense the Lake Charles Civic Center was atypical because of how much the volunteers cared for our brothers and sisters from the eastern side of the state. Something that I am proud of to this day is that we would serve Louisiana staples like gumbo, jambalaya, and pasta while other places would serve bread with spam—or worse—and call it a meal.

I witnessed friends and family volunteering 12-to-16-hour days doing things like cooking, cleaning, and providing essentials. Because of the increase in phone traffic, it was very difficult to make or receive phone calls, so I taught some of the volunteers how to use text messaging. They in turn reached out and taught people displaced from the hurricane how to text. Some people had loved ones that they were not able to reach out to and let them know that they were safe until we showed them how to use text messaging.

Then the unthinkable happened: while still serving the victims of Katrina, we discovered that an even stronger storm was in the Gulf of Mexico, only this time it was headed straight towards Lake Charles. Because of the tremendous loss of life resulting from government’s failures surrounding Hurricane Katrina, it seemed like the state was going to overcompensate by issuing a mandatory evacuation much earlier and enforcing the evacuation order with much more intensity.

The deputies said that if we tried to continue helping people, we would be taken to jail.
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While some volunteers evacuated on their own, many of us, including me, wanted to stay to help until the very last minute. Unfortunately, the Sheriff’s office unilaterally decided that the remaining volunteers did not need our help anymore. I will never forget deputies coming into the Civic Center kitchen and ordering me and the other volunteers to leave. The deputies said that if we tried to continue helping people, we would be taken to jail.

As a young teenager, this was a critical moment in my life. I remember evacuating to Pont Breaux shortly afterward and thinking to myself: “Why would they want us to stop helping?” We understood the risk. We understood the timeline. We remembered what happened from Katrina—this was why we wanted to stay as long as we could to help the remaining people. But none of that mattered to the deputies. The state could not make a risk assessment or value judgement for those volunteers who wanted to wait until the last possible minute. Unfortunately, what happened was that the help I could have provided was forcibly prevented by a top-down “solution” that was driven by the desire of politicians to save face from their failures with Katrina. This taught me a valuable lesson that the state, while sometimes well intentioned, is not the best way to help individuals.

Volunteer Rescues 100 Pounds of Food

Posted on February 13, 2021 by Editorial Team

Sometimes, helping people is just a matter of keeping your eyes open. This was the case with one of our volunteers who was on the lookout for opportunities to help at his local hospital. He discovered that the hospital was tossing out almost 100 pounds of a nutritional supplement that was slightly over the best-buy date. He also knew that the local food bank accepts non-perishable items up to a year after their best-buy date. It was a simple matter to politely ask if he could take the supplements to the food bank. The hospital staff cheerfully agreed, and even helped him carry the boxes to his car.

Because one person was on the lookout for ways to help, the food bank got 100 pounds of food that otherwise would have been wasted. “I’m just glad I was able to help,” the volunteer said. “It just cost me a quick drive, and this food could really help people.” Voluntary giving doesn’t have to be a matter of money. Sometimes all that’s necessary is keeping a lookout for opportunities and having the will to take advantage of them.

July 2020 Organizational Update

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Sam Wade

We went into the second half of the year with a bang with ongoing COVID-19 relief projects as well as more opportunity for personal outreach. Entering the new month, for the first time, VIA is managing dual active fundraisers. Here’s our progress from the past month:

● Your donations to our relief project to assist small businesses affected by the riots helped: Emily’s Eatery, Midori’s Floating World Café, Coco & Family Beauty Supply, Lake Street Stop n’ Shop, and Top Cut Comics. Read more about it here: https://viaction.org/wire/updates/rebuilding-small-businesses

● Launched the fundraiser for COVID Relief for Low Income Students, assisting families who are continuing education from home or distance learning. To support the cause, donate here: https://viaction.org/educate

● In VIA Community, we began releasing homeschooling tips to assist families who are either seasoned homeschoolers or new and forced into it because of school closures. If you’re not yet a part of the VIA family, find our Facebook group: VIA Community

● Assistant Director Justin Glassman and Content Creator Sam Wade assisted a local ‘Strengthen Your Community’ event, giving hygiene kits and snacks to the homeless in Macon, GA, funded by your donations to our fundraiser: Self-Sufficiency Resources for the Needy.

● Launched nationwide volunteer program to send care packages to the homeless across America, again utilizing remaining funds from Self-Sufficiency Resources for the Homeless as well as accepting ongoing funds at viaction.org/ to continue to support the project. Donations can be made here: https://viaction.org/causes/community-development

● In response to the spotlight on human trafficking, we commenced a second fundraiser, Free Our Children: Fight Child Sex Trafficking. If you’d like to support through VIA, donate here: https://viaction.org/freeourchildren

● We jumpstarted our podcast A Voluntary View With VIA on YouTube and LBRY.tv

● We are working with a volunteer grantwriting consultant to start our grantwriting process.

● We invested more capital in our IT department to become more efficient.

As we look to the future, our team hopes to continue to stand for our mission as we respond to government’s failure to act in crisis and certainty with a voluntary helping hand. To our continued donors and supporters, thank you for making this all possible.

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Tag Archives: volunteer

Seattle Govt Orders Volunteers to Stop Giving Aid to Homeless

Quit Helping or Go to Jail

This article, "Quit Helping or Go To Jail," was written by our volunteer David Day.

Volunteer Rescues 100 Pounds of Food

July 2020 Organizational Update