Free Yoga classes at Two Dog Yoga!

FOUR DAY FREE WEEK

Friday, February 17 - Monday, February 20

featuring most of the Two Dog teaching staff

We are pleased to offer 16 yoga and qigong classes spread throughout FOUR DAYS FREE. Get free of your routine and try something new. This is your chance to try out a different teacher, get a taste of a different form and bring your friends, families and neighbors into the Two Dog fold. No limit on how many classes you can take during this week of gratitude for our community. Bring friends, family, neighbors! Classes are open to all & all levels of experience, even if you are brand new to yoga or qigong. See flier; send questions.

LC Taskforce on Homelessness - February Agenda

This is after the fact, but worth posting. The Lake City Taskforce on Homelessness meets once a month and is open to the public. They meet at the Mennonite Church.

We are attempting to post meeting agendas and minutes from neighborhood organizations and will put these on our calendar as well.

Lake City Taskforce on Homelessness Agenda - Feb. 10, 2012

 Work Plan as Taskforce for Lake City Development Council

• Supporting emergency services, homeless prevention, shelter, permanent supportive housing and food provision efforts in Lake City
 

• Meeting monthly to collaborate on provision efforts in Lake City

• Advocating around larger city-wide issues around homelessness

• Organizing One Night Count in Lake City every January

• Educating local community on efforts to end homelessness

• Attending Community Meetings

• Safe Walks (joining Lake City Community Council during the summer months)

• Brainstorming Employment Opportunities for persons experiencing homelessness/low income residents

• Clean-up projects for Lake City?

• Introductions
• Report on Pierre Properties - Marty Curry, UW Professor of Urban Design
• Report on Faith and Family Homelessness Application - Safe Parking subcommittee?
• Updates: 
• North Helpline
• Advocacy
• CPC - Valor Apartments - Relocation
• Medical Respite - Mar. 13, 4:30-6pm - Medical Respite Findings Report
• Safe Walk - see schedule on other side
• Fundraising:
• Dental Van (raised $2100) - next date Feb. 29
• Sponsor a month ($400)- we owe $400 (Checks to Seattle Mennonite)!
• Evaluation report -continue until Fall 2012, review again in May
• Co-Site Coordinator needed - training by Elizabeth Moehrke
• Planning ahead:
• Shelter - exploring beyond April 1, 2012
• GLA Moving - Where? Please consider proposal to host the program
• Housing First - Congregations adopting people, set up car safe parking program, buy a house/ cover rent expenses

Upcoming Events

Feb. 11, 10-noon   Advocacy 101 - SPU Student Union Building, allysonf@ccsww.org

Feb. 14                Interfaith Advocacy Day in Olympia

Feb. 22, am            Olympia - Housing and Homelessness Advocacy

http://www.homelessinfo.org/one_night_count/beyond_the_one_night_count.php

Feb. 23, 10-noon    Safe Parking fact finding- Lake City Pres. 3841 NE 123 Street

Feb. 29                Dental Van comes to GLA

March 9, 3:30-5pm   Next Taskforce Meeting

Mar. 13, 4:30-6pm    Medical Respite Report    Seattle Mennonite

May 5, 11am            Lecture on Homelessness, Church in the Rd. 

May 6, noon         North Helpline's Empty Bowls Fundraiser, Elks Club

Bike Works in Lake City

BikeWorks Storefront in Columbia City

Bike Works is a non profit organization whose mission is to:

- Empower youth to lead healthy and productive lives.
- Make bicycling accessible and affordable to people from all walks of life.
- Promote sustainable transportation and environmental stewardship.

They offer a range of classes that teach people of all ages the basics of bicycle mechanics and maintenance. One of their programs ( the Earn a Bike ) works with kids to repair bikes that are given back to the community. After 18 hours of community service, they can build their own bike for free.

DPC contacted Deb Salls, the executive director at Bike Works, to see if they would be interested in providing programs in Lake City and she wrote back to let us know they would be very interested in teaching classes up here. We found a space at the Lake City Community Center that met their criteria. She offered to have a youth and an adult program. Youth classes are from 3 to 6pm and adult classes are from 6:30 to 9:30pm. Their classes meet once a week for 8 weeks. They can start classes up here as early as April. A class has around a dozen students.

BikeWorks will also work with us to promote the classes here. We will need to get commitments from people to fill the classes first. The minimum will be 12 youths for a youth class and 12 adults for an adult class. If you have any ideas on how to get the word out, please email us with suggestions.

Weekly Walk - Monday, February 13th

On the walk last night we collected about half a large garbage bag worth of trash. We found 3 abandoned shopping carts, 2 human feces ( one behind grocery outlet and one at the dead end on 28th by the Seattle Gymnastics ), and collected 30 empties.

The shelter provides restroom facilities and there is also a port a pot that was put in at the Lake City Mini Park years ago to provide a facility for people to relieve themselves in a sanitary manner, yet the problem persists. Business owners in the area report that this is an ongoing problem.

Interpreting the UGM minutes

The data that UGM Advisory Council has been collecting is now starting to be formatted and distributed for arguments for or against the continuation of the Old 39 as a shelter. Sally Clark has posted on her site some of the data along with her commentary on the shelter. 

The UGM operated shelter is here directly as a result of a request put forth by Melanie and Jonathan Neufeld, the acting chairs of the Lake City Taskforce on Homelessness. As mentioned in an earlier post, they came here in 2007 on religious worker visas from Canada and were invited by Weldon Nisly, the pastor of the local Mennonite Church. They are full-time employees of the church and specifically work on advocacy for the homeless.

Some area residents and business owners continue to suffer from incidents related to Chronic Public Inebriety in our area. Stavros Panos recently hired a full-time security guard for his property to deal with ongoing issues on his property- especially along 30th Ave NE across the street from the shelter where 2 people have died of drug overdoses last year. Bank of America hired a full time security guard last fall. Fred Meyer ( which now has wheel locks on the carts) and other local grocery stores have an ongoing problem with shopping cart theft. The Cedar Park Senior Housing across the street from the shelter had to put in place new building access policies to stop homeless people from entering and sleeping in their building. Business owners still are reporting human urine, vomit, and feces on their properties. Loitering and public drinking are still a problem, most notably: in front of the post office, behind the Grocery Outlet, in front of the 99 cent store, in front of the Dollar Plus store, at the Chevron on 130th, and the other side of 30th from the Pierre Parts and Services building.

DPC litter patrols have found human feces and hypodermic needles in front of the Seattle Gymnastics Academy on 28th (around the corner from the shelter) where many children go during the day. A 10 day period of alcohol empties collected on the DPC weekly walk route has produced a list of over 80 high volume alcohol cans.

Below are requests that were made by Advisory Council community members to UGM and the City.

1. Requested UGM not accept referrals from other parts of the city as publicly agreed to. ( The initial agreement was that they were coming here to serve the local population of homeless and that they would not be taking people in from other areas of the city. )

The Lake City Winter Shelter accepted referrals from Harborview, Northwest Hospital, Seattle Police, and many by word of mouth. (Note: Psychiatric patients at Harborview were referred to Lake City Winter Shelter by a Harborview employee and Mennonite church member, despite the fact that the Lake City Winter Shelter does not offer psychiatric services.)

2. Requested City official to be present at Shelter Advisory Committee meetings (first request prior to shelter opening):

No city officials have attended the eight Shelter Advisory meetings as of 2/11/12. Darryl Smith ( the Deputy Mayor ) said in a phone call on 2/8/12 that he has not attended any of the meetings and has not read any of the minutes from those meetings. 

3.  Requested UGM coordinate community litter patrols to offset any impact from their clients:

No litter patrols were organized by UGM staff. The patrols with shelter residents were coordinated and led by local residents.  

UGM has encouraged shelter residents to participation in weekly community led litter patrols by rewarding residents with bus tickets and $5 gift cards ( purchased and donated by local businesses. ) 

4. Requested UGM disperse Shelter contact information to local businesses (first request - December 2011)

No dispersal of contact info as of 2/11/12

5. Requested UGM create a newsletter to inform community of shelter rules, news, etc. (first request December 2011) 

No newsletter as of 2/11/12

Petition Documents

Here are images of the petition that was sent to the Mayor's office on April 12, 2011 from the Lake City Taskforce on Homelessness requesting the Old 39 be used as a shelter.  There are 28 signatures, some of which are people representing organizations outside of our community. For example, Heroes for the Homeless is based out of Woodinville.

Members of the community submitted a petition requesting a shelter not be opened at the Old 39 to Nick Licata's office. It had ~400 signatures from Lake City residents and business owners.

Darryl Smith was asked to comment on this on 2/8/12 and his response was that they decided to do it anyway because "it was the right thing to do."

The One Night Count in January of 2011 counted 22 people in the Lake City area sleeping in cars and on the streets. This year, the count in the Lake City area was 14.