It was a covert operation that relied on many working parts, including a phone tree that didn't quite reach everyone, a 3 a.m. rendezvous at four different locations, and driving directions that were hard to fathom, leaving one caravan of cars circling for a half-hour, looking for Nickelsville with a KIRO-TV van in tow.
But sometime in the wee hours of Sept. 22, cars and vans of the homeless and supporters made it to the South Seattle lot at W. Marginal Way and Highland Park Dr., where drivers let off riders with sleeping bags and belongings, then drove off to park out of sight of any police.
The campers crossed a rise into a little valley of tall grass, where, one by one, 150 little pink dome tents donated from the Girl Scouts popped up in the quiet darkness.
Give or take a SNAFU, Nickelsville -- erected to call attention to Mayor Greg Nickels' policy of clearing homeless camps and belongings from public property -- went up without a hitch. How and when it comes down will be another story: By days' end, city workers had posted the camp with a 72-hour removal notice that may lead to a confrontation on the evening of Thurs., Sept. 25, when the city promises to clear the field.
"The city is treating this encampment like any other," says Nickels' spokesperson Karin Zaugg-Black. She says that includes sending outreach workers to the site on Monday to offer those at Nickelsville services and shelter prior to removing the camp.
Homeless activists with SHARE, the tent city operator that helped put up Nickelsville, counter that the property belongs to the Duwamish Tribe and, if its members give their permission to use the land, the city may not be able to do that.
Even if the mayor tries, says Anitra Freeman, a SHARE activist who's also involved with Real Change, it will be a political blunder. In 1998, when she helped put up Tent City 2 on Beacon Hill, she says, there were only 16 people the first night. Three days later, she says, it was 160.
"There are going to be a couple of hundred people here within a couple of days," Freeman says. "At that point, it's going to be obvious that there are more people needing shelter than the mayor has shelter for."
"If the mayor's response is to destroy the shelters that people are putting up for themselves, it's going to be a PR nightmare," she says.
"For these people, this is their last safety net," says fellow SHARE activist Leo Rhodes, "because all the shelters are full right now and the tent cities are full."
Instead of spending more money to shelter Seattle's nearly 2,000 homeless people, he says, the mayor conducts sweeps and has added more police, park rangers, and cameras in public parks. "How many millions of dollars is he spending on that when he could just easily put people inside?"
Zaugg-Black responds that Freeman and Rhodes are wrong about the city's shelter capacity. "We would counter that in fact we have beds available, and those beds will be offered to folks" at Nickelsville, she says.
The city already spends nearly $41 million a year to prevent and end homelessness, she says. And of the camps that the city has cleared this year, 41 people have taken up the city on its offer of shelter, with 10 moving into transitional or permanent housing.
As he struggled to pitch a tent in the dark at Nickelsville, Eric, who asked his last name not be used, said he didn't know much about the politics of homelessness, but wants to make a statement.
"I'm hoping that if there's not enough affordable housing, there still could be a safe place where homeless people could come and support each other and build each other up and not feel betrayed by the [city's] authority figures," says Eric, who got a full time job two months ago but hasn't yet saved enough for an apartment.
"People took time out to elect [them]," he says, "and then they turn their back for people who have a buck. And the guy that doesn't have a buck, what happens to him?"