In her job responding to Vancouver’s homeless encampments, Sheila Andrews often feels torn.
“What I’ve discovered is this position — it’s not a loved position,” she said. “For the taxpayers, it’s not enough. For the people experiencing homelessness, we do too much. Some days, it really gets in my heart.”
On a recent morning, she stood along Burnt Bridge Creek shaking her head at the mess strewn along its banks. She had previously told people living there that camping in the environmentally sensitive area was illegal.
“They know we’ll come along and clean up after them,” she said. “That’s kind of a hard pill to swallow.”
She felt disappointed in them while also understanding their hardship. That duality comes with serving on Vancouver’s Homeless Assistance and Resources Team. When first formed by the city in 2020, the team initially consisted of a police officer who enforced Vancouver’s camping rules. Now the program has an annual budget of $1.37 million, two police officers and five outreach workers like Andrews. The Columbian spent two days riding with the team from camp to camp — days full of laughter, frustration, cigarettes, tough conversations, kittens, puppies, garbage and hugs.
Hundreds of names
On a recent Tuesday, Andrews climbed into her city truck at 6:30 a.m. The cab holds a stand for her notes and two phones. She took five calls within 20 minutes.
“This is kind of a mild phone day,” she said. “Some days, it’s just off the hook.”
The city regularly picks up garbage around encampments, and Andrews needed to remind those living in ones scheduled for cleanup later that week to expect crews.
Andrews regularly visits camps to just chat with people about services they can access for help. Those visits are important for maintaining trust, especially when her team has to remove or clean up campsites, she said. Andrews knows hundreds of campers, most of them by name.
“One touch is not enough. One touch does not build trust,” she said. “I’m honest with people. I follow through with what I say. I do what I say I’m going to do. I think that goes a long way.”
Andrews draws from her own experiences to relate to those living outside. She’s lived through incarceration, drug addiction, military service, homelessness and an abusive relationship, she said.
“I never thought my life would look like this today, but I’m so grateful it does,” she said. “I can relate to everyone on a different level.”
On her way to one camp, she spotted a woman sleeping next to a dumpster. Andrews stopped her truck. The woman sat up straight.
“You’re not in trouble,” Andrews told her. “I’m just checking in on you. Who are you working with for housing?”
The woman only nodded, so Andrews repeated the question.
The woman finally responded: “I’m OK. Thank you.”
Andrews’ polite smile faded as she drove away. “She’s not working with anyone for housing.”
Entering the camps
Andrews pulled up next to a privately owned wooded field near Image Elementary and hiked through the brush, her boots covered in mud from previous camps.
The woods were silent, with no sign of human life, until Andrews ducked through an arch formed by sticks. About 15 feet back stood a small, empty tent. The person living in it isn’t friendly, Andrews explained. Nonetheless, she said going into camps alone doesn’t frighten her. The only time she felt truly scared, she said, was when a man threatened to kill her.
She checked on a few other tents inhabited by people she’s previously connected with services before driving to another wooded spot, this one in West Minnehaha, where 20 or so tents are tucked into the brush.
“Remote locations like this tell me they don’t want to be found,” she said as she ducked underneath a tree.
Andrews greeted each person by name before reminding them of the upcoming cleanup. One man admitted he’s struggling with his mental health and believes he’s being stalked. He spoke rapidly about people out to get him and how no one will help him.
Andrews told the man there are indeed people who want to help him. She called Sea Mar, a community health center, to send someone to his camp.
On her way back to her truck, she made calls to find a place for an 80-year-old homeless woman to stay until she can move into the housing city workers helped her find.
“An 80-year-old woman should not be out here on the streets. It’s somebody’s mom, aunt, friend,” Andrews said.
Seeing older people, children and survivors of abuse on the street is one of the hardest parts of her job, she said. She’s had to call the state’s Child Protective Services multiple times.
“When you come across children, that’s difficult. They just think they’re camping and everything is OK,” she said.
She also meets campers who have given up on receiving help and no longer try to get into housing. She knows some drug users who overdose weekly and seem fine with that, she said.
During the pandemic, authorities stopped removing encampments, so people living outside became used to a lack of accountability, she said. Part of her job is to ensure people don’t feel so comfortable living outside that they don’t try to access services.
“I do remind people that this is not a forever lifestyle,” she said.
Cleanup day
The next morning, the Homeless Assistance and Resources Team, along with a massive dump truck, visited the encampment along the Mill Plain Boulevard sound wall.
About 20 city workers fanned out to clean the roughly 100 camps in downtown Vancouver. As of June, Vancouver has cleaned 181 tons of waste from campsites, according to city documents.
A city worker swore and then turned away when he spotted a pile of human feces. The next city worker picked it up without a word.
Andrews said she’s tried to get portable toilets placed along the sound wall, but there’s no flat spot big enough to hold them. So people living in tents there often relieve themselves in 5-gallon buckets and wait for the city to remove them.
“I lost my mind a couple of times,” Andrews said.
As city workers lifted a seemingly abandoned tent to carry it to the dump truck, Andrews shouted at them, “Make sure there’s not a body in there.”
Andrews has known many people who have died outside.
“Unfortunately, it’s just part of the job,” she said.
But the tent was empty. The workers tossed it.
Relationship building
Some campers give members of HART a smile or even a hug. Jamie Spinelli, the city’s homeless response manager, and team member Tiffini Dillard cooed at a tent full of puppies. They’ll be back to help the owner make arrangements for their adoption, they said.
Down the road, Dillard hugs a man with a ponytail who’s just finished brushing his teeth.
“They’re phenomenal,” said the man, Sela SaeHim. “This lady here is beyond herself. All of them are. Every day, they get up to help people who camp.”
Like Andrews, Dillard knows what it’s like to be homeless. She was homeless for almost 20 years in Vancouver, she said. She’s not even 40 years old.
“You’re out there dying together, and now they see their friend doing something different alongside with VPD, and that’s huge,” she said.
Some of her old friends have called her a traitor for working with police, but she tries to demonstrate she can be trusted by making frequent visits to old friends and telling them how she can help.
“The collaboration and being on this team, it makes me want to cry. It’s just full circle,” she said. “I get very excited about going to work. I will never be tired of this.”
Others are not pleased to see the officers and city workers surrounding their camps, even though they were just there to clear trash. Camp removals can be more contentious, said HART member Tyler Chavers. (He has retired from his job as a police officer assigned to the team, but he’s back working for the city as its homeless response coordinator.)
When people refuse to move, police officers can give them citations that send them to Community Court, which gives those with homelessness-related offenses a chance to have their charges dismissed if they engage with services.
“The path to someone’s change in life can be those contentious moments,” Chavers said.
He recalled one man living in a rat-infested trailer whom the HART team “chased around town for a couple of years,” he said. The man wasn’t usually happy to see Chavers and others on the team, but they repeatedly visited him, threatened to tow his trailer and eventually cited him into Community Court.
“Finally, we figured out that almost the only thing he ever looked forward to in life was that one day he might be able to be around his kids again,” Chavers said.
The man sought addiction treatment, started visitations with his children and graduated from Community Court, Chavers said. The HART team attended his graduation last Friday.
“It’s usually a slow process,” Chavers said. “It’s really relationship building in the end.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct amount of police officers and outreach workers on HART.
