In 1992, the Pacific Hotel was on the market, priced to become a luxury development, and the building's future as low-income housing was in serious jeapordy. The following is the second installment of Operation Homestead's Campaign Diary, documenting the occupation of the Pacific.
Last month, Part One covered the planning process leading to the occupation, early negotiations with the City, and the beginnings of community among the hundreds of homeless involved the the occupation.
Our negotiations with the building's owner, Seafirst Bank, had broken down the day before. We wanted a guarantee that the building would be used as a temporary shelter and eventually permanent housing. Seafirst refused and threatened to evict us. When dawn came on Friday, though, we were still there. By this time "we" had grown from almost a hundred to almost five hundred, including people who were sleeping in one of the building's 106 rooms and supporters.
With the rise of this sentiment, our demands began to shift to reflect the immediate concerns of the homeless in the building. More and more homeless people asserted themselves in the different aspects of the occupation. Planned by activists, the takeover was now being defined by those who are hurt most by the tragedy of abandoned buildings-the homeless. A sign of this change was that Tico, another leader, and Chris now facilitated general meetings, replacing the OH members who had planned the occupation.
Among the several hundred people in the Pacific there were many different ethnic groups represented. At least half of the residents were Latino. The other half were Native American, African-American, Asian or white. In order for the Negotiating Committee (the group of residents communicating with Seafirst and City officials) to have the confidence of the growing group of residents, the committee needed to contain more leaders from the different ethnic communities of homeless people in the building. New members were appointed and approved at general meetings. Growth caused change.
The Negotiating Committee began to consider its responsibility for providing shelter for the many occupants who would be out in the cold when we got evicted. We brainstormed about sources of shelter space and came up with the City and County, shelter providers, and churches.
On Friday we developed a new proposition: We would vacate the Pacific Hotel if we could obtain another building or location. Members of the Negotiating Committee spent the day talking to residents of the building to test this new negotiating position. People agreed with the idea.
Later in the day, the Negotiating Committee went to Mayor Rice's office with a written promise to vacate the Pacific if the Mayor found another location to house us. The Mayor's assistant, Andy Lofton, met us in the lobby and showed us into the Mayor's conference room.
Ever have trouble getting a meeting with an elected official? Next time, try seizing a building. It gets their attention.
We presented our conditional promise to vacate, a few sentences followed by hundreds of signatures. Lofton refused and said the City was not willing to find us another shelter space. What about all the vacant property that the City owns, we challenged. We even cited examples of property located only a few blocks from the Pacific.
No means no, we were told. We rose from the table, for it was clear the City was not feeling the need to negotiate an end to the takeover. On our way out, Lofton tried in vain to persuade us to leave the Pacific.
By cooperating with one another, the occupants were proving that homeless people are not helpless. They were running the city's largest and most economical shelter: no private or public funds, no staffing, dozens of volunteers, and loads of donations.
Nights at the Pacific tested our ability to maintain order. While the excitement and challenge of political action may have empowered many desperate and oppressed people, it did not cure the many problems of life on the streets. Alcoholism, violence, prejudice and mental health needs existed in the Pacific just as these problems exist nightly in the shelters, alleys, doorways (not to mention office buildings and condominiums) of Seattle. Despite rules posted everywhere, a certain number of the residents did not respect the guidelines. The constant growth of the group meant that newcomers were not always involved in the process of making rules, a vital element of successful self-management.
The challenge of keeping order was so great that at times it seemed as if we might break down internally before the police evicted us. Many of the OHers who planned the occupation, and never imagined it would be ongoing, were exhausted. We had planned for a two-hour action and we were in our fourth day.
Some of us suspected that the Seafirst security guards, who maintained an office in the basement of the Pacific, were communicating our internal problems to their superiors. We imagined Seafirst's Hal Greene waiting for a disaster that would justify evicting us.
Despite our internal challenges, our public image did not suffer. The longer we held the building the more positive press, donations, and public support we received.
Everyone who entered or exited had to sign in and out. One centrally located entrance enabled us to have more control over who came in the hotel. An important reason for this change was that by Friday several people had been permanently barred from the Pacific for rule violations. The Security Committee needed some way of ensuring that these people would not find their way back into the building.
Someone made a large poster board for the lobby showing the names of the occupants of each of the 106 rooms. Many rooms had three to five names. The Office Committee changed the office into a storage room and made a schedule for residents to staff the room in four-hour shifts. The Renovation Committee gathered tools and fixed the building's plumbing problems.
Latino residents began to hold meetings to discuss issues important to them. To eliminate arguments over food, the Food Committee decided to have two meals a day, one at 6am and one at 6pm. Scott, the food server, posted notices announcing the meal times and consistently lead a group of residents in placing donated food on tables in the lobby.
Agreement in words is easier than agreement in action. At the Pacific, enforcement alone did not mean that self-management was effective, but enforcement initiated and led by homeless residents themselves was a step in the right direction. It signified that the homeless were taking responsibility for and ownership of the occupation.
One sign of progress in this direction occurred on Friday night when the Security Committee asked several people who were drinking alcohol to leave the building. The rule breakers left peacefully.
On Saturday morning, Jim and Chuck met with leaders of the occupation and proposed offering Seafirst a lease agreement that would keep us in the building under the sponsorship of a non-profit agency. Under the plan, OH would co-manage the building and we would have to decrease our size to 100 occupants.
Meanwhile, Mayor Rice's office sent us a message saying he wanted us to make a public statement by Sunday at 3pm promising to vacate on Monday. From the message, we figured that we were safe until Monday. We set a general meeting for Sunday night to discuss the proposal.
Whether it was food, clothing, or other goods, donations were a constant source of material and emotional sustenance for the occupation. A woman from West Seattle who arrived in a taxi and unloaded bag after bag of groceries provided a boost to our morale after a tough night. The television news crew loved her, too.
One day, a woman with two kids holding lunch bags walked into the building. She asked me if she could donate some food. I said yes and directed her to the storage room. She said the kids wanted to give the bags personally to the homeless people. With a nod of approval from their mother, the kids, looking at once frightened and excited, entered the lobby. One afternoon, a church group served a hot meal in the lobby and sang hymns.
As donations of food and clothing increased, managing the goods we received became a challenge in itself. Someone suggested we put up a sign on the building saying, "No more food or clothes, please. Got any abandoned buildings?"
A few people tossing a football in the building's courtyard turned into a full-blown football game, with men and women and boys and girls. A woman from Mexico set up two chairs in the courtyard and gave haircuts while a radio perched in a windowsill above provided music.
My fondest memories of the occupation come from Sunday, for on this day I got to know many of the people whose tireless work made the takeover possible.
There was Jimmy who always made press calls when we faxed news releases. I talked with Jack of "Jack in the Box," the man who stood for hours in front of the Pacific wearing a cardboard box with four sides of our propaganda for passersby to see. Tico told me stories from his life in Argentina. I talked about music with Dante, who became homeless during the occupation because he got evicted from his apartment. Sixto and Eulogio taught me Spanish while we talked about the natural beauty of Mexico. As night fell, I talked with Steve and Dee Dee while they staffed the front desk.
Sleeping people filled the lobby of the Pacific on Sunday night. Over 300 people now were using the Pacific for shelter. At the end of the sixth day of the takeover, downtown Seattle had been visibly transformed. All the familiar places where homeless people sleep outside were empty. Far from perfect, the Pacific takeover was a step in the right direction toward a solution to the crisis of homelessness.
We had the support of some of the most respected and capable people in Seattle's non-profit housing world. Community support was still with us and seemed to be growing, as we targeted Seafirst through the bank's customers. Internally, we were only getting stronger after resolution of previous difficulties.
On Monday morning, the best thing we had going for us was our control over the Pacific. We decided who came in and who went out. We decided our rules. We decided times and agendas of meetings. We controlled the Pacific Hotel and only the police could take that away from us.
At 1pm, rumors that the police were coming started to spread. Although Seafirst had lost credibility with false eviction threats, this time eviction seemed unavoidable. At 3pm, the Negotiating Committee (now composed of about 14 residents) met in room #39.
While we were discussing our next step, someone entered the room to urge us to hurry up because he had heard that the police were on their way to the Pacific. We talked for about three more minutes before the police arrived and surrounded the building. With that, the meeting ended. The Pacific occupation was coming to a close.
Most of the residents of the Pacific vacated the building within 15 minutes of the police's arrival. The presence of Immigration and Naturalization Service agents wearing bright yellow jackets marked INS created a panic among the non-U.S. citizens. Cops in the building stationed themselves at doorways and shuffled people outside. We, too, stationed people at the exits in order to observe the police.
We told the Police Captain we needed until 6pm to get belongings out of the building. He agreed to this demand. The people remaining in the building spent the next two hours moving belongings from the building to people on Marion street.
As we leaned out of windows, people on the street called out their room numbers and tossed us their keys. We went from room to room, packing bags and passing them out the front door, through the police barrier to evicted residents. One of the rooms I went into contained a neatly made bed, family pictures on the walls, clothes hanging in the closet and curtains in the window.
The police took their time arresting us. They had more trouble than they could handle on the outside, where the crowd had swelled to several hundred. People staying in the Pacific returned from day jobs to find a sealed building. Supporters gathered in front of the building to protest the eviction.
Fearing loss of control, the 100 police became aggressive, and three officers on motorcycles rode into the crowd. Hidden from the view of the street, we had no idea of the events outside until several cops brought a bloody-faced man upstairs. They placed him next to us in the third floor hallway.
He had resisted arrest and was beaten by the police. We remained in the hallway for a few hours and when the cops were ready, they sneaked us out the alley on the West side of the building.
Once there, the police dispersed the crowd with threats to arrest the leaders. Twenty-six people got arrested that night: thirteen in the building and thirteen on the street. The media portrayed the eviction as a riot, a "clash" between homeless and police. Such descriptions distracted attention from the fact that 300 people were unnecessarily out in the cold.
The confrontation with police that took place on the street was a natural outcome of the anger and frustration of the former occupants. The police were the most visible, immediate target for people's anger.
There was no doubt that the campaign would survive the eviction. We had built only a foundation, but our sights were set much higher. We had unity, identity, a sense of purpose, and the bonds created by surviving adversity. The police may have handcuffed the people, but they could not handcuff the cause.
Next month's installment will tell the story of how the occupants of the Pacific Hotel worked to establish a self-managed nightly shelter at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 46 auditorium. This is believed to be the first homeless shelter in the U.S. provided by a labor union.