As the city clears homeless encampments one by one, it seems to just move even bigger problems to a different part of town. The situation becomes worse in that individuals who accept shelter and services leave the streets while those who refuse help stay behind and their presence becomes magnified since they can’t blend in with larger homeless communities anymore. These are drug addicts and people with psychiatric disabilities mixed with career street criminals that city residents have to contend with, and they’re showing up in neighborhoods like the Stadium District.

"Unfortunately, I’m seeing the neighborhood go down,” said Stadium resident Dennis Brooke. "This used to be a pretty safe part of Tacoma but you’re seeing more street camping and people passed out on sidewalks. It’s disturbing.”

The city’s Neighborhood and Community Services, Homeless Strategy, Systems and Services Manager Caleb Carbone said that individuals cannot be compelled to accept services. "The city continues to expand the type of shelter available to include offerings like what is being developed at 35th and Pacific in the hopes that individuals will access a shelter location that best meets their needs,” city staff wrote in an email to the Tacoma Weekly. This would be a "low-barrier” shelter where people could stay despite their level of sobriety or criminal history and would include some form of management and services.

A major contributor to the problem is the lack of available shelter space across the county according to Rob Huff with the Tacoma Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness. He said that more than 4,000 people are living unsheltered in the county with 1,300 shelter spaces total to work with.

"Even if we did have 100 percent usage of all the shelter spaces that are available every night, we’d still have upward of 3,000 people living in their cars or sleeping outside on any given night right now,” he said.

Brooke is just one of the residents in Stadium that have been actively trying to get the city to do something about the unwanted street denizens who frequent the area of Division Avenue and Stadium Way. Nearly 40 complaints have been filed with the city through Tacoma FIRST 311 and its SeeClickFix app.

  Stadium residents report hearing gunfire, and this makeshift practice range with its glass bottle targets is why.

The city’s  Homeless Engagement Alternatives Liaison ( HEAL) Team performed an encampment removal at 1 Stadium Way after posting a 72-hour notice on  Aug. 2. The team worked with the encampment until the removal was finished on Aug. 10.  The campers have since moved off the main thoroughfare a short distance and down onto the Schuster Parkway slopes.

Richard Powell, who lives near Brooke, said he has taken up to 900 photos in the past month of disturbing activity just off the deck of his condominium and by using a camera-equipped drone. He has lived in the same location in Stadium for almost 20 years and has never seen his neighborhood in such poor condition with people coming and going at all hours of the day and night, people passed out on the sidewalk or in his yard, and one woman identified as "Michelle” who is often in a vocal rage through the wee hours of the morning. 

"It’s all sorts of craziness. Her active hours are from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. so you’ll hear her yelling and screaming down on the slope in the middle of the night,” Powell said. "A couple nights ago, she came up from the slope and I could hear her walking up and down the sidewalk and she was completely naked.”

Resident Janet Bell said she has seen Michelle completely unclothed in the middle of the afternoon.

"She definitely needs help. There are knives and guns and a lot of drug dealing going on and it’s sad that Michelle can’t get help,” Bell said. 

  This is one of Stadium resident Richard Powell’s more than 900 photos he's taken off his deck and with a camera equipped drone.

Brooke calls it an "epic fail” on the city’s part such that residents in the 1 Stadium Way condominiums used an excavator to transport heavy rocks to the camp area to keep others from putting up tents there.

"People have kind of taken things into their own hands because the city isn’t doing enough,” Powell said. 

Sayde Heminger, a Homeless Outreach Coordinator with the city, said that the Homeless Outreach Team has made great strides to relieve the slope of encampments that used to frequent this area. However, "Michelle…is the main person who continues to frequent the slope and unfortunately refuses shelter,” according to city staff. "The team…will continue regular site visits and address any future encampments in this area.”

Powell’s drone photographed a makeshift shooting range the campers set up on the Schuster slope, bringing gunfire at any given time. 

"We hear gunfire down there frequently,” Powell said. "I went down there one day and they have a shooting range set up with glass bottles up against an earth embankment and do target shooting down there.”

Powell has been watching evidence of a bicycle chop shop in action as expensive looking bikes are taken to the camp site and disassembled. 

"There’s a new inventory of bicycles that appears every couple days and these guys, as soon as the sun goes down, they start working on the bikes and parting them out,” he said. "Other people start to come and take the bike parts away on motorcycles or vans. It seemed like a nice little crime ring going on.”

  Open drug use is a common sight.

What’s even more troubling is that the camp is near Stadium High School, which opens on Sept. 8. Barbara Malden, who lives in the 1 North Stadium Way condominiums, sent a letter to the Tacoma Public School board of directors, the principals of each high school and Tacoma City Council members alerting them to the situation near Stadium High.  Malden said she received no reply from any of the letter recipients. 

"Currently there is drug dealing, intense drug use, physical violence, verbal violence, thefts and threats of muggings, urinating, defecating and masturbating in public and other unstable people with clear mental issues (drug induced and otherwise) who also pose unexpected and random violence and threats,” she wrote in her letter. "All of those things are happening hourly  a block away from Stadium – right where the kids load and unload the busses, walk and congregate.”

In an email to the Tacoma Weekly, Malden said she saw conservation crews around the Schuster slope last week trying to restore natural vegetation and shore up the stability of the slope from landslides. She said it seems in vain, though, with the homeless campers trampling the vegetation, spreading garbage, relieving themselves and lighting fires there.

"If the city would invest in fencing and daily enforcement, then this cycle would not need to be repeated over and over again at a considerable cost and waste of money and fruitless labor,” Malden wrote.

Desiree Radice, Senior Environmental Specialist with the city’s Passive Open Space Program, wrote in an email that city staff have seen many areas of vegetative success despite the circumstances of the urban environment. Radice indicated that restoration efforts will continue, as the Schuster Slope is one of the city’s "emphasis areas” that has received an approved encampment removal action by the city manager.