Seattle Housing and Resource Effort (SHARE) closed most of their facilities, which include two tent cities and sixteen shelters, which are mostly in churches in protest.
Who are being hurt? The people the organization was formed to help. They closed the shelters to reinforce their demand for more free bus tickets. Who sets policy around here? They intend to.
SHARE receives $400,000 from Seattle to provide shelters. Their spokesman Jarvis Capucion, who has been homeless for three or four years, moved here from San Diego after quitting his job in insurance billing and collections. Because the job wasn't fulfilling.
How does a protest that hurts the people they are concerned about help?
The group said that beginning Monday, it will get $50,000 worth of bus tickets from Metro, about a fifth of what it says it needs for the rest of the year.
SHARE said that by closing the shelters during the warmer weather now, it could use its allocated bus tickets during the cold winter weather.
Asked whether shutting down shelters would generate bad publicity, a SHARE spokesman, Jarvis Capucion, said, "I don't think it can backfire publicitywise. We're doing it out of necessity, not for publicity."
On Friday afternoon, 150 to 200 of the homeless and their supporters marched from Westlake Park, then on the sidewalk along Third Avenue, south to the King County Courthouse.
No comments:
Post a Comment