Why We’re Against Sweeps

Sweeps don’t house people. 

The vast majority of sweeps come with no offers of housing, care, or services. Rather than providing shelter, sweeps often destroy the only shelter people have. In 2022, 82% of the 943 sweeps the city conducted were “obstruction” sweeps, meaning the city didn’t need to give residents any offers of shelter or services. Sweeps thus create a cycle where people are repeatedly forced to move to new areas, all while never getting access to the services they desperately need. 

Sweeps inhibit outreach.

Service providers need to maintain contact and build relationships with their clients in order to connect them with housing, treatment, and care. When people are forcibly removed from their homes, service providers lose touch with them and can no longer provide vital resources. This erodes people’s trust in the city, and wastes valuable time and resources.

Sweeps are expensive.

Despite their inefficacy, sweeps are a massive drain on resources. This year, the city budget allotted a whopping $37 million for the Unified Care Team (Seattle’s sweep task force) - a $13.5 million increase from last year. Studies in many other cities reliably show that encampment removal is tremendously costly while doing nothing to alleviate homelessness. This money could go towards providing meaningful services for unhoused people, but it’s instead used to needlessly displace and criminalize them.

Sweeps kill.

Sweeps do not peacefully move people from one place to another - they are violent acts of displacement that separate people from their shelter, community, and belongings. Unhoused people frequently have their property destroyed and stolen during sweeps, which can mean losing life-saving medications, warm clothes, and personal documents needed to access resources. This puts people in an even more vulnerable position that increases their risk of overdose, hospitalization, and death.

A recent study showed that sweeps increase hospitalizations and non-fatal overdoses, which are both traumatic for those experiencing them and costly for our emergency service infrastructure. They were also found to contribute to 15-25% of deaths in the unhoused population over a 10-year period.

In 2022, a record-breaking 310 unhoused people died in King County alone. Our city’s policies are actively contributing to these deaths when they should be working to reduce them.

We demand that the City of Seattle begin addressing these issues by banning the most damaging sweeps, which take place during the winter and extreme weather events.

Read more about our campaign here.