Fighting Homelessness: Multi-Sector Partnering to Promote Community Engagement for Social Change

White RC¹*, Lovell M¹* and Orlando J²*

1. Social Work, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington, USA
2. Jesuit Mission and Identity, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington, USA

Tent City was founded in the Seattle area in 1990 in response to the chronic shortage of shelter beds. (As of October 2004 there were 2,500 shelter beds for 8,000 homeless people). Tent City is a group of up to 100 homeless men and women who live together in a group of tents on the property of a host, where they are invited to stay for periods of 30–90 days. In the almost 15 years of their existence, Tent City has moved more than 30 times in the greater Seattle area. Tent City is sponsored by SHARE/WHEEL – an organization of homeless and recently homeless men and women who advocate on behalf of homeless people in the Seattle/King County area. In addition to Tent City, SHARE/WHEEL coordinates and oversees 15 overnight church-based shelters for men and women, serving up to 325 men and women each night.

In the fall of 2004, Seattle University invited Tent City to take up residence on the campus during the month of February 2005. Prior to this, Tent City had only been hosted by churches, and, in one case, on publicly owned land.

This paper reports on the process and outcomes of the community engagement process that brought together the university’s students, faculty and staff, and the neighborhood surrounding Seattle University’s Tent City encampment. Qualitative and quantitative data will be used to report changes in attitude, knowledge, civic engagement, social capital and social policy among the various stakeholder communities with regard to the issue of homelessness.

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