In the Ballard neighborhood a few miles away, five tiny homes and 16 tents provide shelter for about 25 residents at a camp called Nickelsville. The camp is on Market Street, the main thoroughfare of a once working-class neighborhood that is seeing an influx of trendy coffee shops, British pubs, cafes and town houses selling for $800,000.
This is just down the road from me. It’s on an old brownfield site that wasn’t being used, and I’m glad it’s there. I think they rotate the location around the city on an annual basis. People need somewhere to live. It’s not really on the main thoroughfare though, it’s past the centre. Sadly and unsurprisingly there’s some pretty unpleasant NIMBYism in this neighbourhood about those camps. Nickelsville is a sarcastic name taken from a previous mayor with a poor record regarding the homeless population.
There’s an RV camp opening up nearby too - IIRC, because a lot of Ballard is zoned as industrial space, people can park there indefinitely, so there’s quite a large homeless population here, so the city is opening up a lot that was the site of an old restaurant to get the vans off the street.
(and that ‘British’ pub is shite. But there are lots of good bars).
