- [Interviewer] Theresa.
- Yes.
- [Interviewer] We are in a tent community,
Nickelsville in Seattle, tell me about it.
- That's AKA my home.
So, my family lives here.
Actually, they've accepted me into their life
about a year ago.
Nickelsville, truly I can say is my home.
I grew up in west Seattle,
so they happen to be in west Seattle at this time,
so it's kind of nice that the two kind of coordinate.
I came here a year ago.
My mother had passed away in 2010
and was in and out of shelters,
and I'm very grateful to have those experiences,
you know, to those shelters that are available to the women
that need them, but I never got to grieve.
Never been homeless before,
and just losing my mother was difficult,
let alone to be on the streets.
So when I came here, it was like a breath of fresh air.
I don't know if the family here says that,
but (laughs) it was a breath of fresh air for me.
I got an opportunity to grieve,
and um,
I would never trade these people for anything,
no matter what.
Again, we've gotten some bad press lately.
Yeah, we have our share of problems.
My family had their share of problems too
when I was growing up.
- [Interviewer] You know what I say, you know,
when people say that I say, you know,
if you had a bus full of nuns, they'd probably,
and then somebody said "well, look at Congress."
- Exactly.
- [Interviewer] You know, so,
homeless community, obviously is gonna have an issue
just as any community.
- I mean, I worked for a Fortune 500 company, UPS,
and of course they did all their logistics
on how to run this office and the timely manner of it,
and we run a pretty well-oiled ship here,
I would like to say, given the even flow of people
coming in and out, it is ever-changing.
So it does make it a little difficult
to adhere to certain rules.
But we have great leadership right now,
we always have, actually.
Unfortunately because of our rules, though,
we've had to let go of a few people,
some of them my friends, hey out there.
Some of them were on our green belt
and we miss them terribly, but they didn't follow the rules
and unfortunately, are out there
trying to survive on their own.
It's not that easy, it's not that easy in here sometimes,
but we are, I think we're spoiled here actually.
I can actually say that, I grew up a spoiled child,
and we don't want for anything here, do we?
I don't think we do. (chuckles)
- [Interviewer] Yeah but it's still not an apartment.
I mean, you're out here in the rain today.
It's damp, it's yucky, you don't have running water,
you don't have toilets, you know, I mean.
- Boo hoo.
I'm alive.
- [Interviewer] To me, I'm an old hippie,
so I love Nickelsville.
However, it's really a slap in the face of homeless
services because every one of you should have been
in some kind of a housing situation that's not a tent.
- I agree, I mean, I've often joked around how
if we could just get that 20% flat tax out of everybody
in this United States of America,
we probably wouldn't have a deficit, first of all.
And with the legalization of marijuana,
just to touch on that for a quick second, is a good idea.
I think that could provide a lot of jobs
that are out there.
Our government, god love them, doesn't want us
to have all that, though.
Who's controlling who?
They say that we vote for them,
but I don't know that.
You know, how do I know my vote actually counted?
- [Interviewer] So Nickelsville has been
in this place for a while.
- It has, we've been here for two years on this site.
- [Interviewer] Some of the buildings here,
when I was here two years ago there wasn't buildings.
You guys are making them better.
Goats and all kinds of stuff, and now you gotta move.
- Well, yeah.
Ironically too, were the properties being bought
by a company called Food Lifeline.
What they do is they help feed homeless people.
You know, low income people.
The irony of it all.
One of my questions was, couldn't we just stay here
and work for our rent?
I never did hear a response to that.
But I guess they're too busy fighting with the state
and the city over the property, so I wish them the best.
They deserve a place.
- [Interviewer] So where you gonna go?
You gotta pick up all this, you got gardens,
you got goats.
- If I had a choice, I have a cat, I mean,
I'm worried about my cat, you know.
I'm not gonna go nowhere where, first of all,
my family can't be together.
Okay, I'm not having that.
The animals, that's like my child.
I'll take a baseball bat to you if you go after them.
We want to be safe, we'd like to have electricity,
we'd like to have running water.
We'd like to have the basic needs.
- [Interviewer] You need your own property.
- We would love that.
We might have to have a little help, though.
I'm looking at some church backing,
possibly for two potential sites
where they would lease the property,
even different synagogues, churches, whatever you call them.
On both of them neither encampment would go past 100 people.
We've discussed how to handle that.
We want to be safe and we want to be together,
and if that means we stay here until we have that
and get what we want,
we have rights too.
I think in some cases, as someone who's worked most of
her life, we probably have more rights than most people.
We've earned them.
- [Interviewer] If you had three wishes, what would they be?
- My first wish would be for us all to be together
and be safe.
And that would be my only wish.
I don't need the other two.
That would be it.
Oh, I guess I would have a second one,
to make everyone feel the way that I do about that.
You know, that would be it.
- [Interviewer] Well thank you very much for talking to me.
- You're welcome, thanks for listening.
(chuckles)