I Heart Downtown Seattle

The challenges surrounding Seattle’s urban spaces is well documented, as is the homelessness crisis that results in thousands of people living outdoors, while rendering community spaces unusable for their intended purposes. To address this, We Heart Seattle (WHS) – an action-based, boots-on-the-ground organization – mobilizes hundreds of volunteers for debris cleanups in public spaces and offers resources to the unhoused neighbors we meet along the way.

This unique form of community harm reduction is typically located in difficult-to-access yet highly valuable public spaces that city workers cannot or will not access for several reasons.

WHS achieves dramatic outcomes when measured as a whole, yet these outcomes are achieved by restoring individual public spaces and focusing outreach support to individual people living in those public spaces. Each urban environment or greenspace we restore builds upon the next; each person we assist in moving from homelessness to safe & humane indoor living makes the citizenry stronger.

WHS measures its impact in the following ways:

• Number of debris cleanup events held, tallied by site, zip code and date
• Pounds of debris removed at each debris removal event
• Number of volunteers and volunteer hours contributed to each debris cleanup event
• Number of teams and individuals fulfilling their community service hours with WHS
• Number of people assisted out of dangerous, inhumane situations into safer living conditions inside
• Number of in-depth outreach client engagements, as measured by stipends provided
• Number of people with recent homelessness experience WHS brings on staff (providing meaningful work and compensated with fair wages)

The WHS program involves the following main components, and most of these activities occur somewhat in parallel with cleaning and maintaining a specific park, playground, greenspace, alley, sidewalk, vacant lot, or commercial zone.

Strategy 1: Debris Cleanup & Waste Management as Harm Reduction:
After assessing a degraded public space recommended by community members, a debris cleanup event is scheduled; large numbers of volunteers work 2-4 hours to bag thousands of pounds of waste; WHS rents a truck to haul the debris and hazardous waste to the transfer station, else WHS moves the bagged waste to a location where Seattle Public Utilities can collect them. Some sites are so large and degraded they require 2, 5, or even 8 major debris cleanup events to restore the site. A site steward volunteer is established.

Strategy 2: Outreach and Housing Pathway Activities:
Outreach teams start removing debris from encampments, approximately 25% of the people living there pitch in to help us clean the space they inhabit. In appreciation for their volunteer labor, WHS offers a basic needs stipend in the form of a gift card. We return daily. The Outreach Team continually offers resources that might remove barriers. This includes finding resources to fulfill basic needs like getting a paying job or accessing benefits to establish income. Case Management services are often held in local cafes and restaurants, enabling the client to feel relaxed in a clean, quiet, professional setting. Other common locations are business and government offices while enrolling for benefits, employment, or housing. Transportation is provided. If the client decides they’re ready to move off the streets, we assist them - including in some cases referring people to treatment service providers, employment agencies, transportation, and various housing providers.

Strategy 3: Common Barriers WHS Outreach Team helps people overcome:
We help people get employment through contracted labor arrangements with UpLift Northwest (upliftnw.org, FKA The Millionair Club). We help people establish sobriety to qualify for housing by referring them find a treatment provider who can accomplish this, often on the same day they request it. We provide transportation to wherever they need to go to remove barriers and move into housing.

In just the first 9 months of 2023:
1) We signed up 425 brand new volunteers for trash clean-ups… we now have 944 active volunteers.
2) We logged 3,323 person-hours for trash removal and graffiti cleaning.
3) We acquired the paid services of 15 people with lived experience as part-time debris cleaners and outreach staff.

Over our first three years, we’ve paid living wage hourly rates to 26 hard-working people with a recent history of homelessness, by partnering with a local nonprofit organization that provides dignified jobs and job-readiness services to men and women experiencing poverty and homelessness.

In short, we are volunteer-led and scales to meet the needs of our community.

As of September 30, 2023, We Heart Seattle reached a two major milestones: not only did we celebrate our 3-year anniversary, we can now report we’ve removed 1 million pounds of trash from Seattle public spaces from 26 distinct Seattle zip codes. Over our first three years of operation, we established contact with thousands of people living outdoors, and helped 193 people move off the streets.