Environmental hazards and neighborhood stressors among people living outdoors in Seattle, Washington
Date:
Presenting Author: Aja Sutton, Postdoc, Stanford University
Abstract: In the US, no jurisdictions ensure the fundamental conditions producing health, including housing, despite the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which (in article 21) names housing as a necessary requirement for human life. In Seattle’s King County, Washington, officials estimate forty thousand people experienced some form of homelessness in 2022, placing Seattle among the most homeless-burdened cities. People living outdoors in parks, tents, or under tarps have scant protection from weather and other environmental hazards. Through a relationship between the University of Washington and REACH Evergreen Treatment Services, the area’s largest outreach and stabilization provider, we mapped tent encampments in Seattle from 2016 to 2022. REACH’s mobile social workers record the location and nature of each street encounter, made available through a data user agreement approved by the Institutional Review Board and shared through highly secure servers. We evaluated encampment proximity to amenities (e.g., grocery stores) and disamenities (e.g., environmental contamination) in Seattle. Using spatiotemporal analysis methods, we identified changes in trends in the number of inhabitants and encampments at the census tract level relative to demographic characteristics from the American Community Survey’s 5-year 2022 estimates. Combining Washington State Department of Ecology air quality data and Seattle City Service Requests data (complaints about homeless encampments), we analyzed encampment distribution, neighborhood socioeconomic context, and environmental risk. We find encampment locations have concentrated mostly in Seattle’s low-income areas with disproportionately harmful environmental exposures over the past 6+ years, including areas with greater automotive traffic, Superfund sites, and toxic air release.