Mount Baker Preschool Says Encampments Feel Unsafe
- A Mount Baker preschool reports nearby homeless encampments have returned, making teachers and parents feel unsafe again. - Staffers say increased street camping near the facility has disrupted drop-offs and worried families. - The preschool's complaints add pressure on city and outreach services to clear camps and protect childcare sites (patch.com).
A preschool next to Seattle’s Mount Baker Transit Center says unauthorized encampments have returned nearby, and staff now say families feel unsafe again. (komonews.com) Gloria Hodge, who runs Hoa Mai Vietnamese Bilingual Preschool, told KOMO News that a recent stabbing in a nearby encampment intensified fears for teachers and parents. She said a man was found bleeding at the transit station steps from the school. (komonews.com) Hodge said conditions improved last year after city action, but she now sees street camping growing again around the school and transit hub. She said parents hear about the area during tours and some leave worried about daily drop-offs. (komonews.com) The dispute sits in a part of Mount Baker where Seattle and Sound Transit are planning long-term family-oriented redevelopment. The city says the adjacent Mount Baker sites are slated for affordable housing, childcare and an early learning research facility. (seattle.gov) Seattle’s current encampment rules do not create an automatic no-camping buffer around preschools. The city says it inspects unauthorized encampments, ranks them by hazards and site conditions, and handles them through litter pickup, hazard mitigation or 72-hour removals under its Multi-Department Administrative Rule. (seattle.gov) That leaves childcare operators pressing the city to treat sites near children as urgent, while outreach policy still requires shelter offers and notice in many removals. Seattle says outreach, storage and shelter offers are provided at all 72-hour removals and on request at obstruction or hazard removals. (seattle.gov) The area also includes Tent City 3, a sanctioned encampment run through SHARE/WHEEL. KOMO reported that Hodge believes authorized sites can draw additional unauthorized camping nearby, while SHARE/WHEEL says Tent City 3 is currently at 2720 S. Hanford St through May 26, 2026. (komonews.com) (sharewheel.org) Tent City 3 describes itself as a self-managed encampment that has operated since 2000 and can host up to 100 people, with rules for sobriety and security shifts in some program descriptions. That sanctioned camp is separate from the unauthorized encampments Hodge says are troubling families near the preschool. (sharewheel.org) (washington.edu) For now, the preschool’s complaint is another test of how Seattle handles encampments around places built for children. Hodge told KOMO the city is not managing the unauthorized camps closely enough, and no public plan for the Tent City 3 site after May 26 has been announced in the reporting she cited. (komonews.com)
