Jacob Dimond / jake@yelmonline.com
Yelm Senior Center aims to be a hub for older residents in the city to connect, interact and stay active, all while creating a safe environment.
Over the course of this past year, Yelm Senior Center and the organization’s volunteer executive director, Jeanie James, have hosted numerous events and activities for the senior members, but have run into the same recurring issue — homeless individuals trespassing the property and camping overnight.
Additionally, James said there have been several instances where those trespassing have become hostile toward her after being asked to leave.
James knows this isn’t an issue unique to Yelm Senior Center or even the city and Thurston County itself. She’s calling on to the state’s leadership to find solutions to prevent hostile interactions involving trespassing transients.
“It’s the state and the laws they’re passing. Everybody goes ‘you’re one paycheck away from being houseless,’ and I think a lot of the issue, and we’ve seen it over and over, is drugs. There needs to be help for them,” James said on Monday, Aug. 25. “Are cops’ hands tied? I think it’s got to be from the top of the state. I don’t know if the county is a solution. I think it has to come from the state.”
James recalled several experiences where she arrived at Yelm Senior Center and found people camped outside the organization. She noted that several of the interactions included hostility from those trespassing at the local senior center.
Most recently, on Monday, Aug. 18, James arrived at Yelm Senior Center and noticed three homeless individuals camped in the organization’s outdoor gazebo. She wrote on Facebook last Monday that she’s “fed up with arriving at the Yelm Senior Center and finding people who have camped out overnight … And to get in my face and yell, telling me it is church property?”
“I don’t think they expected anyone to show up at 6 a.m. last Monday morning, but I came down here and sat in my car and looked at them. Their sleeping bags were on the ground, there was junk all over the table, and I got out of the car and walked over there and told them to leave or go to jail. The one younger guy got in my face,” she told the NVN. “What I wish I had done differently, I was so angry when I drove in and I confronted all of them, but I should’ve just called the police. This is not a new issue to the Yelm Community Center.”
James said previously she has arrived at the senior center to find an individual sleeping on the building’s entrance ramp. She said he was “nice and polite” at first when asked to leave, until he began walking off the property and screaming and yelling at James.
“He got to the street, stopped screaming and yelling at me — and I had already called 911 — but then he started yelling some more. The Yelm cops, two of them, saw him and they trespassed him,” James said. “They told me he’s been trespassed from just about every single business on Main Street. They get kicked off one place, and they just go find another place and another place. There’s such a lack of respect.”
Additionally, James noted a green pickup truck has recently been parking overnight in the senior center parking lot. She also observed the occupant open the truck door and urinate in the parking area.
After seeing the man urinate, James took a photo of his license plate and reported it to Yelm Police Department — who told her the vehicle is registered from Centralia. Just a couple days later, the vehicle returned to the parking lot for an extended period of time and, once again, the executive director observed the occupant urinate in the parking area.
After an encounter with YPD, the man was trespassed from Yelm Senior Center property, James claimed.
“I see his truck parked there all the time. He’s living there,” she said. “When he had to go to the bathroom, he would just come over here and do his business, and then he was back over there in his truck.”
While James knows that homelessness is a nationwide tragedy, she’s hopeful to see the state of Washington come up with realistic and effective methods to provide support for individuals experiencing homelessness. She’s also hopeful to see more treatment programs available for houseless people experiencing drug addiction.
