Decamping Tent City IV

The Eastside's tent city homeless community is getting the boot on February 20 from their current digs in Kirkland. They had hoped to move to Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Bellevue, but the church's parisioners voted Not In My Front Yard yesterday.

Seattlest can't help but find the vote's result very unChristian-like and, at the same time, very Bellevue-like. From the King County Journal:

``It mixes innocent kids with a potentially bad element,'' said Steve Sheely of Newcastle, whose 3 1/2-year-old son is enrolled in the preschool [at the church].

Tent City 4 has stopped at three locations since it broke off from Tent City 3 in Seattle last May. At each location, neighbors have raised concerns about crime and potential threats to their children.

While some arrests have been made, mostly on outstanding warrants, police from Woodinville, Bothell and Finn Hill have said the camps didn't bring crime with them to a neighborhood.

Photo courtesy of the Union Record