‘$1,800 a month to live in hell’: Neighbors of homeless camp near Walmart want action

Residents at the Tullwood Apartments in north Bellingham are asking the city and law enforcement for help due to growing concerns about the large homeless encampment located next to their housing complex.

The encampment, located on about 20 acres of thick woods behind Bellingham’s Walmart at East Stuart and Deemer roads, has become one of largest homeless encampments in the city, with hundreds of people living in it and many documented instances of violence, crime, drug use and even deaths.

Now residents at Tullwood say the living conditions have gotten too dangerous to ignore and they fear for their safety.

“There’s trash everywhere. There’s drugs on the sidewalk everywhere,” said Tullwood resident Shelli Tench in an interview with The Bellingham Herald. “It’s just getting worse.”

Tench has been living in Tullwood for about three years. She recently started speaking out at City Council meetings to raise awareness about the situation and put pressure on the city to find solutions.

“I pay $1,800 a month to live in hell,” Tench said at a council meeting on Monday, Sept. 25. “I had a man that stood between me and that gate with a hatchet trying to hit my car and break my car window out. I didn’t know this man. Somebody in that building had to come out and run [him] off.”

Tench and other residents say they hear gunshots on a daily basis and fighting and yelling all night. Fires are frequently set in the woods that create huge clouds of smoke that make it dangerous for residents to open their windows or use their decks.

Residents say they are afraid to walk to the bus stop or to Walmart just a block away because they’re concerned about being harassed, assaulted or robbed. Residents also told The Herald a man pointed a gun at their children while they were playing on the playground.

“They threaten to kill us all the time,” Tench said.

Safety is a top priority

Landmark Real Estate Management, which manages Tullwood Apartments, told The Bellingham Herald it is doing everything it can to keep residents safe.

Management installed gates and fencing about a year ago to keep non-residents from entering the apartments. They also are working to install new security cameras, according to on-site manager Dan Wilson.

“It’s consuming my life basically these days,” Wilson told The Herald.

Wilson became the property manager at Tullwood about three months ago and lives in the apartments with his two kids. He said inside the gates, the residents are safe. But in just a few months since he’s taken this job, he has noticed people living in the encampment have gotten bolder and more dangerous.

Wilson said he worries every day about the safety of the residents.

“It’s a matter of time. Somebody is going to get hurt. Somebody is going to get assaulted,” Wilson said.

Residents say they feel supported by Landmark but there is only so much the management company can do. Residents say they want action from city leaders now.

“I want people to be held accountable. I want them to step up. I want them to stop giving me excuses,” Tench said.

A call to action for city leadership

Mayor Seth Fleetwood addressed the growing concerns about the encampment at a City Council meeting on Monday, Oct. 16, saying he met with a group of residents at Tullwood Apartments.

“It was illuminating. It was informative. I got a very clear sense of the distress that they’re experiencing. Clearly, they are deserving of help and relief — not just to them but also the people that work in the area as well,” Fleetwood said.

He said city actions are limited when encampments are located on private property but the city was actively taking the necessary legal steps to eventually clear it — like what was done with the former encampment behind Winco on Deemer Road.

“We can’t go into private property, by law. Cleanup is the obligation of the property owner. We can assist but the actual cleanup is the requirement of a private property owner,” Fleetwood said at the council meeting.

The homeless encampment has existed for at least 11 years. Fleetwood said steps to contact the property owner, who lives in Taiwan, have been unsuccessful.

“In the process of the work involved in (clearing the Deemer Road encampment), we learned a great deal about the complexity and about the organizational requirements involved in organizing improvements at places like this,” the mayor said.

City Attorney Alan Marriner addressed the legal challenges the city faces when working to clear encampments on private property. He told council members that clearing the encampment behind Walmart would take much longer than it took to clear the encampment on Deemer Road, although no concrete timeline was determined.

“It’s wooded. It’s much larger — much, much larger than the Deemer Road (encampment) and that took us six to eight months, so that’s the scope of what we’re dealing with,” Marriner said.

Fleetwood said the city is in contact with adjacent property owners and jurisdictional partners, including Lummi Nation Chairman Anthony Hillaire, who want to collaborate in the effort to clear the property.

Fleetwood also addressed the systemic issues that contribute to growing homelessness within the city, such as a lack of mental health resources. He noted the need for more jail beds and a fully staffed police department, too.

A lack of resources

Local homeless advocate, Markis Stidham told The Herald that clearing the encampment without the proper resources will just cause the homeless to relocate without solving the problem.

“We will see them scattered all over the city, going to new locations into areas of greenways and forests,” Stidham said. “Currently we’re dealing with more opiate use, less shelter availability and extreme scarcity of social workers,” Stidham said. “We need to bolster all of that.”

Stidham said without policy change and government action, the crisis of homelessness will continue.

“Our responses are only punitive,” Stidham said. “What have we done to bring hope?”

Stidham was the co-author of a plan released in July called ‘The Big Lift’ that he believes could be the solution to drastically reducing homelessness in Whatcom County. He is working with local legislative candidates who he hopes will adopt and fund it.

A history of crime and violence

Bellingham Police have responded to numerous reports of theft, assault, domestic disturbances, trespasses, possession of stolen property, parking violations, overdoses, death investigations, weapons violations, and drug sales and use at the encampment, according to Bellingham Police spokeswoman Lt. Claudia Murphy.

A man was found dead in the encampment as recently as last weekend, police told The Herald. Another man was murdered in the encampment in 2021, according to previous reporting by The Herald.

A drug distribution network operating out of the encampment was busted in August after the man running the network was arrested carrying about 70,000 suspected fentanyl-laced pills — enough to kill the entire population of Bellingham, police said.

A search warrant related to that arrest was executed on the compound in the encampment and four firearms were found, including an AR-15 assault-style rifle; an illegal, “sawed-off” shotgun; a reported stolen .22 caliber pistol, and a 12-gauge shotgun; a small amount of suspected fentanyl powder, drug packaging material and other drug paraphernalia, and $5,876 in cash. Thirteen dogs, including 11 puppies, were also located at the encampment and taken to the Whatcom Humane Society.

Murphy told The Herald that residents living near the encampment should take all possible safety precautions when out in public.

“We also recommend calling 911 when observing or hearing criminal activity occurring in the encampment,” Murphy said in an email to The Herald. “As with most criminal activity, we rely heavily on witness information.”