In the winter of 2007, a group of houseless people and their allies set up camp on a downtown parking lot in Olympia, daring the city to do something about it.
Nineteen years later, what started as a direct action protesting bad policy is now Quixote Village in Olympia, Orting Veterans Village and Shelton Veterans Village. It got there because the people who needed it most were allowed to lead and make it a place to thrive, not merely exist.
I was there at the beginning, and I've been thinking about it as we approach the 20-year anniversary.
In 2006, I was working at Bread & Roses, a Catholic Worker-style organization in Olympia that ran a women's shelter and a drop-in advocacy center downtown. I had spent years watching the people we served get squeezed from every direction. The city council had passed a series of ordinances designed to make homelessness invisible: no camping, no car camping, no panhandling. Then came the Pedestrian Interference Ordinance, barring people from gathering on public sidewalks during certain hours. A friend described being unhoused as being stuck on the shoulder of a freeway, where every time you tried to pull back into traffic another car came flying past. The ordinances were those cars, by design.
A friend named Tim, who had been houseless most of his life, was angry and wanted to do something about it. A small group of us had been meeting for movie nights, watching political documentaries and talking about what was happening locally. One of those nights, the conversation turned serious and we started planning. We called it Camp Quixote.
What people don't realize is that this wasn't something we slapped together in a week. Nearly four months of planning and preparation went into it. Volunteers stored supplies in their garages and backyards. We lined up porta-potties and drew up floor plans. The campers were clear about what it required: the camp had to be better than life on the street or nobody would come. So, we thought through every detail.
We chose a city-owned lot just off State Avenue, tucked behind the Brotherhood Tavern. Our fight was with the city. It made sense to plant our flag on their property.
Feb. 1, the day the new ordinance took effect, was move-in day. We were up at 5 in the morning. By the end of the first day, there were a dozen tents. By the end of the second, the camp had doubled. Eventually, we had 30 or 40 tents arranged in a circle around a common area.
The barn raising is a day I'll never forget. One of the residents turned out to be a construction worker who drew up the plans and framed out the walls. He led the volunteer crew and we built a structure that became our kitchen, dining room and gathering space. Everyone helped: campers, volunteers, people who had never swung a hammer. That night, with chicken donated by Top Foods, we cooked a meal for everyone. It was joyous. I can still see the bright smiles on faces that normally reflected the harshness of their lives.
Only one city council member showed support. The rest called for the camp to be swept away, back under the rug. The Olympian ran an editorial calling for our arrest. The city manager sent police to hang notices on tents: vacate or be arrested. The backside of each notice listed resources with phone numbers. Half of those numbers didn't work because those services no longer existed.
Despite all of that, something else was happening. People drove by, got curious, and stopped. Word spread. Neighbors showed up with food, warm clothes and donations, bringing their kids down to ask questions. Michael, the chef at Ben Moore's across the alley, made a giant pot of soup every single day.
In the final days, we expected a raid at any moment. We began looking for options, and finally the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation voted to offer sanctuary. When that news reached the camp, people were overjoyed. It was a victory.
I personally told the city we'd be moving the next morning and the site would be cleaned by the end of the day. The city manager ordered police to raid the camp at 5 in the morning anyway. They shook tents, yelled, shined lights in people's eyes. Some people were terrified and fled; we didn't see them for weeks. That was just plain mean, and I'll never forgive it.
But our volunteers were there when the sun came up, as scheduled. We moved. The camp survived.
The camp's story didn't end there, and neither did mine. Years later, on the Olympia Planning Commission, I made the motion to recommend that our city council allow a permanent encampment inside city limits. It passed. I was at the groundbreaking for Quixote Village when Kevin, a resident of the original camp, drove a shovel into the ground. Later, working as a congressional staffer, I helped connect Quixote Communities with the housing vouchers that allowed the Shelton veterans village to move forward. Every time I got to play a small part, it felt like paying something back.
Before Camp Quixote, I was the kind of activist who wanted change like a light switch: immediate, total, now. But the people on the streets, who had the most to lose, didn't have patience for that kind of urgency. This was their lives on the line and they wouldn't let us rush into it. They taught me that four months of unglamorous preparation was part of the work, not a prelude to it. It was the foundation that allowed us to last long enough to force change in our community.
I still think about the litter patrol. The campers organized teams to go out several times a day and pick up trash two blocks in every direction. It mattered to them to be good neighbors. That's grace. Grace isn't earned; it's given because it's the right thing to do. A community that had pushed them out and erased their humanity still deserved their grace, and they refused to mirror the treatment they received.
You don't change things by becoming as small as the people trying to stop you. The campers knew that. They practiced grace in the winter, in a muddy parking lot, at nine degrees, when nobody was watching.
The rest of us are still catching up.
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Rob Richards is a Navy veteran and former congressional staffer who has been an active community member in Thurston County for over two decades. To submit an opinion piece to the Thurston Chronicle, email news@thurstonchronicle.com
