PORT ANGELES — At a muddy, abandoned campsite just above Peabody Creek, Joe DeScala bent to his task under gray December skies.
“Here’s another needle,” he said from a crouch.
Within minutes, he spotted two more syringes stuck in wood and dirt in the tiny clearing, the gentle static of rushing water in the background.
“We’ve got sharps containers and stuff for all this stuff when we find it,” DeScala said Friday morning.
“But it’s not easy working in this stuff, you know, scattered all down the hill, so we’ll have to, you know, go back and forth and pick away at it.”
A saturated Mariners jacket and an Algood peanut butter jar lay among the debris, a tenth of a mile or so from where the trail begins in a retail parking lot. There sat DeScala’s pickup, waiting for its trip to the transfer station.
Closer to the creek, all that was left of an estimated ton of detritus picked up by DeScala and his crew were a few crates overflowing with signs of daily life — empty food containers, an empty personal bag, a grocery cart returnable to Safeway.
A mortgage company’s advertisement, painful in these climes, was affixed to the cart’s side.
“‘Stop Renting’ Homeownership is For Everyone!” it said, illustrated with two broadly smiling faces.
One of the three hypodermic needles found at an abandoned campsite Friday at Peabody Creek in Port Angeles. (Paul Gottlieb/Peninsula Daily News)
Earlier last week, the Port Angeles High School graduate and CrossFit enthusiast was the guest of the Port Angeles Business Association, describing to a Zoom audience his plans and 4PA (4PA.org), the group he founded to accomplish his goal. 4PA is fueled by non-tax-deductible donations.
DeScala, 46, whose grandfather was a founder and builder of Laurel Lanes bowling alley in Port Angeles, wants to expand the effort in 2022 by establishing a transitional housing site he would call Touchstone Campus.
No property for the housing has been selected. No plans have been made for it.
“There’s a lot of places that have just been left with nobody in them, and stuff has been there for months, and it’s just rotting,” he said Friday.
“That’s what we’re attempting to go and clean up at the moment.”
A former Wilder Auto car salesman who earned a bachelor’s degree in biology, DeScala turned over the reins of his church at the end of October, retaining leadership team duties while laying 4PA’s groundwork.
He already has been cleaning up areas with volunteer crews.
He said he noticed encampments while running backwoods trails and talked with residents who raised concerns, which also were a major focus of the recently concluded elections for the City Council.
Board members on 4PA are Levi and Ashley Liberty, Justin and Dei Snook, and Jena Stamper, who ran unsuccessfully for a council position.
“For a community our size, we have a healthy amount of services to extend to people who are homeless,” he said.
“I’m not here to talk about all the reasons that people fall into homelessness,” he said. “There are various reasons, but at the same rate, they’re human beings, they’ve lost some sort of self worth and dignity, and we can help them restore that.”
To that end, he said he would hire homeless people to be on his cleanup crews or have a job on his planned Touchstone campus.
“One thing I that I really noticed that I felt was drastically neglected, was city cleanup,” he said at the meeting, citing “accumulation of debris and trash in areas that are not necessarily directly in the public eye, although some of it is, but a lot of it’s just off the beaten path, but it’s still in places the public goes, creeks, valleys, areas like that have gotten really bad.”
His website paints a troubled picture of life in the city.
“Something is out of balance in Port Angeles,” it said.
“The population of unsheltered individuals continues to rise, which has led to our public spaces and natural areas being damaged and made unsafe,” it goes on to say.
“Businesses in our downtown have been drastically impacted by the increased population of unsheltered. Theft, assault, and property damage have taken a toll.”
In an interview last week, DeScala said he based the assertion on his conversations with friends who are business owners.
He reminded PABA participants that it is not a crime to be homeless, a point echoed in a separate interview last week with Police Chief Brian Smith, who stressed it as a “take-home message” for discussing criminal activity and the homeless.
“Looking at someone and trying to characterize them or determine if their circumstances are this or that, that is also unfair if you don’t know that person,” Smith said.
“This isn’t a new subject that businesses deal with criminal activities around burglaries and thefts and things like that,” he said.
“There is a connection between illicit and dangerous drugs with burglary and theft. I did not use the word unhoused in that sentence,” he said. “We deal with behavior and what’s against the law.”
It is illegal to camp or pitch a tent on city property, he said, as well as doing drugs in public.
If while cleaning up an area people see what appears to be a person’s belongings, they should leave those items alone, Smith said.
DeScala said he is following that rule. He said local law enforcement knows about 4PA’s efforts and that over the years he has created relationships with the Olympic Peninsula Community Clinic and the Rediscovery Program, which can dispatch workers “to areas that require less of a law enforcement hand but more of a social services, de-escalation type of situation.”
New PABA President Jim McEntire asked DeScala on Tuesday what he and the board members think “were the steps or missteps that got us to where we are today.”
Said DeScalia: “I think we got here because you cannot tolerate everything, any and every behavior in a community, and retain the safety and the structure of that community,” he said, adding he was speaking for himself, not the board.
“So I think what’s got us here is we just tolerate behavior that shouldn’t be tolerated. In my opinion, you shouldn’t be able to sit in a public space and build a shelter or do drugs,” he said.
“And unfortunately, in the climate of today, you know, tolerance and acceptance is king, and so, we get to a point where people feel like they can do whatever, whenever, however they want, and there’s no repercussions for it,” he said.
“Until we take back some of those things, it’s going to be an ongoing problem.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
