Last night, student group Campus Radical Women hosted a meeting to discuss the Nickelsville encampment, which is currently located in the U-District. The meeting included speakers, students and Nickelsville residents, who participated in a forum to discuss problems the encampment is facing and possible solutions to homelessness in Seattle.

“This is a particularly pertinent problem seeing that Nickelsville is in our own community,” said Liz Biskar, UW junior and the group’s organizer, in opening remarks.

The encampment, which moved to the University Christian Church parking lot Oct. 10, is now being asked to leave by Nov. 30.

“The congregation voted that the encampment move because [the church is] getting a lot of pressure from the mayor in getting fines,” said Andrea Bauer, political activist and editor of the Freedom Socialist.

Bauer was one of the 25 people arrested in September for trespassing and misdemeanor when the city of Seattle asked Nickelsville to leave its location.

The encampment plans to move to a different church parking lot in the U-District.

The new location will mark Nickelsville’s fifth move since it formed in September. The name “Nickelsville” is meant to poke fun at Mayor Greg Nickels for his citywide sweep of homeless encampments in a proposed effort to “clean up” Seattle.

As the economy worsens, homelessness rates rise. January’s One Night Count found more than 8,000 homeless in King County between the hours of 2 and 5 a.m., a 15 percent increase from the previous year.

“Everything in the economy that’s bad hurts people who are poor or on the edge of being poor,” Bauer said. “I think shelter is a human right but our government doesn’t really act like it is.”

The encampment, not to be confused with SHARE’s tent cities, is meant to provide the homeless with a safe and sanitary community in which to live. The long-term goal of the encampment is to obtain a piece of land where the homeless can build a shantytown to house 1,000 homeless.

“People there are really friendly,” said Jacob Brown, a three-week resident of Nickelsville who was asked to leave transitional housing after misconduct while sleepwalking. “There’s a communal fire for people to sit around and talk. That satisfies some sort of instinct to me for some reason.”

In general, residents have been receiving generous donations from surrounding communities, including food donations from fraternities and sororities. But occasionally the encampment receives harassment from passersby.

“Every once in a while somebody will drive by and say, ‘get a job’ or ‘why don’t you find a house,” said Ted “Tex” Shirey, a Nickelsville resident since its inception.

Many Nickelsville residents have jobs but simply cannot afford rent or find a place to live. Others said many homeless have trouble getting references.

Though the city has offered Nickelsville residents temporary housing, restrictions deter some people away from shelters.

Many shelters do not allow couples or families to stay together.

Residents emphasize homelessness as a citywide problem that burdens not only the homeless but also society, arguing that putting the homeless into temporary housing does not provide long-term solutions, but instead costs taxpayers.

“The Mayor is stepping on all the little people while he’s trying to build a bigger and better city,” Shirey said. “What he doesn’t understand is that you need the little people to make a good city.”

Reach reporter Emily Lee at news@dailyuw.com.