The City of Bellingham will begin clearing and logging the large, long-standing homeless encampment near the Walmart store in north Bellingham starting in the first week of August, working alongside private property owners, Whatcom County, and social service providers. The encampment, estimated to house roughly 150 residents across 40 acres of mostly private forested land, has been a persistent focus of public safety and environmental concern from the surrounding King Mountain neighborhood.
What the Cleanup Will Look Like
The process will unfold in phases. First, notices to vacate will be delivered to all residents of the encampment. After encampment residents have left the site, a logging company will build access roads and prepare the properties for cleanup and timber harvest. The City of Bellingham is coordinating the effort but notes that the land is primarily privately owned; the city's role is to support the property owners rather than to conduct the cleanup itself.
Mayor Kim Lund's office communicated the plan to the King Mountain Neighborhood Association in a letter that was specific about the scope: the goal is to address health and safety risks, criminal activity, and environmental damage that have developed on the properties as a result of the long-standing encampment. City officials were explicit that the cleanup is not intended to "solve homelessness or the many complex issues that contribute to it."
The encampment sits between East Stuart Road, Kellogg Road, and James Street, a forested wedge between residential King Mountain neighborhood streets and commercial development along Meridian Street. A judge previously ordered the owner of the largest parcel within the encampment to pay the city for cleanup costs after Public Works fenced off part of the property and removed more than 17 tons of waste in a prior cleanup action.
What Neighbors Have Said
Residents of the King Mountain neighborhood have repeatedly raised concerns about conditions at the encampment at city council meetings and in direct communication with the mayor's office. Their concerns have centered on violent crimes within the encampment, fires set in the forested area that pose a risk to adjacent homes, human waste runoff, and the accumulation of toxic materials. The encampment's residents have included people with significant histories of refusing shelter and services, which the city has publicly acknowledged.
Many encampment residents have lived at the site for years. City officials have described them as "deeply service-resistant," a term that captures the difficulty of connecting long-term outdoor residents with shelter and treatment systems they have previously declined. That pattern is common in large entrenched encampments, where the social norms and informal economies of the encampment itself can become a barrier to transition.
Outreach Efforts Before Displacement
Intensive outreach has been underway for weeks and even months ahead of the planned clearing. The outreach effort is led by the Whatcom County Health Department with participation from other service providers and community partners. The goal of the outreach phase is to connect as many encampment residents as possible with shelter beds, addiction treatment, mental health services, and other support before the notices to vacate are delivered.
Whatcom County will lead the outreach coordination going forward, a division of responsibility that reflects the county's broader role in operating and funding shelter and social services. The city has recently announced additional strategies to expand shelter capacity, including the planned third tiny home village in the Irongate neighborhood approved earlier this summer. That village is projected to add around 30 units of transitional housing when it opens in 2027.
How many of the estimated 150 encampment residents will accept services before the clearing begins is unknown. Advocacy organizations working with Bellingham's unsheltered population have raised concerns about where residents will go if shelter options are unavailable or if they decline them, noting that clearing one encampment without adequate alternatives often leads to dispersal to other forested or undeveloped areas throughout the city.
Environmental and Safety Factors
The environmental damage at the site has accumulated over years of occupation. Encampment residents have used the forest for waste disposal, constructed informal structures, and in some cases set fires that have damaged the tree canopy and understory. The timber harvest component of the plan allows the property owners to recover some economic value from the land while also clearing the site for cleanup and replanting with native vegetation.
Bellingham Public Works had previously fenced off portions of the property and removed more than 17 tons of waste, but the sheer size of the 40-acre footprint has made comprehensive cleanup difficult without the kind of coordinated, multi-party effort now being organized. For more on the city's ongoing homelessness response, see earlier coverage of the Irongate tiny home village announcement. Those interested in following the city's broader approach to encampment management and shelter services can also visit the City of Bellingham's housing and human services page and the Whatcom County Health Department's outreach resources.
