10/16/2022
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The Spokesman-Review
GUEST OPINION: HELPING CAMP HOPE RESIDENTS FIND STABILITY TAKES TIME AND EFFORT
The Inlander
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The Spokesman-Review
By Colin Tiernan
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Sometimes Kristen Gerloff handles the drive-thru at the Jack in the Box on Sprague Avenue, where she’s worked since May. Other times she mans the grill or the fryer at the east Spokane fast-food joint.
“It’s a lot of fun,” she said. “It’s fast-paced.”
Nearby, Gerloff has lived since the spring in a tent at Camp Hope, the 450-person encampment on state property along Ray Street, 100 feet north of Interstate 90.
She doesn’t plan to be at Camp Hope much longer.
“I just got approved for an apartment,” she said. “I’ve come a long way since I’ve been here.”
While Gerloff has been trying to find a place to live, Camp Hope’s residents have found themselves in the middle of a standoff between Spokane leaders and officials with the Washington state government, which owns the land.
Mayor Nadine Woodward and Spokane County officials want Camp Hope gone by mid-November. The city is threatening to sue the Washington State Department of Transportation, which owns the land, over the tent city, and the county is already working on a lawsuit. Woodward has said Camp Hope must go not only because it’s hurting East Central, but because it grows increasingly unsafe for its own residents as winter draws near.
The state, which has committed $21 million to housing the people living at Camp Hope, says disbanding the camp now would be counterproductive, given the ongoing effort to resettle its residents. State officials have chided Woodward for her handling of the situation and accused her of caring more about “optics than action.”
“The City’s approach and artificial deadlines will not benefit the people living within or outside of the encampment,” Secretary of Transportation Roger Millar wrote Friday in a letter to Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl.
While government officials have traded barbs, Camp Hope has received attention at the state and national level.
“It is devastating the entire neighborhood,” Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said on “Fox and Friends” last month.
“You have entire families living in fear because of the drugs, the alcohol, the theft, the violence inside the camp.”
Knezovich and Meidl have vowed to clear Camp Hope, and said they’ll arrest people who refuse to leave.
Campers have heard Knezovich’s comments. They said they know many residents have accused them of ruining the neighborhood.
“I’m not stupid; I know what they’re saying – we’re all a bunch of druggies, heathens, criminals,” Chris Senn said. “It’s not true.”
Many East Central residents said they also aren’t happy with the bitter back and forth over Camp Hope.
Randy McGlenn, chairman of the East Central Neighborhood Council, said crime has risen dramatically since Camp Hope formed in December, and residents feel unsafe walking around the neighborhood.
According to the Spokane Police Department, calls for service in the quarter-mile radius around Camp Hope are up 56% compared to 2021 and burglary calls are up 514%.
But McGlenn said lobbing “nasty” letters and making demands isn’t helping. Government officials have to put aside their differences and address the root causes of homelessness, he said.
“Just scattering the camp and moving these people along isn’t solving anything,” McGlenn said. “They’re still going to be homeless. They’re still going to have the same issues they had that got them here.”
Homeless advocates, meanwhile, said they’re worried that anti-homeless sentiment is growing.
Maurice Smith, who works for Jewels Helping Hands as the camp’s security official, said it feels like some politicians are more interested in “waging a war” against the homeless than helping them. Jewels is the primary service provider to camp residents.
“Leadership sets the tone, and the tone that’s being set is, these are a bunch of drug-addicted criminals and they just need to be swept and taken to a shelter or jail,” Smith said. “It shouldn’t be that way.”
How Camp Hope happened
Camp Hope started in December, when homeless people pitched tents outside Spokane City Hall to protest the city’s lack of shelter space.
After the city said it would remove the tents, the protesters moved to the vacant Department of Transportation property along the freeway. The department initially planned to break up the camp, but opted against it because the city didn’t have enough shelter beds available.
Over the following months, Camp Hope grew. In June, government officials started making tangible steps toward addressing the situation.
The Department of Commerce offered Spokane $25 million to house Camp Hope residents. The Washington Legislature had set aside $143 million in 2022 for housing people living on state-owned rights of way. The money has to be spent on projects that provide “safer housing opportunities” and emphasize “permanent housing solutions.”
Spokane had mere weeks to put together a proposal for the dollars. To date, the Department of Commerce has committed $21 million to the Woodward administration’s plan.
More than $13 million is going toward a Catholic Charities project that entails buying, remodeling and operating a former Quality Inn on Sunset Boulevard to house more than 100 people. Spokane will get $4 million to pay for the operation of a new homeless shelter on Trent Avenue. Another $3.5 million is set aside for the Empire Health Foundation and other homeless service providers.
Spokane and the state are still collaborating on the Woodward administration’s plan, but their relationship became acrimonious in early September.
The shift came after Woodward threatened to sue the state over Camp Hope and demanded that it be cleared by mid-October. The mayor and sheriff have since pushed that deadline back by a month.
The threat came just two days after the city had opened the Trent Resource and Assistance Center, a former warehouse.
Before opening that facility, the city couldn’t have argued it had shelter space available for all of Camp Hope’s residents. Governments can’t legally remove homeless people from public property unless they offer them a bed, so attempting to disperse the campers could have exposed the city to lawsuits.
The Woodward administration says it can fit 400 people into the Trent shelter, and that it could find beds for all of Camp Hope’s residents. The Department of Transportation has disputed whether the city could house 400 people in the Trent shelter.
The state on Sept. 20 delivered a scathing response to Woodward’s letter, signed by Millar, State Patrol Chief John Batiste and Department of Commerce Secretary Lisa Brown. The state officials said Woodward was trying to shift blame for Camp Hope and setting up the campers for failure by moving them before housing was available.
It was an unusually harsh rebuke for an official government communication, and two days later Knezovich escalated the fight even further. He said he’d clear out Camp Hope on his own.
In the three weeks since Knezovich’s announcement, the county and Meidl have continued to threaten the Department of Transportation with legal action, citing nuisance law violations.
Nuisance laws are often used to prevent property owners from accumulating trash or using their land as a base for chronic criminal activity. With a judge’s approval, governments can abate the nuisance without the property owner’s permission and make the owner pay for the removal.
The Department of Transportation on Friday shot back at Meidl with an eight-page letter that questions the constitutionality of the city’s plans and threatens legal action against Spokane if the city doesn’t rescind its “chronic nuisance” notice.
‘Difficult to feel positive’
East Central residents say they feel for the people at Camp Hope.
“I don’t want to paint them all as criminals,” Moises Gourneau said. “People are people.”
But Gourneau said it’s hard to remain empathetic when people steal from you. In recent months, his family had its lawnmower and leaf blower stolen, and its car windows smashed. He said his family had to call the police when a homeless man broke into their house and wouldn’t leave.
“I’ll still have sympathy because my family went through drug problems,”Gourneau said. “At the same time, I definitely wouldn’t have my little sisters playing out here by themselves.”
Lina Krivopustov said she doesn’t feel safe going for walks by herself. Jeff Jones said it’s unsettling to have people walking through the neighborhood at night, rummaging through trash cans.
“I feel sorry for them and all that,” Jones said, adding that “the ones I’ve come into contact with don’t seem to want anything more than something for nothing.”
Ken Craudell, general manager of Double Eagle Pawn, said Camp Hope has had a negative impact on his store.
“Every day we catch, conservatively, three people trying to come in here and steal something,” Craudell said. “I ran a guy out of here earlier today because he came in here with a pair of snips and was going over to the bikes. He was going to cut one of the security tags off a bike and try to wheel it out the door.”
McGlenn said East Central residents understand that people at Camp Hope are struggling, but they’re also growing tired of rampant crime.
“It is difficult to feel positive when people don’t feel safe,” he said. “I think that’s really what’s feeding a lot of the animosity today, is people just want the issue to be dealt with.”
Spokane Homeless Coalition Administrator Barry Barfield said it’s undeniable that Camp Hope has caused an uptick in crime, but people need to put the situation in context.
“Even if you took the 600 wealthiest, most well-intended Spokanites and put them on ground with tents, and surround them with police cars, and give them no income and services, and porta-potties, and drinking out of a hose, I bet those 600 wonderful citizens of our community just might cause an uptick in crime,” Barfield said.
People living in Camp Hope say they know the encampment has led to a rise in theft, but they said they believe a minority of the residents are responsible.
“Just because you’ve got one bad apple in the box doesn’t mean the whole box is bad,” Mark Young said.
Lewis Harrington, an Army veteran who lives out of his broken down 1990 Chevrolet van, agreed.
“There’s good, honest people here that are really struggling and trying,” Harrington said. Senn, who spent 15 years in the Army, said many Camp Hope residents simply suffer from mental illness or had bad luck. He used himself as an example of the latter.
Before he came to Camp Hope in May, Senn was a house painter. He lost his job and couldn’t afford rent.
“Woke up one morning, car wouldn’t start,” he said. “The company I worked for, you had to have a running vehicle to work for them.”
Senn has two jobs, one as a part of Jewels Helping Hands’ security team and another at Conoco.
Barfield said it’s important to remember Camp Hope’s residents are some of the most disadvantaged members of the community.
“These folks have been beaten down, hurt, victims of adverse childhood experiences. They were raised by drug addicted parents, they were in and out of the foster system, they have lost jobs, it goes on and on,” he said.
“If you dig into their story, 90% of the time your heart goes out to them and you say, ‘Oh my God, I want to help you.’ ” Smith said it’s frustrating that the narrative around Camp Hope has become so negative.
He pointed out that the camp’s population has fallen from more than 600 to 443 as more people move into housing, and said an effort by the Department of Licensing to get people state identification documents is a major sign of progress.
Spokane will be remembered for how it responds to Camp Hope, Smith said.
“What do we believe in?” Smith asked. “Do we believe that rescuing a life – and we’ve got 443 lives here – and bringing them out of the situation that they’re in is a worthwhile endeavor? Are we willing to pay the price for doing it? What kind of community do we want to be?” Colin Tiernan can be reached at (509) 459-5039 or at colint@spokesman. com.
GUEST OPINION: HELPING CAMP HOPE RESIDENTS FIND STABILITY TAKES TIME AND EFFORT
By Lerria Schuh
The sheriff has announced a Nov. 10 deadline to clear out Camp Hope. He says he can place everyone in a more humane situation at local shelters and receive services. Why shouldn’t it be done immediately?
According to a recent survey, 443 folks live at Camp Hope. A long-standing challenge has been an inadequate number of available shelter beds in the greater Spokane region.
What about the new Trent shelter that accommodates 250 guests and, if necessary, 400-plus spaces? Recent night counts have been just over 150 persons at the Trent shelter, leaving only 250 open spaces. Those spaces are floors mats only (not enough beds), and spaced within a few feet of each other offering no privacy or security. There is no running water (only porta potties), no on-site services and no space to store all personal belongings.
Besides not having enough shelter space to accommodate everyone at Camp Hope, it is critical to recognize that shelters are not appropriate solutions for everyone. A Camp Hope survey last spring revealed the majority of residents would not go to a shelter. Many houseless individuals have concern about personal safety in shelters because of past trauma (particularly when the number of guests is high and no personal space provided). Some need medical assistance shelters don’t have the capacity or skill to manage. Some folks want to be with their partner or family, and many shelters take only singles (meaning if you are a couple or family you cannot stay).
No one, not even the sheriff, can force an individual to a shelter. If the sheriff clears out Camp Hope, some folks will walk away to pitch their tent in a park, roadside, alley or neighborhood. For those who accept a ride to a shelter, nothing requires them to check-in or stay. If all 400-plus people go to a shelter when the sheriff requests it, they don’t have to check-in and can check-out the next day.
What’s the alternative? The state of Washington is providing more than $24 million for housing and services for Camp Hope residents to ensure they are moved to transitional housing with support for a healthy, sustainable lifestyle. The process must include services and permanent supportive housing, not shelters. This will take time. It is this time that the sheriff is unwilling to allow.
Why does it take time? Why can’t the state pick up folks and drive them to housing? First, housing must be available. With the amount of funding the state is providing, several options will initially house a few hundred folks with beds, running water, access to food, transportation, services specific to individual needs, etc and should be available for move-in within about a month. Knowing that space for 400-plus is needed, additional plans are in the works. But with a less than 1% available occupancy rate in Spokane, it is taking time to find enough housing units.
The most fundamental step to getting folks housing ready is securing proper paperwork. Only two of the Camp Hope residents interviewed last spring indicated they have necessary identification to apply for housing (state identification and social security cards, both of which require a birth certificate). Cash and a current address are necessary to apply for these documents. Houseless folks typically don’t have either. The state is willing to provide funding to ensure Camp Hope residents get the documents they need, and the sheriff’s plan does not.
Currently, city-operated shelters do not provide services. However, service providers are at Camp Hope daily and offer medical treatment, mental health assistance, substance-use disorder treatment, assistance in securing identification, meals, clothing and more.
In addition to housing, the state is willing to fund continued resources to accommodate individual needs to help ensure success. Camp Hope residents won’t be dropped off at housing and forgotten, they will have peer navigators and support systems to help them through to the next steps of building their lives and staying housed while simultaneously lowering the houseless population. The sheriff’s plan is to drop off folks at shelters, with no follow-up plan or funding to support them. The sheriff’s plan will do nothing to lower the houseless population.
What do the residents of Camp Hope and community of Spokane deserve? Reduction of the houseless population into housing, not shelters, and services to match individual needs to ensure folks stay housed. The state is willing to pay for it. The sheriff should get out of the way. Lerria Schuh, of Spokane, is executive director of the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund and secretary/ treasurer of the Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium.
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The Inlander
In a lengthy, fiery letter, the Washington State Department of Transportation "strenuously objected" to the city's threats of legal action over Camp Hope, calling Spokane's actions "unlawful," "constitutionally suspect," and "unreasonable and unrealistic."
The letter is in response to a "Chronic Nuisance Notice" Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl sent to WSDOT on Oct. 5. The notice blamed WSDOT for multiple crimes being committed on or near the large East Central homeless encampment, and proposed an agreement that would see the camp cleared by mid-November. WSDOT’s letter rejects that timeline and some of the steps the city says the agency needs to take.
Earlier today, city spokesperson Brian Coddington said the city was in regular meetings with the state as the parties try to work towards a solution. The meetings are behind closed doors, so we don't know whats going on in there, but the letter doesn't paint a pretty picture.
WSDOT spokesperson Joseph McHale says the agency isn’t taking interviews about their reply to the nuisance notice. The agency's 8-page letter is full of legal jargon, so here's a simplified breakdown of some of what WSDOT is saying:
1. We tried to call the cops when people first started camping there, but you said they couldn't come.
While laying out the history of Camp Hope, WSDOT reminds the city that they did not “authorize, permit, or in any other way condone the protest moving to [WSDOT] property or the establishment of an encampment of displaced individuals on this site.”
In fact, WSDOT says the Spokane Police Department was immediately contacted for help coordinating a plan to close the camp. But WSDOT says the police weren’t allowed to help.
“Following the protesters’ trespass onto WSDOT property, the agency sought to work with the City to coordinate an effort to humanely remove those individuals from the property. Indeed, WSDOT immediately contacted the Spokane Police Department and Code Enforcement to attempt to coordinate a plan to close off the property. The Spokane Police Department and Code Enforcement, however, advised WSDOT they were directed to not respond to trespass calls involving WSDOT’s property or its surrounding parcels.”
2. You later signed an agreement saying the cops could come. One day later, you hit us with a nuisance notice.
WSDOT says they signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” with the city that would allow cops to enter the property and issue trespass orders. In the agreement, the parties also pledged to work together to solve the issue and work to get camp residents housed. The “working together” part of that understanding was undermined a day later, WSDOT says, when the police issued the chronic nuisance notice.
"WSDOT continues its efforts to coordinate with the City, which recently finally agreed to a 'Memorandum of Understanding Between City and Washington State Department of Transportation,' acknowledging the City’s law enforcement’s authority to 'enter, issue no trespass orders, and to enforce state and municipal law' at Camp Hope. In addition, the City finally professed to agree to 'cooperate in efforts to address homeless encampments' and 'utilize its social services outreach resources to connect at-risk populations with critical housing and social services.' The following day, however, the City issued this purported Notice of Nuisance.'
3. Your city’s code for chronic nuisance properties is illegal because it doesn’t allow for due process.
Here, WSDOT appears to say Spokane's entire city code that regulates chronic nuisance notices is illegal because it requires property owners to enter an agreement with the city to clear their property, without providing a process to dispute whether the property is even a nuisance. There's also no process to contest a city-approved "agreement" outlining steps to clean up the property.
"Although SMC 10.68.040 mandates a response to Chronic Nuisance Notice, it provides no timelines, process, or standards for consideration of the response. Moreover, the code further provides that after a response is submitted, '[t]he person in charge shall enter into an abatement agreement or otherwise produce a plan approved by the chief of police or his designee to abate the nuisance within fifteen days of the issuance of the chronic nuisance notice'—irrespective of whether the respondent objects to the Chronic Nuisance Notice.
Here, for instance, WSDOT contests the Chronic Nuisance Notice and does not agree with the proposed 'Chronic Nuisance Abatement Agreement' drafted by the Spokane Police Department. But the code provides no mechanism by which respondents can challenge the proposed agreement. Instead, the code purports to require WSDOT to agree to the 'agreement' drafted by the City without any input from WSDOT or meaningful legal process whatsoever, produce a plan approved by the chief of police or his designee (in their sole discretion, apparently), or else be guilty of a class 1 civil infraction. See SMC 10.68.050.B ('It is a class 1 civil infraction for any person in charge to fail to enter into an abatement agreement or otherwise produce an approved plan to abate the nuisance within fifteen days of the issuance of the chronic nuisance notice.'). Requiring a respondent to enter into a contested 'Chronic Nuisance Abatement Agreement' with no means by which to challenge it or else be subject to civil penalties, falls far short of the minimum due process required by our State’s constitution."
4. We’re trying to fix the problem but don’t feel like you’re giving us enough information.
In their chronic nuisance notice, the city said there is "adequate shelter space capacity for all involuntarily homeless in the City of Spokane." WSDOT does not think that is true.
"Moreover, the site population is beginning to further decrease as limited shelter beds have become available (although WSDOT disputes that Trent Resource and Assistance Center has capacity for '250 minimum with additional flex space to 400,' as you assert at page 4 of the Notice)."
The city’s notice listed available shelter beds at the Trent Resource and Assistance Center, the Catalyst Project, The Way Out Center and VOA. WSDOT says that glosses over the complexity of shelter bed availability.
"The City’s Notice appears to quantify potentially available shelter beds, but WSDOT’s understanding is that a significant number of those beds are not currently available. Clarity and confirmation surrounding how many beds and where those beds are available is key to solving this complex issue — a discussion that should have taken place long ago but for the City’s resistance to coordinating efforts."
5. You’re blaming us for what is essentially your problem.
WSDOT thinks the city is trying to blame them for a city-caused problem. WSDOT notes, as they have done several times, that Camp Hope began as a protest over the city’s failure to provide sufficient resources to homeless residents. Specifically, they say the protest resulted from a "lack of shelter beds and other housing options and the dearth of social and health services to assist those most in need."
"Moreover, your failure to work effectively with the State when Camp Hope was first established, and contained less than 100 residents, led to its growth and the conditions that you complain of now. Because the City both caused and contributed to the conditions at Camp Hope through its own actions and inactions, its attempts to shift blame to the State must fail."
WSDOT goes on to say that, despite the city’s "blame-shifting approach," the agency has been able to work with local organizations to find solutions and take major steps to improve safety and security for residents and neighbors alike. That includes towing away RVs, installing fences, creating a badging system, providing on-site security, helping residents with identification restoration and more. That’s all on the state’s dime — not the city’s.
"The City's counterproductive approach of seeking to shift blame onto WSDOT rather than working collaboratively ignores not only the complex challenges at Camp Hope but is also constitutionally suspect. Moreover, the City's approach and artificial deadlines will not benefit the people living within or outside of the encampment and will very likely continue the cycle of displacement and encampments within City limits on the eve of the holiday season."
You can read the full letter here