10/20/2022
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The Spokesman-Review
Madsen: Of hope, hopelessness and rumors of hope
KREM
The Center Square
The Wall St Journal
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The Spokesman-Review
Madsen: Of hope, hopelessness and rumors of hope
The ongoing protest over Spokane’s housing and homelessness challenges was dubbed Camp Hope 2.0 by its organizers in December 2021 when it was first planted in front of City Hall. The city stood firm on the misuse of city-owned property and the camp moved to one of WSDOT’s empty lots at Second and Thor.
Ironically, the right-of-way exists as a blockslong stretch of nothingness because a large swath of affordable housing was purchased and removed by WSDOT to avoid attracting squatters to boarded up houses. It didn’t work.
For the neighborhood, it might better be named Camp Hopeless. Calls for response to the Spokane Police Department are up 72% compared to the average of the prior four years, 76.9% over the year prior to the camp. EMS calls in the immediate neighborhood increased from five in 2021 to 123 year to date, with an additional 13 fire calls from a baseline of zero in 2021.
Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich prefers to call it Camp WSDOT, a geographically descriptive name for the hundreds of people illegally camped along Interstate 90 in the Department of Transportation right of way. Knezovich says he’s been hearing from business owners who have stopped filing property damage claims for fear of having their policies canceled. “People are losing livelihoods. Normal everyday working people are trapped in this socialist experiment.” It’s not just property theft but fear as public safety takes a back seat to other concerns. There has to be compassion for both the itinerant campers and the settled neighbors. “Businesses and residents need a timeline, they’re looking for hope,” said Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl. “No easy answers, but we haven’t gotten any timeline from the state.”
Meidl did get a letter last week from Transportation Secretary Roger Millar. No mention of the concerns of the neighborhood along the empty WSDOT right-of-way, but plenty of justification for why the state has little sense of urgency. Millar spent most of its eight pages defensively outlining the state’s version of the past six months, with a majority of the letter describing the Spokane Municipal Code chronic nuisance ordinance as unconstitutional so they don’t have to comply anyway.
Meidl reported the format and tone of the city’s letter enforcing the chronic nuisance ordinance were the same as any property owner receives. “The ordinance has been enforced, taken to court and successfully upheld many times.” The chronic nuisance abatement hearing is scheduled for Nov. 10.
While rehashing the past, Millar’s letter states that “WSDOT immediately contacted the Spokane Police Department” in 2021 and claims SPD “advised WSDOT they were directed not to respond to trespass calls involving WSDOT.”
According to Meidl, law enforcement can only respond to enforce a charge of “trespass” if there is a property owner willing to press charges. Meidl said his understanding is WSDOT did originally call regarding trespassing, then withdrew support for the request. That left an alternative charge of “unlawful camping” which “has an exception that says it can’t be enforced if there are no shelter beds available,” Meidl said. “We can now say with a clear conscience that we have sufficient shelter for everyone at the camp who wants it.”
Unlike other municipalities offered funding under Gov. Inslee’s Rights-of-Way Safety Initiative, Spokane County’s efforts are being coordinated through a local nonprofit. Empire Health Foundation is under contract with the Department of Commerce for “outreach, engagement and services” as a convener of stakeholders, said Zeke Smith, president of the foundation.
“It is not our intent to stay in this role. Our goal is to stabilize the process and hand this off.” He noted Jewels Helping Hands is now being paid to stabilize operations at the camp.
There is a downside to stabilizing the chaos where it is instead of focusing on moving campers out. While agreeing permanent shelter is everyone’s ultimate goal, Meidl pointed out winter is coming. “Is it more compassionate to let people live in a hub of crime about to turn into a huge frozen mud pit?” There is no downside to moving people to temporary shelter while arranging permanent shelter.
Private security contracts for Camp Hope have been signed by the state for six months with an option to renew. Smith pushed back on rumors the state was deliberately slowing down the process to influence the 2023 mayoral race in Spokane, saying he hasn’t seen any slow-walking. His understanding is the ROWSI funding is intended to become part of the state’s baseline budget starting next biennium.
That doesn’t sound very hopeful for neighborhoods feeling the impact of illegal camping on public property. It’s treating the problem by fishing people out of the river instead of going upstream to keep them from falling in. Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com.
SUE LANI MADSEN
SPOKESMAN COLUMNIST
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KREM
In the meantime, the Spokane community is weighing in on that plan and how it can make the community safer.
Signs Your Dog May Not Like You Very Much
SPOKANE, Wash. — The Spokane Police Department is sharing an early look into its plan to get more officers on the streets to tackle crimes.
In the meantime, the Spokane community is weighing in on that plan and how it can make the community safer.
Ben Osborne, manager of Zanies Smokeshop in Spokane's Emerson-Garfield neighborhood, wants his business to be a hometown shop.
"Zanies has always been what it is now," Osborne said. "It's open to everybody. It's a hippie shop."
But, he says the crime in this neighborhood makes it difficult to maintain that experience for customers. Amidst the vandalism, the drugs and the shootings near there, Osborne hopes for a better, safer community.
"The problem has become so enormous that I don't really know where they can start as far as fixing it," Osborne said.
"One of the things I've noticed is this increase in tension and willingness to resort to violence more quickly," Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl said.
Meidl says an increase in calls and officer fatigue are the results of this trend. Because of this, the department wants to restructure its precincts and patrols. That means moving some of its current officers from other units to patrol the streets.
"The hope is, starting January, we'll have 40 more officers on patrol than what we currently have as well," Meidl said. "This is one of many layers that we're looking at to fix the crime issues that we have in Spokane. Having officers on the street that can respond more quickly to calls is one prong. But, there are so many layers to this."
Osborne welcomes the idea of seeing more officers around.
"When the presence is there, bad guys don't want to see the cops," Osborne said. "They're going the opposite direction."
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The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Kent City councilmembers have unanimously passed a ban on public camping within city limits.
The ordinance will allow the Kent Police Department and human services to use a carrot and stick approach. They can offer resources and encouragement for homeless people to accept shelter, or hold out worse consequences.
The ordinance was proposed as leverage to keep city streets safe and clean. It was thought that current law enforcement actions were not enough to get many homeless people into shelters and off of streets.
One police sergeant was quoted during the city council's discussion that the number of homeless people declining shelter referrals was “well into the 90th percentile.”
“The sad fact is that some people need that push to make the choice to change the situation they’re in,” Chief Administrative Office Pat Fitzpatrick said at the council meeting.
The ordinance centers on the immediate removal of encampments in four sensitive areas: parks, streets and sidewalks, unopened city property and what the city deems “critical areas.”
Fines will not be imposed as a penalty for anyone who has an encampment within the city. The authority to arrest and file charges against any person camping on public spaces will be suspended if there is no shelter available.
City officials emphasized during the council meeting that massive encampment sweeps will not result from this ordinance.
In an Operations and Public Safety Committee meeting on Oct. 4, data presented to the committee members showed there were 234 emergency calls with the keyword “homeless” in 2019, 488 in 2020, 465 in 2021 and more than 300 calls through the first seven months of 2022. The committee projected 519 total calls by the end of the year.
Council President Bill Boyce spoke on how the ordinance is a step in the right direction to keep parks clean and urge people to seek shelter and resources provided by the City of Kent and King County.
“We have taxpayer money for parks, sidewalks, streets and everything and it’s an investment. So I think it’s our responsibility and our duty to make sure we take care of that investment,” Boyce said.
The ban on public camping will go into effect next month.
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The Wall St Journal
Home builders are pulling back. Over the long haul that will only exacerbate America's housing problem.
Justin LahartOct. 19, 2022 11:50 am ET
And so, American home builders have decided to slow down. The Commerce Department on Wednesday reported that construction was started on 1.439 million homes last month, at a seasonally adjusted, annual rate, down 7.7% from a year earlier. Exclude starts on multifamily dwellings, which can be volatile from month to month, and the decline was even more severe. Single-family starts, at an annualized 892,000 homes, were down 18.5% from a year earlier.
Hang it on the surge in mortgage rates, which is putting severe constraints on housing affordability. With the rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage averaging 6.1% last month according to Freddie Mac, compared with 2.9% a year earlier, monthly payments on the same size loan would be more than 40% higher. And with Freddie Mac’s latest reading on mortgage rates at 6.9%, the crunch is now even worse.
There is a chance that builders’ ability to sell homes might not be as limited as the rise in mortgage rates seems to imply. The job market continues to do well, allowing more people to form new households. America’s protracted housing shortage—Freddie Mac estimated that as of the end of 2020 the country was 3.8 million housing units short of what it needed—suggests there is plenty of work for builders to do.
The stock market doesn’t think so, though: A popular home builders exchange-traded fund, which had done twice as well as the broad market from 2020 through 2021, is down by about 35% year-to-date.
And why risk it? The Federal Reserve is aiming to cool the job market as part of its effort to tame inflation, and the risk is that it ends up only doing the job too well, sparking a wave of layoffs. Investors are clearly worried.
Moreover, builders have plenty of homes already in the pipeline: Wednesday’s report showed there were a seasonally-adjusted 800,000 single-family homes under construction last month, which compared with 531,000 in February 2020, the month before the pandemic took hold.
The danger is that over the long haul, builders’ pulling back only exacerbates the home shortage. In the end, that might only put upward pressure on prices, rents and, ultimately, inflation. The sad irony is that rather than fixing America’s housing problems, the Fed’s actions might only make them worse.
Housing is one of the most weighted categories when tracking inflation, but it’s also one of the most complicated to measure. WSJ’s David Harrison explains how the shelter index is calculated, and why it can muddy the inflation outlook for the Fed. Illustration: Laura Kammermann
Write to Justin Lahart at Justin.Lahart@wsj.com