6/28/2022
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The Spokesman-Review
CITY COUNCIL APPROVES LEASE AGREEMENT FOR EAST TRENT HOMELESS SHELTER
KREM
KHQ
KXLY
The New York Times
California’s Fight Against Homelessness Has Turned Desperate and Dangerous
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The Spokesman-Review
CITY COUNCIL APPROVES LEASE AGREEMENT FOR EAST TRENT HOMELESS SHELTER
By Greg Mason
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
The city of Spokane’s plans to start a new homeless shelter on East Trent Avenue took a significant step forward Monday night.
The Spokane City Council approved a five-year deal to lease 4320 E. Trent Ave., the identified location for a proposed 150- to 250-bed low-barrier homeless shelter. The property is owned by developer Larry Stone under an LLC, Lawrence B. Stone Properties No. 4320. With the lease secured, city officials have hopes to open the shelter later this summer, perhaps as early as August, pending an agreement with the agency recommended to run the facility’s day-to-day operations as well as another agency to provide wraparound services to tenants.
“This is the step for us to get in the right direction,” Council Member Jonathan Bingle said. “That direction is shelter and services for those in need.”
The City Council voted 6-1, with Council Member Karen Stratton opposed.
In her opposition, Stratton cited the many questions still surrounding the Trent Avenue proposal, such as operational costs and specifics on the operations and services that will take place at the facility.
City officials have also repeatedly acknowledged that the Trent Avenue facility is not the end-all and be-all to the city’s homelessness problem.
While the goal is to have a minimum of 150 beds at the Trent shelter, the “Camp Hope” homeless encampment on state Department of Transportation land along East Second Avenue has upwards of 400 to 500 people living there.
“To sit up here and be told ‘if you don’t vote for this shelter, there’s not a plan B’ is really disappointing to me that we have known about this for so long and we don’t have a plan B,” Stratton said.
Camp Hope has grown on the WSDOT land as the city has an inadequate number of shelter beds to house the city’s homeless population.
Stratton said she is disappointed the city has not, in the last six months since Camp Hope emerged on the WSDOT land, thoroughly explored options such as tiny homes, pallet homes and RV parking.
“What happens if it’s slow?” she said of Trent Avenue. “We’re going to open those doors, we’re going to force people into the Trent shelter, and then if they don’t go in, we’re going to be able to say, ‘We have available beds and you’re not using that shelter, so now we get to take you off the streets because we don’t want to see you out here.’ That keeps me awake at night.”
As work continues on the Trent Avenue shelter, the state Department of Commerce has offered $24.3 million to Spokane County to help relocate people out of Camp Hope pending a proposal to do so from the city and county, which is in the works through, in part, City Council staff and the city administration.
With East Trent Avenue, the council on Monday briefly considered perhaps tabling the lease for another two weeks until July 11, which is when City Administrator Johnnie Perkins has promised to give a presentation about several key details. Topics will include a proposed operator agreement with the Guardians Foundation to run the facility’s day-to-day operations and an agreement with the Salvation Army Spokane to provide services.
Perkins, however, said a two-week deferral would have been difficult, especially given that Stone has another party interested in the property.
As part of the lease agreement, the city will pay $26,100 base monthly rent plus a 2.5% lease management fee, down from 4% when the agreement was first presented to the City Council earlier this month during the council’s Public Safety and Community Health Committee meeting.
Perkins – stating that lease management fees are collected for services associated with accepting and processing rent payments, ensuring the property is inspected on a regular basis, preventive maintenance and anything associated with emergency maintenance calls – said the fee is standard in similar leases, if not more expensive.
Despite the reduction, the management fee was still a questionable point as council members reviewed the updated lease Monday afternoon. The city’s negotiation team originally sought 2%, while Stone’s side sought 6%, Perkins said.
“It just gives me a little heartburn,” said Council Member Lori Kinnear.
Between the rent, the lease management fee and cost adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index, the lease is expected to cost at least $1.6 million over the five-year term.
The agreement also includes an option to buy within the first six months of the lease agreement, an option to renew for another five years and an early termination clause at the cost of eight month’s rent.
Renovations are underway to fix up the Trent Avenue facility. The first of two phases of renovations – entailing items including lighting, exterior fencing repairs and dividing the facility with temporary wall sections for occupants – will be paid for by “a joint private partnership” with Stone, Perkins said, at no cost to the city.
The second phase – which includes bathrooms, showers, washer/ dryer hookups and furnishings for phones and Wi-Fi – would be covered by the city.
The improvements came up during a discussion of how the renovations could possibly increase the building’s purchase price if the city were to exercise that option to buy. While the option to buy calls for an appraiser agreed upon by the landlord and the city, council members noted that there’s no language in the agreement that would hold Stone to that appraiser’s price.
Council President Breean Beggs said he will propose for the city to begin purchase negotiations once the lease is finalized.
“Although we are hoping that in five years, homelessness is a very different situation than it is now we can probably make very good use of a facility like this,” Beggs said, “and if we can’t, rising real estate prices, we can sell it.”
Officials said the optionto- buy clause was added without much room for negotiation.
“In speaking with the owner about this exhibit and the potential for the city to purchase, they are willing to work with us on that and do so in a manner that would not be overly intrusive in terms of what price we would pay,” Perkins said.
Next steps involving the shelter are scheduled as discussion items for the July 11 meeting of the council’s Public Safety and Community Health Committee.
On the services side, the Salvation Army was one of three entities that submitted proposals to provide services at the facility. After two of those were rejected, the Salvation Army proposal was set aside as city officials considered other options, such as contracting individual service providers for specialized care rather than one organization providing a suite of services.
“We felt their relationship with the various providers that they have that deal with mental health, drug counseling, some of the other services we’d like to see,” Perkins said, “that it would benefit those that will be at the shelter to have someone with that experience there.”
City administrators are hoping to open the facility by Aug. 1.
That’s the goal date Perkins offered to Council Member Michael Cathcart who asked when Trent might begin housing people “if things go as expected from here on out.”
“I don’t expect everything to be 110% going on Aug. 1,” Perkins said. “I hope that is the case, but I think we have to be realistic and allow for staffing people and understanding the operations of both the Salvation Army and the Guardians Foundations.”
One of the questions surrounding the facility at this point is how much the shelter could cost the city to operate.
“This is just so fluid that we just can’t seem to get our hands around it to move forward,” said Council Member Betsy Wilkerson. “The building is a building is a building, but everything else, we’re dealing with people, and that’s a little challenging.” Greg Mason can be reached at (509) 459-5047 or gregm@spokesman. com.
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KREM
This draft is the result of several months of collaboration between Council President Breean Beggs, Council Member Lori Kinnear and City Legal.
SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane City Council has announced a discussion draft of an illegal camping ordinance for community feedback.
This draft results from several months of collaboration between Council President Breean Beggs, Council Member Lori Kinnear and City Legal.
According to the city council, the ordinance updates reinforce the city's overall need for shelter space to abide by the Spokane Municipal Code of illegal camping in public areas.
"Since Martin v. City of Boise, which was the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2019 that has prohibited enforcement of the camping prohibition on City-owned property subject to the availability of shelter beds, the City of Spokane has not updated its illegal camping ordinance," said Council President Beggs. "This updated draft language is meant to be a starting point for discussions among council members and is being released publicly to get community feedback on the best way to move forward to bring city code into better alignment with the Martin v. City of Boise ruling."
City council says the current draft presents the following three levels of enforcement:
Camping is prohibited on all City-owned property but may be subject to the availability of shelter beds to the extent required by Martin v. City of Boise.
Camping is prohibited at all times regardless of shelter availability in the following locations: Under any Downtown railroad viaduct and within 100 feet of one; Any City-owned park or park facility; Any portion of land within 35 feet of the Spokane River or Latah Creek.
Camping is prohibited at all times, regardless of the availability of shelter beds, where such activity creates an unreasonable risk of harm or poses a substantial danger to the community, such as on the right of way where there is congested foot traffic adjacent to streets; or due to the potential for fires, damage to infrastructure or any other safety hazard; or where such activity poses a substantial health or safety risk to any person for any reason.
Kinnear says the ultimate goal of the draft is not to move the problem of illegal camping from place to place but to get people referred to a safer location. The council member said that the site could include a designated area for campers who don't use shelters for various reasons.
"I look forward to hearing community feedback on this draft so we can work to improve our attempt to identify community priorities for illegal camping enforcement," Kinnear said.
City council says city park space is preserved and maintained to help benefit the public, both physically and mentally. Camping interferes with park preservation, maintenance and fair public use of these protected outdoor properties.
Ultimately, the city council says this ordinance intends to prohibit camping within the City of Spokane while encouraging the homeless to use available, low-barrier shelters and access community services open at Spokane Community Court.
According to the city council, people subject to enforcement under the ordinance will be directed to community court by officer referral.
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KHQ
From City of Spokane:
Council President Breean Beggs and Council Member Lori Kinnear have collaborated with City Legal for several months on draft updates to the City of Spokane’s illegal camping code. The ordinance updates reinforce the city's overall need for shelter space to continue to abide by the Spokane Municipal Code of illegal camping in public areas.
“Since Martin v. City of Boise, which was the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2019 that has prohibited enforcement of the camping prohibition on City-owned property subject to the availability of shelter beds, the City of Spokane has not updated its illegal camping ordinance,” said Council President Beggs. “This updated draft language is meant to be a starting point for discussions among Council Members and is being released publicly to get community feedback on the best way to move forward to bring City code into better alignment with the Martin v. City of Boise ruling.”
This current draft articulates three levels of enforcement, as follows:
Camping is prohibited on all City-owned property, but may be subject to the availability of shelter beds to the extent required by Martin v. City of Boise.
Camping is prohibited at all times regardless of shelter availability in the following locations:
Under any Downtown railroad viaduct and within 100 feet of one;
Any City-owned park or park facility; and,
Any portion of land within 35 feet of the Spokane River or Latah Creek; and
Camping is prohibited at all times, regardless of the availability of shelter beds, where such activity creates an unreasonable risk of harm or poses a substantial danger to the community, such as on the right of way where there is congested foot traffic adjacent to streets; or due to the potential for fires, damage to infrastructure or any other safety hazard; or where such activity poses a substantial health or safety risk to any person for any reason.
The City of Spokane has the responsibility of regulating public property and ensuring that properties are generally intended for the safe and sanitary use by the broader public to gather, move freely and safely about, and engage in diverse activities all of which are inconsistent with a campground and camping activity.
“Our ultimate goal in this draft ordinance is to not move the problem of illegal camping from place to place, but to actually get people referred to a safer location, which could include a designated area for campers who do not utilize shelters for a variety of reasons, or when sufficient shelter space is not available,” said Council Member Lori Kinnear. “I look forward to hearing community feedback on this draft so we can work to improve our attempt to identify community priorities for illegal camping enforcement.”
City Park space is preserved and maintained to help benefit the public's physical and mental health and enjoyment with freely accessible sanitary and safe outdoor spaces. Camping interferes with park preservation, maintenance, and fair public use of these protected general properties. The same applies to public Right of Way (ROW), sidewalks, and railroad/highway underpass walls adjacent to sidewalks. The ordinance intends to prohibit camping within the City while encouraging persons experiencing homelessness to utilize available low-barrier shelters and access community services open at Spokane Community Court. Except for those who do not meet the criteria for acceptance into community court, individuals subject to enforcement under this ordinance will be directed to community court by officer referral.
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KXLY
Posted: June 27, 2022 4:25 PM Updated: June 27, 2022 6:24 PM by Vincent Saglimbeni
SPOKANE, Wash.— Spokane City Council members are proposing two different ordinances to clear campers from the streets.
As a result of Martin v. Boise, Spokane has not been able to enforce laws relating to illegal camping and other sit/lie activities.
Spokane City Councilmembers Jonathan Bingle and Michael Cathcart proposed an ordinance to address this.
“This proposal has been modified, edited, and collaborated on with City Legal, for the past several months,” Cathcart said.
The proposal resumes enforcement in downtown Spokane within buffered areas of the Spokane River. Enforcement is also allowed along City property and within one half mile of all shelters.
The proposal also allows for enforcement “within clearly identified business districts that consider the time of day and provides law enforcement with the tools to enforce when life, health and safety are at risk.”
“If approved by a majority of the City Council, this proposed ordinance creates the power to once again de-incentivize activities that endanger our vulnerable,
unhoused populations,” Cathcart says. “It will also ensure safe passage for individuals of all abilities on our public sidewalks, paths, trails, and roadways. These measures will enact much needed safeguards in the face of a converging public health and public safety crisis in our community while increasing the quality of life for all.”
“The community has been demanding this for years,” Bingle said. “It’s time we pass an ordinance that allows for strong and reasonable action that addresses the challenges presented in Martin v Boise.”
Spokane City Council President Breenan Beggs and Councilmember Lori Kinnear have presented a discussion draft on a different ordinance for the city’s need for shelter space, as part of the Spokane Municipal Code of illegal camping in public areas.
“Since Martin v. City of Boise, which was the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2019 that has prohibited enforcement of the camping prohibition on City-owned property subject to the availability of shelter beds, the City of Spokane has not updated its illegal camping ordinance,” Beggs said. “This updated draft language is meant to be a starting point for discussions among Council Members and is being released publicly to get community feedback on the best way to move forward to bring City code into better alignment with the Martin v. City of Boise ruling.”
The draft goes over three levels of enforcement.
First, camping would be prohibited on all City-owned properties. This is subject to the availability of shelter beds required by Martin v. City of Boise.
Secondly, camping is prohibited at all times under any Downtown railroad viaduct and within 100 feet of one, any park or park facility owned by Spokane and anywhere within 35 feet of the Spokane River of Latah Creek.
Finally, camping is prohibited in areas of danger for the community, such as a right of way where there are a lot of people or where activity poses health or safety risks for people.
“Our ultimate goal in this draft ordinance is to not move the problem of illegal camping from place to place, but to actually get people referred to a safer location, which could include a designated area for campers who do not utilize shelters for a variety of reasons, or when sufficient shelter space is not available,” Kinnear said. “I look forward to hearing community feedback on this draft so we can work to improve our attempt to identify community priorities for illegal camping enforcement.”
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The New York Times
California’s Fight Against Homelessness Has Turned Desperate and Dangerous
June 27, 2022
Opinion Writer
If the homelessness crisis in California can offer any lessons to the rest of the country, it’s what politics looks like when a restless and beleaguered public places pressure on politicians to do something — anything — about a complex and seemingly intractable problem. The state has spent billions of dollars a year and tried a variety of solutions; none has put much of a dent in the public face of homelessness — the tent encampments of unhoused people that have sprung up throughout every major city in the state.
In an earlier newsletter, I outlined what I think is the emerging ideological battle line in the homelessness crisis, not only in California, but also throughout the country. There are “housing first” advocates who believe that a greater supply of subsidized, supportive and affordable housing is necessary to end homelessness, not only for the people on the streets, but perhaps more important, also for the people who are about to be short on a rent payment and will soon be living in their cars, in motels or in shelters. The other side, which I’ll call “mental health and addiction first,” believe that a liberal and permissive culture around homelessness in California’s cities has opened the floodgates for mentally ill and drug addicted people from around the country to set up camp in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Until now, the housing-first people have largely won the significant battles in both the federal government and the state of California, which both adopted their policies in the mid-2010s. But there are signs that some of this might be changing, in large part because of people’s frustrations with the lack of visible change.
Last week, the California State Assembly passed a bill proposing the creation of the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court program, or CARE Court, with a 9-to-1 vote. In the State Senate, the vote was 38-to-0 in favor. The bill, which must still make it through a few more political hurdles to become law, establishes a “framework to deliver mental health and substance use disorder services to the most severely impaired Californians who too often languish — suffering in homelessness or incarceration — without the treatment they desperately need.”
What this means on a practical level is that if a police officer, behavioral health provider or family member observes someone acting erratically and suspects the person is suffering from a mental health breakdown, the observer can submit a petition for referral to a CARE Court, even if that person has not committed a crime. The person will then receive a “clinical evaluation” to diagnose “schizophrenia spectrum or other psychotic disorders.” If any is found, the person will be appointed counsel and be entered into a CARE plan, receiving treatment in the form of counseling and court-ordered “stabilization” medications. State Senator Tom Umberg, an author of the bill, told me that it is aimed at somewhere around “7,000 to 12,000 individuals in California” with “schizophrenia or schizophrenia-like conditions” who he says are “very difficult to reach, very difficult to stabilize and very difficult to bring back into society.”
Over the course of roughly a year, people in a CARE program will have to pass a variety of assessments to make sure they are keeping up with it. If they do so in a satisfactory manner, they will “graduate” from CARE Court. In drafts of the bill, there is some talk of a plan that will also help put them into temporary or permanent supportive housing, but none of the versions I’ve reviewed give any specifics on what that might look like, and, more important, offer any firm commitments on providing that housing. When I asked Umberg, he said that CARE Court participants could get some priority in housing, but it’s not clear that it will be guaranteed.
If participants drop out of CARE Court or fail to comply with their therapy and medication program, they could ultimately be placed into a conservatorship. This means the state may be able to make every meaningful decision in their lives, from where they live to what they do with their money, and who they’re allowed to see. In a conversation I had with Susan Mizner, the director of the A.C.L.U.’s Disability Rights Program, about the type of conservatorships that the CARE Court would use, she said: “There is a reason this is called the greatest deprivation of civil liberties aside from the death penalty. People in prison at least get to have visitors and decide whether they take medication.”
Despite the CARE Court bill’s popularity among politicians, there has been considerable pushback against it from legal, human rights and disability rights groups. In a joint letter from more than 40 organizations, advocates for the homeless called the bill a “system of coerced, court-ordered treatment that strips people with mental health disabilities of their right to make their own decisions about their lives” and pointed out that the bill doesn’t even guarantee housing for its graduates. “It’s not voluntary,” Eve Garrow of the A.C.L.U. told me. “The governor’s administration is shrouding or cloaking this in language that makes it seem empowering and voluntary, but in reality, you’re hauled into court.”
Human Rights Watch called the entire process “convoluted” and pointed out the “highly subjective” criteria that could get someone entered into the CARE Court system.
Both criticisms have a point: The CARE Court bill can wrap itself in the language of help and empathy, but at its core, it is a way to force people who have not committed any crime, nor have proved themselves to be an imminent threat to the public, to be coerced into a court proceeding that will place many of them on powerful medications under the threat of a conservatorship that would take away many of their freedoms. When people enter the system, they are assigned legal aid (earlier drafts of the bill provided a public defender). You don’t assign people legal aid because they’re about to enter a fully voluntary system. You assign them legal aid because they are about to enter a form of the court system. Considering that the standard for being entered into CARE Court is the exhibition of symptoms of what Umberg called “schizophrenia-like” conditions, the subjectivity of those assessments and the potential for abuse are both certainly there.
If California cannot handle the current number of mentally ill homeless people, what will it do when the 7,000 to 12,000 more that Umberg predicted hit the system? Umberg for his part acknowledges that finding those workers, whether psychiatrists or social workers, will be one of the biggest challenges facing the CARE Court system. He says the governor is investing in training new workers, but given the current shortage of civic workers, especially when it comes to homeless services, it’s difficult to imagine there will be anything close to enough trained professionals to fill the role. The state’s continuing conundrum is that everyone wants to do something about the homeless so long as the person carrying out that work is someone else.
The other major challenge Umberg noted was around the CARE Court’s housing plan for people who enter the system. Much of the criticism over the bill, especially from the A.C.L.U., comes from the fact that there is no real guarantee that a CARE Court graduate will receive any form of housing. This is certainly puzzling given that part of the state’s justification in setting up CARE Courts is rightfully noting that the stress of living on the streets contributes to mental illness and makes it more difficult for people to seek or maintain treatment. If the state cannot guarantee a homeless, mentally ill person a place to stay, how can it really compel that person to seek regular treatments or check in with a counselor and the court, especially when the state agrees that homelessness, itself, is a main driver of the symptoms of mental illness?
This is the question that CARE Courts put in front of Californians: How much are you willing to play fast and loose with the civil liberties of chronically homeless, mentally ill people? It’s true that homelessness is the state’s most pressing problem and that most residents, including me, are dismayed on a daily basis at the seeming intractability of the problem.
The billions of dollars the state spends per year on homelessness solutions includes significant investments in housing. But while housing-first policies can provide relief for many people who are about to lose their homes or fall in and out of homelessness, it is not a panacea that will keep chronically unhoused, mentally ill people off the streets. (To be fair, no serious housing-first advocates would ever say that their approach will be able to solve every problem.) This is why the political mood in the state has swung so quickly toward a type of desperation that says something — anything — must be done.
Such bluster and silly promises actually have made it nearly impossible to tell which proposals should be taken seriously and which ones should not, which ones are simply the reflexive ideations of politicians under strain and which ones try to solve a problem. Or if there even is really a difference anymore between the two.
One can sympathize with the frustration of the supporters of the CARE Court without falling into the type of talk that says a group of people — in the case the homeless — constitute an emergency and that something must be done about them. The norms of civil liberties in this country should dictate that the state should not be able to use vague criteria like “schizophrenia-like” conditions to compel people to take medication and enter a court system under the threat of a conservatorship that would take away nearly all of their freedoms, even in cases where they have not committed a crime or posed a threat to the public.