9/29/2022
Ed. Note: the article from the LA Times below is recent - as of last Wednesday. It is a new ruling out of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on the Grants Pass, OR case.
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The Spokesman-Review
State’s plan to erect fence around Camp Hope draws mixed reactions
KREM
The Center Square
LA Times
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The Spokesman-Review
By Emma Epperly
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
In Tuesday afternoon’s heat, Spokane city workers following a garbage truck picked up debris from a camp along the river near East Trent Avenue and North Waterworks Street, where a few dozen people lived until told to leave earlier in the day. Several Spokane police officers watched from patrol cars after helping with the cleanup.
For years, the area has been a place where homeless people camp. In January, two people staying in the area were hospitalized after a propane explosion in their tent.
Crews have cleaned out the area multiple times, and this week it was among a number of area encampments removed after the Spokane City Council voted to ban camping along the Spokane River and Latah Creek.
While the illegal camping ordinance will give the city new avenues to cite people, it has yet to change the city’s practice of cleaning up encampments, and the removal of the prominent camp along the river near Trent and Waterworks this week was unrelated to the new law, said Kirstin Davis, communications manager for the Community and Economic Development department.
New ordinances take 30 to 45 days to be enforced. During that time, crews are trained and public notices are posted informing people of the ordinance, Davis said.
Maurice Smith, activist
City workers pick up piles of garbage left behind from a homeless camp Tuesday on a strip of land between the Spokane River and North Waterworks Street.
JESSE TINSLEY/ THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
The city’s Homeless Outreach Team does partial or full cleanups based on unauthorized camping complaints several days a week, Davis said. The team is made up of code enforcement officers, public works employees and police officers, she said.
Those complaints come through the city’s 311 line, a customer service line used by multiple city departments. In August, the city received 267 complaints, according to data provided by Davis.
Complete abatements, where crews cleaned up the entire area, were completed at 123 sites. To do a total cleanup, the site either has to be abandoned or have an enforceable component, like someone with a warrant for their arrest or who is unlawfully camping, Davis said. The city completed 69 partial abatements last month, done at sites that were occupied and didn’t have an enforceable aspect.
Documentarian and longtime homelessness activist Maurice Smith said they city’s cleanup procedure has largely remained the same for the last few years.
They deliver notices, come in and throw everything away and tell people to leave, Smith said.
“They force the people to move, and there’s nowhere for them to move,” he said.
Davis said crews don’t come into an area and “just start taking things,” but instead engage with people there or monitor locations to make sure they’re abandoned.
Often, people who aren’t violating the ordinance will give crews garbage or unwanted items, Davis said.
There were also 37 duplicate complaints and 48 complaints where no violation was found.
More than 56,000 pounds of waste was taken from those camps, Davis said.
The partial cleanups were largely focused in the downtown area, with full cleanups scattered throughout the city, according to a map provided by Davis.
In July, the city received 267 complaints and completed 83 full cleanups and 111 partial ones. In June, there were 210 complaints with 68 completed cleanups and 107 partial cleanups.
Smith wishes the city would alert providers near where they plan to remove the camps in advance, so they can help people move their things or find a place to relocate.
“It’s one more trauma,” Smith said of people losing their belongings.
Emma Epperly can be reached at (509) 459-5122 or at emmae@spokesman.com.
City workers pick up piles of garbage left behind from a homeless camp on a strip of land Tuesday between the Spokane River and North Waterworks Street.
JESSE TINSLEY/ THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
State’s plan to erect fence around Camp Hope draws mixed reactions
By Garrett Cabeza
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
The Washington State Department of Transportation will erect a fence around Camp Hope – possibly by the weekend – and camp residents have mixed feelings about it.
Joe McHale, the department’s spokesman, said Wednesday he could not release details about the fence, such as its dimensions or purpose. He said those details will be released once that information is determined by officials along with two other state agencies, the Department of Commerce and the State Patrol.
Julie Garcia, founder of the nonprofit homeless service provider Jewels Helping Hands, said her organization and transportation department workers cleared space Wednesday for the fence to be installed.
Garcia said the barrier will go on the perimeter of the entire homeless encampment, which is owned by the state and located off Interstate 90 in East Central Spokane. She said private security personnel will work the perimeter of the camp, while Jewels Helping Hands’ security will be on the inside at all times. An 8 p.m. curfew will also be enforced.
“This is what we’ve been asking for for months,” Garcia said.
She said her organization’s goal is to ensure the safety of the people inside the camp, as well as for neighbors. Garcia said the fence and curfew will help improve the look of the camp and track data to see if members of the camp are creating an increase in crime in the camp area, which some, like Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, have alleged.
“I think it’s just beneficial to the whole community to be able to have some accountability on the camp,” Garcia said.
Garcia said campers are being asked to sign a “good neighbor agreement.” She said if people at the camp truly are willing to better their living situation, then they will have to follow rules.
“Most of the camp is on board,” she said.
Garcia estimated about 10% of camp residents will leave when the fence is installed because they won’t want to follow the rules.
Jered Fullen, who has lived at Camp Hope since February, favored the proposed fence installation and curfew.
“I think that we need the control,” he said. “I think we need direction.”
He said people are typically up to no good after 8 p.m. and the curfew will weed out camp residents who aren’t serious about obtaining better housing.
“A lot of people out here want better, but they just don’t know how to get it,” Fullen said.
Another camp resident, James Christianson, said the fence and curfew would make neighbors feel safe and help reduce thefts in the neighborhood. On the other hand, he worried the fence would prevent people from escaping the camp if a violent person attacked them.
Christianson, a carpenter, also expressed concern about not being able to leave early in the morning to look for work or arriving late at night at the camp from a job. Garcia said security would make exceptions to the curfew for those who work.
Christianson, who has lived at the camp since March, said he planned to move out of the camp by the time the fence is erected.
City spokesman Brian Coddington said the erection of the fence is part of the conversation city officials have had with the three state agencies.
He said the city is working to connect people with resources to get them out of the state-owned field and into safer and more humane housing.
Knezovich said last week he planned to clear the camp by mid-October without going into details of how he would do so. Part of that plan entailed giving bus tickets for the homeless people living at Camp Hope so they can reunite with family in hopes of recovering from drug and alcohol addiction and mental health issues.
Coddington said Mayor Nadine Woodward has asked Knezovich for more time, and he agreed to push back the removal to mid-November.
Garcia said everyone agrees Camp Hope is not the most humane option, “but there is nowhere for them to go and dispersing 600 people into the neighborhoods isn’t a benefit to the community.”
Fullen said Camp Hope shouldn’t be shut down. However, he said 90% of people at the camp won’t go to a homeless shelter.
“There’s people that are addicted to living outside, you know, and there’s nothing you can do to change that,” Fullen said. “They’re just comfortable with the outside life and you can’t take that away from someone and make them move into a structured environment like that, where they’re inside and stuck. It feels like you’re caged sometimes.”
Fullen said he wants to remain at the camp until he and his girlfriend can get an apartment. He said Jewels Helping Hands hired him to work at the camp’s cooling tent.
Christianson said most people at the camp want better housing, but many need mental health or drug treatment. Without treatment, they won’t be able to hold down a home and job.
The Camp Hope issue received some national attention on Tuesday when Knezovich appeared on Fox News and called the camp a “prime example of the failed policies of the radical left.”
“It is devastating that entire neighborhood,” Knezovich said. “You have entire families living in fear because of the drugs, the alcohol, the theft, the violence.”
The Fox News interview showed aerial photos of Camp Hope. But most of the pictures and video used to illustrate Knezovich’s interview where instead pictures of homeless camps in other cities, specifically those in Seattle.
In Knezovich’s letter to the transportation department, he said that camp residents have experienced rape, beatings, brandings, thefts, shootings, stabbings and other crimes. Similar crimes have been reported in surrounding neighborhoods and businesses, he wrote.
Knezovich said a representative at Fred Meyer, located across I-90 from Camp Hope, told him theft at the store is “off the charts.”
“They have people shooting up drugs in the restrooms,” Knezovich said.
He told Fox News the state failed to clean up Camp Hope and allowed it to expand. Camp Hope formed in December outside City Hall and moved to the stateowned land off I-90.
The commerce department has offered $24.3 million to the city to relocate residents at Camp Hope to better housing.
“That’s just simply going to line the activists’ pockets,” Knezovich said. “It’s not going to help these people, and it’s surely not going to help the neighborhood.”
Meanwhile, Coddington said the city has not fined Jewels Helping Hands for refusing to take down the cooling tent at Camp Hope. Last week, the Spokane Fire Department issued a notice that Jewels Helping Hands must take down the tent, which the nonprofit uses as a resource access hub and which the fire department said did not have a building permit.
The city could impose a fine of $536 per day for every day it is occupied if the nonprofit failed to remove the tent last week.
Coddington said while the city has not imposed fines, they can be levied retroactively. Garrett Cabeza can be reached at (509) 459-5135 or by email at garrettc@spokesman.com.
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KREM
In an exclusive interview, Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich says he met with law enforcement agencies and non-profits on Wednesday to discuss clearing the I-90 homeless camp.
SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich met with law enforcement and local non-profits to develop his plan to clear out the homeless camp located near I-90 and Freya Street.
In an exclusive interview with KREM 2, Knezovich said he met with the Spokane Police Department (SPD), members of his staff and non-profits like the Guardians Foundation on Wednesday. Everyone willingly gathered to formulate an action plan to clear out the camp.
The meeting comes one week after Knezovich notified the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) of his intentions to clear out the I-90 homeless camp, which currently holds more than 600 campers.
"Quite frankly, the reason I did it, I really got tired of answering phone calls and attending meetings from people's houses and meeting with people and some of them get in church because what is happening to our city, to their neighbor," he said. "They felt as if they had no voice."
Knezovich made plans to meet with Spokane Police and other local resources to develop an action plan, which happened Wednesday.
"This was our first initial strategy meeting," he said.
During the meeting, the groups outlined assignments, including resources for people living at the camp, housing options and investigations involving Jewels Helping Hands, a Spokane organization actively involved in assisting those experiencing homelessness.
Knezovich wanted to make it clear he is not planning an immediate police response in the clean up efforts.
"The value statement for this group is this: to have that camp pulled out without ever having to use a law enforcement means," he said. "That means provide every ounce of resources we can to help anybody that wants out of that camp get out of that camp immediately."
SPD willingly came to the table to collaborate on this plan.
"SPD understands what we're dealing with," Knezovich said. "They're part of the planning, they are in an active planning phase with us."
Knezovich initially set a goal of clearing out the camp by Oct.14. On Wednesday, he laid out a new timeline that he claimed is at the request of Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward. He now expects to clear out people and property at the camp from Oct. 25- Nov. 10.
"We're going to inundate the camp with as much help as we can from all kinds of angles," Knezovich said. "Mental health, drug addictions you name it, and help people get out of there."
Sheriff Knezovich said the next planning meeting will be on Oct. 12, at which point he expects to get debriefed on action plans from each of the groups.
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The Center Square
Photo courtesy of the City of Seattle
(The Center Square) – Seattle’s affordable housing and homelessness crises would be addressed with $403.4 million in proposed funds from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget.
The Seattle Office of Housing would receive the highest amount of dedicated funds in its history with $253 million from Harrell’s proposed budget. The boost in funding for the department primarily comes from $138 million in JumpStart payroll tax dollars.
The Housing Department’s $253 million would see $228 million be used for multifamily housing projects; $17 million for homeownership and sustainability; and $8 million for department administration, according to the budget.
Harrell said the near quarter of a billion dollars to housing efforts would create hundreds of units of permanently affordable housing and advance affordable homeownership opportunities.
“By merging investments from our Housing Levy, Payroll Expense Tax and more, we are taking historic action to create places for people to not just get out of the elements, but to be stable, to recover and to thrive,” Harrell said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Harrell’s proposed budget dedicates $150.4 million in funds to homelessness. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority would be given $87.7 million from a transfer out of the $108 million that would be allocated to the Human Services Department in 2023 for homeless outreach, shelter, services and administration.
The budget states that this is a 13% increase in Seattle’s contribution to the authority from the 2022 revised amount of $77.5 million, excluding one-time federal funding received this year.
However, Harrell pledged around $118 million to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority in his proposed city budget in May, following the authority’s requested budget of $227 million.
Unspent money from $40.6 million in one-time federal funding that was first made available as a lump sum in the 2022 budget will also be available to the authority for approved uses.
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority would also receive $2.2 million in 2023 and $7 million in 2024 to sustain existing homeless programs and services previously funded with one-time funding. To build new tiny home villages, the authority would be allocated $2.4 million and $5 million for new safe parking lots to serve people living in vehicles.
According to the budget, the remaining $20.2 million of proposed spending for the Human Services Department budget would support city managed homeless programs with $16.6 million, $1.1 million for contract oversight and administration, and $2.4 million for expanded outreach support to connect homeless people to shelter and housing.
The Seattle City Council launched its budget process to review Harrell’s proposals for the upcoming biennial year. Councilmembers have until Dec. 2 to adopt a budget for the next fiscal year.
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LA Times
By Kevin Rector, Ruben VivesSept. 28, 2022 6:21 PM PT
A passerby gives a donation to a man panhandling at a freeway rest stop outside Grants Pass, Ore.
(Shaun Hall / Grants Pass Daily Courier via Associated Press)
About a decade after losing her job and becoming homeless in the small city of Grants Pass, Ore., Debra Blake joined two other homeless residents in suing the city over a set of local ordinances that, in their view, criminalized the act of sleeping outside.
Blake and her co-plaintiffs argued that there were no shelters where they could stay in the city of 38,000, that they had no place else to go, and that the city’s anti-camping and anti-sleeping ordinances represented “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of their constitutional rights.
Among other things, the ordinances banned the use of rudimentary items such as blankets and cardboard boxes for protection against the weather.
“Over the past eight to ten years I have met dozens, if not hundreds, of homeless people in Grants Pass,” Blake wrote in a court declaration in 2019, when she was 60. “They have all had similar experiences with the Grants Pass police awaking them, moving them along, ticketing them, fining them, arresting them and/or criminally prosecuting them for living outside.”
In a decision sure to reverberate in bigger cities such as Los Angeles, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling Wednesday that largely sided with Blake and her co-plaintiffs, rejecting central tenets of the Grants Pass ordinances as unconstitutional and upholding part of a lower court’s decision blocking them from being enforced.
Grants Pass City Atty. Augustus Ogu declined to immediately comment on Wednesday, saying he was still reading the decision.
The city hadn’t disputed that it did not have enough shelter beds for all of its unhoused residents.
Ed Johnson, director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center, which helped represent the plaintiffs in the case, applauded the ruling.
“Today’s decision is consistent with well-established precedent that it is unconstitutionally cruel to punish homeless people for unavoidable acts of survival,” he said. “We are pleased with the outcome, but not surprised.”
Homeless rights advocates said the ruling further affirmed — and in some ways expanded upon — protections for unhoused people forced to sleep outside across the country, including in major cities with large homeless populations such as L.A.
“Anytime the 9th Circuit passes down a ruling about what cities can and cannot do in relation to the criminalization of homelessness, it’s going to have an impact in Southern California,” said Shayla Myers, a senior attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and co-lead counsel in an ongoing lawsuit over L.A.’s practice of destroying the property
of unhoused people during cleanups and sweeps.
“What the court is doing is saying, quite simply, this is a basic constitutional principle,” Myers said. “You can’t punish people for sleeping on the sidewalk, and you can’t find loopholes to punish people.”
In its 2-1 decision, the appellate court — which covers a huge swath of the West, including California — reiterated its 2018 decision in the major homelessness case Martin vs. City of Boise. In that case, it ruled that the 8th Amendment “prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter.”
But the court went a bit further this time.
“Our decision reaches beyond Martin slightly,” Judge Roslyn O. Silver of the U.S. District Court of Arizona, a visiting judge on the appellate panel, wrote for the majority.
Among other findings, the court said that the Martin decision’s protection of unhoused people’s right to sleep outdoors when they have nowhere else to go “includes sleeping with rudimentary forms of protection from the elements.”
During the litigation, the city of Grants Pass had revised its anti-camping ordinance to allow homeless people to sleep in city parks, but continued to ban them from using sleeping bags or other bedding materials. The city argued the change brought its ordinance into compliance with the Martin decision.
The court disagreed in its ruling Wednesday.
“The only plausible reading of Martin is that it applies to the act of ‘sleeping’ in public, including articles necessary to facilitate sleep,” Silver wrote.
The court also rejected the city’s claim that its ordinances did not run afoul of the Martin decision — or the Constitution’s cruel and unusual punishment clause — because they relied on civil citations for enforcement before resorting to criminal sanctions.
The ordinances subjected unhoused people to civil fines of up to several hundred dollars per violation, and people found in violation of the ordinances multiple times could be barred from all city property. Once barred, a person returning to city property was subject to criminal prosecution for trespassing.
The court ruled that it was a clear violation of the Martin ruling to subject unhoused people who have nowhere else to go to criminal trespassing charges just for being outside and trying to keep warm, whether civil citations came first or not.
“Imposing a few extra steps before criminalizing the very acts Martin explicitly says cannot be criminalized does not cure the anti-camping ordinances’ Eighth Amendment infirmity,” Silver wrote.
The appellate court’s decision upheld in part an injunction against the enforcement of the city’s anti-camping ordinances that had been issued by a lower district court.
The ruling told the lower court to “narrow” its injunction to recognize a “limited right” to protection against the elements, which it suggested did not include the use of stoves and fires or the building of structures — things the anti-camping ordinance had also barred.
Blake, the lead plaintiff, has since died. The appellate court said the lower court would have to reconsider other claims relevant to harms she had suffered, possibly by finding a substitute plaintiff who had suffered similarly.
Silver was joined in the majority opinion by 9th Circuit Court Judge Ronald M. Gould. Both were appointed by President Clinton.
In dissent, 9th Circuit Court Judge Daniel P. Collins, who was appointed by President Trump, said the majority’s decision was “egregiously wrong.”
Collins — who also called the Martin decision “deeply flawed” but acknowledged he was bound by it — wrote that the ruling Wednesday misunderstood Martin, misapplied it, and “effectively requires the City of Grants Pass to allow all but one of its public parks to be used as homeless encampments.”
It was unclear Wednesday whether the ruling would be appealed.
After the 9th Circuit’s ruling in the Martin case, city officials in California and other Western states challenged it, arguing it undercut their authority to regulate encampments on sidewalks. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, refused to take up the case.
Advocates in L.A. said they hoped Wednesday’s ruling would give local leaders pause about enforcing similar laws that displace unhoused people.
“Hopefully it sends a different message to cities and counties around how houseless people can get organized legally to fight back against the criminalization of houselessness and the removal of property,” said Pete White, founder of Los Angeles Community Action Network.
But, White said, he worries that L.A. and other cities will simply recalibrate their laws to evade the ruling, just as they have with past court decisions that landed on the side of the unhoused.
Carl Sanchez, a 64-year-old man in the L.A. area, had similar concerns.
Earlier this year, when Sanchez found out the city was going to clear an encampment where he was living in San Pedro, he put up signs on his tent that mentioned the Martin decision, which he believed should have protected him. Shelters at the time were full or felt unsafe, he said, and he had nowhere else to go.
But the signs didn’t help, he said. When he refused to leave, he was arrested and booked into jail, and when he got out, his tent, clothes and medication for high blood pressure were all gone, and he slept in the cold for three days.
He has since relocated to Riverside, he said.
“I’m staying in a secluded area surrounded by bushes and trees,” he said. “All I have to worry about is the coyotes and bobcats.”