SPOKANE, Wash. – Big changes could be coming to cities across the country–including Spokane–after a major decision from the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS), giving local jurisdictions the ability to enforce camping bans even if they don’t have enough available shelter beds.
Friday’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson comes six years after the Martin v. Boise case was decided in the U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals, which found that criminalizing camping outside is unconstitutional if the city or county banning camping doesn’t have enough shelters to accommodate its homeless population.
Justices effectively overturned that ruling in Friday’s 6-3 decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, with the majority finding such a ban doesn’t violate the Constitution’s 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment, which means that camping bans can start to be enforced by local jurisdictions.
Homeless advocates call this ruling devastating, but others say it allows cities more flexibility on how to handle the homeless crisis in a way that best suits the needs in their area.
The biggest question now is whether or not the City of Spokane will start to do just that, especially in the wake of voters overwhelmingly passing Proposition 1 last November, which makes camping illegal within 1000 feet of a school, park or playground.
Attorney Brian Hansen is the architect of last year’s Proposition 1, and said he thinks Martin v. Boise was decided wrong in the first place and hamstrung cities when it came to addressing homelessness in their areas.
“I was very pleased with how Grants Pass v. Johnson came out,” Hansen said via phone Monday. “It took away a valuable tool that these jurisdictions had when trying to balance the need of accommodating homeless citizens, against that of the greater society as a whole.”
With Martin v. Boise overturned, the city can now actively enforce a camping ban–like that of Proposition 1–but so far they’ve been hesitant, citing ongoing challenges to its legality in the Washington State Supreme Court, and issues with Spokane Police and Code Enforcement staffing.
“I don’t fault them for being a little bit conservative in the way that they’re approaching Proposition 1,” Hansen said. “Because you don’t want to find yourself investing the time, energy and resources into enforcing a measure, when at the end of the day every one of your enforcement actions [could be] invalidated.”
Hansen says he’s hopeful that if Proposition 1 is upheld, that Mayor Brown will find a way to enforce it, since it passed voters with such a wide margin.
“It’s clear that the people want some relief from the issue,” Hansen said. “As to how they do that, I don’t consider myself to be a policy expert on how best to handle the issues of homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction, and some of the other reasons people find themselves in that status, so I’ll defer to the experts.”
Julie Garcia, founder of the homeless outreach organization Jewels Helping Hands, says even if the city now can enforce camping bans and criminal penalties, they shouldn’t unless there’s enough housing or shelter space available.
“The issues are always going to be the same,” Garcia said Monday. “If you want people to move and you want to move them, then you have to have somewhere to move them to, otherwise all we’re doing is playing this game of ‘whack a mole’ with people experiencing homelessness. It’s not benefitting downtown or the neighborhoods, or the providers for that matter, because then we can’t find our clients.”
She calls the decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson devastating, mostly because she says it devalues the needs of an entire population of people.
“Are there some folks that want no access to service? Absolutely. Are there folks that need to go to jail? Absolutely. But is there a bigger population of people that literally can’t go anywhere because there’s no space? Yes, and that’s the problem that we’re going to run into with this new ruling–doing anything in homeless services immediately.”
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown hasn’t been available for an interview after multiple requests from NonStop Local KHQ, but in a Friday statement said SPD and Code Enforcement will continue to respond to unlawful camping violations:
“The City of Spokane has been and will continue to respond to unlawful camping and code violations through police enforcement, Spokane Fire’s behavioral health response, and our Homeless Outreach Team. We are also working closely with non-profit and community organizations that engage in outreach and provide paths to stability.
I remain committed to community safety and the well-being of all our citizens, which requires a more robust approach than enforcement alone. We are committed to getting to the root causes of the unhoused crisis by making investments in mental and behavioral health care, expanding access to substance use treatment, and creating more transitional and permanent housing.”
Interim Spokane Police Chief Justin Lundgren said in a statement the Grants Pass v. Johnson decision clears all hurdles for law enforcement to enforce illegal camping, giving them another tool to address the homeless crisis in Spokane:
“The Supreme Court ruling in the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson case clears all hurdles for law enforcement to enforce illegal camping as detailed in Proposition 1. The decision gives Police the authority to cite people camping within 1,000 feet of a park, daycare, or school – either private or public. Illegal camping is a misdemeanor and the citation is to community court where offenders are offered services and options to encourage them to take steps toward choices other than camping on streets, sidewalks, parks, and other spaces. Offenders who are found to be in violation of other laws may also be arrested and taken to jail. Officers will respond to illegal camping complaints as able and warranted, depending on the particular situation, other calls for service, and staffing. The ruling in essence gives police another tool to address the homeless/camping crisis in Spokane.”
“It is just a tool to help you decide when, where and how these things are going to be carried out,” Hansen said.
Garcia, though, says that’s not enough, and thinks there needs to be a federal standard set on how people are treated.
“It shouldn’t have to be that way, but it does have to be that way,” she said. “If local jurisdictions had invested in infrastructure to support the homeless crisis already, we wouldn’t have needed judges to say ‘no, now you have to.'”
A city spokesperson said the Brown administration is still in the process of meeting with their attorneys to review Grants Pass v. Johnson, compare it with Spokane’s municipal code and see how city resources will be impacted. They said they hope to have more concrete plans to announce in the coming days.
