SPOKANE, Wash. – Spokane City Council held a roundtable discussion at the downtown library Tuesday night to gather public input on how to improve laws surrounding homelessness.
The meeting was attended by activists and local business leaders, as the city council aimed to find common ground on how to address homelessness in Spokane.
Small business owner Nick Womack expressed a common concern, saying, “Where do they go? The whole thing is we should be helping them, not shuffling them around.”
The sentiment was shared by those who serve the homeless every day.
“If not here where?” asked Julie Garcia, the leader of the homelessness organization Jewels Helping Hands. “There has to be somewhere for people to go.”
Activists and business leaders voiced that the city’s approach should focus on solving the issue rather than applying temporary fixes.
“We have spent so much time sweeping this under the rug,” Justice Forral, an activist with Spokane Community Against Racism, said. “We know that this is not a problem that we can ignore anymore.”
The roundtable discussions addressed three main city policies: sit and lie ordinances, pedestrian interference and unlawful camping. However, participants sought broader solutions to help permanently get people off the streets rather than relocating them.
“We keep going around and around and around and around and the problem keeps growing and it keeps getting worse,” Kurits Robinson, Executive Director at the Revive Center, said. “Yet where is the conversation about getting to the root causes and implementing root solutions?”
Spokane City Council continues to seek comprehensive strategies for addressing homelessness in the community, including another homelessness policy roundtable on Oct. 1.
