SPOKANE, Wash. – SPOKANE, Wash. – The city of Spokane is drawing inspiration from Boise, Idaho in addressing its homelessness crisis.
Last November, NonStop Local , a city similar in size to Spokane, to see how it manages homelessness. Boise showcased a stark contrast to Spokane’s downtown.
Dave Bieter, the former mayor of Boise, is in Washington to discuss his methods with Mayor Brown. Bieter said he was surprised that Spokane was not already taking some of the steps he did during his 16-year tenure.
“We all have family and friends with addiction problems, mental health problems. I know people close to me. They could be homeless,” said Bieter. “And if they were, we would go bring them home, that’s what you would do. You would want your city to bring them in.”
During this visit, Bieter saw Spokane’s downtown firsthand.
“I was a bit taken aback with what I saw at the street level,” he said. “I wasn’t prepared for the level of camping, the level of open drug use. And that that’s allowed.”
Bieter preaches collaborating with homelessness services on a citywide level, as well as the use of citations when needed.
“You do need to enforce camping and open drug use and issue citations. I believe you need to do that,” he said. “Spokane might unfortunately be headed in the wrong direction on how you treat those street-level activities.”
Bieter said he was surprised to see some of the changes the city has made regarding policies like these.
“When I first came I thought you had a similar ordinance that prohibited those kinds of activities,” Bieter shared. “I’ve come to know that recently the city passed an ordinance that makes it more difficult to cite against those activities. That really pretty much shocked me.”
However, enforcement like Boise’s against open drug use and camping could be challenging for Spokane.
Wednesday night showed that the city’s criminal justice funding is being exhausted. With this, the city’s purse to cover costs for jailing those arrested on misdemeanors is empty.
Still, Bieter emphasized that the goal of his methods was to compel those on the street to comply with laws, and to secure these individuals help.
“We never sent anyone to jail, we didn’t ask them for fines or court costs,” he said. “Our officers had to call and ask [a shelter] is there a bed available, is there a spot available, and if there weren’t they wouldn’t issue a citation.”
While Bieter said that under his leadership the city of Boise was not jailing individuals for simply being homeless, it does enforce laws against open drug use.
Ada County’s district attorney told Nonstop Local that her office prosecutes low-level drug offenses, saying that failing to do so removes the deterrent to commit crimes.
Still, Boise’s solution does not eliminate homelessness. Nonstop Local found last November that in Idaho’s capitol, homelessness is concentrated away from highly visited areas.
In turn, Bieter believes Spokane’s current ‘Scattered Site Model’ is the right method for the city.
“Scattered site in particular, I do believe that’s the way to go,” he said. “But you need to combine that with an enforcement piece.”
Regardless, Bieter emphasized that addiction and homelessness are two of the hardest issues to tackle as a city leader, but he’s confident that Spokane can make a change.
“You can turn things around here in Spokane.”
