SPOKANE, Wash. – Spokane police have begun enforcing the recently approved Safe & Accessible Spaces Ordinance, logging over 300 contacts and issuing more than 100 citations for camping in public spaces.
Once cited, individuals are free to leave, but the city does not track where they go next.
In the first week, 34 out of 300 people contacted by police accepted services. If services are rejected, officers can issue a citation, allowing the person to leave. Police track citations and warnings but not the subsequent whereabouts of individuals.
Gavin Tenold, who runs Northwest Renewables located just beyond the downtown line west of the Sunset Bridge, has noticed changes in the past week.
“We’ve noticed an increase in the homelessness, an increase in the crime and the human waste… camping in and around our place of business,” said Tenold.
He described the area over the Sunset Bridge as an easy direction to find open space and land.
Tenold believes the current approach is merely shifting homelessness outward without solving the issue. People camping in the nearby woods have also noticed changes.
Jamie Boyd and Gabriel Graham, who are experiencing homelessness, expressed confusion about the enforcement.
“We don’t have phones or TV, so we don’t know the laws or city ordinances… and then all of a sudden police will show up, and then we’re getting arrested, and we don’t know why,” they said.
Boyd and Graham, who have coexisted with businesses like Tenold’s for months, echoed that citations aren’t moving people into shelters but rather further away from downtown.
“There’s a bunch of new faces out here. We weren’t sure why, they shove them out and then they end up here. We feel like criminals. We feel like we have to hide from the police and we’re law-abiding citizens. We just have no place to go,” Boyd said.
The sentiment is shared by nearby neighbors like Terry Olsen.
“The way I look at it, the homeless have got to go somewhere. And the police just kind of move them around,” said Olsen.
Since the ordinance was passed, Spokane has recorded 74 instances of public camping reported through the 311 system.
