Tacoma City Council member John Hines has come forth with a proposed ordinance to address some of the city’s homeless encampments, but the jury is out on whether it will help or just move homeless people around to other parts of the city.

The ordinance intends to keep homeless encampments 10 blocks away from six of the city’s authorized temporary shelter sites: the stability site on Puyallup Avenue; Tacoma Emergency Micro-Shelter (TEMS) sites at 6th and Orchard and South 69th and Proctor Street; the mitigation site at South 82nd and Pacific Avenue; the RISE Center Emergency Stabilization Shelter at 21st and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way; and the soon to be opened mitigation site at 35th and Pacific Avenue. Three additional shelter sites are also included: Altheimer Memorial Church of God in Christ on South Altheimer Street, Bethlehem Baptist Church on Portland Avenue East, and Shiloh Baptist Church on South I Street.

The plan is to create a buffer zone around all nine of these areas so that groupings of tents don’t pop up outside of shelters where homeless individuals have chosen to accept services to help them get off the streets permanently. The goal is twofold – to protect the vulnerable people inside the shelter from being preyed upon by those who choose to continue living the street life, and to make temporary shelter sites more palatable to Tacoma residents if such a site comes to their neighborhood, demonstrating that the city will maintain control at temporary sites so that they won’t end up becoming sprawling tent cities with their often associated public health and safety issues.

"How I see this working and why I’m supporting it is because I feel like it’s a way to share to the public that we care about your community, your neighborhood, and we’re going to make it safe,” said ordinance co-sponsor Sarah Rumbaugh. "If you allow us to put a temporary shelter into your neighborhood, we will make sure that there is not that illegal portion around the outside of the shelter.”

Violating the ordinance by setting up a camp within the buffer zone could be punishable as a misdemeanor offense, which carries a $1,000 fine and 90 days in jail.  

Hines introduced the ordinance at the council’s Sept. 13 study session where there was much discussion of its pros and cons. Aside from ordinance co-sponsors Rumbaugh and Joe Bushnell, other council members weren’t clearly convinced that the ordinance would merit their yes vote ultimately for passage. Some had questions that couldn’t be answered at that very moment of the study session and others have amendments in mind. For example, Bushnell wants to include the Aspen Court homeless shelter on Hosmer as an additional buffer zone area. 

"It’s one of the lowest opportunity zones in our city and has had some of the highest rates of crime and some of that has been due to the activities around these encampments,” he said. "I’d like to make sure that those folks that are seeking help and are vulnerable in our community don’t get preyed upon by the criminal elements that are part of some of those encampments.” 

Council member Keith Blocker asked how the ordinance would be enforced and whether it will just push encampments to other parts of the city.

  The mitigation site at 35 th  & Pacific is being prepped with a target opening in October.

"It seems to me we still lack the resources to go out and clean up encampments in a timely manner. Where will the people go? Are we just pushing them outside of the 10-block mark and that’s success? What is the measurement of success when we still lack resources and still don’t have adequate law enforcement?” Blocker said. "I’m concerned for our vulnerable populations and for our law enforcement officers who will have to go into encampments and whatever engagement could potentially result in negative actions.”

City Manager Elizabeth Pauli conceded that the city and Tacoma Police Department don’t have adequate staff to keep ahead of encampments.

"Certainly, there are more existing encampments, and likely more existing encampments with heightened concerns around health and safety, than we have staff to do the appropriate level of outreach for,” Pauli said. 

The second issue is shelter capacity. 

"At the pace that we’ve been clearing these encampments, we have been able to offer the existing shelter beds as we’ve been doing these removals. If we had a larger staff to do engagement and post sites for removal, we might not have that corresponding capacity for shelter beds for any given moment in time,” Pauli said. 

For Rumbaugh, it’s a matter of the city trying something different to address Tacoma’s homeless population.

"The reason I’m supporting this is because not doing something is doing something as well. It’s saying in some way that what we’re doing is okay and I don’t think it’s okay to be clearing encampments. I think what we do is wrong and that we need to offer another solution,” she said.

Hines sees the ordinance as a starting point for conversations as much as a plan of action. 

"Once this gets passed, it’s not as if we’re going to clear all those camps out the next day,” Hines told the Tacoma Weekly. "It will shift some of the outreach conversation, so we’ll focus on those areas, reach out to people in the camps, try to get them services and educate them about the buffers and where they are. That will take a while to make sure we’re getting that information out and that people are well aware.” 

He said the city won’t jump in to start clearing camps within the buffer zone, and Tacoma Police Chief Avery Moore has made it clear that he is not in favor of criminalizing homelessness. Hines said the city will continue with its current system of reaching out to campers and hopefully get them to accept shelter and services. 

"My goal would be to chip away at some of the people that are most ready for services and move them in. The people who don’t I guess could or would relocate to the edge where they don’t want help, but we would at least know who those people are to zero in and meet their needs to help them transition to the next part of life.”

The proposed ordinance will have its first reading at the council’s regular meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 20. It could pass as soon as its second reading on Tuesday, Sept. 27.