SPOKANE, Wash. — It's a laundry list of cities and counties. More than a dozen.
"St. Paul, San Diego, Seattle, Tacoma, Honolulu, San Bernardino County," Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward said. "It's a huge effort."
A huge effort to petition the U.S. Supreme Court which now includes the City of Spokane.
Mayor Woodward announced Friday that the city is joining the legal effort, asking the high court to review two separate rulings which impact how local jurisdictions across the West coast handle homelessness.
In the two cases, Johnson v. Grants Pass and Martin v. Boise, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled people who are unhoused can't be punished for sleeping or camping on public property if alternatives aren't available. That means a shelter bed for every unhoused person.
The Trent Resource and Assistance Center, for example, sees more than 300 people every night.
"Right now, if we were required to have a bed, a shelter bed for every single homeless person, we'd have to duplicate that shelter numerous times," Woodward said. "And we just don't have the funding."
The mayor says it's not just expensive, but it's an expense that diverts funding and resources from long-term solutions.
"We need to be able to invest in other resources that we know move people out of homelessness," Woodward said.
It's why the more than a dozen cities are pushing for local control by petitioning the high court to review -- and they hope reverse -- the lower court's rulings.
Spokane City councilmember Jonathan Bingle says if the decisions are overturned, it will help the regional homeless authority chart a path forward that focuses on the local unhoused population.
"Because we do have different challenges than Seattle and Tacoma and Boise," Bingle said.
The petition says encampments are dangerous and unhealthy to the public and those living inside them. The City of Spokane says yearly data shows around 80,00 pounds of litter and debris related to encampments will be removed.
Phil Altmeyer, executive director of Union Gospel Mission, sees reversing the bans as a step forward to helping even more people. He believes it will also reverse a trend he says is hitting cities in the western U.S. where businesses and people are leaving.
"Sit and lie, camping -- it's lawlessness," Altmeyer said. "It cleans up the city, so the number of people, I believe, we see who are homeless, it's going to change the choices they have to make."
Altmeyer explained that many people who are in active addiction, like the ones they see at the gospel mission, are not making logical choices like getting into a program or working toward permanent housing.
"It's starting to get cold," he said. "Can you imagine someone choosing to sleep on the sidewalks tonight? That oughta tell you something about addiction. They don't think clearly, they don't make smart decisions."
Woodward seemed confident the reversal will happen; when asked about a backup plan for providing services if it doesn't, such as more shelter beds, she said there's not much of an option.
"That's one of the biggest challenges we do have, the funding we do have to address homelessness aren't sustainable," she said. "They're state and federal grants. So, I mean we're always advocating at the state level to fund this challenge. Lawmakers have stepped up, to some degree."
She pointed to the state's right-of-way initiative, which was used to move people out of Camp Hope. She says there wasn't much success there.
"At Camp Hope, $25 million spent and very, very few people permanently housed," she said. "We need a better approach."
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