Bellingham city officials ask court to order Walmart encampment be cleared by new year

Bellingham city officials are joining the owners of the Tullwood Apartments in asking Whatcom County Superior Court for a “motion of summary judgment” to find the nearby 20-acre encampment property behind Walmart to be a “nuisance as a matter of law” and that it be cleared by the first of the year, court records show.

In June of 2024, the court allowed the apartment complex owners, 52nd & Brooklyn LLC, to intervene in the lawsuit filed by the city of Bellingham against the property owner of the land with the encampment behind Walmart at Stuart and Deemer Roads, where nearby residents have been expressing safety concerns for years.

In its motion to intervene, 52nd & Brooklyn claimed it had a right to protect the safety of its residents and its economic interests of maintaining full occupancy of its apartments.

The apartment complex owners then filed a legal motion for summary judgment for the court to find the encampment property a nuisance as a matter of law, which the city is joining.

City officials are also asking the court to order the property owner, Li-Ching Fang, to abate the encampment by Jan. 1, 2025.

If the encampment is not abated by then, the city is asking the court to allow it to go onto the property to “inspect and plan for a clean-up after Jan. 1, 2025,” court records show.

The original lawsuit, filed by the city of Bellingham against Fang in February of 2024, alleges that unhoused individuals are trespassing on the property and the encampment is causing a public nuisance, which violates the Bellingham Municipal Code and state law.

The city is seeking a warrant of abatement and claims in its lawsuit that Fang had “taken no steps to abate the nuisance” since city officials began taking steps to declare the property a public nuisance in November 2022 by attempting to contact her and requiring her to abate the encampment.

Fang filed documents in March pushing back against the lawsuit , denying the city’s claim that she had taken no abatement steps.

The lawsuit states that unhoused individuals have been residing in the encampment for at least 15 years and that the encampment’s size has grown significantly since 2020.

The encampment property contains an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 tons of solid waste, with more assumed to be buried in the ground. The property also holds approximately 300 shopping carts, according to the lawsuit.

The estimated cost for the city to remove the visible solid waste alone is $2 million due to the large amount of waste and the lack of access roads for machinery to pick up the waste. Repairing the damage to the wetlands on the property would cost an additional $2 million to $4 million, according to the lawsuit.