After nearly two hours of debate, the Lakewood City Council narrowly voted to allow police to remove people camping on public property and their belongings after giving them 24 hours to vacate, mirroring language of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling .
An amendment to postpone the vote until next month to give council more time to discuss the topic failed Monday, as did an amendment that would have made the ordinance enforceable only if the person refused available shelter services. It’ll go into effect in 30 days.
Last month the Supreme Court upheld an Oregon city’s ban on people sleeping outdoors even if no shelter beds were available, saying the city of Grant Pass didn’t violate the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling gave cities and municipalities more authority to enforce bans on camping in public spaces.
The ordinance Lakewood passed, on a 3-2 vote with two council members excused, would ban anyone from sleeping on public sidewalks, streets or alleyways, as well as any property abutting a public sidewalk.
If the person does not vacate after a 24-hour notice, the Lakewood Police Department is now authorized to remove the campsite, litter and all personal belongings there. Any personal property that is not disposed of or held as evidence would be stored by the Police Department for at least 30 days, the ordinance said. Anyone found to be in violation of the ordinance could be cited for civil infraction and barred from city parks and facilities for 30 days, according to the ordinance.
“In addition to any other remedy provided by law, any person found in violation of this section may be immediately removed from the premises,” the ordinance states.
The ordinance passed without amendments, with Mayor Jason Whalen, Deputy Mayor Mary Moss and council member Ryan Pearson voting in favor. Council members Mike Brandstetter and J. Trestin Lauricella voted against. Council members Paul Bocchi and Patti Belle were excused.
City officials said the ordinance is intended to “maintain public spaces and public safety” and be one tool of many to address issues related to homelessness. City spokesperson Brynn Grimley told The News Tribune on Wednesday the ordinance itself doesn’t stipulate any criminal sanctions or fines, “but if the person is violating other sections of either city code or state law that have fines or criminal consequences, that would be enforced.”
Last year the Lakewood City Council banned overnight camping on public property within 15 miles of Lakewood City Hall and also banned the use and disposal of “dangerous drugs” in public. Violating that overnight camping ordinance could result in a misdemeanor and violating the “dangerous drug” ordinance could result in a gross misdemeanor, as previously reported by The News Tribune.
At Monday’s meeting Whalen emphasized the importance of the council taking immediate action and giving the Lakewood Police Department more tools to address homelessness.
“The focus is not to punish homelessness, and, yes, we all believe in being compassionate,” he said. “I think what we are doing is being compassionate because sometimes compassion requires tough love, in my opinion.”
Three strikes or else?
At Monday’s meeting Capt. Peter Johnson, who oversees the Lakewood Police Department’s patrol division that will be enforcing the ban, told the council his team is good at connecting with people experiencing homelessness, “but it’s been very limiting not having any legal ramifications to a lot of these issues.”
Johnson said his team routinely hands out all-day bus passes and informs people about emergency-housing options, as well as food options, substance-abuse treatment programs and mental health access.
“We understand that there are needs … and we want to meet those,” he said. “Unfortunately, what we come up against right now is often people, they know we have those resources, we offer those and because they don’t have to take them, they don’t. They don’t want to meet the low-threshold and barriers they need to meet to go into those programs.”
Moving forward, Johnson said, he envisions his team working similarly to how its working now. Police will inform people they are violating the law, issue a warning and connect them to resources, he said. If someone continues to violate the ordinance, the officer will write a formal trespass report.
“If you choose to do it a third time, that’s when this new law would come into play, after we’ve exhausted someone utilizing their own agency to either get help or move elsewhere if they don’t want to darken a doorway in Lakewood where they know it’s privately owned or public property,” Johnson said.
The department has built a storage facility that could be used to store seized property, he said.
City attorney Heidi Wachter said Monday that Pierce County has several therapeutic courts that offer intensive wrap-around services as well as a Veterans Treatment Court for people who served in the armed forces.
“We have avenues, once they are in the criminal justice system, to plug them into services yet again, just with a different motivation this time,” Wachter said.
Knee-jerk reaction? Others say time is of the essence
City officials say Lakewood is already doing a lot to address homelessness and the affordable housing crisis and this ordinance is another tool. Not everyone on the council agreed.
Council member Brandstetter said Lakewood isn’t dealing with the level of encampments Grants Pass was seeing and should use the opportunity to engage with the community and be less reliant on the Police Department.
“Bragging about this and saying we’re doing enough is a bit self-serving and not really the case,” Brandstetter said. “I think our reaction to the Supreme Court decision by just modeling a new ordinance after a Grants Pass ordinance is a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.”
Efforts from Brandstetter to push back the vote to Aug. 19 failed, as did an amendment that would have not given the Police Department authority to remove a campsite and all personal property after a 24-hour notice to vacate.
Council member Lauricella also expressed concerns about the council effectively “criminalizing people who are experiencing homelessness and don’t have anywhere else to go” by passing the ordinance. An amendment he brought forth that would have made the ordinance enforceable only after someone refused shelter services failed.
Whalen said despite some of the city’s best efforts to provide services, shelter, food, mental health services and transportation to people experiencing homelessness, “We still have challenges with a few folks choosing to hang out here on public property because they can, not because they have to, in my opinion.”
Those people “create a deleterious impact on our public amenities here in Lakewood,” he said. “I don’t believe that we need to overly accommodate the few to the detriment of the other 99% of the residents in the city, given all the work we have done today. I am fine having another discussion about what we can do. What I’m not fine with is further kicking the can down the road.”
Deputy Mayor Moss said she supported approving the ordinance Monday.
“The more we procrastinate, the larger the group’s going to get,” she said. “We’ve managed to keep our number of people low, not out, but low. But if we don’t put something and take it to the next step… that’s where I’m having a challenge of not delaying it.”
Council member Pearson said he hopes the ordinance is a way to get people out of inhumane living conditions by encouraging them to make a different choice.
“I think the community, businesses, everyone’s been looking for something like this,” he said.
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