Moses Lake council accepts sleep center grant

MOSES LAKE — The city of Moses Lake will continue to operate the Open Doors Sleep Center, but Moses Lake City Council members want more information on the city’s options in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued last month.

Council members voted 5-2 Tuesday to accept an emergency housing grant which will provide funding through July 2025. Council members Dustin Swartz and Victor Lombardi voted no.

The $585,000 grant is used to fund the sleep center, located at the intersection of East Broadway Avenue and State Route 17. Lizabeth Murillo, who administers the grant for the city, told council members that it’s used only to operate the sleep center.

“Currently we are only administering an overnight, drop-in, low-barrier sleep center,” she said.

Interim City manager Mike Jackson said the money pays for the site lease, utilities and security at the site, among other things. HopeSource operates the facility and the grant helps fund the agreement between the nonprofit and the city.

“If we do not accept and sign this award, we will not have funds to operate the sleep center,” Murillo said.

Swartz said in a later interview that council members want to understand the dimensions of homelessness in Moses Lake and the costs and impacts to city residents. Those may go beyond what homeless advocates and others have documented, he said.

Prior to the vote, Lombardi advocated rejecting the grant.

‘I challenge the original genesis of this whole project,” Lombardi said.

Moses Lake, like other cities around the West, changed how it enforced its ordinances governing camping in public places following a 2018 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ruled that cities could not impose criminal penalties on homeless people if they did not have access to shelter. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision, saying that cities could enforce what it called generally applicable laws against camping in public places.

Lombardi said in his opinion the city had opened the sleep center in part to enforce its public camping ordinances, but that the Supreme Court ruling changed things. Administering to the homeless puts a strain on city services, he said.

“I look at this and I say to myself, ‘Why are we in this business?’” Lombardi said. “I don’t see how this benefits the city of Moses Lake, especially given the Supreme Court decision.”

Lombardi said he did not believe that most of the people who were homeless were willing to give up the lifestyle.

Council member David Skaug said he expected the city to keep operating the sleep center, but he wants more information about how it worked and what the city is getting for its money.

“We’re not going to undo the shelter this year anyway. Whatever we’re going to do we need to keep doing it, but we have to do it with our eyes wide open,” Skaug said.

In answer to a question from council member Deanna Martinez, City Attorney Katherine Kenison said the city is also governed by state law. Late last month the Washington Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to a Lacey ordinance that prohibited RVs and other large vehicles from parking on city streets or parking lots for more than four hours.

“The Washington State Supreme Court just issued another decision in a state case,” Kenison said. “There are other issues that you would need to take into consideration if you discontinue.

“Publicly I will say the city has always had the ability to enforce its ordinances. It is the risk associated with the enforcement piece that has been the issue,” she said.

The risk may be different in light of the two recent court decisions, Kenison said, but there’s still risk.

Moses Lake Police Chief Dave Sands said people must be given a notice of trespass before they can be cited, but they can be given a citation once that’s been issued. There are people with multiple citations, he said; booking restrictions at the Grant County Jail mean they don’t go to jail.

“It’s a complicated issue,” Sands said. “And we can keep moving them, (however) we will push them and they will go to another park. They will go to the next place, because they will go somewhere.”

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.