Community Government Health & Wellness

City monitoring proposed legislation that would complicate camping bans

Elected officials from Gig Harbor are leery of a state House bill that would prohibit cities and counties from criminalizing camping on public property unless the jurisdictions have adequate shelter beds available. 

Shea Smiley, the city of Gig Harbor’s housing, health and human services manager, described House Bill 2489 as a one-size-fits-all approach during a City Council meeting last month. The bill would require all jurisdictions to follow the same approach and is essentially an unfunded mandate, she said. 

Outside of a couple safe parking sites, Gig Harbor has no overnight shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness. The city works with partners, often in Tacoma, to place people in shelters, Smiley said.

Officials worry that would no longer be an option under the bill.  

“It is a major concern that this bill would require we have a shelter in city limits,” Smiley said. “There is not funding that is coming along with this mandate, therefore we would not have a shelter and we would not be able to house people adequately under this bill.”

‘A revolving door’

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mia Gregerson, D-SeaTac, prohibits local governments from enforcing laws that inhibit people from performing “life sustaining activities” on public property, unless they can demonstrate “adequate” shelter space is available.

During a public hearing, Gregerson said the bill is not about restricting cities’ ability to address crime or protect public safety. Instead, she said, it seeks to create a consistent approach that ends municipalities’ ability to criminalize homelessness.

For years, a court ruling barred Washington cities and counties from enforcing so-called anti-camping laws unless they had available shelter space. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2018 that doing so violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that in 2024 in a case involving the city of Grants Pass, Ore. That decision gave local governments the authority to enforce camping bans without consideration of alternatives.

Pierce County and 10 of its cities have at least one anti-camping law on their books, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports HB 2489. Gig Harbor is not among them. In Kitsap County, Bremerton, Bainbridge Island and Poulsbo also have anti-camping laws.

“Local criminalization does not resolve homelessness, it simply moves it,” Jazmyn Clark, a policy director for ACLU of Washington, said during testimony on the HB 2489. “Enforcement without shelter is not a solution, it is a revolving door.”

Richards votes against bill

Rep. Adison Richards, D-Gig Harbor, was the lone Democrat on the Housing Committee to vote against HB 2489. The bill advanced to the Rules Committee of the state House.

Richards, who has handled eviction cases as an attorney for Kitsap Legal Aid Services, said he is sensitive to the needs of people experiencing homelessness. But he believes this bill takes the wrong approach. 

Richards expressed concern about how the bill defines an “adequate” shelter. The definition requires not only that beds be available, but that they accommodate a person’s family, pet and other possessions, among other requirements.

Richards said no shelters in his legislative district — covering Gig Harbor, the Key Peninsula, Port Orchard and part of Bremerton — would meet that definition, including the 75-bed Pacific Shelter in Port Orchard. The bill, he said, would discourage municipalities from connecting with people on the street and trying to get them into shelter.

“My objective is to get people into shelter and services and not leave folks on the side of the road,” he said in a phone interview. “I think there’s a middle ground to be found in addressing the humanitarian problem folks are facing while addressing the public safety concern associated with leaving folks lost in addiction and mental health crises without options in our community.”

Large cities shoulder the responsibility

Smiley said she hasn’t spoken with lawmakers, but she surmised that the bill is trying to motivate jurisdictions to build more shelters. “Because we do need more shelters,” she said.

Gig Harbor Mayor Mary Barber said she believes that is exactly what is happening.

“Some of the larger communities have a tendency to feel the smaller communities may not be pulling their weight,” she said during the council meeting. “We are relying on partnerships that we have built to help us be able to meet the need without having the infrastructure in our small community.” 

Gig Harbor Now asked city spokesperson Lori Maricle via email about the bill and whether the city would support a shelter in its jurisdiction. She insisted our questions were “addressed during the public meeting and in the meeting packet materials.”

“The discussion there reflects the city’s position,” she said. “We continue to monitor the progress of the proposed legislation and will evaluate next steps as appropriate.”

Addressing the criminalization of homelessness

Tacoma hosts the majority of shelter beds and services for the homeless in Pierce County. But Rob Huff, a spokesperson for the Tacoma Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness, said building facilities in other parts of the county could help get more people to accept help.

“Not everyone who becomes homeless — when they’re in the community they know — wants to have to go to Tacoma for shelter,” he said.  “I think our county will be able to help people come back from homelessness better when they’re sheltered in an area they’re familiar with, but it’s a slow road to get there.”

Huff said the coalition is mixed on supporting the bill. But he noted broad support for encouraging communities to invest more resources on solutions to homelessness, as opposed to camping bans. 

“The camping bans are not currently set up to help prevent or solve homelessness  at all,” he said. They’re just about making people move at a very high cost.” 

Steve Decker, CEO of Family Promise of Puget Sound, said the state needs a policy to addresses criminalization of people for simply being homeless. But Decker, whose agency works to house families, expressed doubts that requiring cities to provide shelter before they can enforce a camping ban would be effective. 

“Cities will simply not do anything because they don’t have the resources to provide the shelter space,” he wrote in an email. “What that means is that they would feel hamstrung on the ability to clean up camping sites.  The reality is that it’s an unfunded mandate from the state.”