After Supreme Court punts on the homeless, cities are left with tenuous status quo

MOSES LAKE — The Supreme Court’s refusal last Monday to review last year’s Boise decision maintains the right of homeless individuals to sleep on public property if there are no shelter beds available.

In the September 2018 Martin vs. City of Boise decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that city ordinances barring the homeless from sleeping in public were unconstitutional and tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment if there were no beds available in a homeless shelter.

For cities that have struggled to balance community outcry about newly-visible camps and the rights granted to the homeless by the circuit court, the Supreme Court’s punting of the issue maintains a tenuous status quo.

In the months that followed the Boise decision, Moses Lake’s homeless emerged from hiding places behind businesses and strips of undeveloped land to move closer to the center of town, many saying they were better able to access services and felt safer out in the open.

With no shelter beds available for the general population, local authorities were largely unable to respond to an outpouring of complaints from residents, who reportedly complained that they felt the tents were unsightly and unsafe.

Elected officials have since passed a number of ordinances tightening what it would allow, first by banning nighttime camping in public parks and then banning daytime use of “camping paraphernalia,” including tents, among other restrictions.

By the time the suite of ordinances was enacted, the net effect was that the homeless could set up their tents outside of parks at night, but had to remove them by 6 a.m. each day. This, city officials hoped, would address community complaints about campers situated in the same place for months at a time while also avoiding direct conflict with the Boise decision.

But with the Supreme Court failing to bring clarity to the issue, even those circumspect ordinances are on unclear legal ground, said Interim City Manager Kevin Fuhr. This was illustrated by a camper who set up their tent in front of the police department and parks and recreation department offices, which was unoccupied and still standing come daylight hours Monday.

Fuhr, who is also the city’s chief of police, said that though the ordinances in place did not allow for that tent to be standing during the day, officers would not be enforcing that particular ordinance in every case. If they did, he added, the city would be put at undue risk for a legal challenge that could potentially cost the city in damages and add to case law further limiting what cities could do.

“What you can and can’t do hasn’t really been defined,” Fuhr said. “We’ve tried to create ordinances that would be defensible, but do we really want to fight that fight when we could end up doing something that could be contrary to the court decision?”

Still, public homeless encampments slowly became less visible as the new ordinances were implemented, even if not all of them are enforceable. Though there is no warming center expected for the winter — rumors and reporting that the food bank would open its doors to overnight stays are false, according to staff — the majority of Moses Lake’s homeless population has found tentative shelter on a parcel owned by resident Mick Hansen.

Emry Dinman can be reached via email at edinman@columbiabasinherald.com.