Moses Lake council, business owners discuss homelessness concerns

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake City Council is going to look at places to park RVs used as residences — including next to the current city dog park on N. Paxson Drive — in early May following a lengthy discussion of the homelessness situation in Moses Lake at its regular Tuesday meeting.

“There are not a lot of good solutions,” said City Manager Allison Williams. “That would be a temporary location to deal with RVs until they move along.”

The council has roughly until the end of May to find a place for RVs being used by those without permanent housing to park after Moses Lake Police officers served eviction notices on the nine RVs parked on stub-outs on private property along N. Central Drive, both Williams and MLPD Chief Kevin Fuhr told council members.

“I think most will comply and leave within 30 days,” Fuhr said.

Three RV owners weren’t present Tuesday morning when officers served the eviction notices and at least one RV resident said he would fight eviction, Fuhr said.

Williams said the city’s ability to deal with the homeless situation is limited by a pair of court rulings and recent legislation. In 2019, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found in a case involving the city of Boise that municipalities cannot prevent homeless people from sleeping in public if there is no safe public shelter, like the sleep center the city established the following year.

Then, in 2021, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in a case involving the city of Seattle that a vehicle used by a homeless person as a residence qualifies for protection under the state’s homestead act. That act is designed to keep people in bankruptcy from losing their primary residences and experiencing homelessness. Williams said the second ruling ended the ability of cities like Moses Lake to impound motorhomes that are being lived in.

“State law supersedes local law,” Williams said.

Originally, Williams proposed setting up a temporary parking place on the 9.5 acres the city owns at the southeast corner of N. Paxson Drive and W. Central Drive. The parcel is host to Basin Homes Park, which is the city’s enclosed dog park. The dog park, however, only occupies a small portion of the 9.5-acre plot.

Williams said the city is currently in discussions with Grant County Animal Outreach to use at least part of the land for the organization’s new animal shelter, which is currently located in a dilapidated facility on the Port of Moses Lake. However, Williams said it will be a year or two before GCAO will be able to begin work, giving the city the opportunity to utilize the property for other purposes. Williams said a few minimal improvements — lights and cameras to monitor activity — would need to be made, but the goal would be to get people and their vehicles off Central Drive and eventually encourage them to move on.

“This is not an RV park,” said Deputy Mayor Deanna Martinez. “It’s very basic. We’re not going to make it friendly for them.”

“It’s not going to be comfortable, but it gets them off the street,” Fuhr added.

However, Martinez expressed concerns held by other council members that other city properties had not been looked at — such as the city maintenance yards on Cherokee Road near the municipal airport — and that city residents, especially those living near the dog park, get a chance to weigh in on the proposal.

“It’s near a school, a residential area, the fairgrounds,” Martinez said. “Anywhere that we put it, if we do it quickly, there will be concerns.”

Williams also told council members that once the council approves a location, the city can have it up and running in “a couple of weeks.”

“No kidding? Excellent,” said Council Member David Eck.

The council is set to consider the dog park, and any other options that might be put before it, at its next meeting on May 9, and is encouraging the public to participate.

“I like the idea of having citizens involved,” said Council Member Judy Madewell. “They are the ones who pay the taxes.”

A number of local business people expressed their concerns that the city needs to do something about the unhoused population in the city causing problems for other residents and businesses alike.

“It’s not a crime to be homeless, but they are definitely creating a lot of crime,” said Kevin Starcher, owner of Hot Springs Spas and Leisure at 993 E. Broadway, not far from the sleep center.

Starcher, along with several other business owners, spoke of having to clean up trash and human excrement, of thefts and vandalism, public drug use, people coming in and demanding to use toilets, and of the need to walk customers, clients and employees out to their vehicles at night.

“We have an all-female staff right now and they feel very unsafe,” said Danette Preston, operations manager for Settler’s Natural Market in downtown Moses Lake.

“We have a drug problem. We have a crime problem. We definitely have a homeless problem,” said Heather Kerekffy, owner of Salon Envy. “This town is killing small business.”

Williams said she would do what she could to forward a video of their comments to state and federal legislators in order to let them know how a number of court and legislative decisions have affected citizens and taxpayers.

“Thank you for speaking up. City staff are as frustrated as you are,” she said.

In particular, Williams said the state legislature’s failure to fix the Blake decision, a 2021 state supreme court decision that struck down the state’s drug possession laws as unconstitutional, has only exacerbated the current homeless problem. Several of the business people spoke up about public drug use and the inability of the police to do anything about it.

Fuhr said he has been working with County Prosecutor Kevin McCrae on creating a county ordinance that would make the use and possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia illegal. It would only be a gross misdemeanor, Fuhr said, but it would give local police and sheriff’s deputies laws they could enforce.

“They won’t go to jail, but we can arrest and book and search, and they will end up with a warrant,” Fuhr said.

The chief expected an ordinance might be ready by late May, well before June 30 when the state’s current temporary drug law expires.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.