By Erica C. Barnett
On this week’s edition of the Seattle Nice podcast, we discussed the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, in which the court upheld a law barring people from sleeping in public, including in their vehicles. (Officially, the ban “only” prohibited using items that provided protection from the elements or basic comfort, but in practice, a person could be ticketed, fined, and eventually jailed for actions like using a rolled-up towel as a pillow, or covering up with a blanket for warmth.)
The ruling has the effect of overturning Martin v. Boise, the landmark Ninth Circuit Case that prohibited cities from sweeping homeless people unless shelter was available. For many cities, the ruling will essentially provide carte blanche to remove people and destroy their possessions, and to do so over and over again without providing any form of shelter or assistance.
In Seattle, the situation is different: Under a set of local rules governing encampment removals adopted in 2017, the city is supposed to provide at least 72 hours’ notice and individual offers of shelter to everyone at an encampment before removing it. In practice, the city has interpreted the rules in a way that creates two categories of sweeps: Those that include 72 hours’ notice and offers of shelter, and a much larger category in which encampments are categorized as “obstructions” that can be removed immediately, with no notice, shelter offers, or even storage.
Seattle, in other words, won’t be directly impacted by the Grants Pass decision because our rules, as interpreted by the Durkan and Harrell Administrations, already allow no-notice sweeps in any circumstance where an encampment exists on public land, such as a park or plaza—that is, in almost every circumstance. When the city decides to single out an encampment for more humane treatment, by sending the Unified Care Team to familiarize themselves with encampment residents and their individual needs, it’s an exception, not the rule.
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Sandeep and I disagree about the circumstances in which cities should remove encampments, but we did agree that, as Sandeep observed, the ruling could have major implications for Seattle if (or, more likely, when) nearby cities like Burien and Everett pass or begin strictly enforcing laws that criminalize people for being homeless without providing them even nominal alternative shelter options. Already, the city of Burien considers Seattle shelters close enough to qualify as “available” shelter alternatives for people living unsheltered there; when suburbs and nearby cities no longer have to provide even a fig leaf offer of shelter before fining people caught being homeless, Seattle could become a (highly) relative refuge.
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