By Erica C. Barnett

This post has been updated with a comment from King County about enforcement by the King County Sheriff’s Office.

Burien, the Seattle suburb that recently banned sleeping outdoors at night in the vast majority of the city, tightened the vise on the city’s homeless residents last night by making it a misdemeanor to “camp” outdoors on any public property in the city, including all sidewalks. The new ban expands on an earlier (and already much-amended) law that allowed people to sleep at night in public spaces where camping wasn’t “explicitly prohibited,” including some sidewalks in downtown Burien.

The city council passed the new sleeping ban 5-2 last night after a brief debate.

The hastily proposed amendment came just one week after PubliCola was first to publish a video in which Councilmember Linda Akey ranting at homeless people who had set up tents on the sidewalk outside her condo building downtown, telling them that she had the “authority” as a homeowner to call the police on them. In the video, which made it all the way to the Daily Mail, Akey can be seen roaming up and down between the tents, telling people to go somewhere else because “I live here and you do not belong here.”

The expanded ban, which one public commenter referred to as a “survival ban,” prohibits people from sleeping or setting down items like tarps, blankets, and cooking equipment at any time of day on any public property in Burien. (Almost as if it was being sarcastic, the law says it’s fine for homeless people to sleep in apartments and other types of homes.)

Although the law includes a now-standard exemption saying police can’t arrest or move people if there’s no available shelter, it defines shelter so broadly that a bed 15 miles away in Seattle would probably qualify, as would a church-based shelter that required a person to enter treatment or participate in a religious program; under the existing and amended law, people whose addiction or mental illness makes staying in congregate or sober shelters untenable could be arrested for violating the law.

To accommodate the possibility, however remote, that people might end up sleeping in certain areas because no shelter was available, the ordinance also explicitly bans “camping,” under any circumstances, within 500 feet of schools, daycares, libraries, and parks, on the justification that “the Burien community has vociferously asserted that the significant increase in unhoused individuals has resulted in an incredible increase in crime and public indecency, and has made the use of libraries, sidewalks, and other public places uninviting if not dangerous.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

 

The new law gives Burien’s city manager, Adolfo Bailon, absolute authority to add any amount of city land to the “areas protected from unhoused encampments” without any public discussion or legislative approval. Bailon, as we’ve reported, received a critical performance evaluation and improvement plan last year, but has refused to release it to the public; late last year, the firm that evaluated Bailon resigned their contract with the city because, in their view, the city had failed to take its recommendations seriously or “take constructive action” to address Bailon’s performance.

Three homeless Burien residents, along with the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, have sued the city over the previous version of the ban, arguing that it violates the state constitutional ban on cruel punishment, among other violations. SKCCH director Alison Eisinger said the plaintiffs’ attorneys are currently amending the complaint to reflect the new, even more restrictive ban.

“Burien residents told their city council in public comment that history will not look kindly on those who wrote and passed this law and drew the outrageous map, and we agree,” Eisinger said. “Our co-plaintiffs and others braved snow and freezing temperatures outside while five council members pretended that excluding people from their community means helping them.”

The bill makes creative use of “whereas” clauses, ordinarily used to cite facts that justify a piece of legislation. In lieu of facts, the law asserts political views, using unsourced, unsubstantiated, and sometimes outrageous claims to make the case that homeless people are a uniquely menacing threat to “the Burien community,” meaning Burien’s housed residents.

One clause cites “allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assaults, drug use, thefts, and trespasses in or near unhoused encampments” as a justification for the ban; another claims that “the Burien community, including business owners and residents, has demanded that the Burien City Council and law enforcement address this significant increase in crime.” A third asserts, again without evidence, that “young girls” are being “taken into tents” by predatory homeless people.

“If council wants to adopt this ordinance, there may not be the votes to prevent it,” said Councilmember Sarah Moore, who—along with Councilmember Hugo Garcia—voted “no.” “But please consider if you want [the whereas clauses] in our recorded history.”

Many public commenters who opposed the ban noted that they, too, are part of the Burien community, and often outnumber anti-homeless voices at city council meetings. “This reads like a middle-schooler’s parody of a Fox News story,” one resident, Paul Hood, said of the legislation.

Others noted that the buildings the legislation purports to “protect,” using buffers similar to those that keep sex offenders from living in most areas, are closed at night—people aren’t using the library or going to school at 10pm, making the specific justification for the “protection areas” patently absurd. (Homeless people are still allowed to exist in Burien libraries and parks during daytime hours, for now.)

In fact, most of the commenters at Monday night’s meeting opposed the ban, including several residents of an encampment outside City Hall whose names were called while they were outside, laying tarps over their belongings as a heavy snow began to fall.

One who made it back in just as the comment period was winding up, Marina, almost didn’t get to speak. Deputy mayor Stephanie Mora tried repeatedly to shut her down, telling her she was out of order and did not have the right to speak. After several people in the crowd intervened—pointing out that Robert’s Rules of Order allow people to speak at the end of the meeting if they weren’t in the room when their name was called—Marina spoke for two minutes as Mora stared off in another direction. Here’s some of what she said:

It’s really hard to be here and have your entire community turn their backs on you. I grew up in this town. My last listed address is here. I had my daughter in this town and I graduated [in] this town, and it’s crazy watching y’all just try to push us out. … We’re waiting here for any kind of help. But you guys don’t want us here. The cops told us the other day to keep walking north. They’re the ones who shuffled us into the alleyway in the first place.

[Homelessness] can happen to anybody. I lost everything so fast, and I was trying my hardest not to. I feel like most of us are maybe just a couple bad steps away from being homeless. And we need help. And I thought y’all had the money to help us. We don’t want to be out here like this. All my friends, my family, they’re out there right now, covered in snow under tarps, miserable, cold, and completely alone. … I have nerve damage in my fingers from the cold. … Some of our people are really sick and they’re not getting the help that they need. They’re out here fighting demons, because that’s what they’re treated like. We’re treated like trash around here and that’s just not nice.

When Oasis Home Church opened a temporary encampment for homeless residents last December, Marina noted, she didn’t have to sleep on public property. The city threatened a lawsuit to stop the church from hosting the encampment.

The ban, which the city passed as an “emergency” ordinance, goes into effect immediately.

UPDATE: The King County Sheriff’s Office told the city of Burien it would not enforce the new camping ban, prompting the city to issue a statement attacking the county for “claiming the authority to decide the constitutionality of existing laws and potentially politicizing an important public safety issue”—as if a ban on homeless people existing at night was not political, and as if the existence of homeless people was an inherent public safety threat to housed Burien residents.

Asked how the King County Sheriff’s Office, which serves as the police department for Burien, plans to enforce the expanded ban, a spokesperson for King County said, “Burien adopted this ordinance with minimal notice to the public and no outreach to King County, which provides law enforcement services to Burien by contract.  This is atypical.  It is unclear why this measure was adopted as an emergency ordinance when prior versions of the same ordinance allowed for full public input and debate.  It is crucial for law enforcement to follow constitutional norms when enforcing any law. King County is currently evaluating the ordinance to ensure that it fits within the proper mission of the Sheriff’s office.”