The Need to pass laws on homeless camps

[Guest guest]

Lacey needs to pass law on homeless camps by The Olympian

Editor's note: The Lacey City Council is scheduled to discuss the

latest draft of the ordinance governing homeless encampments on

Thursday, March 13, following the regular council session.

Members of the Lacey City Council need to get off of the dime and pass

an ordinance governing homeless encampments.

Olympia and Tumwater adopted identical ordinances last July. If it's

good enough for those forward-thinking cities, surely their model

ordinance should be good enough for Lacey.

The truth is, the Lacey City Council is running a great risk by not

having a tent city ordinance in place. Without an ordinance governing

such things as sanitation and camp oversight, the seven council

members are running the risk that a Lacey church will agree to host

Camp Quixote or some other tent city and Lacey will be powerless to

intervene on the public's behalf.

Face it, homeless encampments are part of life in the 21st century.

And if the economists are right that this nation is headed into a

recession, then the number of tent cities surely will increase. Too

many people are living on the edge — one paycheck away from the streets.

And the truth is regulated encampments are safer and better for both

the residents and the community than men, women and children living in

the woods or under freeway overpasses.

Camp Quixote, Olympia's year-old homeless encampment, has been a

resounding success. Campers have a no-alcohol and no-drugs code of

conduct and they hold their fellow residents accountable to those rules.

Olympia's encampment got off to a rocky start when activists took over

a portion of a city block in downtown Olympia in protest of a new

pedestrian interference ordinance. But the encampment morphed into a

safe tent city for homeless residents at Unitarian Universalist Church

on Olympia's west side. Since then, the camp has moved to a different

church property roughly every three months. Tent city residents

applaud a sense of safety they don't have living on their own. And

many residents have found employment and gotten on their feet to the

point of being able to afford a permanent roof over their head.

Olympia and Tumwater did the right thing last summer when they passed

their ordinances because the law requires community notification and

public meetings before the camp moves. For whatever reason, the Lacey

City Council has struggled to put similar rules in place.

In fact, last week Mayor Graeme Sackrison said, " I could conceive of a

circumstance where there wouldn't be enough support " to pass the law.

" I'm hopeful we'll get it resolved in a positive way. "

Lacey's council is scheduled to discuss the latest draft of the

ordinance Thursday, March 13. Panza, the advocacy group for Camp

Quixote, has raised concerns about a clause written into the draft

that Panza members interpret to mean the camp's host church must

provide liability coverage for the city under the church's insurance

policy. Such a requirement would be " either impossible or so hugely

expensive as to be realistically impossible, " Tim Ransom of Panza

wrote in an e-mail to Sackrison.

If Lacey fails to act, the council will leave Lacey homeowners with

less protection, not more. Churches will be able to host homeless

encampments without the safeguards of community notification and

proper public safety measures in place.

It's time for Lacey to get off of the dime.

http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/story/374162.html