Aug. 12—The Spokane City Council has delayed for two weeks voting on a controversial proposed law to protect the homeless from employment and housing discrimination, with a majority citing a need for more public outreach amid sharp pushback from prominent business and property owners.
Initially, Councilman Zack Zappone suggested an indefinite deferral, believing that more time would be needed to reach consensus. Councilman Michael Cathcart, however, alleged that a long-rumored indefinite deferral would be politically motivated, claiming publicly Monday night that the deferral came under pressure from Mayor Lisa Brown out of concerns that it could politically damage the chances for a proposed sales tax funding public safety investments that voters could approve this November.
"So is this (ordinance) going to really change, and is it going to really change in a way that dramatically alters the landscape of support and opposition?" Cathcart asked rhetorically. "Highly doubt it, but we are going to have to wait, most likely, until after an election."
With a last-minute pivot to a two-week deferral, however, that concern appears to have been preempted.
In a brief interview Monday night, Brown said that she had raised concerns about implementation of the proposed law and agreed with calls for more community discussion but, when asked several times, did not directly deny pressuring for a deferral out of concern with how the law would impact the sales tax vote in November.
The first major ordinance introduced by freshman Councilwoman Lili Naverette, the proposal would make it illegal to use someone's homelessness itself as a reason to deny them employment, housing or access to public services.
Existing civil rights laws prohibit businesses from rejecting a job applicant or serving a customer because of their race, religion or other protected class, with some exceptions. The law considered Monday would add homelessness to those protected classes, making it illegal to use the lack of a residence as a reason to not hire someone or serve them.
Some, especially owners of downtown businesses and properties, have construed the ordinance to have sweeping implications that the law's sponsors say are misguided.
In an email server maintained by developer Sheldon Jackson and circulated among a number of prominent business owners, Jackson wrote that the "Homeless Bill of Rights or whatever you want to call this warped, idiotic, entitlement for the 1%, drug addicted, criminals" would stop the city from enforcing laws preventing the homeless from camping in certain areas, including the recently voter-approved Proposition 1, which applies to most of the city.
Barbara Woodbridge, president of the East Spokane Business Association, an organization that called in 2022 and 2023 for the closure of the since-dismantled Camp Hope homeless encampment, claimed the law would make homeless people immune from prosecution and predicted doom for Spokane if the bill is approved.
"As people from all areas of the nation hear that they will find refuge and no accountability for degenerate behavior, the worst of the people in this population will descend upon our city," Woodbridge wrote to progressive Councilman Paul Dillon in a letter first reported by RANGE Media.
The city is already not holding the homeless accountable for their criminal conduct, Woodbridge argued, causing residents to hold them in contempt. Granting the homeless anti-discrimination rights would encourage them to cause "more destruction of business and residential property," eliminating what compassion for the unhoused the public had left, she added.
"We believe that the contempt towards the people living on our streets has come from a complete lack of accountability for the lawlessness that follows many of those individuals," she continued. "Many citizens who once had compassion for these people, no longer do."
Dillon, who in an interview dryly called the letter "one of the kinder and more thoughtful messages" he's received on the ordinance, noted in an emailed response to ESBA that the homeless are still being arrested or cited when they are found to have committed a crime.
Enforcement of homeless encampment laws has increased this year, according to Julie Humphreys, spokeswoman for the Spokane Police Department. Police issued 67 tickets for illegal camping between April and the end of July, compared to 21 in the same period last year. Police also issued more than eight times as many tickets for people blocking sidewalks between April and July as they did in that period last year.
The sweeping provisions of Proposition 1, which banned people from sleeping on public property within 1,000 feet of schools, parks or playgrounds and impacts most of the city and almost all of downtown, were not being enforced until recently. Initially, city officials hesitated to enforce that new law pending the results of a U.S. Supreme Court decision informing whether Proposition 1 was constitutional. Following a decision in late June that such laws are constitutional, the Spokane Police Department has been training and preparing to begin enforcement.
Enforcement of Proposition 1 began last week, Humphreys said.
Navarrete has tried to address some of the concerns of vocal detractors in the business community, emphasizing that the ordinance does not allow the homeless to commit crimes without consequence and does not impede the city's ability to continue enforcing laws like Proposition 1.
"This will have no effect on the ability of law enforcement to enforce city ordinances like unlawful camping or sit-lie," Navarrete wrote to recipients of Jackson's email server. "Laws ensuring that a person is free from discrimination based on their housing status do not equate to a license to violate other laws of general applicability."
The law would not prevent a business from removing someone for, for instance, not wearing shoes or being intoxicated, Navarrete added.
"In other words, if the customer is violating any laws or policies of the establishment, the business owner has every right to remove that person," she wrote. "However, if a business owner refuses to attend to a prospective customer who is not otherwise disruptive and never has been," that customer might have a legitimate discrimination complaint.
Those reassurances seem to have done little to assuage the concerns of business owners, however.
Dave Black, the prominent and politically active business owner of Black Realty, thanked Navarrete for her responses to business owners, before claiming that the law would make the homeless immune from trespassing laws, as Navarrete silently shook her head. Another business owner argued that the law would force them to hire people addicted to drugs, which it does not require.
The ordinance drew an unusually large crowd, with dozens signing up to speak. Most used the proposal as an opportunity to express their disdain for how the city manages homelessness, as opponents conveyed their general anxieties about the impact the homeless have on their lives and businesses, and supporters argued there are insufficient resources and an over-reliance on criminal enforcement to manage the unhoused.
"(The homeless are) not the ones that need to be protected, it's the local businesses and the citizens of this city that need to be protected from them," said resident Mark Falls, whose downtown employer also spoke on the ordinance Monday.
Wendy Fishburne, a counselor associated with ESBA, echoed the prior comments of Woodbridge, arguing that approving anti-discrimination protections for the homeless would "send out a beacon" drawing the homeless from the "entire west coast."
The ordinance is now scheduled to come back for a vote on Aug. 26.
