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By Jake Bullinger
Twice in the span of a month, Hope Beasley was removed from a tent encampment by authorities in Tacoma, Washington. First, in November, police moved Beasley and others from the sidewalk outside a local shelter. She ended up at nearby People’s Park, along with about 30 to 50 other people. It was likely she'd be on the move again — that month, Tacoma’s council banned the daytime use of tents in public parks, so the encampment where Beasley was staying was in violation of local ordinance.
The second removal had a different outcome, though. After living in People’s Park for about three weeks, Beasley’s case worker called her and asked if she was interested in moving to a tiny house village that was being built a block away. “And I said, ‘Oh hell yeah! I don’t like my tent that much,’” Beasley told me.
Her new 8-by-12 dwelling is heated and insulated, and she has saved up enough money since December to buy a television and mini-fridge. The village, funded by the city, has 22 shelters and a capacity for 35 people. It's clean, quiet, and monitored around the clock. Unlike at traditional shelters, residents have a private space they don’t need to leave each morning. They have access to a communal kitchen, and caseworkers are constantly shuttling about.
To Beasley, 60, the tiny house is an upgrade. “My tent … it was better than freezing to death. But, yeah, it was rather depressing.”
Beasley’s situation epitomizes how homelessness responses have changed recently around the West. A federal appeals court ruling issued in September 2018 has many cities experimenting with solutions like Tacoma’s tiny-house village. But some argue leaders are simply deploying temporary emergency measures while neglecting permanent fixes to the emergency itself.
“The scale of the problem is such that it’s a little bit of musical chairs without a larger master plan for how you close the gap between the amount of housing that’s needed and what’s available,” said Benjamin Henwood, an associate professor of social work at the University of Southern California.
Authorities in several cities around the West, such as Denver, Las Vegas, and Tacoma, all have some form of camping bans in effect, as do 57 percent of cities nationwide. “We do not believe that encampments are a safe location either for individuals living in the encampment, or the general public,” said Allyson Griffith, assistant director of Tacoma’s Neighborhood and Community Services. “Having folks live outside in a climate where we experience lots of rain … is not our ideal solution.”
In the past, it was common in various cities for police to break up encampments without regard for where people would go in the aftermath. But, in a case brought by homeless individuals against the city of Boise, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2018 that “as long as there is no option for sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property.” Numerous Western cities joined Boise in appealing the case to the Supreme Court, but the high court declined to hear the appeal late last year.
That has some cities around the region taking a more proactive approach to folks living in tents. For some, that means embracing tents themselves. Modesto, California, officials last year operated a tent shelter with a capacity for 450 occupants; it closed in December after a new shelter came online. Sacramento is considering a shelter with tents and tiny houses that would hold 700 people. Olympia, Washington, has been operating a city-sanctioned tent encampment for more than a year. Seattle went a step farther last week when its council authorized up to 40 tiny-house villages, tent encampments, and parking facilities for folks experiencing homelessness.
Enforcement of camping bans has changed, too. Cities such as Boise, Tacoma, and Denver interpret the 9th Circuit ruling to say a person can’t be roused from a tent site unless there’s a shelter bed available. But, “if you’re on one side of Denver and there’s a bed on the other side of Denver, how are you going to know that and how are you going to get there?” Howard Beledoff, an attorney in the Boise case, told The Denver Post. “It’s just not that simple.”
There are other complications. Seattle, while embracing formal tent encampments, is increasingly cracking down on informal ones. Capacity at the new Modesto shelter is just 40 percent of what the tent city could hold. Plus, some folks prefer tents over shelter facilities that, for instance, don't allow pets or couples.
What these new temporary housing measures do show is how quickly cities can move when there’s political will. Tacoma’s council, for instance, approved funding for the micro-shelter site on November 19, and people were moving in just a month later.
Tacoma contracted with the Low Income Housing Institute, which runs 12 micro-shelter sites in the region, to oversee the operation. Sharon Lee, LIHI’s executive director, said that while her staff is skilled at putting up the $2,500 structures quickly, cities need to think of tiny houses as more than a last-ditch solution.
“Some of our villages started as tent encampments,” she said. “We would rather see villages with tiny houses funded from the very start, as opposed to making that transition, but it can be done.”
Teresa Crawford was among the first residents at the Tacoma village. The 59-year-old used to have a home of her own near Tacoma, but lost it after she stopped working for health reasons and to take care of her ailing mother. Crawford had been living in her car since her mother died in late 2018.
The tiny house — a warm blanket, a secure roof over her head, a locking door — has Crawford feeling hopeful. “People don’t understand, those things are a big help. You don’t realize it until you’re put in this situation,” she said.
The LIHI village will have to relocate at the end of July (low-income senior housing will be built on the property), but Lee is confident the city will find another space for the village. If it were to shut down, tiny-house resident Ronny Brown told me, “there are people who would go right back to [the streets], because there’s nothing else working. You have people coming up, and then you take the rug out from under them. It could lead to a lot of trauma, to relapse.”
The impermanence, USC’s Henwood said, is the fundamental conundrum with emergency measures surrounding homelessness. “What the research says is that housing subsidies and a housing-first approach is effective,” he said. “The balance that I think people are trying to figure out is, what do you invest in permanent solutions when there’s a crisis?” To put a finer point on it, would the $388,000 Tacoma is paying for the micro-shelter space be better spent on rent vouchers?
For her part, Beasley is optimistic she’ll find permanent housing before August, but it might not be in Tacoma. Her caseworker, she said, is confident she can find a unit — in Yakima, 150 miles away.
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