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Once again the homeless will have to pack up their gear and tear down tent city.
After many complaints from local businesses and residences, the Spokane Police Department along with the city communications director, and the director of community and neighborhood services swept through a newly developed tent city under the interstate clearing out all illegal campers. Police and city officials gave the campers 24 hour notice, saying they need to pack their things by noon on Friday, Jan. 11. The Spokane Police Department then proceeded to evict residents from the tent city under I-90 on that day.
Campers took everything they could carry with them and left the rest for the city to either throw or give away.
“I got what I need,” Douglas Seibold, a former tent city resident said to police officers. “The rest is yours.”
Once city officials arrived on the scene with Spokane Police officers the removal of campers went fairly
smoothly. “All of the people here have been
compliant,” said Spokane Police Lt. Scott Mullennix. “It’s going very smoothly and some of the people have already vacated before we got here.”
The ones who remained were upset that they had to leave their home, and their ‘family.’
“I consider all of the younger ones: my kids,” said Sharon Richard, a former resident of tent city and also known as ‘Mama.’ “I chose to live this way because this is my family. The other night I took one into my tent because they were cold.”
Most of the campers who stay relatively sober are upset because drugs, robbery, and prostitution is the reason the city council cites for enforcing their code.
“Two guitars were stolen from a couple out of their car a few weeks ago near Dick’s Hamburgers and the guitars were traced back here,” said another former resident of tent city who goes by the name of ‘Crazy.’ “A bunch of bikes and other belongings have been stolen and that ruins it for the rest of us.
“If everyone in our community worked together we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems.”
Tent cities have been put up and torn back down in Spokane before. In 2005 the number of homeless persons in Spokane was over 6,000, according to Spokane County’s ten year homeless plan. The Spokesman Review showed in an article that the number has greatly decreased to a little over a thousand people in 2012. Instead of allowing these tent cities to continue, the Spokane Police Department evokes the city’s ordinance, created in the summer of 2005, which prohibits any camping on public property.
“We gave them notices and offered different services,” said the director of Community and Neighborhood services in Spokane, Jonathan Mallahan. “We have warming centers open for the night and there are some beds available at the Union Gospel Mission. Homelessness is a complex problem but these are unsafe conditions.”
The Spokane Police Department will most likely be doing follow ups to make sure people abide by city code.
“If we find people still camping here then it will most likely depend on their attitude if we give them a ticket or, in the worst case, take them to jail,” said Mullennix. “We don’t want to use a hammer when we can be using a feather to move these people.”
Corbin Bronsch