What is Spokane's homeless shelter capacity and why does it matter?

Jan. 21—Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward has said for months the city could immediately provide shelter for everyone living at Camp Hope.

"We have a safe place for people that's warm, that's a bed, that's three meals a day and access to showers," she said in early October. "People don't have to be freezing in tents."

The Washington State Department of Transportation, which owns the Camp Hope property in east Spokane, has repeatedly said the city couldn't immediately house everyone living there.

"There simply isn't enough housing options to either meet the encampment or overall need at this time," the department wrote in a December news release.

Spokane has a finite number of homeless shelter beds. According to a city-run dashboard on sheltermespokane.org, the city has 1,082 beds available spread across 11 shelters, including 350 at the Trent Resource and Assistance Center.

Yet debate over Spokane's true shelter capacity continues.

"We don't even seem to agree what capacity means," said Jeffry Finer, a civil rights attorney who is fighting the city and county's efforts to clear Camp Hope before its residents can be resettled.

Until recently, Woodward refused to place a hard limit on the city's maximum shelter capacity. She now says the Trent Avenue shelter, operated by the Salvation Army, could house 688 people if necessary. That would bring the city's emergency capacity to 1,420 based on the figures listed on sheltermespokane.org.

City spokesman Brian Coddington said shelter capacity is difficult to quantify.

"Flex capacity by nature is flexible," he said.

Some question the feasibility of fitting 688 people into the Trent shelter. Salvation Army spokesman Brian Pickering said he couldn't discuss whether the organization is capable of operating the facility if more than 600 people are using it.

"I'm personally skeptical of having much more than 250 in one place because of health concerns," Spokane City Council President Breean Beggs said. "But at the same time, we've got to get people out of the cold, the heat, whatever it is."

The disagreement over shelter capacity makes more sense when viewed in a legal context.

In 2018, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that cities cannot prohibit camping on public property unless shelter is available.

The Martin v. Boise ruling allows for exceptions, but it often presents an obstacle for local governments seeking to remove tent cities. Evicting campers from public property without offering them a bed can be legally risky.

"Until there's capacity to house, you cannot criminalize or use nuisance laws to chase after people who are homeless," Finer said.

If Spokane clearly lacked shelter capacity, Finer said, sweeping Camp Hope would be an impossibility.

"If it's murky," he said. "The option exists."

The 9th Circuit ruling gives cities "a strong motivation" to argue they have capacity, Finer said.

Woodward has made that argument since the city in September opened the Trent Resource and Assistance Center and Spokane's shelter capacity grew dramatically. She began strongly pushing for the camp's closure soon after the Trent shelter opened and even threatened to sue the Department of Transportation if it wasn't closed by Oct. 14.

"If we have a bed to direct someone to, then we should be able to remove people out of an insidious encampment that is having an incredibly negative impact on the neighborhood and has for over a year," Woodward said in an interview last week.

In recent federal court filings, the city argued that Camp Hope could be closed without violating the 9th Circuit's ruling and did not appear to argue that it had capacity to house the tent city's residents.

Some homeless advocates say the city didn't have nearly enough capacity this fall to house people living at Camp Hope.

"Absolutely, absolutely not," said Barry Barfield, administrator of the Spokane Homeless Coalition. "Absolutely, 100% not."

An evolving shelter network

The question of how many people can be absorbed by the Spokane shelter system is becoming increasingly salient as the population of Camp Hope homeless dwindles. On Thursday, officials from the state Department of Transportation stated that less than 140 people remained, down from more than 600 last summer.

The recently opened Catalyst project, a former hotel converted into transitional housing for the homeless, can reportedly take in upward of 50 people from Camp Hope, which could drop the camp's population to fewer than 100. Depending on the number of beds available in the shelter system, the city could soon be within striking distance of being able to relocate everyone staying at Camp Hope, which would be a major political victory for the Woodward administration. On Thursday afternoon, sheltermespokane.org listed 150 shelter beds available, although not all of those are open for all people.

Since it opened in September, the capacity of the Trent shelter has expanded well beyond the limits in the current contract with the Salvation Army and beyond what the city budgeted. From original projections in early 2022 that the shelter would house up to 120 people, the number of beds grew to 150, then 250, then 350, with emergency capacity for up to 450.

Woodward has insisted the capacity of the Trent shelter could be expanded even beyond 450 beds, pointing to building officials who have said the shelter could hold as many as 688 people, though not without additional staffing and utilities, such as bathrooms. City Administrator Johnnie Perkins also told council members in December that this was a legal maximum, but that there were no plans to put that many occupants in the Trent facility.

Yet, when asked whether the city could provide shelter to the residents of Camp Hope and shutter the encampment, Woodward has leaned on that 688 number to argue that the capacity exists.

Some homeless service providers call this claim and the shifting shelter bed numbers a politically convenient way to justify ramping up law enforcement against the homeless.

"I think she wants to be re-elected and it serves her image to not have a hard number, to be able to move around and have some wiggle room," Barfield said of Woodward. "Her conservative base really wants her to be able to move somebody off a sidewalk."

Coddington flatly rejected that characterization.

"Politics have nothing to do with it," he said. "It's about finding spaces for people to get out of the weather. Bottom line, our priority is helping people, and a considerable amount of time, energy and resources have been spent to do that."

Woodward's record and rhetoric

In her bid to become mayor, Woodward presented herself as the candidate to solve the visible issue of homelessness and prevent problems like those depicted in a controversial "Seattle is Dying" TV news report aired on KOMO in Seattle.

Unlike her general election opponent, then-Council President Ben Stuckart, Woodward stressed accountability, increased law enforcement and long-term solutions, rather than shelters with few restrictions on guests like the one now located on East Trent.

Woodward criticized the shelter-first approach to homelessness, saying in a political forum that "we have to get beyond warehousing people and handing out sandwiches."

At the time, she proposed the city wait out the conclusion of the appeals to Martin v. Boise.

But in 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the case, allowing the precedent to remain the law of the land within the 9th Circuit, which includes Washington.

Police continued to issue citations. An Inlander report in late 2020 found that city police issued 30 citations for violating its sit-lie ordinance — a prohibition against sitting or lying on a public sidewalk — or illegal camping since November 2019, even though shelter space wasn't available at the time.

Law enforcement pulled back, focusing instead on finding ways to clean up hot spots while avoiding the restrictions created by the appeals court. The city was forced to lean on "interference with pedestrian or vehicular traffic" and other charges, in part because they don't come with the same shelter capacity requirements as its sit-lie ordinance, which was no longer being enforced.

The administration also launched some shelter services during this period, though Woodward faced criticism at the time for a lack of emphasis on low-barrier beds that could be accessed by any homeless person.

By late 2021, Woodward stated publicly that her philosophy had changed. The Cannon Street Shelter had opened, which today provides 80 low-barrier beds for men and women. The mayor's proposed 2022 budget included a provision for what eventually would become the Trent Resource and Assistance Center.

Amid this shift in priorities, a tent city called Camp Hope formed outside of City Hall in December 2021 to protest a lack of low-barrier beds. After the protest was disbanded, its members moved to land near Interstate 90 owned by the state Department of Transportation.

Since then, the Trent shelter has come online, expanding from the 120 beds initially proposed to 350. More than 300 people stayed in the Trent shelter Thursday night.

Immediately after the Trent shelter opened, the city announced it would resume enforcing sit-lie ordinances, pointing to the new bed space as justification.

"We are setting an expectation that individuals take advantage of the opportunities available to them to receive services in a safe, healthy, and humane environment," Woodward said in a statement published by the city. "Our downtown needs to be a safe and healthy place for everyone and living on streets, alleyways, viaducts, and fields is not in anyone's best interest."

An expanded system

Despite the ongoing debate over Spokane's shelter capacity, there are more beds today than there were when Woodward took office. In an interview, she estimated that 500 low-barrier shelter beds have been created during her tenure.

"Last night, 500 people spent the night in a safe, warm, indoor environment, were fed, and had access to services," Coddington wrote in a text Friday. "They had that option because Mayor Woodward supported and led partnerships to add those spaces.

"Those choices have rarely been popular and more often than not met with considerable criticism. However, she did it because helping people move out of the elements and closer to a permanent housing solution is the right and humane thing to do."

On Thursday night, there were 150 beds open out of the nearly 1,100 throughout the shelter system within city limits.

Not every bed is created equal, though.

Jewels Helping Hands Executive Director Julie Garcia, whose organization helps provide services to Camp Hope's residents, explained that each shelter comes with its own restrictions.

"There are a handful of beds in our system, but they are beds that are specific to specific groups of people," Garcia said.

Some of Spokane's shelters offer space exclusively to men. Others cater to women, teens, families or individuals fleeing domestic violence. The Union Gospel Mission's shelters are referred to as "high-barrier" facilities because they impose sobriety requirements on their guests.

Of the 150 beds available on Thursday, more than a third were high-barrier. The city had 61 low-barrier beds available to adult men.

Several of the city's shelters are continuously full. Joe Ader, executive director of Family Promise, said his organization's facility is one of them. Family Promise is the only shelter that provides space for families with children.

"We have been operating at capacity since July and even a little bit over," Ader said.

Among low-barrier shelters, the Trent Resource and Assistance Center often has the most room.

On Thursday, its 42 unoccupied beds accounted for more than two-thirds of the capacity open to adult men and women.

The capacity at the Trent shelter has ballooned over time.

The original Trent shelter proposal was for 60 two-person pods, but by the time the shelter opened on Sept. 6, its capacity was increased to 150 bunks, with the capacity to flex up to 250, according to the city. Mike Shaw, CEO of the Guardians Foundation, which operated the shelter at the time, stated that another 200-300 mats could be used to flex capacity further.

By November, when the Salvation Army began operating the Trent shelter, that facility was averaging 280 guests per night. In all, there were 250 wooden beds available, with 100 floor mats for overflow, according to city officials.

From the beginning, city officials have relied heavily on the Trent shelter to handle most of the homeless population once Camp Hope is closed. Even when the population of Camp Hope was over 440 people this fall, the administration claimed the capacity existed to house its residents.

"In theory, you could put everybody in there," Coddington said on Sept. 27. "That's not ideal; that's not the city's desire."

"We can provide a lot more space at Trent, and we have other shelters within the regional shelter system that can expand as well," Woodward said at the time.

In a Thursday interview, Coddington clarified that the situation was in flux shortly after the Trent shelter opened, and that additional housing options such as the Catalyst Project were expected to come online sooner than they have. There also were ongoing questions about whether Camp Hope contained as many people as had been reported.

The city was justified in stating at the time that shelter existed for everyone at Camp Hope, Coddington said.

Since the Trent shelter opened, Spokane County has pitched in $500,000 to replace the facility's 250 wood-framed beds, which city officials have acknowledged were prone to breakage and infestation, with 350 metal beds.

Salvation Army Executive Director Maj. Ken Perine said in November that continuing to provide 100 overflow mats, for a total capacity of 450 sleeping areas, would take up too much room and interfere with the facility's services.

Woodward, however, has repeatedly maintained that no one will be turned away from the shelter, and during a recent cold snap the population surged above 350.

Not long after the Trent shelter opened, city and county leaders increased pressure for the rapid closure of the camp before the start of winter. Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl and then-Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich threatened to arrest those who did not voluntarily leave.

In October, the Spokane Police Department warned the Department of Transportation that the camp was violating the city's nuisance law. In response, state Transportation Secretary Roger Millar threatened legal action if the complaint was not rescinded and questioned whether there was enough shelter space for the camp to be cleared without running afoul of Martin v. Boise.

"Ignoring these complex considerations, the City's administration has instead recently made vague assertions that it may go in and clean out the encampment, in apparent blatant disregard of the potential legal implications of such an action," Millar wrote.

A point made moot?

Amid months of politicized debate over whether Camp Hope could truly be emptied out into Spokane's shelter system, the encampment's population has plummeted.

With less than 150 people remaining at the camp, there are more beds in the shelter system than residents remaining at Camp Hope, although not all of those beds are low-barrier and open to adults. An additional 50 housing units for residents of Camp Hope also are expected to come online in the near future, Coddington said.

A continued frustration for city officials, Coddington said, is that they have not been provided demographic data for those still living at the camp, which makes it difficult to know if all of those remaining can be placed in the beds available.

"Until we have the demographic breakdown and know for certainty who is there, it's equally unfair to make the assumption that there isn't space for people," he said.

The next steps to close Camp Hope might not be easy ones. The people still living at Camp Hope could be the hardest to house, Finer said.

Of the more than 600 people that once called the encampment home, the easiest ones to place in shelters or housing already have been placed, he said. The ones who remain often have disabilities, he added.

"As the easy, cherry-picked ones leave, the group that's left is the hard core," Finer said. "They're going to be very hard to place."