Lacey’s parking restrictions ‘banish’ homeless RV-dwellers from city, lawsuit says
A new lawsuit is challenging the city of Lacey’s rules about recreational vehicle parking, arguing that by limiting the amount of time an RV can be parked in city streets or parking lots to four hours, the municipality has effectively “banished” homeless RV-dwellers from Lacey entirely.
The RV case is the newest entry into a legal debate about the rights of homeless people that has unfolded across the Western U.S. since the landmark Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Martin v. Boise was upheld last year, which barred cities from punishing people for sleeping outdoors if they have no other place to go.
In Martin v. Boise, and in a ruling last month against the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, Ninth Circuit courts have asserted that laws that target behaviors like sleeping outdoors or sitting in public parks have the effect of criminalizing homelessness. Punishing a homeless person simply for being homeless, the courts have said, amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment,” which the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects against.
These cases have also given legal ammunition to advocates and attorneys seeking to challenge municipal laws of all stripes that target the unhoused population.
“A lot of attorneys right now are trying to articulate and draw boundaries around what the rights of unhoused people are,” said Carrie Graf, an attorney for Northwest Justice Project, a statewide pro-bono legal aid organization which filed the lawsuit in Thurston County Superior Court on August 27.
While those cases addressed laws that target people sleeping outside or camping in tents, this case specifically addresses a law that targets people who live in RVs.
In September of 2019, Lacey City Council passed Ordinance 1551, which shortened the amount of time that RVs could park from 24 hours to four hours and extended the rule to cover city-owned lots. It does not apply to cars, just RVs.
The ordinance was aimed at curbing the growing number of recreational vehicles parked in the city-owned lot behind the Lacey City Council and library building.
One of those RV-dwellers was Jack Potter, the plaintiff in the case, a 63-year-old man who had lived in Lacey for the better part of 22 years since he moved to Washington in 1997.
The lawsuit paints a picture of Potter as a veteran of the Army and Navy, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, and also, later in life, a perpetrator of sexual abuse.
Potter bounced around various homes in Lacey, living in a mobile home, a fourplex, and later a friend’s home, which he shared with his late partner. For much of the period between 2013-2015, Potter was incarcerated.
The last home Potter lived in was a two-story house on Martin Way that Potter operated as a veterans homeless outreach charity with the permission of the owner. He left that house and bought a 23-foot travel trailer in April of 2018, the lawsuit says, eventually settling in the Lacey library parking lot.
In 2019, after the ordinance was passed, Potter was issued a citation and the following day police told him his car would be impounded if he did not move it, according to the lawsuit and The Olympian’s previous reporting.
Potter has since moved his RV to various locations in Olympia.
The lawsuit argues that because the ordinance’s language is written so broadly, applying to just about anywhere one could park an RV within Lacey city limits, it effectively prevents RV-dwellers from living anywhere in Lacey.
The ordinance says that RVs cannot be parked on any “improved or unimproved portion of any street, alley, public right-of-way, or publicly-owned parking lot for more than four hours.”
After passing the ordinance, Lacey did create a permitting process by which “non-residents” could apply for permits to park their RVs for up to 12 hours if they have insurance, registration, and a government-issued ID.
However, in the year since the ordinance passed, no permits have been issued to RV-dwellers, according to Shannon Barnes, spokesperson for Lacey Police Department. In fact, no one has even applied, Barnes said.
Potter would not have qualified for a permit because it specifically excludes anyone with an “existing or outstanding” warrant for their arrest and convicted sex offenders, of which he is both.
In 2014, Potter took a plea deal where he pleaded guilty to third-degree assault with Sexual Motivation to avoid a trial in a case where he was charged with molesting the daughter of his then-girlfriend, according to court records. He also has an existing outstanding misdemeanor warrant from another county, the lawsuit says.
John E. Justice, a private attorney, will be representing the city of Lacey in the suit. He was retained by the Washington Cities Insurance Authority, a municipal risk-pool that provides liability protection for cities when they are sued.
Justice declined to share details of the city’s defense because the lawsuit is pending.
Lacey City Attorney David Schneider said that the intention of the ordinance was to address the needs of local businesses and shoppers, who were disrupted by the cluster of RVs parked in the city’s lot.
“Commercial vehicles and recreational vehicles, whether its an RV or a moving truck, they’re incompatible with business and parking for customers and employees,” Schneider said.
Schneider also questioned the lawsuit’s premise that cities should have to provide areas for RV-dwellers to park.
“I don’t think there’s any legal requirement that the city say, hey anybody with an RV, you’re allowed to park anywhere you want at any time and live here. There’s just no requirement that a city do that.”
Schneider added that he thought the council’s motivation for creating the permitting process in the first place was to do something altruistic for the RV-dwellers, rather than to check any legal boxes.
“Council created the permitting process out of a desire to assist those that might be impacted by the no-parking ordinance. And that desire wasn’t required. There’s no requirement for them to come up with any permitting process. They didn’t have to do anything. They could’ve just said, hey, there’s no parking for more than four hours, you need to move. They didn’t want to do that.”
Lacey has until Sept. 24 to file a response to the complaint. It’s also possible that the case will be kicked to federal court, because of the constitutional claims it contains.
This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
.jpg)