An Olympia nonprofit took a stand against anti-camping laws. It cost them $1,700
A homeless encampment in a downtown Olympia parking lot has ignited a legal standoff between city officials and a nonprofit that serves LGBTQ youth.
Stonewall Youth has been issued more than $1,700 in fines since October over what the city calls an “unauthorized emergency housing facility” that has generated complaints over trash spilling into the adjacent alley and onto a privately owned parking lot that serves one of the city’s busiest indoor markets.
Tents began popping up on disused parking spaces behind the organization’s office on State Avenue near Capitol Way in August, and were home to at least seven people in October.
The organization says they are morally opposed to forcing the campers out with so few alternative shelter options and are willing to incur fines rather than displace them.
Olympia’s laws ban camping on public property, or sitting or lying in public spaces, which is why those sleeping in sidewalk alcoves are roused at 7 a.m. When homeless camps form on private property, cities can and do use trespass laws to remove campers at the request of the landowner, as Olympia did last month in a sweep of the Deschutes Parkway camp.
Here the situation is flipped, a private owner that wants the camp to stay, making the legal situation murkier.
Bryn Houghton, a member of Stonewall’s staff collective, confirmed that they were fined by the city, but Houghton did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls requesting further comment on the situation.
On Oct. 17, Stonewall Youth posted a statement on Facebook saying that while they don’t have any formal arrangements with the campers, they see it as “immoral and unjust” to enforce laws against camping when there is not enough shelter space.
“We believe the people in the encampment have taken steps to address their own needs, and that they have a right to do so,” the organization wrote. “Sleeping is a necessary, life-sustaining activity, and when there is a lack of adequate housing and shelter space, anti-camping ordinances criminalize actions indistinguishable from the status of homelessness.
“Stonewall Youth believes that people have a right to live peacefully wherever they choose,” the statement said.
The city became aware of the encampment in September. According to emails between police officers and city staff, one resident presented a handwritten note claiming that Stonewall gave them permission to camp there.
According to Kim Kondrat, the city’s homeless coordinator, the city put up several of the initial residents in a hotel room, but they were subsequently kicked out for damaging the rooms. Others moved on their own, or were offered spots at the city’s mitigation site or nearby shelters, but they were soon replaced by new campers, according to emails obtained via public records request.
“One of the people who found permanent housing informally bequeathed their tent and other belongings to a friend of theirs,” Houghton wrote in an email to city staff on Oct. 6.
City officials have met several times with members of Stonewall Youth’s board, first on Sept 9, and again on Nov. 3, after initial fines were issued. City Manager Jay Burney stepped in to freeze the fines in an effort to work with Stonewall, according to the code enforcement office in charge of the case.
Burney says he gave Stonewall a Jan. 7 deadline to apply for a permit through the city’s emergency housing ordinance, which allows for churches and nonprofits to set up sanctioned tent encampments or tiny house villages.
If they don’t, or if the permit is rejected, as it likely will be, the fines will resume unless Stonewall removes the camp.
The ordinance requires that permitted shelters be at least 1,000 feet from another emergency housing facility, and the Stonewall camp is just blocks from both the city’s mitigation site and a small tiny house cluster outside the Union Gospel Mission shelter.
Internal emails show that city officials don’t see a permit as a realistic option for the Stonewall camp, which has no formal staffing or services.
“Why give them the impression that a permit would even be contemplated?” wrote Mike Reid, the city’s Economic Development Director, in a Sept. 3 email to staff.
Burney admitted the odds of it being approved are extremely low, both due to the 1,000 feet rule and other limitations. The site does not have a bathroom or running water, and trash removal has been intermittent.
“I’ve communicated to them that this is a tough spot for there to be a camp,” he said.
“I don’t want to be in a fight with them,” Burney continued. “I do appreciate what they’re trying to accomplish and they’re trying to help, but we do have a process that we go through, and that’s what the surrounding property owners are asking of us.”
Olympia’s leadership is often criticized by neighboring cities such as Lacey for not being aggressive enough about removing homeless encampments, even as activists say they sweep too many camps.
Tents ballooned in Olympia’s downtown core in late 2018, which led the city to establish a sanctioned camping site downtown. Seeking buy-in from a divided community over the mitigation site, which is soon slated to move to a site near Interstate 5, city officials promised business owners that they wouldn’t allow unpermitted camps downtown.
“We made commitments to the community that if we created a mitigation site and passed this ‘emergency housing facility permit process’ we would not have encampments in the downtown core area,” Reid wrote in an email to staff on Sept. 24. “We are failing on that commitment and we’re hearing about it.”
This story was originally published January 4, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
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