Judge rules on request to block Pierce County homeless village. Here’s what it means
A Spanaway Lake advocacy nonprofit’s effort to block development of a micro-home village for people experiencing chronic homelessness has been thrown out in Pierce County Superior Court.
Judge Gretchen Leanderson ruled Friday against Friends of Spanaway Lake’s land-use petition, which alleged that the Pierce County Village was the product of illegal spot zoning. The petition sought, among other things, to invalidate the County Council’s ordinance in March that approved the estimated $62 million project on an environmentally sensitive site near Spanaway.
Lawyers for the county argued there were technical faults in the petition, including that it was untimely, court records show.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Friends of Spanaway Lake would seek reconsideration of the court’s ruling or file an appeal.
“We are disappointed by the ruling and reviewing our options,” attorney Gabriel Hinman, who’s representing the nonprofit, said in an email.
In a statement after the ruling, Pierce County said the decision amounted to “another step forward” for the controversial project, which would create permanent housing for the county’s longest-struggling residents and connect them to on-site services.
“With this latest attempt to stop the project rejected by the courts, the Tacoma Rescue Mission can continue working on its project to provide a safe and dignified place for people to live, grow and heal,” the county said.
The rescue mission, which will own and operate the village, submitted an application to develop the project in May. The application was still under review as of Oct. 18, meaning no permits had been issued, according to a court filing.
Another challenge to the county’s village zoning ordinance, brought by the environmental nonprofit Futurewise and the group Spanaway Concerned Citizens, is expected to be ruled on by the Growth Management Hearings Board in early November. The two groups, whose separate challenges were consolidated into one this summer, alleged that the ordinance violated the Growth Management Act and was in conflict with county planning policies and regional growth strategy.
Friends of Spanaway Lake filed its petition Sept. 12, also raising concerns over how the 285-unit village was set into motion. The petition alleged that three county ordinances, when taken together, were enacted for the sole purpose of pushing the single project forward, or spot zoning, which is illegal in Washington.
The County Council approved shared-housing villages to be constructed in a low-density residential zone in March, effectively green-lighting the village project off Spanaway Loop Road. County lawmakers later delayed the contested ordinance’s effective date until after the Growth Management Hearings Board’s decision and then repealed the ordinance in order to avoid potential sanctions that could impact state funding opportunities if the county was to be found in noncompliance with the Growth Management Act.
Project proponents said the village was protected regardless of how any formal challenge to its genesis were to play out since it was vested under the regulations in place at the time its permits were applied for.
Friends of Spanaway Lake’s petition asked the court to strike down the zoning ordinance and the decisions that delayed and repealed it, as well as find that the zoning ordinance didn’t and couldn’t have resulted in vested rights for any party.
“The record in this case is clear that the Pierce County Council adopted all three ordinances in this case with one single goal in mind: Rezone one specific site to allow one specific development project entirely inconsistent with the zoning everywhere else in Pierce County,” Hinman wrote in an Oct. 24 court filing.
In their rebuttal, lawyers for the county argued that the petition was too late and none of the ordinances challenged by Friends of Spanaway Lake contained a site-specific rezone. The land-use decision, they said, covered an entire zone within a community plan area and wasn’t specific to a tract and therefore couldn’t be reviewed under the state’s Land Use Petition Act (LUPA).
Under LUPA, cases must be filed within 21 days of the contested land-use decision. In this instance, the only timely challenge was to the county ordinance that repealed the zoning decision. Lawyers for the county contended that the petition attempted to circumvent the time limit by alleging that the combined effects of all three ordinances constituted an illegal spot zone.
“It was a novel theory, we thought a stretch of the law and the judge agreed,” attorney William Lynn, who is representing the rescue mission, told The News Tribune.
In their filing to dismiss the petition on Oct. 18, lawyers for the county suggested that Friends of Spanaway Lake would have another avenue for recourse.
“The petitioners in this case will have the opportunity to express their objections to a Shared Housing Village being located in their community during the permitting process and at the public meetings and hearings on the proposal,” they wrote.
