Gig Harbor moves to accommodate homeless shelters, with restrictions

Homeless shelters and transitional housing should be part of the mix in Gig Harbor, the City Council agreed Monday.

The council voted 6 to 1 to ask the Planning Commission to design an ordinance to align the city’s code with a new state law requiring cities to accommodate homeless shelters.

The new ordinance would replace an interim ordinance passed Sept. 27. It would come back to the council for consideration in March of 2022, after a series of workshops and public hearings. In the meantime, the interim ordinance would remain in effect.

The action followed a public hearing Oct. 11 in which only one person testified — Kim Foster, a Gig Harbor land-use attorney, who argued that “such policies can quickly ruin the character” of a small city.

“Certainly we have compassion for the truly homeless, especially families with children,” he said, “But we’ve seen in other places that the term homeless has been co-opted to include common vagrants and addicts and thieves and people with severe mental illness roaming the street.”

He argued any definitions of homeless shelters should exclude “derelict motor homes, tents, tiny houses and RVs.”

Such fears are overblown, Councilmember Tracie Markley said.

Providing for the homeless “doesn’t mean our parks are going to be filled with tents. It doesn’t mean our streets will be lined with RVs,” she said. “I hope as we work through this we can dispel some of these myths and some of these fears.”

She noted that there are 139 homeless children in the Peninsula School District, and their families are “not criminals, they are poor.”

Markley said she knows of charities that do transitional housing so well “you wouldn’t even know it’s there.”

State law takes precedence

The state law, HB 1220, was a reaction to the attempts by some cities to ban or severely restrict homeless shelters. It forbids cities to prohibit indoor shelters in any zones where hotels are allowed, or to prohibit “transitional or permanent supportive housing” in residential areas.

To comply with the law, the revision passed Sept. 27 would allow homeless shelters in any Gig Harbor zone that also allows hotels or motels, and longer-term transitional housing in any zone that allows residential housing.

It also included a package of restrictions designed, as Community Development director Katrina Knudson explained, to assert a measure of local control the state law would not otherwise allow.

“Effectively what would happen is, we would have to permit all these uses outright,” she said.

Restrictions on occupancy, spacing

The ordinance would allow only one continuously operating emergency shelter in the city at a time, and sets occupancy limits at 10 families or 40 people, whichever are fewer.

The ordinance defines emergency housing as “temporary indoor accommodations for individuals or families who are homeless or at imminent risk of becoming homeless that is intended to address the basic health, food, clothing, and personal hygiene needs of individuals or families.”

It also sets limits on “permanent supportive or transitional housing,” in residential neighborhoods, requiring that such dwellings be at least a half mile apart and follow the same basic building and safety codes as other residential housing.

What about warming centers?

At one point during the discussion, Markley wondered whether churches and others might be precluded from opening warming or cooling shelters during bad weather if they were too close to an existing homeless shelter. Knudson replied that, since warming shelters didn’t offer overnight accommodations, they probably would be allowed.

But she added that churches are a concern, and one of the staff tasks in coming weeks will be to find out how many fall in the “red” zone that could include homeless shelters.

Knudson laid out a timeline in which staff would perform an analysis in October and November, the Planning Commission would hold work sessions and a public hearing in December and January of 2022, and return a formal recommendation to the City Council in February or March of 2022.

Local control a selling point

During the early meeting, Tony Piasecki, the acting city administrator, emphasized that Gig Harbor’s ordinance, with its occupancy and separation limits, provides more local control than the state law alone.

That was the selling point for the majority of the council.

“I’m interested in keeping as much local control as we can,” said Councilmember Jeni Woock.

“I’m so disappointed in the state Legislature in forcing this on jurisdictions,” said Councilmember Jim Franich, but he added, “If we don’t do something, we’re going to be at the state’s mercy, and that is a horrible place to be.”

The sole vote against adopting the staff findings came from Councilmember Spencer Absersold.

“To anyone who is homeless, my heart goes out to them,” Abersold said. But he said he suspects “something more than meets the eye,” and fears the state is ramping up to “use an eminent-domain type situation so they can take over people’s hotels.”

Asked about that by The Gateway Wednesday, University of Washington School of Law professor Hugh Spitzer said: “Condemnation or eminent domain doesn’t seem to be a really necessary approach.”

He noted that King County has purchased hotels during the pandemic, as did Pierce County, without it. Hotel owners have seemed happy to sell, he said, because they were seeing less business.

“Basically, a city or a county and a housing authority has the underlying authority to condemn property for public purposes, including for housing — in fact, there are statutes that permit that going back to the late 1930s,” he said. “But I’m just not aware of any cities or counties doing it. They don’t have to and it’s politically sensitive.”

This story was originally published October 14, 2021 at 5:00 AM.