Story updated April 10

The City of Aberdeen will close down the homeless tent camp it has operated behind City Hall for almost a year. The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday night to close it by May 15.

Meeting via audio conference, council members cited lack of funding support from the state and county as the reason for closing the camp. The vote was 10-0 in favor of the closure, with Ward 2 Councilman John Maki not participating in the meeting and with an open Ward 5 position due to the resignation of Jerrick Rodgers.

The city spends about $35,000 a month to operate the camp. That doesn’t include staff time.

The effect of closing the sanctioned camp is likely to be that homeless people will be more apt to camp in other public places around town, including sidewalks. The city has a law covering that, but federal court rulings have said laws such as that — targeting the homeless — can’t be enforced if homeless people have no sanctioned place to go.

Council President Dee Anne Shaw said after the vote that she has been in talks with the county for months about providing funding from the state Department of Commerce Consolidated Homeless Grant, which is funneled through county government and funds crisis homeless response, and the recent COVID-19 Outbreak Emergency Housing Grant in the amount of nearly $390,000 to fund a homeless encampment in the city.

County Commissioners have said the type of shelter Aberdeen was providing was not an appropriate use of those funds. Shaw said other sources, including the Legislature and the Department of Commerce, told her otherwise.

“We went to the county and made it very clear that any statements that Aberdeen is not eligible are not accurate,” said Shaw.

“We’ve been working at this for months,” she said. “When the Legislature was in session, we met with caucus staff and the Department of Commerce who said, based on the description, that the county could use homeless and housing funds to fund some sort of shelter.”

In early March, “we were almost at the home stretch and it was looking very promising and there was hope (the camp) was in line for funding,” said Shaw. “We pushed hard and said Aberdeen can’t afford to do this on our own. Counties around us are calling shelters necessary, but our county commissioners and the Board of Health (the Board of Health is made up of the three county commissioners) are saying they are not needed during this crisis. So what else can we do? We qualify, but it’s not the direction the county is taking.”

Shaw said she hoped the city will continue to appeal to the county.

“What we had to do tonight is not a long-term solution,” said Shaw.

“It’s sad we have to put the people housed there back on the street, but I totally understand there needs to be funding, and we can’t fund it ourselves,” said Ward 2 Councilman Nathan Kennedy.

Public comment was taken only via email during this meeting. One was from Chaplains on the Harbor regarding the proposed closure of the TASL camp.

It said that in this time of global pandemic, when a person is made more vulnerable to COVID-19, the entire community is made more vulnerable. “There is no ‘us and them’ in a pandemic.”

The letter, co-signed by Chaplains on the Harbor founder and priest in charge Rev. Sarah Monroe, said as more people have been evicted from TASL over the last several weeks for rules violations, the number of unsanctioned camps is on the rise, and the unsheltered who are forced to move from place to place are putting themselves at greater risk of exposure.

The letter said there has never been a more critical time for the city to “make it possible to for homeless people to truly shelter in place.”

The letter said the organization’s own staff is taking all possible precautions but are still putting themselves on the front lines as growing numbers access their services, saying the group is still leveraging its resources through growing sickness and growing poverty, and called for the city to do the same.

Police role

Aberdeen Police Chief Steve Shumate said the department will follow the same procedure they did for the closure of the River Camp.

“We will try to assist any individuals who may potentially have other locations that they can go,” he said. “For the River Camp closure, the police department worked with several private citizens and a few organizations to assist a number of individuals who did have other places to go. Our hope is that we can do the same for some of the remaining individuals currently in TASL.”

The lack of a camp presents challenges to law enforcement addresses issues like illegal camping — sleeping on sidewalks — with the enforcement of city rules hampered by the Martin v Boise federal court ruling that said such regulations are not legal when a city hasn’t provided a place for the homeless to go.

“We will continue to address transients who are trespassing on private property. However, the unsheltered in other public places continues to present challenges for residents and business owners,” said Shumate.

The City of Aberdeen’s ordinance for public camping prohibits the police department from enforcing illegal camping in “portions of any street right-of-way that are not expressly reserved for vehicular or pedestrian travel,” when there is no available overnight shelter for individuals or family units experiencing homelessness, said Shumate.

“Given the closure of TASL, we would not be able to enforce this particular provision,” said Shumate. “With respect to pedestrian travel, there is an ADA requirement of 4 feet that can be enforced.”

The city has provided maps that illustrate where the unsheltered are allowed downtown if there is no other available overnight shelter, added Shumate.

“There is certainly a hope by many that a number of the TASL participants will have other places to go. Only time will tell if that is the case,” said Shumate.