EVERETT — The Everett City Council plans to take up three ordinances this week designed to address problems centered on the city’s homeless population.
The plan is meeting some resistance from the public.
One ordinance would ban sitting or lying on sidewalks along Smith Avenue from the Everett Gospel Mission to Everett Station. Another would establish a large alcohol impact area in which certain cheap beverages could not be sold.
A third ordinance would ban panhandling at any street corner with a traffic signal — where traffic is likely to stop on major arterials — or in a median strip.
“This, in my opinion, will hurt the most vulnerable among us,” said Mike LaPointe, the owner of the Firewheel Community Coffeehouse in downtown Everett, testifying to the Council on April 8.
“As far as I’m concerned this proposal will make homelessness illegal,” LaPointe said.
He added that the ordinance would do nothing to address the causes of homelessness.
“When we take the homeless and say, ‘Get the hell out of our city,’ we’re not showing empathy, we’re showing window dressing for people who come here to visit,” he said.
Two other speakers from the Seattle housing advocacy group SAFE (which stands for Standing Against Foreclosure &Eviction) warned the city that the ordinances could face legal challenges, similar to what the city of Burien experienced when it passed similar legislation. The American Civil Liberties Union has also challenged the law.
Jackie Minchew, a former Everett city council candidate, said that while he largely supported the work of the Everett Community Streets Initiative, he found it unsettling that the city’s first steps were more punitive than preventative.
“I didn’t anticipate these sorts of ordinances will be the ones we would enact first,” Minchew said.
The Streets Initiative task force was convened last year by Mayor Ray Stephanson to come up with proposed solutions to the city’s chronic problems with homelessness, addiction, mental illness and public nuisances.
The task force issued its final report in November, listing 63 initiatives to be undertaken by either local government, social service nonprofits, the business community or some combination of groups.
The anti-panhandling ordinance was notable for its inclusion on the list because it drew dissenting votes from two task force members, Alan Dorway of First Presbyterian Church and Megan Dunn of the city’s Human Needs Advisory Committee.
Some of the recommendations of the task force are being implemented elsewhere.
In March, the Everett Police Department, working with the Everett Gospel Mission and other social services groups, cleared out a large perennial homeless encampment under I-5 near the mission.
Several of the people in the encampment — the exact number is not known — were steered into various programs for housing, addiction treatment or to address some other need, and no one was arrested at the time.
However, about 20 people returned to the area to camp out near the mission, even though the sidewalks under the freeway are now fenced off.
While the alcohol impact area would cover much of downtown and the commercial corridors along Broadway and Evergreen Way, some businesses do not support the ordinance.
Gigi Burke, a former city councilwoman whose family owns Crown Distributing Co., a regional distributor for Anheuser-Busch, said alcohol impact areas generally don’t work.
“By eliminating certain packages of product all you’re doing is hurting the retailer,” Burke said.
The problems lie with consumer demand, she said.
She said the industry has been working with the problems with alcohol for decades and they are willing to work with local officials to craft a solution.
“I believe the industry should have been invited to the table on the Streets Initiative group,” Burke said. “They have a lot of programs and resources available.”
When the three ordinances were first introduced at the council’s April 1 meeting, councilwoman Brenda Stonecipher said she feared the ordinances wouldn’t have a long-term impact until the underlying causes were treated.
Both city officials and Streets Initiative task force members have worried that enacting new laws against certain behaviors would simply force the problem to move elsewhere.
As if to emphasize that point, on Monday morning, a woman was injured when a garbage truck picked up the container she was sleeping in behind a north Everett Taco Bell and dumped her into the compactor.
The woman’s male companion was able to climb out onto the roof of the garbage truck as it drove down Broadway, but she was stuck inside. Several pedestrians saw the man and called the driver’s attention to him, said Eric Hicks, Everett’s assistant fire marshal.
The woman had been crushed by the compactor, he said.
Rescue workers were able to free the woman, put her on a backboard and transport her to Providence Regional Medical Center, Hicks said.
The woman’s injuries were not considered life-threatening, but could have been.
In a similar incident in December, a 23-year-old man was found dead at a recycling center. Travis A. Thurman was determined to have died from blunt force injuries before arriving at the recycling plant.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
City council meeting
The Everett City Council will consider three ordinances at its Wednesday meeting, which starts at 6:30 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Historic City Hall, 3002 Wetmore Ave.
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