Candidates are skeptical Spokane’s tougher approach to homelessness will sway voters

There have been a handful of October surprises ahead of this year’s Spokane City Council races, those last-minute events that may or may not sway voters in the waning days before the election.

A lawsuit attempting to disqualify a candidate from the ballot, alleging inadequate residency. An attack ad incorrectly claiming to be paid for by unions supporting the candidate being attacked.

But Monday’s reforms to the city’s homelessness laws – a significant pivot towards criminalization by politicians who had until now mostly resisted using tickets and arrests to address the issue – may be the most interesting wrinkle before the final ballots are cast on Tuesday.

Homelessness remains top of mind for voters in Spokane, ahead of crime and cost of living, according to the latest Greater Spokane Incorporated biannual survey published in October. That’s been a self-evident reality of Spokane politics for years .

What remains to be seen is whether a major shift eight days before the election will help buoy the electoral odds of the three candidates most closely aligned with the council majority and mayor.

Of the six candidates running this November for three city council seats, Sarah Dixit, Kate Telis and Councilman Zack Zappone have largely hitched their electoral fortunes to the council majority, and voters will likely judge them based on their broader sentiments about City Hall. They all opposed the 2023 voter-approved anti-homeless camping ban and had generally supported City Hall’s previous approach of building out services rather than criminalizing.

The campaigns of their opponents, Councilman Jonathan Bingle, Alejandro Barrientos and Christopher Savage, have almost entirely centered on the perceived failures of the progressive coalition currently in power, particularly to address chronic homelessness downtown. Now that a policy is in place that they all largely support, the question is whether the reforms take the wind out of their sails.

For Bingle, Monday was a victory lap. He declined in the moment to speculate on the timing of the reforms, focusing only on the policy victory.

And he was still effusive by the end of the week, saying Friday that the law had already proven to be more than lip service and he expects to hold a news conference praising the mayor’s office for its renewed enforcement.

“I have people who are downtown business owners telling me, ‘Hey, it’s great that they can just move them along now,’ ” Bingle said in a brief interview in between knocking on doors.

But he is doubtful that the progressive majority or the candidates aligned with them are going to get much credit they can spend by Tuesday.

“I mean, most of the comments that I’ve received on this have been like, ‘Oh, of course they did this right before the election, right?’ ” he added. “Or that the timing for them is incredibly suspect, and honestly, it is for me too, but I’m not going to turn down decent policy just because the timing is suspect.”

Ahead of Monday’s reforms, Telis was quick to express dissatisfaction with the city’s camping laws once it became clear they were considered unenforceable by the local police department. She supports the more enforcement-heavy approach adopted this week and praises the bipartisanship and collaboration that led to the reforms.

She partially credited her campaign and that of her opponent, Barrientos, for influencing the reforms by advocating for more collaboration.

But she is also skeptical that they will change the perception of voters at this late hour.

“I think if this legislation had been done a month or two ago, it definitely could have changed people’s feelings, but right now, given we haven’t seen the results yet, it’s hard for people to know or trust that it’s going to have the effect that it’s intended to have,” she said.

Barrientos could not be reached for comment Friday.

Sarah Dixit, the progressive reproductive rights activist running against Bingle, is the only candidate who hesitates to voice support for the reforms approved Monday. Like the mayor and council majority, she has long opposed enforcement-based approaches to homelessness, but she’s not sure she would have changed course with them this week.

“It is definitely something where we are seeing council respond to concerns…but my values and principles on the issues remain the same,” Dixit said. “I think the big thing that stood out to me with the ordinance was just the harsher penalties. … I’d be curious to see how that actually impacts this issue, because it doesn’t feel like increasing incarceration would get to the root cause.”

She did note the unanimous support for the reforms on council and acknowledged that she wasn’t “privy to some of the conversations council is having with community members” that led to the changes. She stopped short of saying she would have voted no.

But as for voters at the doors this week: “It hasn’t come up.”

Voters bring up homelessness broadly, and at least one expressed disappointment in the use of incarceration, but mostly voters aren’t so plugged in to local politics that they can identify a particular ordinance, she said. Mostly, she’s hearing frustrations about the federal government, traffic safety and other issues more broadly, she said.

Zappone opposed the 2023 voter-approved camping ban around schools, parks and day care facilities, calling it ineffective, but was quieter than the very vocal opponents who were running for office that year. He more loudly opposed another measure in 2023 to raise taxes for a new jail, among other things.

He also joined Bingle and Councilman Michael Cathcart this spring by backing a procedural vote to consider reinstating the camping law after the state Supreme Court struck it down on technical grounds in April, surprising some of his colleagues on the dais.

But while Bingle and Cathcart were very vocal about bringing the law back, Zappone’s vote went entirely without comment – though he later told The Spokesman-Review he supported it for the sake of compromise. Days later, he was backing an enforcement-light approach by Mayor Lisa Brown, which passed 5-2.

At the beginning of October, after Police Chief Kevin Hall called the new law unenforceable, Zappone called for urgent action to give police more discretion to issue tickets and make arrests – notably an approach that his opponent, Savage, had been calling for the entire time.

The late change in policy has provided an opportunity for Zappone to argue that his opponent doesn’t have anything new to bring to the table: The Inlander recently painted Zappone ’s and Savage’s approach to homelessness as strikingly similar, and Zappone told Savage at a recent candidate forum that “I’m really glad you’re supporting all of the policies I’ve been working on …”

While Savage agrees with the stricter criminalization approved Monday, he said the timing is suspect.

“Why wasn’t this done three months ago?” he quipped at that same forum. “Why are we doing this a week before the election? It seems … like they’re trying to do a lot to try to sway a little bit of votes.”

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 4.