Housing, homelessness and ICE: Conservative faces progressive in northeast Spokane council race

The race between Spokane city councilman Jonathan Bingle and community organizer Sarah Dixit provides a sharp contrast for voters in northeast Spokane.

Bingle is a staunch conservative running for his second term as a bulwark against Spokane’s progressive council majority. Dixit is a young woman of color and abortion rights organizer running as an unabashed progressive.

According to Bingle, Dixit is a “radical” doubling down on failed public safety and housing policies. According to Dixit, Bingle is a “distant and inaccessible” politician more concerned with ideology than serving his diverse district.

District 1 covers the northeastern third of the city – east of Division and north of Trent – but stretches west of Division to include almost all of downtown. The district is the last bastion of conservative politics in Spokane’s current council. Bingle and fellow District 1 representative Michael Cathcart are the only two conservatives on the seven-member body.

Bingle is running for re-election for the first time after winning his first four-year term in 2021. Last year, he unsuccessfully ran for Spokane’s congressional seat.

“There is not another office that I’m looking at right now. I have every intention of serving my time,” he said. “I’m not interested in the state position. I am very much here, wanting to serve my people, my city.”

Though the incumbent in the race, Bingle said Spokanites should vote for him if they do not like the policies of the current city council and Mayor Lisa Brown.

“If you love the direction that the city is going, then you’re going to like my opponent, because she’s supported by the council five, and she’s supported by the mayor,” Bingle said. “But if you think that the city needs to head in a different direction and address things differently, then I’m your guy.”

Dixit’s central pitch is that as a 29-year-old organizer, she will bring in disenfranchised young people who do not currently engage with local government.

“My big goal if I were to be elected would be the accessibility of local government,” she said. “So many people don’t know or don’t have access to what’s happening at the city. So that means increasing language access, increasing website accessibility, having town halls or doing events centered in community spaces instead of making people come to city council.”

She is also a progressive with ties to city hall’s liberal majority. Councilman Paul Dillon is her former boss at Planned Parenthood, and has been a “mentor” to Dixit and encouraged her to run. Other council members have endorsed and donated to her campaign. Despite this, Dixit promises not to be a “cookie-cutter” reflection of who is in power and has some criticisms for her allies, including how city leaders have addressed protests against stricter federal immigration enforcement.

Being in the minority on the council, Bingle has few large accomplishments to tout in his first term. Some ordinances he did help pass include the removal of height restrictions in downtown development, banning people from city parks at night and a pilot program incentivizing urban tree planting.

Should he be re-elected, Bingle hopes to increase the size and funding of the Spokane police force and invest in long-term mental health facilities to address homelessness.

If she wins, Dixit wants increased access to public transit and rent stabilization measures to slow the growth of leasing costs.

Housing and homelessness

Since the city’s replacement to voter-approved restrictions on camping, the city’s 2023 Proposition 1, was passed earlier this year, Bingle has taken to calling the substitute “Prop None.”

“None of what we want. None of what we asked for,” he said, calling the new camping ordinance a “miserable failure.”

Voters overwhelmingly approved the original camping ban by a roughly 50-point margin. The proposition made it illegal to camp within 1,000 feet of schools, parks or playgrounds in the city. Later struck down by the state supreme court, the city council approved a replacement ordinance that bans campers but lacks the enforcement mechanism of its predecessor.

According to Bingle, the city cannot earnestly address homelessness in Spokane until it reinstates the original Prop 1 word for word. Barring that, the city should return the issue back to the voters, who he believes will back the original ban overwhelmingly.

“For me, I’m not interested in compromise until we take it out to the public and ask them,” he said.

Dixit does not support the 2023 camping ban, which she called harmful messaging about those who are homeless and counterproductive to helping people get off the street. She says the city’s focus needs to be on getting as many homeless people into stable housing as possible.

“When we delay housing due to substance use or mental health issues, we’re not addressing the problem. You need to be housed to be able to pursue a job or work on substance abuse disorders,” she said.

Bingle opposes this “housing first” model and believes the council’s focus on housing has been to the detriment of treatment access. Housing First centers on getting people into housing as a form of health care that’s necessary to then treat their addictions or other issues.

“Where Housing First has failed is for the folks who have the most acute needs, those typically on the streets the longest. Because there’s a serious human brokenness issue,” he said.

Some people need treatment before they can be successfully housed, and sometimes that requires involuntary treatment, Bingle said.

“You gotta have the carrot and the stick. Engagement and enforcement. Pathways and penalties. Right now, it’s all pathways,” he said. “It’s all engagement, but there’s no enforcement.”

Dixit believes forcing people into treatment will cause relapse and ultimately not help those experiencing addiction.

Bingle called Dixit a “radical” for her positions on homelessness, especially for her support of safe injection or smoking sites. These are areas where drug users can use illicit substances in a controlled environment with close access to medical care. Though safe injection sites can be found in several countries around the world, they are exceedingly rare in the United States. The first government-authorized supervised injection site began operation in New York City in 2021.

“The data in places that have these programs show there is more success in reducing overdoses so that people aren’t dying on the street,” Dixit said. “It means having health care providers present who can get people into treatment.”

Bingle said such sites would encourage drug use and exacerbate addiction in Spokane. He opposes needle exchanges for the same reason.

Dixit supports stipends or vouchers to help people afford housing and rent stabilization, which limits by how much and how often landlords can increase rent.

“Rent stabilization helps the power dynamic between tenants and landlords. Tenants need to have time to know if they need to move somewhere else because the rent increased with no warning,” she said.

Bingle said these policies have been tried elsewhere and caused decreased housing supply and higher rents over the long term. Dixit said the policy “doesn’t discourage housing” but creates better communication.

Dixit also supports an eviction moratorium during winter months, which she said will lower demand on shelter beds essential to survival of the unhoused during cold months. Bingle would “not ever” support an eviction moratorium because it prevents “bad tenants” from being removed.

ICE

In June, local activists staged a protest at Spokane’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility over the detention of two legal asylum seekers after a routine immigration check-in.

Hundreds of protesters surrounded the ICE facility June 11. That evening, Mayor Brown instituted a curfew and sent local police to break up the protesters. More than 30 were arrested that night, and nine individuals were later federally charged for allegedly obstructing federal officers.

Dixit was among the approximately 1,000 protesters at the ICE building and stayed there until after police dispersed the crowd. According to her, Brown’s use of local police and a curfew was “unnecessary.”

“I was disappointed by the response. When I think of deescalation, I don’t picture hundreds of officers in riot gear and SWAT trucks,” she said. “It didn’t get violent until law enforcement started pushing people, throwing them to the ground.”

Dixit wished Brown and council members would attend protests like these so they understand what is going on and have the most appropriate response.

Bingle agrees with Brown’s decision to use police but believes they should have broken up the protest earlier in the day.

“The city responded too slowly. You have every right to protest; you do not have a right to obstruct justice. And that’s what was happening there in that moment,” Bingle said.

The city has passed several measures attempting to curb federal agents’ ability to target those in Spokane. Bingle said the city should not be blocking federal law enforcement at all and that passing of these ordinances gives community members false assurances they will be followed. Dixit supports these efforts.

Editor’s note: The headline of this report was changed on Sept. 29, 2025 to correct the council district Bingle and Dixit are running in.