Position on Homeless Encampments In Washes

My Vote On the Wash Ordinance

The Tucson Mayor and Council voted 5-1 Tuesday in favor of a measure making it a misdemeanor to camp in city washes. I was the lone vote in opposition.

While I certainly don't fault my colleagues for their vote, I feel this ordinance solves nothing except maybe making the City slightly less vulnerable when it comes to getting sued.

My staff and I at the Ward 3 office are intimately aware of the impacts of the homeless population, poverty, the affordable housing crisis, the opioid epidemic, and the ever-growing lack of safety nets to catch people before they join others living on the street. We understand the suffering of living unsheltered – which often involves mental health instability, addiction, and abuse.

Daily we refer people to the City’s Community Safety, Health, and Welfare office. We connect people with resources in the community. We have opened a cooling center in our meeting room for the last three summers, run by the St. Francis Shelter Community. With office discretionary funds, we have paid people’s electric and gas bills, their rent, and their deposits for a first-time apartment. The postage and fees to get a driver’s license in order to get into shelter…on and on. We do this to try to keep people from falling into homelessness, where it’s much more expensive and takes a lot more effort to reverse.

Calls and emails related to homeless camps are the single biggest issue we hear about from residents and businesses. And we go beyond just helping them report it to someone else.

My office initiated and secured funding for a pilot Tucson Police Department bike patrol to help disrupt drug use and problem areas for businesses near Huckleberry Loop. We held business roundtables to engage those affected because we can’t do it alone. We worked with neighbors to install fencing in certain alleys as a form of deterrence. These efforts – which will take funding to continue – have a goal of fixing the problem, not just moving it around.

It would be politically expedient for the Mayor and Council to solve this problem immediately, but we can’t. Not immediately, anyway, and to say otherwise is untrue. Like most complex problems with many facets, there is no easy answer, no silver bullet. I fear it is only going to get worse with the cuts and chaos coming from the Trump administration.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying.

We should continue down the successful path of Housing First, which means getting a roof over their head before dealing with addiction and mental health issues. You can’t expect someone to get clean while living on the street.

I am proud of what the City and its partners have done to create more shelters and affordable housing during my three years in office. Recently a decommissioned Fire Station in Ward 3 has been transformed into a low-barrier shelter. The former Wildcat Inn is now a shelter that specializes in helping parents with children get off the street. Milagro on Oracle, Amazon Flats, Executive Inn, and the under-construction Sugarhill on Stone are similar projects in Ward 3. We competed for and received a $50 million grant from the federal government to renovate our largest public housing project, Tucson House, and provide additional housing units.

Even with all that, I know people feel we need to do more – and we absolutely must. The City recently closed Santa Rita Park, a common place for unhoused folks and drug use, to complete upgrades and new amenities. After the closure, Ward 3 saw an almost instant uptick in complaints about new camps popping up. We can’t play whack-a-mole and expect anything to change other than the location of the problem.

I acknowledge there are some people who are let down by how I voted on this item. They want something done now, anything. I know some people are angry, and some have said they will not support my election because of this. I hear you – but it wouldn’t be honest if I had voted any other way.

Kevin Dahl 
City Council Member
Ward 3