Tell the City of Tacoma to Delay the Implementation of the Metro Parks Tent Ban Until the City Has Adequate Designated Day and Night Shelter!

On January 3rd, on the eve of yet another wind and rain storm, the City of Tacoma posted a 72-hour notice informing unhoused residents of a tent ban to go into effect in People’s Park in downtown Tacoma, forcing them to scramble for new shelter. This planned sweep came as a surprise to local service providers and housing advocates, who only hours earlier had interacted with City staff at the Tacoma-Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness meeting, where the sweep was not mentioned in spite of most providers getting ready to close for the weekend.

Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America (TDSA) believe that Tacoma Municipal Code 8.27.210 punishes people seeking to shelter oneself when there are no alternatives available that meet individual needs and that this planned sweep is not only unjust, but in violation of the constitutional rights of the unhoused. We urge a repeal of the ordinance or, at the very least, demand a delay in its enforcement until meaningful alternatives are found for daytime and nighttime shelter.

The Ninth Circuit Court of appeals ruled in Martin v. City of Boise that laws criminalizing individuals who are sleeping, sitting, and lying down outside and who have no access to indoor shelter are a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In other words, laws like these are cruel and unusual punishment. Tristia Bauman, Senior Attorney at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, outlined clearly the connection between Martin’s decision and TMC 8.27.210 in their December 2019 letter to the City of Tacoma leadership. She stated that, “[These] proposed changes to the City’s municipal ordinance will ultimately subject homeless people to criminal penalty simply for sheltering themselves in public, even when they lack any shelter alternatives.”

Where are all of our unhoused community members going to go with our City’s camping bans in place? The shelter capacity provided by the city is simply inadequate. The number of people currently facing houselessness greatly exceeds the number of shelter beds available. Moreover, some who are encamped cannot simply stay at any shelter where beds may be available due to restrictions at a shelter for the demographic served or other qualifications to be met. This situation leaves no other choice than to find shelter outdoors. Often times, the safest option is within public parks which TMC 8.27.210 now penalizes.

Furthermore, this ordinance criminalizes homelessness and exacerbates rather than resolves this crisis. After the encampments in public parks are swept, people experiencing homelessness will just be forced to move to another part of the city. People experiencing homelessness need stability and support to get out of homelessness. The penalty for violating this ordinance, which is a civil fine, plays an obvious counter effect. If people are fighting to survive, they do not have any additional resources to pay such fines. Unpaid fines, in turn, can lead to warrants for arrests and negative impacts on credit ratings. In effect, this ordinance compounds the already fraught experience of homelessness and undermines people’s attempts to find adequate, long-term housing.

We demand the City of Tacoma to:


  1. Repeal or at least, delay the implementation of the Metro Parks tent ban until the city has adequate designated day and night shelter.

  2. Follow in the footsteps of the City of Austin, TX to overturn the public camping ban, allowing police to only sweep campsites (i.e., unhoused people’s homes) if they present a public health or safety hazard or are blocking a walkway.

  3. Establish self-governed legal encampments as a temporary arrangement while more permanent affordable housing options are developed. We desire the City to look into using publicly-owned land for small, self-governed tent cities as well as provide adequate sanitary measures, such as bathrooms, storage, and trash service. In this vein we ask the City to look into replicating the Camp Hope legal encampment from New Mexico, described in the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty’s 2017 report, “Tent City, USA,” as a model of how this can be successfully done.

  4. Immediately scale up its response to this crisis NOW. Invest in more emergency shelters; utilize public land for safe and sanitary encampments and create facilities like Urban Rest Stop where people experiencing homelessness have access to restrooms, showers and laundry services.

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