It started with just a handful of tents outside Burien City Hall.
In less than a year, the city of Burien went from fretting about how to get people indoors to enacting a strict camping law that makes it nearly impossible to live unsheltered there. The push and pull between long-term solutions to homelessness and short-term actions to relieve frustration and fear has long been the background of homelessness debates.
Indeed, Burien’s story is America’s story on homelessness today.
Cities across King County have introduced or tightened laws around public camping — especially after pandemic-era eviction moratoriums and other rental protections went away — hoping to prevent a visible homelessness presence in their downtowns or to reduce it.
In the midst of new regulations that restrict sleeping in public, cities and states are becoming more punitive in other ways as well.
In Kentucky, the state Legislature is considering a bill that would allow people to use force against homeless people who are camping on private property. In Shawnee, Oklahoma, lawmakers passed an ordinance last year to penalize the feeding of homeless people in its downtown.