Dear Committee Members, As a Spokane resident and the Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney, I urge you to oppose HB 2489. This bill locks our community into a framework that perpetuates our growing fentanyl and crime crisis. It guarantees that we will remain on our current course of inaction and lack of progress. Open drug use and lax drug laws amplify the impact of homelessness in our communities because, in these environments, any hope of breaking the cycle of addiction fades. HB 2489 makes sweeping statements about enforcement and accountability that have already been rejected by the “pioneers” of many Housing First models. We have seen many of our nation’s large urban centers change course and focus on a treatment-and-accountability model that pairs compassionate outreach with limited to zero tolerance for open vagrancy and drug use. Our local systems are straining under a crushing load. Instead of helping, this bill greatly undermines our efforts to maintain clean, safe, and accessible public spaces throughout Spokane County. It limits law enforcement’s ability to enforce necessary laws regarding unauthorized public camping, loitering, open drug use, and obstruction of public rights-of-way. This bill puts our communities at risk because it guarantees vagrancy without consequence. It is not “compassionate” to sentence our homeless population to more vagrancy and open drug use. It would be one thing if we solely faced a “homeless” crisis—but we do not. The potency and lethality of fentanyl demand a different course of action. Our morgues and county jails are bursting with the effects of our state’s free-crime stance and acquiescence to open drug use. The “Housing First” approach embraced thus far has not resulted in clean and safe streets; rather, it has ensured that many individuals and families are sentenced to an existence that sees them repeatedly bounced from an emergency room to a temporary bed—and occasionally the county jail—all while narrowly avoiding the morgue in between hits of Narcan. This is not progress. This is not compassion. Our lax drug laws and limited criminal enforcement, combined with continual acquiescence to a “lifestyle” of vagrancy, are like a faucet left in the “on” position, while the homeless person is like an individual taking refuge in a bathtub beneath that faucet. If we do not take steps to turn the water off, we cannot continually fault them for being wet—any more than we can sit and wonder in painful naïveté why they are always drowning. We can make as many bathtubs available as we have people in need of one, but until we shut the water off, the people we are “helping” will continue to drown under the weight of bad policies and bad choices. This is not compassion. We know intuitively that this approach is fundamentally flawed, yet we say it is acceptable in our homeless response. We must strike a balance between compassion and enforcement. Our enforcement must be informed by compassion, but we must return to a model of personal accountability and openly reward those who engage in a treatment-first approach. Our state’s increasing fatality counts, continued victimization of the vulnerable, increased addiction, and daily threat of violence or death should change how we attack this problem. We would never encourage someone we love to continue an activity that kills or maims them, yet we continually do that in our approach to homelessness. We consistently acquiesce to a tortured combination of bad circumstances, bad choices, and open drug use. We call this acquiescence “compassion” and guarantee that this hellish cycle continues. Thus far, we have thrown enormous amounts of money at the symptoms of this tortured combination, but it does not address the root problems. We tried removing penalties for drug crime—that did not work (see This Is the Pacific Northwest on Drugs – WSJ, study attached). We tried providing housing to as many as possible, but that also does not work. The individual must be prepared to change their lifestyle and take accountability for their own actions. The old adage that “Nothing in life works until you do” applies here. We are never going to bribe our truly drug-addicted population into changing on their own; the lethality, addictiveness, and proliferation of this new brand of synthetic drugs make that approach obsolete. There has to be a point where we take a more hands-on approach and require accountability in our community outreach. Rather than help, HB 2489 removes necessary tools our communities need to address these issues. As a county prosecuting attorney, we do not receive our largest cities’ municipal code violations, but we do receive all their felony referrals. Felony crime within the city accounts for over 50% of the criminal referrals my office handles. The level of crime and the violence seen on our streets has a direct connection to our state and local policies on open drug use and vagrancy. I have no desire to “[p]unish people who are homeless for engaging in necessary, life-sustaining activities in public spaces…” But our previous approach has to inform on our future action. The facts say we should choose a different path. HB 2489 would reverse any progress achieved despite our global stance on homelessness. It sets shelter standards that no city could meet. It guarantees that the faucet remains on and the person trapped in that tub of addiction is always treading water. Please vote no on HB 2489. I welcome any opportunity to speak with you regarding my concerns. Respectfully, Preston McCollam Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney Office: 509-477-2841 Cell: 509-342-5135 ADVISORY: Please be advised that Spokane County is required to comply with the Public Records Act Chapter 42.56 RCW. This act establishes a strong state mandate in favor of disclosure of public records. As such, the information you submit to the County via email, including personal information, may ultimately be subject to disclosure as a public record.