Burien, Washington state cities keep tightening homeless camping bans

SEATTLE — Burien created an outright prohibition on living outside in the city Monday.

The city already had one of the most restrictive bans on camping, targeted toward homeless people, in the state. Officials have removed allowances for sleeping based on time and place and a requirement that police offer people a shelter bed before enforcing it. Now, people in Burien can be arrested for sleeping outside even if there are no alternate places for them to go.

The law, passed as an emergency ordinance in a 5-2 vote, takes effect immediately.

The latest chapter in Burien’s dizzying homelessness saga is an indication of how far the region and country have shifted toward policies that push homeless people out of sight rather than help them move inside.

Seattle recently began using arrests and street cleanings to push people away from certain parts of the city.

At least seven other jurisdictions in Washington created or expanded camping bans in the last year including Auburn, Bremerton, Chelan County, Lakewood, Washougal, Wenatchee and Spokane Valley. Many cities acted swiftly after the U.S. Supreme Court last June ruled that punishing people for sleeping outside was not “cruel or unusual.” Across the country, more than 140 cities have passed similar regulations, according to the National Homelessness Law Center.

“This is faster than we anticipated,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, communications and campaign director for the National Homelessness Law Center. “It shows cities can move quickly when they want to. I just wish they wanted to move quickly to help people and not harm them.”

Rabinowitz said he expected the situation to get worse with the Trump administration’s plans to cut government services, possibly pushing more people into homelessness and the president’s stated intention to “ban urban camping” and open up “tent cities.”

Leaders in Burien framed the camping ban as a compassionate policy, saying it could push people to seek shelter and treatment. They said the cold snap with freezing temperatures this past week made it urgent for them to bring people inside.

“Many people believe that keeping people in tents is a housing solution. I do not and will not support this inhumane way of treating people,” said Councilmember Linda Akey who voted in favor of the camping ban.

There are few options for homeless people in Burien to get inside. There is a family shelter, a nine-bed shelter for women and a cold-weather shelter that opens when temperatures are freezing but no year-round shelter for single men, the majority of people living outside. Shelters in other cities around the county are full, clogged or can take weeks to get into.

Rey Tosch, 28, was one of dozens of homeless people who stayed in the city’s cold-weather shelter Tuesday night. But with the shelter closed Wednesday night with temperatures at 33 degrees, Tosch said he didn’t know where he would go.

“They think we want to do this, like we want to be homeless, or we want to stay outside and stay in tents and stuff. They have no idea how far from true that is. It’s miserable,” Tosch said.

Tosch said the city is cracking down on homeless people in other ways. He was arrested for public drug use a few weeks ago. He said he was only holding a torch lighter. Court and jail records show he spent a night at South Correctional Entity but wasn’t charged with any crime.

King County sheriffs arrested 331 people in Burien for drug-related offenses in 2024, more than four times the number they arrested in 2023.

“If you’re living on the streets, it’s extremely, extremely obvious that the police are a lot more active, and they’re cracking down and being a lot more harsh,” Tosch said.

Until now, the King County Sheriff’s Office, which provides contracted police services for Burien, had not been enforcing the city’s existing camping ban, saying the ordinance contained vague language. Now, it said it would.

Deputy Mayor Sarah Moore, who cast one of two votes against the updated camping ban, called the law banishment.

“We’re authorizing our law enforcement officers to send people essentially to nowhere,” Moore said.

A few years ago, it wasn’t clear this was where Burien’s homelessness policy would end up.

When the city began mulling what to do about a homeless encampment that formed in front of City Hall more than two years ago, people around the region watched to see what kind of example Burien would set for other suburbs near Seattle, many of which have seen homelessness grow within their borders in recent years. City officials and residents at first suggested solutions that would avoid arrest or displacement.

When Burien began taking steps to remove homeless encampments, King County tried to nudge the city toward providing services, offering $1 million in the summer of 2023 to build new shelter units.

Officials in Burien said they could do both. By August 2023, they appeared to be moving toward both a camping ban and building new shelter units with the county’s funding.

But the city slow-rolled shelter plans, with myriad concerns arising for each potential location. By June 2024, the county rescinded its $1 million offer, saying it appeared Burien was not going to add a shelter.

Meanwhile, the city passed its camping ban in September 2023 and has since updated it twice to make it stricter and more expansive.

In the most recent City Council meeting, City Attorney Garmon Newsom noted Burien had backed a permanent supportive housing development for homeless people in the city and an expansion of its family shelter.

“It’s not like Burien doesn’t do anything in support,” Newsom said.

King County shifted from trying to nudge Burien to trying to block it.

The county filed a lawsuit against the city in March of 2024 asking a judge to determine whether its camping ban was constitutional, citing a federal ruling that said cities on the West Coast must have adequate shelter for people to be arrested for sleeping outside. But in June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck a blow to that ruling by deciding on a similar case in Grants Pass, Ore., saying camping bans did not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. In September, a federal judge threw out King County’s lawsuit.

The county appears to be conceding, at least for now. King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall said Tuesday that Burien’s updated camping ban was enforceable.

“That said, I am asking the men and women of the King County Sheriff’s Office to continue to lead, as they do each day, with outreach and compassion while continuing to engage with regional service providers whenever appropriate,” Cole-Tindall said.

Burien’s camping ban allows police to offer people shelter if they choose.

When Carlo Paz, 39, who has been living outside in Burien for a few years, heard the city updated its camping ban to apply regardless of whether shelter space was available, tears rolled down his cheeks.

“I just feel so discarded. It feels hateful. It’s not that I’m not used to that, but it still sucks,” Paz said.

Homeless people and advocates are hoping states will offer more protections against camping bans than the federal government.

Disability Rights Oregon sued Grants Pass on Thursday, the city at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court case on homeless camping bans. The advocacy group accused it of violating a state law requiring cities’ camping regulations to be “objectively reasonable.”

Burien is still being sued by several homeless people who claim the city’s camping bam “banishes” homeless people and inflicts “cruel punishment” that violates Washington’s Constitution.

Paz is one of the parties in that lawsuit. While he’s not giving up, he said with the U.S. Supreme Court, the president and Burien’s City Council seeming aligned, “it’s hard to be hopeful.”