Downtown billboard criticizes Spokane Mayor Brown for lack of emergency shelter plan

SPOKANE, Wash. — A new billboard in downtown Spokane criticizes Mayor Lisa Brown’s response to the city’s homeless crisis.

The billboard states the city still doesn’t have an emergency shelter plan, despite temperatures beginning to drop in the area.

HT Higgins, a Democrat and one of the two people who paid for the billboard, said he’s been trying to get in contact with the Mayor since May to speak about a plan for the homeless community come winter. He has yet to get a response from the Mayor.

“The homeless community is the voiceless in all of this,” Higgins said.

Higgins, who helps out at Jewels Helping Hands, said he’s worried the city isn’t prepared to keep its most vulnerable population warm during colder weather.

“For them not to have a place to go to bed at night and stay alive and not be arrested come Thursday, it’s sad,” he said.

Temperatures are expected to drop below freezing Thursday evening.

Earlier this month, the city published its inclement weather plan that identifies 357 surge beds: beds that can be quickly made available in the case of extreme weather. Those beds are in addition to the already existing shelter beds across the county.

“We’ve now issued what’s called a request for proposals, which is a more formal piece to then initiate those contracts,” said the City of Spokane’s Erin Hut. “We’ve identified where that bed space is and now we are working to issue those contracts and we intend to have those in place by November 1.”

Without contracts, this plan is not finalized.

Spokane Municipal Code requires the city to publish its plan for emergency warming centers, including addresses of those locations by September 30. Addresses are not provided in the city’s request for information.

“The addresses are not listed in the RFI,” Higgins said. “I mean, the service providers are listed, but there’s no addresses. So come Thursday, where are the homeless people going to go?”

The city also said it can’t afford all 357 surge beds. It can only afford 100 beds for 38 nights, meaning more funding will likely be needed. Of those 357 beds, 175 are from the Trent Resource and Assistance Center (TRAC) Shelter which is set to close at the end of this month. The city said those beds are not an option once it closes.

Higgins said he wishes the mayor would bring the community together, including the homeless services providers, and business owners, so they can have a conversation to come up with a solution together.