Regulate, don't ban, roving tent cities

Tent cities have an undeniable political dimension. Their roving existence is an in-your-face strategy for keeping the plight of the homeless in the headlines as each new neighborhood wrestles with the prospect of homeless people moving in.

The tent cities already are generating heat in Bellevue even though no church has sought to host one. Critics of a Bellevue city staff proposal say the standards are so high, the proposed rules could effectively bar homeless camps. The city proposal is even more exacting than the strict regulations adopted last month by the Metropolitan King County Council. The county's rules set reasonable standards for sanitation, including portable toilets, hand-washing stations and food-preparation tents, and a 92-day limit.

But Bellevue's proposal goes further, requiring hot-water and cold-water taps and setting size limits. The proposal also limits the stay to only 60 days.

Some of the proposed rules are taken from state laws governing migrant farmworker camps, which are used seasonally, but every year. That's an unreasonable standard for a 60-day homeless camp that may never return to the same location.

Certainly, there are other, more-preferable ways to provide shelter for the homeless — believed to number about 8,000 in the county on any given night. Of course, the issue would lose its urgency without the sporadic headlines.

One solution would be to anchor the tent camps to one location and invest in infrastructure until the larger problem of homelessness is solved. In March, the Committee to End Homelessness in King County, a coalition of eight organizations, approved a 10-year plan to do just that.

But, in the meantime, tent cities are helping provide a place for several dozen people down on their luck.

Bellevue City Council members should drop some of the proposed rules' unreasonable requirements that could bar Bellevue churches from hosting tent cities.