TACOMA, Wash. — Three years after it was first passed, Tacoma City Councilor John Hines is asking his colleagues to expand the ban on camping in the city.
The first ordinance was based on temporary and emergency shelter, creating a ten-block ‘buffer zone’ as well as 200 feet around protected bodies of water.
Three of the shelters have closed over the summer, leaving what Hines sees as gaps in the law.
“We were left with areas that were currently under the buffer areas and no longer part of the buffer area, and they include a lot of our permanent shelters,” Hines said.
His new proposal adds a camping ban around permanent shelters as well as five-block camping bans around schools, parks, and libraries.
“I am a firm believer that we need to provide shelter and housing for people to end homelessness. At the same time, we have to keep our public spaces open and accessible to the public.” Hines said.
Hines says he’s heard from people concerned about encampments near those public spaces. Hines believes the ban has been effective, pointing to a 7% decrease in 311 service calls for homelessness-related complaints in 2025 compared to the same time last year, as well as 14 percent of people who are homeless accepting services over this summer, compared to less than nine percent the previous two years.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think people living on the streets is a good solution for anybody, right? I want people to come into shelter services and housing, and I want people to access those services. Hines proposed the law change to the rest of the City Council on Tuesday, and was met with some skepticism about the plan and the effectiveness of the current ordinance.
“It’s kind of a losing battle of ‘you have to not be here,’ but there is no ‘you can be here,” said Councilmember Jamika Scott.
While Hines points to a decrease in large encampments across the city, he conceded to Scott that this could be due to smaller camps resulting from larger ones being broken up.
“It feels like encampments haven’t reduced, and maybe that’s because I’m in one of those neighborhoods where folks got pushed to, and it feels like there are even more of them,” Scott said.
Rob Huff with the Tacoma Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness says the region’s most recent point-in-time count shows homelessness continues to increase since the original camping ordinance was passed in 2022.
While point-in-time counts are widely viewed as a significant undercount of people experiencing homelessness, Pierce County’s recent count found 2,661 people homeless in 2024 and 2,955 in 2025.
“It’s a policy that really focuses on making people move from one place to another and clean up whatever they leave behind, and there’s just not enough of a focus on solving the people’s situation.”
Huff is also concerned about restricting access to libraries, which he says are often life-saving during extreme heat and extreme cold.
While the punishment for violations still includes 30 days in jail, a $250 fine, or both, Hines added a provision for Therapeutic Court, where people can engage with services in exchange for dropped charges.
“We want to provide space away from some of our public spaces for people to continue to access them,” Hines said.
Tacoma City Council will hold a full hearing on this issue later this month, tentatively on October 14.
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