SPOKANE, Wash. — While touring a homeless shelter in western Washington Wednesday, Gov. Jay Inslee was asked about the I-90 homeless encampment in Spokane, otherwise known as "Camp Hope."
"The state's position is we want to close and folks to move into better housing away from Camp Hope as soon as possible," Inslee said.
People have been camping on the WSDOT property for ten months. With millions of dollars earmarked to help the homeless, Inslee says there has been "significant progress."
"The number of people there I think has come down from about 600 to 400 or in that range," Inslee said. "We are very, very aggressively looking for other housing solutions for them."
Local leaders say that work isn't happening quick enough. Spokane County has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Transportation and local leaders plan to clear people out by Nov. 15.
The city of Spokane says outreach work will continue at the Trent Shelter, which the mayor says is a safer, more humane alternative to sleeping outside.
"Four weeks from now, that Trent Shelter, no matter who runs it, is going to be full," Jewels Helping Hands Executive Director Julie Garcia said.
The city is now working with the Salvation Army to create more space at the Trent Shelter and Catholic Charities could open the former Quality Inn hotel as soon as Dec. 1. However, Gov. Inslee worries that putting speed ahead of placement could have even worse consequences.
"Now, some people in the community don't want to see them just pushed into another park in Spokane, they want them to have some other housing solution so that this doesn't just create a Camp Hope 2 and that's what we're doing," Inslee said. "Very dedicated to that as humanly possible."
The most recent numbers put the state's homeless population at 83,000. Nearly half of them live in King County.
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