An ongoing controversy over the city of Burien’s approach to homelessness hit a new peak this June when city leadership voted to remove the Planning Commission chair for advising homeless people on where to camp after multiple sweeps in the area.
On June 15, the Burien City Council held a special hearing that ultimately removed Planning Commission Chair Charles Schaefer. The mayor and deputy mayor — effectively glorified councilmembers — joined in the 4-3 vote.
The decision sparked an uproar among Burien’s volunteer commissioners and committee members. In the days following the decision, 11 volunteers resigned in protest, including the six other full members of the Planning Commission, three members of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and one member each from the Airport Committee and the Arts Commission.
Under state law, municipalities in Washington are required to form planning commissions to review and propose changes to zoning and land use. According to the state’s Growth Management Act, cities in King County like Burien will have to finish a periodic comprehensive plan update by the end of 2024.
Together with Burien City Councilmember Cydney Moore, Schaefer had been doing outreach to unhoused Burienites who were living downtown, trying to find them a better place to stay. As Real Change reported in April, shelter spaces failed to materialize, leading residents to have few options other than to remain outside in tents. Moore, Schaefer and other homeless advocates supported residents as they were swept first from City Hall on March 31 and then again from a patch of grassland a block away that was subsequently converted into a dog park. Residents then moved to a part of a nearby park that was initially misidentified as an ordinary city-owned parcel of land, from which they were swept a third time and forced to scatter.
Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon said she voted to remove Schaefer because his advocacy was getting in the way of his city position and he was going rogue without the support of the council.
“If you read the statement from the B-Town Blog, and I don’t have the exact quote, it went something like, ‘Well, if you’re going to have the role of a planning commissioner, and if you’re going to be bullied by the council, what’s the point of not being able to do what you think is right?’” Aragon said. “And to me, that shows that he really was acting in his role as planning commissioner.”
The B-Town Blog article Aragon referenced was published on June 19, four days after Schaefer was removed from the planning commission.
“And another really important principle when you’re working on the commission is [that] you’re there for the benefit of the city,” Aragon said. “You’re there to address what’s best for our city and also deal with and hear from a lot of different people, not only homelessness advocates, and they’re certainly a strong part of the voices. But, you also need to hear from businesses, you also need to hear from communities when you are trying to make a proposal or a decision. And it really seemed like he had his own ideas and agendas about where people are going.”
Schaefer said that the City Council was essentially cracking down on unhoused people being informed of their legal rights.
“Apparently some of the councilmembers object to people being informed of their legal rights and what areas of Burien it’s legal for everyone to camp on,” Schaefer said.
He added that city officials should prioritize supporting the most vulnerable members of the community, which is what he said he was doing.
“I think as a public servant ... you have to focus more on the rights of people that are marginalized, that are actually more likely to be victims of crime,” he said. “These folks are outside. They can’t go and lock their door at night. If you’re concerned about crime, they’re easy targets; you know, we should be protecting them.”
August Hahn, one of the members of the Planning Commission who resigned June 16, said that he had lost confidence in the City Council guaranteeing the rights of commissioners to express political opinions in a personal capacity.
“Number one, his actions weren’t anything to do with the Planning Commission,” Hahn said. “And number two, he had the civil right to do that. He had the right to talk to people.”
Leit Myers, the chair of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, said that they couldn’t keep serving a city whose council engaged in authoritarian politics.
“I think it’s really scary and problematic for democracy, the trend that’s happening. And I think Burien has entered into the spectrum of that by removing Charles,” Myers said.
“I think what that does is it sends a message to commissioners and advisory members — all of whom are volunteers and, you know, showing up for their community and everyone in their community, and acting as advocates and an activist even in their community in these roles. It tells them, if you do or say something that we do not agree with, we might remove you,” they said. “And that has a really chilling and suppressive effect on people’s ability to have free speech and to act on their values and to respond to needs that they see in their community, which is what Charles was doing.”
According to Moore, repetitive displacement was doing little to alleviate the circumstances of unhoused Burienites, while pushing them to more dangerous camping areas, such as on median strips and dirt patches along busy roads. Moore advised residents that the eight-foot-wide dirt patch was city property, but she did not encourage them to camp in the middle of the road, where it’s dangerous.
“Others decided to move into a median at the end of the block by the private property in the middle of the road on Ambaum [Boulevard Southwest], a particularly dangerous road,” Moore said. “So to the best of my knowledge, there are currently several people who are out camping literally in the middle of the road, in this little island median.”
Safety concerns increased further after a tent located on the dirt patch caught fire on the morning of June 23 when a resident left combustible material unattended.
As a result of the 2018 Martin v. Boise Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, municipalities are prohibited from criminalizing camping on public land when there is no available shelter.
Officials leased the land to the Burien CARES animal shelter. Private security was hired to conduct sweeps. Organizations like the Burien Business Association have also resorted to hostile architecture, including placing boulders in median strips to prevent camping.
The Burien City Council came under fire for not responding to an offer of support from King County. After months of discussions, Executive Dow Constantine’s office wrote to Burien’s city manager on June 7 proposing to provide the city
$1 million in funds and 35 tiny home shelters manufactured by the company Pallet that Burien could use to set up a managed encampment. In exchange, the city would need to identify land to site the shelter. The county offered the city temporary parking space so it could use land currently leased to a Toyota dealership.
So far, the council has not responded to Constantine’s offer.
“Our city is facing a budgetary shortfall at this point. So turning down a million dollars for anything seems unwise to say the least, nevertheless a million dollars to immediately house people,” Moore said. “Notably the Pallet shelters the county is offering, they house two people apiece; they’re offering 35. So that would house 70 people immediately. And that’s a sizable portion of our recognized unhoused population.”
Moore added that failing to take action will just further inflame tensions and anti-homeless hatred.
“If you’re not going to do anything,” she said, “then you’re allowing this debate to persist and the outrage to continue in our community, from all sides. Everyone’s mad.”
Aragon said that she wanted to get more information about the different options available to the city before committing to the deal.
“When you have a community like that, we need to make sure there’s security, we need to make sure there’s sanitation,” Aragon said. “And we haven’t run those numbers. So that’s something that I’ve asked our city manager and staff to do, so that we’re just really aware about how that money needs to be spent and how long will it last.”
The Burien City Council’s next meeting is scheduled for July 17. However, advocates say that the more time passes, the more conditions will continue to deteriorate for unhoused Burien residents.
“The situation has become increasingly dire and our council has still taken no action,” Moore said.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the date of the next Burien City Council meeting. The newspaper regrets the error.
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
Read more of the June 28-July 4, 2023 issue.