MOSES LAKE — The Longview Tracts area, which was selected at a May 12 meeting of the Moses Lake City Council as the site of a managed homeless camp, was one of five sites considered by the city’s homelessness committee, according to city officials.

This runs contrary to a previous statement by council member Dean Hankins, who was on that committee, that the committee considered every parcel owned by the city.

According to Police Chief Kevin Fuhr, who along with then-Deputy City Manager Gil Alvarado selected the five sites to put in front of the ad hoc homeless committee, only those five sites were fully considered by the committee. Those other four sites were ruled out for a number of reasons, leaving only the Longview Tracts site, Fuhr said.

A vacant building near the intersection of West Broadway Avenue and state Route 17, close to the Cenex fuel station, was considered and passed over because the city would have had to purchase the property. A vacant church on East Nelson Road was considered and dismissed for similar reasons.

A vacant property near Blue Heron Park already owned by the city was considered but eventually ruled out due to the distance from city services and downtown Moses Lake.

The committee also considered two parcels next to The Home Depot, which would have been near to city services and away from neighborhoods and schools. However, the land had been given to the city by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and due to agreements with that agency, the city would have had to pay the bureau back for the value of the land if it was developed, Fuhr said.

Though the project had been under consideration for around two years, Fuhr said that it had ultimately been stalled by a lack of funding. While the city had moved ahead with securing a stable source of funds, taking back a portion of recording fees being sent to the county to fund a homeless program, most discussions at the time suggested that the money would be best spent on affordable housing initiatives.

However, after the state offered a grant of over $300,000 to the city to identify and aid the chronically homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic, the city suddenly found itself with the funding needed to move forward, according to city officials. In an April meeting of the city council, the decision was made to move forward with a managed homeless camp.

Much of the selection process, choosing five possible sites and whittling them down to one, had already taken place by that time, according to city officials. Certain types of city-owned parcels had been ruled out outright before reaching the committee, Fuhr said, including already developed park land. The Longview Tracts site, though technically classified as a city park, is an entirely undeveloped stretch of scrub brush.

However, Hankins stated that one site he had been in favor of that was not on the list of pre-approved sites is in fact a stretch of Civic Center Park, located between the Moses Lake Police Department and the Moses Lake Public Library.

Hankins noted in a recent interview that the site is a good distance from neighborhoods and schools, while still being in walking distance from city services and businesses frequented by homeless residents. It was an area that dozens of homeless people flocked to after the late-2018 court decision barred cities from banning people from sleeping on public land, Hankins noted.

And though the activity of the homeless in that park had caused public backlash, with library patrons and staff testifying to the city council about flagrant drug use and open defecation, Hankins said that a managed site could mitigate those effects.

However, Hankins said that the site received a lot of opposition from other council members concerned about the impact on nearby businesses and the library. Still, he said that given the public outcry regarding the Longview Tracts site, he’d like to see a portion of Civic Center Park be up for reconsideration at the May 26 meeting, when the council will decide whether to proceed with the current site or choose another.