In The News - 3/18/2025
RangeMedia
The 5 am Crisis Walks will continue until conditions improve
Every morning, Gavin Cooley of the Spokane Business Association leads an hourlong walk as part of a campaign to end visible homelessness downtown. Is it effective? Opinions vary.
(Ed. note: this is a very long but very informative and readable post. Tap the link to read the whole article.)
At 5 am every morning, Gavin Cooley meets a group of concerned citizens outside City Hall, ready to lead them through the dangers of downtown Spokane.
He’s somewhere between a college tour guide and safari expedition leader; he’s energetic and knowledgeable of the history of the area feeding his participants nuggets of lore about his experience working with city government as they move through Riverfront Park. But when it comes time for the riskier leg of the tour — braving the viaducts that pass under the elevated railroad tracks in downtown — Cooley confidently takes the lead, speedwalking past the few unhoused people sheltering under the bridges.
Without Cooley’s group, some of the participants say they would never feel safe enough to make the trek. “ I used to be able to go walk around at lunch anywhere downtown. I won’t, and I can’t now,” said Julie Demakis, one of the regular participants in Cooley’s walks. “I have to have my husband with me and he won’t let me go by myself.”
The group only saw about a dozen homeless people this Tuesday, huddled around under the viaduct for warmth or sleeping on the stoops of closed businesses, though sometimes there’s more adrenaline. Usually it’s from a safe distance — last Friday, Cooley’s group saw an assumed drug dealer with a “ giant gallon bag of fentanyl pills,” they said — though once a participant felt ill because they got close to fentanyl smoke, Cooley wrote in an email.
And on this morning, they saw evidence of more danger: an unregulated trash fire under the viaduct and a broken car window outside The Ridpath apartments.
To his credit, Cooley always returns the tour group safely to City Hall, where they circle up and share how they’re processing the experience and how their perspective has changed.
“This is part of action and seeing firsthand, because everyone says, ‘Oh, there’s open drug use, or oh, there’s people buying drugs,’” Derek Baziotis, another frequent walker, said at the end of Tuesday’s walk. “Until you’re out here and you see it, you don’t actually really see what the crisis is.”
The Spokesman Review
‘HOUSING IS HEALTH’
As Colville phases out homeless camp, students and organizations are stepping up to get people sheltered
High schoolers from Upper Columbia Academy in Spangle traveled to Colville to help offer a fresh start for those in need as the city prepares to close its homeless camp.
On Sunday morning, more than 30 high school students volunteered at Bridges of Hope, a new transitional housing facility in Colville that will help up to 10 men transitioning out of homelessness or recovery. The Astor Avenue house, donated by former prisoners’ rights nonprofit the November Coalition, is part of a project by Shelley and Barry Bacon, co-founders of Hope Street Restoration who hope it will offer a pathway out of the homeless camp.
“We don’t think you can talk about ending homelessness without talking about housing,” Barry said. “We have to have housing. And nobody’s been building affordable, entry-level housing for a long time in this area.”
Colville city officials announced last year that all individuals at the homeless camp must be completely moved out by October 2025.
The decision aligns with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from July, which determined that laws prohibiting the homeless from camping on public property do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
‘Your school helped me’Before the Bacons sectioned off the students across the house project, Richard Smith, who works at Hope Street, stood in front of them and shared a personal story that changed the trajectory of his life.
Last year, Smith suffered an aortic dissection.
“I got a new scar for the rest of my life,” he said.
Prior to this incident, Smith had been living out of his truck for months. He made his way to Colville with the intention of selling his car and having someone take him to Colville National Forest to end his life.
That’s when he met Teresa Lang, director of the Hope Street Rest Stop, and eventually Shelley and Barry Bacon.
“(Barry) said to me, one day, ‘Hey, man, where are you sleeping?’ I said, ‘In my truck.’ He said, ‘No, you’re not. You’re gonna sleep here,’ ” Smith said. “Maybe a month later, I woke up one day to go volunteer with (Lang) at Hope Street, and I had this pain in my chest.”
Spokane proposes investing $1.5M in opioid treatment, sobering beds
Plan would expand addiction center resources: ‘We want to help everyone’
Spokane leaders are planning to allocate $1.5 million of opioid settlement funds towards efforts against addiction in the city.
Over the next 13 years, the city will receive approximately $13.3 million related to settlements with opioid distributors. Having already distributed $1 million of the funds, the new $1.5 million allocation proposed by Mayor Lisa Brown and Council President Betsy Wilkerson would fund the Spokane Regional Health District’s opioid treatment services, local sobering beds and invest in planning for the future.
“It is not lost on me that the opioid crisis has profoundly impacted our community, and it is why I strongly advocate for using opioid settlement dollars to invest in behavioral health treatment,” Wilkerson said in a statement. “Now, more than ever, is a critical time to transform these funds into vital resources for those in need.”
Should the proposal be approved, the city would have $2.2 million opioid settlement dollars remaining on hand.
The plan would send $350,000 to expand SRHD’s treatment hours and take more walk-in patients. Health District spokesperson Kelli Hawkins said the funds would keep more people from being turned away at treatment services.
“We want to help everyone. We know when they come to treatment services, they are ready to get the help they need,” she said.
Another $500,000 would be directed to Spokane Treatment and Recovering Services for the purchase of additional sobering beds. Earlier this month, Spokane County approved $775,000 for the same program. County Commissioner Mary Kuney said she was “super excited” the city is “coming along with us.”
“We’d love the city to come along and do more,” she said.
In a statement, Brown said she hopes to coordinate opioid settlement funding between the city and county.
“This regional partnership with Spokane County ensures that opioid settlement funds are used effectively to address both the immediate crisis and its long-term impacts,” Brown said. “Together, we are strengthening our community’s response to the opioid epidemic and investing in proven solutions.”
One man’s crusade to shape city policy
How Sheldon Jackson uses outrage, email chain, social media to influence public perception
When a woman walking to work at River Park Square this winter was dragged into an alley behind P.F. Chang’s and mugged, Spokane developer and commercial property owner Sheldon Jackson and like-minded business owners pointed to the incident as further proof of the city’s decay.
“This is why this email is so critical,” Jackson wrote to more than 400 people, including politicians, city officials, anti-progressive activists and businesspeople.
The incident added to Jackson’s vision of the city: that the “Progressive in Spokane” and “Pro criminal activists” are “ruining our city.” “Compassion” and harm reduction policies – meant to reduce overdose or disease without forcing drug users into treatment or jail – are killing people on Spokane’s streets, and incidents like the mugging were proof that the city needed to pivot to incarceration and forced rehabilitation.
Except there was no mugging. It was another faulty game of telephone, a misremembered and embellished story passed along seemingly because it proved what people already believed.
In the last year, following conservatives’ loss in 2023 of significant political power in Spokane, Jackson has become perhaps the loudest anti-progressive voice in Spokane politics, though most of the public won’t hear from him directly.
He hasn’t gained and used his influence with big ad buys or election spending like businessman Larry Stone, who has spent hundreds of thousands to attack progressives and support their opponents over the years. Jackson doesn’t testify at meetings or organize protests. Instead, he rallies people almost entirely by email.
Jackson repeatedly declined to be interviewed by The Spokesman-Review, and at one point told readers of his email not to speak to reporters without his permission.
There are many formal organizations representing the Spokane business community that, like Jackson, have highlighted crime and urban decay in the city and called on elected leadership to enact tougher policies, particularly after the hardship of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A 2021 Downtown Spokane Partnership survey of the organization’s ratepayers and newsletter subscribers highlighted homelessness and public safety as the dominant issues downtown. Overwhelming voter approval of an anti-homeless camping law in 2023 and a 2024 Greater Spokane Incorporated survey of area residents suggest those frustrations are widespread.