As CEO of the Tucson Metro Chamber, I find one of the more rewarding aspects of the job is to regularly talk to small businesses about their successes and challenges. In all the years I have had these conversations, I hear more about difficulties they face due to unhoused individuals than I ever have in the past.
This is why the recent Supreme Court decision overturning City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, allowing local governments to again enforce urban camping ordinances, is of great importance locally. Simply put, it could add more tools that effectively address a 300% increase in unsheltered homelessness since 2018.
The chamber and other partners have found both staff and some on the dais as thoughtful collaborators over the last couple years in tackling this challenge at scale. Their innovations like the Transition Center, or the city of Tucson’s Community Court, can now be utilized in even better ways along the continuum of care if greater accountability is created.
As I opened with, this issue, more so than ever, impacts our 1,400 members and the 150,000 people they employ around the region. While an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court included specific challenges small businesses face, those stories are very similar to local ones we regularly hear. A small retailer embattled by retail theft moving to a safer location because they can’t afford security. A local mortuary regularly chasing off homeless who are scraping metal nameplates off memorial urns to turn them in for cash. Restaurants who share about loss of business after homeless persons, under the influence and from nearby encampments, assault their customers.
These stories are not caused by the teenager living in their car while fleeing domestic violence, or the evicted older adult who couldn’t afford rent last month for the first time. They stem from the plight of chronically unhoused individuals who are struggling with deep behavioral and substance abuse issues unmet by systemic policy failures.
City and county staff state that these individuals make up most of the unsheltered population and are often housing-unready.
Navigators share that it often takes many weeks of offering services to those sheltering in our parks and public spaces for just a small handful to ultimately accept. Those who don’t are then swept somewhere else to encamp, to only begin the cycle again. In the last two Point-in-Time counts in 2023 and 2024, available data shows that hundreds of emergency shelter and other supportive housing beds were not filled that night. Key nonprofit partners tell us about the scores of behavioral health beds and resources that go unused day after day.
This is the policy conundrum we now face: what do we do when those who need it most are not accepting of alternatives and unable to chart their own path to recovery?
The chamber has sought to work with the public and private sector on a clear policy framework in response: scale up interim, emergency shelter fast and first; enforce current ordinances and create accountability around treatment; then, provide more permanent and supportive housing options when ready.
Since 2018, we’ve heard our policymakers reference Grants Pass and Martin V. Boise to justify why their hands are tied and unable to implement this policy framework. Yet, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, some city and county officials have remained vocally resistant to policy changes and consider it a criminalization of homelessness.
It’s an incorrect characterization, and a poor defense of the status quo that is not working.
Other cities have begun, with success, to move in a different direction.
In Reno, county, city and nonprofits collaborate to rapidly stand up over 600 emergency shelter beds, as a point of entry for those experiencing homelessness to receive treatment and more permanent housing. It resulted in enforcement of urban camping ordinances and decreased street homelessness by nearly 60%.
Or, Phoenix, where the City Council just passed an ordinance by a vote of 8-0 that would tighten restrictions on urban camping near parks and schools, but also downshifted the penalties. This creates guardrails of accountability to protect the public space while still leaning on education and services-first.
Prior to the Supreme Court Decision, San Diego implemented their Unsafe Camping Ordinance in 2023, banning camping within two blocks of schools, homeless shelters and transit hubs, in open areas like public parks and riverbeds, and on city sidewalks if shelter space is available.
We’ve heard for so long in our region why we can’t take bigger, better steps. Now, we call on local leaders to re-engage the possibilities for compassionate action that more effectively helps the unsheltered while benefitting small businesses and Tucson families who simply want to conduct business and enjoy our parks and public spaces safely.