In the last 10 months, Tucson police have arrested 80 people for seeking shelter in underground tunnels like the one underneath Park Place Mall.
Amid the city’s housing emergency declaration in February, the Tucson City Council passed a controversial ordinance criminalizing sleeping in washes last summer, sparking criticism that Tucson is criminalizing homelessness and harassing its homeless population as the nation has been plummeting into a housing affordability crisis.
One of the biggest reasons the city adopted the ordinance in the first place was the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024. The decision overturned a long-standing Ninth Circuit ruling that had constrained cities across the West from banning homeless people from sleeping on public property.
“The enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’” the court majority wrote in 2024.
Many of the 80 people that the Tucson Police Department has arrested since the Tucson City Council passed the measure have been arrested in groups, with the largest single-day operation leading to 14 arrests last October, records we obtained via a public records request revealed.
Business owners said unhoused people used this tunnel regularly after city officials closed and fenced off a massive homeless camp near the 100-Acre Woods.
In March, the city also installed metal gates in washes to discourage people from seeking shelter near the Navajo and Cemetery washes on the north side of Tucson.
During the monsoons, washes and underground tunnels can be incredibly dangerous to live in, the city's multi-agency resource coordinator, Justin Hamilton, said. He believes the new law helps protect people living in these hazardous environments.
The city has folded the new law into a much larger initiative to encourage homeless people to take advantage of services that the city offers -- and it has been working, Hamilton said.
Tucson City Councilwoman Miranda Schubert is less sold on the new initiative.
“We have to use the right resources for the right situation,” Schubert said. “People need to be given a chance, and each person has their own things that they might need in order to get off the street and get into a better, more stable, and comfortable living situation.”
Schubert is worried about how the arrests could affect people’s ability to find other forms of housing.
Camping in washes is a misdemeanor punishable by community service, a maximum $250 fine, 10 days in jail or a year of supervised probation.
Other initiatives allow people to seek services in a safe environment, like cooling centers, without the risk of a potential citation, she said. And she recently opened the Ward 6 office to homeless people, operating it as a cooling center.
But Hamilton and Schubert agree on one thing: the dangers of living in washes. Hamilton said he’s seen people get trapped in the tunnels because of their own debris or get swept away by water rushing through a once-dry wash.
“Nobody wants you to die here,” Hamilton said. “Nothing good comes from being down in the tunnel.”
Hamilton said the new ordinance cracking down on sleeping in washes has been an effective tool to connect people with resources.
“We're not trying to do anything by arresting people in the watches besides encouraging them to take services,” Hamilton said.
That encouragement for people to accept services usually comes through a virtual court process, he said.
Officers head into the washes roughly every two weeks and essentially keep the judge on speed dial, allowing cited people to appear before a judge without ever entering a courtroom, Hamilton said.
During this process, outreach groups are also on standby to speak with cited people about shelter and detox programs. Hamilton said this type of outreach has a roughly 50% acceptance rate. For him, that’s almost unheard of.
“I've done outreach in the city for a long time, and I used to do it years and years ago by myself out there,” Hamilton said. “It's about one in every 10 engagements (where) an individual will accept services when you're out there by yourself, without that accountability there.”
This wash near a strip mall close to Park Place Mall was frequently used by homeless people and is one of the top sites in data released by the city related to arrests for camping in washes.
While the new program is still in its infancy, about 50% of those cited returned for their second court appearance — an impressive increase from previous programs.
Many cities, including Phoenix, have tried to establish specialized courts for homeless people because so few return for subsequent hearings.
In Phoenix, only 5-6% of those experiencing homelessness show up to hearings, according to David Ward, the director of Phoenix’s Public Defender's Office.
Phoenix's new community court, which offers a plea deal in exchange for accepting social services, increased that percentage to 72%, Ward said.
Few housing options
In December, Tucson closed its public housing waitlist shortly after the backlog reached 40,000 applications. The city can only admit about 600 families per year.
A month later, the Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness Point-in-Time annual count found around 2,130 who self identified as living on the street. That’s a roughly 4% decrease from last year, according to the nonprofit.
But the PIT Count also revealed the region lost nearly 200 shelter beds in the past year.
This prompted the city to declare its year-long housing emergency to streamline shelter approvals and expand housing options.
While city officials play down a formal link between the camping ban and last year’s passage of Proposition 312, there has been pressure on the council to do more about homeless encampments for several years.
Prop. 312, approved by voters in 2024, allows property owners to seek tax reimbursements under the new law if local governments fail to enforce public nuisance laws.
City officials note they have several public housing initiatives in process to add more temporary and permanent housing, but it takes longer for the city to build housing (because of grants, public private partnerships, etc.) than the private sector.
Staying the course: Despite an executive order by President Donald Trump earlier this month, Pima County health officials don’t see a need to change how local families vaccinate their kids, the Green Valley News’ Jorge Encinas reports. The order from Trump — who once suggested people inject bleach to fight COVID — was meant to shrink the list of recommended vaccines and change how measles, mumps and rubella vaccines are administered. County health officials say they’re going to continue following the vaccine schedule set up by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“As measles cases reach a 35-year high in the U.S. and with cold and flu season quickly approaching, today's executive order on vaccines is not only disheartening but dangerous,” American Academy of Pediatrics President Dr. Andrew Racine said when the order was released.
Focusing on the affordability agenda: Right after we dove into the political ads in Congressional District 6 in yesterday’s newsletter, Democratic candidate JoAnna Mendoza dropped a new one. Her campaign is leaning on the argument that Trump’s policies are raising the cost of living and Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani is too “spineless” to push back. The 30-second ad goes after Ciscomani for signing off on tariffs, “gutting veterans’ healthcare” and “throwing thousands of Arizona families off their health insurance.”
Bipartisan border bucks: Gov. Katie Hobbs is pushing ahead with her plan to get the federal government to reimburse Arizona for $900 million in border-related expenses, including roughly $200 million that would go back to county governments, KGUN’s Alexis Ramanjulu reports. Hobbs is getting some Republican allies in the fight, including Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, who is trying to get reimbursed for a building the sheriff’s office uses for border work. State officials expect to hear back from the Trump administration in October.
A little something for the kiddos: The Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl selected Alice Vail Middle School in Tucson as the first participant in the organization’s “Adopt a School” program, Michael Lev reports for the Arizona Daily Star. Students were thrilled to hear the news, partly because they could earn tickets to the football game by doing well in school and because volunteers gave them free T-shirts. The bowl game has donated $5 million to local charities since Gin & Juice by Dre and Snoop started sponsoring the game about a decade ago.
We don’t have a bowl game to name after you, but we’d still appreciate if you clicked this button and “sponsored” the Agenda.
That was a close one: The primary election for Nogales mayor last month was so tight that it triggered a recount, the results of which were released Monday, per the Nogales International’s Alessandra De Zubeldia. The recount showed Nogales Mayor Jorge Maldonado squeaked by former mayor Arturo Garino to secure the second place spot — meaning Maldonado will continue to a runoff election against first-place finisher David Ruiz in November. The recount found the exact same number of votes for each as the original tally.
To be honest, we were caught off-guard to see that Southern Arizona rancher Jim Chilton is hosting a discussion on MAGA 2.0 later this week.
In case the name isn’t familiar to you, Chilton is a go-to for national reporters who need a quote about the lawless border.
Chilton got deep in with Trump during his first term, appearing with him to talk about the horrors of the border. (Though Trump once referred to him as “Clinton,” as Chilton’s nephew, Jean Chemnick, wrote for Politico in a piece that probably made for some awkward Thanksgivings.)
Anyway, Chilton’s event — advertised on a private Facebook group — is hosting Yale Wishnick as the featured speaker.
He is the author of “MAGA 2.0: No Permission Needed,” so maybe we need to catch up on the reading. All 582 pages of it.
The subtitle of the book gives a hint about what is inside — describing it as a “A Local Populist Blueprint for Restoring Civility, Community, & Common Sense.”
Apparently common sense requires extensive documentation.