Grand Canyon Times

An Arizona appellate court has concurred with a trial court judge’s ruling last September, which ordered the City of Phoenix to clean up “The Zone” – the vast homeless encampment occupying city streets for over a year. 

“With a population sometimes exceeding 1,000 people living in tents on sidewalks and in public parks, The Zone destroyed private businesses and ruined the livelihoods of innocent taxpayers – all because city officials refused to enforce their own already-existing laws,” said Timothy Sandefur, Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute.

The Institute’s Municipal Affairs Liaison, Austin VanDerHeyden, elaborated on “The Zone” during a previous appearance on the Grand Canyon Times podcast.

“There was a thousand homeless individuals in a small, few block radius. It was the largest homeless encampment in that small of an area anywhere in the country. So, no doubt homelessness has exploded in many cities, but Phoenix has just been hit terribly hard. And so, that's really what happened. The Zone, like I said, about a thousand individuals, there's the central Arizona shelter services right there,” VanDerHeyden said.

“And so that's kind of where all of this happened. And so little over two years ago, There was a group of business owners who decided to bring a lawsuit against the city of Phoenix for what they said, creating and maintaining a public nuisance. And a lot of the issues that were happening down there were not just individuals, but the crimes that were committed down there.”

Property owners, assisted by the Institute and law firm Tully Bailey, filed a lawsuit against the City and won last year, with the trial court ordering the City to clean up The Zone and stop what the judge called the City’s “decision to forego enforcement of criminal, health and other quality of life statutes.”

Though the City complied with the court’s order to clean up The Zone, it stood by its refusal to obey the law and chose to bring the case forward to the Arizona Court of Appeals.

According to the City, it made a deliberate “policy” decision to operate The Zone and if voters were unsatisfied, then they should vote the City’s leadership out – but aside from that measure, the City said property owners had to “accept” the official refusal to enforce the law.

It was an argument which the appellate court unanimously rejected.

“For more than 85 years, Arizona’s courts have recognized the authority to hold municipalities responsible for public nuisances on land they own. The City has failed to show how obeying the law would pose ‘significant difficulties’ [or]…how requiring a municipality to abate a public nuisance on property it owns and controls and prohibiting a municipality from maintaining a public nuisance on that property impermissibly intrudes on that municipality’s autonomy,” the ruling stated.

In response, Sandefur said, “Today’s ruling is a welcome reminder that the government is not above the law – and, in fact, that it is required to enforce the laws even-handedly, to protect the hard-working taxpayers whose rights are imperiled when city officials decide to simply ignore their law enforcement responsibilities.”

VanDerHeyden previously spoke to a measure aimed at doing just that, in response to everything which had happened with “The Zone”.

“The police officers testified in court that they were told not to enforce the law, not to go down into the zone and do some of these things. And so you’ve had to take on any sort of mitigating expense. If you've had to build a fence up to, to block off your property, hire private security, put in a security system, whatever it may be, you can take off a portion or file a tax credit to receive a portion of your property taxes back,” VanDerHeyden said.

“The point of our property taxes is to receive the public services that the city provides. really owes to us. And when you’re not receiving those services, we think that you should be able to get a portion of your property tax back. And so it’s not going to fix the problem entirely, but it's certainly going to help.”

Sandefur added that the City’s decision to appeal the initial trial court ruling is an imperative for ensuring the situation with “The Zone” is not repeated.

“Unfortunately, the very fact that Phoenix leaders chose to appeal the trial court’s common-sense ruling shows that such officials cannot be depended upon to follow existing laws. And that shows the necessity for passing Proposition 312, the ballot initiative that will ensure that no future ‘Zones’ occur on Arizona streets,” Sandefur said.

“That initiative provides that if cities refuse to enforce existing laws against public camping, defecating in the streets and other nuisance activities, such that property owners have to pay for their own security – installing cameras, putting up bars on their windows, etc. – the property owners are entitled to a refund for that amount. What’s more, it takes that refund out of the money that the city would otherwise receive from the state. That’s as it should be: Taxpayers pay for police protection, and if the city won’t give them that protection, they should at least get their money back.”