Boise mayoral candidates address transit, homelessness at Interfaith Sanctuary forum
At this point a year from now, some people staying at Interfaith Sanctuary want to move south. Others hope to move a little closer to family. And some want to stay right in Boise, a place they say is their home.
Boise’s two remaining mayoral candidates, Mayor David Bieter and City Council President Lauren McLean, participated in a private question-and-answer session with those at Interfaith Sanctuary on Thursday.
Candidates answered questions about affordable housing and transportation, with multiple people asking what the mayoral candidates would do to improve public transit in the city and surrounding cities. Through audience questions asked by Jodi Peterson, the director of Interfaith Sanctuary, audience members told candidates about times they had to turn down jobs in nearby cities such as Meridian because they wouldn’t be able to get to them.
McLean said she’d heard that kind of story “way too often,” which she said meant it was time to increase bus service and invest more money into public transportation.
“We’ve got to develop a regional transportation vision and political will to make it happen,” she said. “I would work really hard to build those relationships ... at the elected official and government level to ensure that we can work with the state to find the funding that we need for a larger transit system.”
Bieter spoke about how other cities have not contributed as much to a public transportation system, making it difficult to fund a better system. Boise needs to be able to have a local sales tax to pay for transit, he said.
“I will be committed to that in the future,” he said. “If we have to do it with an initiative, we’ll do that. But without funding, you’re not going to have a system that’s going to be adequate for you for Meridian or frankly any other community.”
They also spoke about Martin v. Boise, the lawsuit focusing on whether the city can ticket people who are homeless for sleeping in public places when they have nowhere else to go. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September 2018 that cities can’t prosecute people for sleeping on the streets if they have nowhere else to go because it is unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
Bieter is in favor of taking the case to the Supreme Court. McLean was originally in support of the appeal but later changed her mind after hearing that not all local advocates were in favor of it. She has since said she believes it’s ineffective and hurts people who are homeless.
Calling the case the “elephant in the room,” Peterson read Bieter a question on why the city was spending so much to pursue the case, referring to the $75,000 it is paying a Los Angeles firm to ask the Supreme Court to hear the case and the $225,000 more it will spend if the case is taken up by the court.
Bieter said he wanted to avoid camps of people who are homeless and that allowing police officers in the city to ticket is the best way to ensure camps don’t form, citing Cooper Court, a camp the city cleared in 2015.
McLean in turn was asked what people are supposed to do when there’s nowhere else to go. She said that every person needs to sleep and that the city needs more beds and more homes, be it in shelter space or permanent supportive housing.
In a reversal of standard forums, candidates had the chance to ask questions of the audience. McLean asked people to share their stories, while Bieter asked how long people had been in Boise.
Attendees were frank with the candidates, the two top vote-getters in November’s election. McLean got 45.7% of the vote to Bieter’s 30.3%, but because no one got 50%, city code dictates there must be a runoff.
One man told candidates it was “almost impossible” to get the kind of voucher required to get into affordable housing. Others talked about landlords who take advantage of people looking to rent.
A lot of people were looking to share their ideas with the candidates on how they could improve the lives of Boise’s homeless community if elected.
“This community has gotten so much better in the past few years,” one man told the candidates. “A lot of people aren’t aware of that.”
The runoff election is Dec. 3.
This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 7:52 PM with the headline "Boise mayoral candidates address transit, homelessness at Interfaith Sanctuary forum."
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