It's time for the Spokane area's elected leaders to revisit the idea of a regional approach to reducing homelessness, drug use, and crime. A sense of urgency for doing so is justified. 

Despite some steps taken in the right direction, problems persist on a large scale, and data suggests some major problems have worsened. A new approach is necessary, and everybody should come to the table on a comprehensive plan to address the region's woes. 

As has been well documented, a small group of volunteers have laid the groundwork for such an approach. That work remains relevant and should serve as the foundation for a broad plan moving forward. 

As a reminder, three former city of Spokane executives—Gavin Cooley, Rick Romero, and Theresa Sanders—led an initiative that brought together eight jurisdictions in the Spokane area: Spokane County, the city of Spokane, Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, Millwood, Airway Heights, Cheney, and Medical Lake. 

Together, representatives from those municipalities committed to a 90-day due-diligence process and began meeting regularly to navigate the complexities of such an approach. The effort extended well beyond that 90-day period, and after what some estimate to be thousands of hours of collective volunteer work, the bones of a plan were in place. 

Then, the city of Spokane, under newly elected Mayor Lisa Brown, balked at continuing forward. The effort fizzled at that point.

That regional collaborative effort started precisely two years ago, in March of 2023. As has been widely reported, drug-overdose deaths in the Spokane area have increased since then, a trend that runs counter to national patterns in which overdose deaths have declined. 

On the business front, one commercial real estate executive recently placed the downtown office vacancy rate at 28%, which is up from an already unprecedentedly high vacancy rate of 20% reported a year ago. A variety of factors contribute to that, including work-from-home trends, but concerns about public safety and vandalism contribute to organizations' decisions to leave the core and prospective new tenants' decisions to locate elsewhere.

Much of the ire and frustration is with the city of Spokane, which has stymied the regional approach while taking some of its own proactive steps, such as planning to create scattered-site shelters and expanding a relationship with Downtown Spokane Partnership for cleaning service in a broader swath of the core. Such steps are laudable to a degree, but they clearly aren't solving problems quickly or quantifiably.

It's time for the city's leaders to put policy ahead of politics and personality and start working with their peers on practical solutions, similar to what Pierce County has started doing in western Washington and other communities have done with success in other parts of the country.

The devil is always in the details, and moving forward, nuanced conversations will be essential if this process is to be kickstarted. But such conversations, no matter how difficult or complex, are worth having to move our community forward, help the most vulnerable people among us, and hold accountable those who harm others.