The Spokane Business Association recently brought together more than 750 business and community leaders to hear former four-term Boise mayor David Bieter speak on homelessness, addiction, and public disorder. The evening underscored a reality Spokane’s business community knows all too well: the health of our local economy and the health of our community are inseparable.

Boise and Spokane share many similarities — size, regional role, and political balance. Yet their downtown streets look very different. Spokane has seen unsheltered homelessness rise by nearly 40% this year, while also suffering from among the highest overdose death rates and neonatal addiction rates in the nation, and a commercial office vacancy rate of 32%. Boise, by contrast, has managed to keep these challenges at a much smaller scale.

Bieter was clear: this was not the result of luck. It came from persistence and policy.

“Cities exist for three reasons,” he says. “To keep us safe, to promote commerce, and to safeguard what is sacred.”

Public order, he argues, is not a negotiable extra. It is a core duty. Bieter rejects the idea that cities face a binary choice between compassion and enforcement.

“Leaving people on the street in states of addiction, illness, and despair may feel like tolerance, but it is not compassion. It’s indifference,” he says.

The approach in Boise focused on both accountability in public spaces and access to detox, treatment, crisis mental health care, and transitional housing. The goal was never to jail people for being homeless, but to direct them toward help.

Bieter says, "Services do not attract the homeless — a lack of enforcement does.” 

That absence of enforcement, he warns, is what allows chronic encampments to take root.

Perhaps the most striking lesson came from what Bieter calls an “unintended experiment.” A temporary pause in enforcement led to a downtown encampment of more than 100 people. When order was reestablished, outcomes were remarkably consistent:

• About a third engaged with services.
• About a third reunited with family or friends.
• About a third left (hopefully to come into services when they are ready).

This simple pattern carried a powerful implication: cities don’t need to build services to absorb 100% of those visible on the street. The infrastructure must be built for the third who are ready to come in. That is a heavy lift, but it is achievable.

Boise’s progress was possible because government, nonprofits, hospitals, businesses, and citizens pulled together in what Bieter calls a “barn raising.” Spokane can do the same.

The urgency is real. Spokane’s downtown vacancy rate is twice that of Boise’s. Employers and employees alike feel the impact of unsafe streets and public disorder. But the path forward is clear: pair enforcement with accessible services, insist that public spaces remain public, and refuse to confuse indifference with compassion.

Business leaders have a pivotal role in this. As Bieter says, “If the people will lead, the leaders will follow.” 

Spokane has the tools, the talent, and the civic spirit to meet this challenge. What remains is the collective will to make it our highest priority.

If Boise could turn the corner, Spokane can too.

Gavin J. Cooley is director of strategic initiatives at Spokane Business Association, working to build a regional approach to homelessness. He can be reached by contacting Gavin@SpokaneBusinessAssociation; 509-995-3376.