Vancouver resident Peter Bracchi says the longer the city hides behind excuses, the longer our environment, economy, and public safety will suffer

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the author alone and may not reflect the editorial position of ClarkCountyToday.com

For over eight years of the mayor’s leadership the city of Vancouver has allowed — and in many ways facilitated — a long-term, unsanctioned homeless encampment  East of downtown, surrounding the Men’s Share House at 13^th & Lincoln. This site, once meant to offer transitional help to individuals in need, has become a zone of unmanaged public risk, environmental degradation, and lawless dysfunction. What’s worse, the city has not only tolerated these conditions — it has contributed to them.

City officials placed portable toilets and a large dumpster directly in the public right-of-way, without filing a Right-of-Way Permit, Street Use Permit, or Traffic Control Plan (TCP) — requirements that apply to any construction crew, business, or private citizen using sidewalk or street space. There are no caution signs, no cones, no pedestrian detour paths, and no ADA accommodations, as required under federal and city regulations. If a resident left a mattress on the curb or a business obstructed a sidewalk, they’d face fines or legal action. But the City? It does it openly, year after year, while demanding compliance from everyone else.

The result is a deepening civic and humanitarian crisis. Sidewalks remain impassable, especially for elderly and disabled citizens. Pedestrians are forced into busy streets, increasing the risk of vehicle accidents. The area has become a hub of public health hazards: open drug use, rodent infestations, human waste, biohazards, and trash piling into storm drains. Stormwater runoff from this zone carries pollutants — including plastic, fecal matter, and PFAS chemicals — into our Ground/Drinking Water and StormWater, the city claims to protect through its stormwater management program.

What message does this send? That the city of Vancouver has one set of rules for law-abiding residents and another for itself. This is not compassion. It is neglect—toward both the people living in these conditions and the community around them.

Let’s be honest about what’s happening. This is not an accidental oversight. This is a policy failure that has lasted for the entire duration of Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle’s time in office. For eight years, her administration has ignored its own permitting, ADA, and sanitation codes, allowing an encampment to expand without accountability. While taxpayers fund costly expansions of homelessness services and shelters, the city continues to host — and legitimize — dangerous, illegal, and unsanitary conditions on public sidewalks and streets. These are not short-term humanitarian gestures. They are systemic violations of public trust.

Residents deserve better. Businesses deserve better. And the unhoused individuals, trapped in a failing system that offers neither safety nor dignity, deserve better. Vancouver must enforce its own laws equally. If a sidewalk cannot be legally blocked by a merchant or a property owner, then it should not be blocked — indefinitely — by tents, trash, and city-placed outhouses either.

This is not about politics. It is about responsibility. The longer the city hides behind excuses, the longer our environment, economy, and public safety will suffer. Vancouver’s leadership must act—and be held accountable — for restoring both the rule of law and the principle of equal protection under it.

Peter Bracchi
Vancouver

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