Phoenix business owners and residents who were exposed to ground “soaked with urine and human feces,” “frequent public nudity,” and “tin foil with burned residue of fentanyl pills all over the sidewalks,” have secured a second legal win in a years-long battle over a sprawling homeless encampment known as “the Zone.”

The Arizona Court of Appeals agreed Tuesday with a lower superior court’s order in September that forced the city of Phoenix to clean up the encampment and enforce its own public nuisance laws.

“For more than 85 years, Arizona’s courts have recognized the authority to hold municipalities responsible for public nuisances on land they own and control under Arizona law,” the appeals court ruling notes. 

The decision comes as homelessness has become a major issue in Arizona, with the state’s data indicating that the homeless population increased by 29 percent from January 2020 to January 2023. “Homelessness-related service providers are a growing industry,” according to the Common Sense Institute, which estimates that public entities and nonprofits spend an estimated $1 billion annually directly on homelessness — or nearly $50,000 per homeless person each year. 

In November, Arizona voters will decide on a ballot measure that aims to give property tax refunds to property owners who are affected by the government’s failure to enforce laws “prohibiting illegal camping, loitering, obstructing public thoroughfares, panhandling, public urination or defecation, public consumption of alcoholic beverages, and possession or use of illegal substances.”

Arizona’s ruling also comes only two months after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, in which the majority held that a city enforcing its public camping ordinances can’t be considered “cruel and unusual” punishment — although the state ruling didn’t address the Grants Pass verdict.

In the Phoenix case, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge, Scott Blaney, agreed in September with the property owners who were suing the city, holding that city officials both created and maintained “the dire situation that currently exists in the Zone through its failure, and in some cases refusal, to enforce criminal and quality of life laws in the Zone.”

That ruling found that the Zone had become a “biohazard,” as “human waste, food waste, and trash,” were dumped on the streets, “homeless individuals defecate and urinate in the open,” and property owners “are forced to clean up the human waste each day.” In addition to fire hazards, prostitution, public nudity, and public “sex acts” in the Zone, the court noted that there were “used needles,” and said “fentanyl-tainted pieces of tin foil blow around in the wind and come into contact with residents, business owners, their employees, and even their children.”

While the city ultimately followed the judge’s order to clean up the Zone, it appealed the ruling, arguing in part that the injunction violated “the autonomy of local government to address homelessness.” The appeals court this week found that “the City has not shown 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 or will.”

 In response to losing their appeal, a representative of the city tells the Sun that a walk-up service area near where the Zone had been is providing resources to homeless people while alerting them that camping “is no longer permitted.” 

“The City of Phoenix has prioritized creating more indoor shelter than ever before in the last several years,” the representative says, noting that it’s added 200 beds already in 2024 in addition to 1,074 in the previous two years.

The Goldwater Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, Timothy Sandefur, who filed briefs in support of the property owners affected by the Zone, welcomed the appeals court ruling.

He said it was a “reminder that the government is not above the law” and that “it is required to enforce the laws evenhandedly, to protect the hardworking taxpayers whose rights are imperiled when city officials decide to simply ignore their law-enforcement responsibilities.”