City of Tucson Expanding Homeless Shelters to Neighborhoods - Speak UP!
The City is rewriting the zoning code to put shelters in your neighborhood.
Please watch this video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nhr2RXay_fA (YouTube)
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1046335061740213
The City of Tucson is quietly rewriting its zoning codes to allow homeless shelters and sanctioned outdoor “safe sleeping” camps in areas where they are currently prohibited. With reduced parking, reduced on-site restrictions and a streamlined approval process that cuts you out of it. This will all be done with No vote and no warning!
Before you trust this City to manage this, look at what they already manage:
● Drive down any street - potholes that have been there for years , patched and re-patched while the City brags about road bonds it has spent and can’t show you.
● Look at the medians - weeds waist-high, trees growing out of the sidewalk, dead trees still standing and trash all over.
● Try to use a City park restroom - Locked, Boarded and welded shut. People doing drugs and living in these restrooms. The city can not keep the park restrooms clean
● Stand at a bus shelter after dark, no lighting because of copper theft, people sleeping on the benches, numerous crimes happening and drug paraphernalia at your feet
● Ride the Crime Bus, a fare-free transit system that has become a rolling drug den with a schedule, where drivers are told not to intervene and riders are told to look away and everyone is told that riding the bus is safe
The City cannot keep a restroom open, it can not mow a median, they can not fix a pothole or keep bus stops or riding the bus safe and now they want you to believe that they will competently locate, permit, inspect and police drug permissive shelters and tent camps next to your home and your kids school and that they will “maintain standards for surrounding neighborhoods.” They have an entire track record saying that. The shelter they open next to you will be run exactly the way they run everything else.
Insurance & Compliance
All operators must maintain General Liability ($1M per occurrence/$2M aggregate) and Sexual Abuse and Molestation insurance, naming the City of Tucson as an additional insured. Applicants must also provide proof of property owner consent if they do not own the land.
Read the fine print. The City's own permitting guide requires every shelter operator to carry $1M/$2M general liability insurance AND Sexual Abuse and Molestation insurance — naming the City as an additional insured. Think about what that means. The City knows exactly what they are inviting in. They are protecting themselves from lawsuits. They are not protecting you!
COULD THIS AFFECT YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD?
Did you receive a letter? Probably not, the only letters that were sent out were to properties that would be within 100 feet of one of the new shelters. One of our members shared this letter with us and we Thank You for sharing!
Whether you support these changes, oppose them, or simply want more information, you deserve to know what is happening in your community.
Feedback Session 3
Where: Park Place Mall Central Exhibit Space, 5870 E. Broadway Blvd
When:
● Friday, October 2, 2026, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.
● Saturday, October 3, 2026, from 12:00 to 4:00 p.m.
● Sunday, October 4, 2026, from 12:00 to 4:00 p.m.
RSVP Optional: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/g/wFU8z4z2hH
Community members unable to attend in person are encouraged to join the virtual session or submit written comments to Amanda.Smith@tucsonaz.gov. Feedback gathered during these sessions will inform a draft code amendment, which will be available for public review in the fall. The draft will then go to the Planning Commission for a study session and public hearing, after which the Commission will forward a recommendation to the Mayor and Council for consideration.
Visit the Housing and Homelessness Emergency Shelter Care Code Amendment website for more information.
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You are asking & We are delivering
The Tucson Crime Free Coalition has had a significant number of requests from community members and business owners asking how The City of Tucson works and who to contact with concerns, problems and or questions. We have also found that many residents are unsure of which Ward they live in. To help with this, we have included in this newsletter a City Ward Map so you can easily identify your direct council representatives although we recommend contacting ALL of them with your concerns and questions.
To help residents take action, we have compiled a complete list of the Mayor and City Council along with their contact information. We encourage you to reach out directly and share what you are experiencing. You are more than welcome to include and provide pictures and movies for proof that you have. This can include but is not limited to
● Trespassing on private property
● Encampments
● Fires set on public property
● Street Racing
● Boarded-up or abandoned buildings
● Businesses closing due to on-going crime
● Safety concerns for yourself, your children or grandchildren
● Poor road conditions
● Concerns about the Cities $2,410,000,000 budget and them not being able to control spending
● Free Buses and the problems that has created
● The drug addiction and mental illness problem all over Tucson
We strongly encourage you to email The Mayor and all of the Council, so they can receive a full and accurate picture of what is happening across the whole city and hopefully see that this is not normal. This is one of the most effective ways to communicate concerns - and it ensures you have a record that your voice was heard. We have made this very easy - all you need to do is “copy and paste” all of the email addresses into the To: section of your email.
Copy and Paste these email addresses into the To: section of your email:mayor.romero@tucsonaz.gov, ward1@tucsonaz.gov, ward2@tucsonaz.gov,ward3@tucsonaz.gov, ward4@tucsonaz.gov, ward5@tucsonaz.gov, ward6@tucsonaz.gov, help@tucsoncrimefree.com
EMERGENCY=EMERGENCY EMERGENCY. Yep was that Robbie the robot from “Lost in Space”?//////// Remember, a couple years ago the State passed some legislation that required the cities to act by altering then zoning and coding requirements to permit the building of certain types of structures in certain “zones” Remember that? And remember that the legislation had some kind of time element to it which required cities to comply or face some terrible repercussions. We wondered why there was such a time element to rush this through and even questioned city planners who claimed to not know why this legislation had some “time to act” requirement. Well, here we go again, now the city on its own sees that all they have to do is declare an emergency (which if you’re watching closely does not exist) and force a quick response. Force the legislation through without letting the people affected have time to digest and protest against it ////////Why is this happening now? The kings and queens see that we, the citizen body, are focused on the out of control crime problem. What a better time to slip through this legislation , legislation which will only compound the crime and drug problem in the future. Pay attention everyone. //////IN REALITY, doesn’t the city already permit these homeless camps all over the city. You see them everywhere, don’t you. Maybe there is money to be made here?///// And in any event, whenever you try to discuss something with the city, listen to the language, because in this case the first question needs to be: WHAT IS A HOMELESS PERSON? All we see are males of various ages, various races, congregated all over town, disheveled, dirty, drugged up. We have yet to see a mother with a string of kids and a shopping cart walking down Ft. Lowell. Why? because there is space for truly HOMELESS people willing to abide by a couple rules and a little discipline in order to get a spot in a shelter. On the issue of parking, there are rules and regulations requiring certain numbers of parking spaces for buildings going up, If they are not followed, you are going to have here what they have in LA: cars double and tripled parked on the side streets. Streets will be turned into parking lots.
Correction: I misstated the parking reduction request for the homing project. The request is from 15 to 7 parking spaces, and the reduction is 53% not 100%.
What if we required Mayor Romero and each council member to have one of these across from their home first as a test run. They need to have skin-in-the-game first.
The homing project is in my neighborhood and those of us in the adjacent block are opposing the requested waivers, 7 in all. This project is happening under the current homeless emergency declaration and they are asking for the the waivers in order to cram this project into my neighborhood. This is a test case for the rest of the city, if they approve the 7 waivers for this project it will give the city precedent to approve similar waivers in other neighborhoods. This is a quick summary of the requested waivers 1) Reduce the required minimum lot size from 1.5 acres to 0.83 acres. This is a 45% reduction. 2) Reduce the minimum setback from 20’ to 12.4’. This is a 38% reduction. 3) Change the number of micro/pallet shelters from 10 to 20. This is a 100% increase. 4) Increase the maximum number of residents to 29 people. Up from 10 originally promised to our neighborhood. 5) Reduce required parking from 15 to 7, a 100%+ reduction. 6) Reduce the 1,200 foot minimum distance from other shelter care or rehabilitiation use services. (They don’t say reduce to what) 7) Relief from requiring fire sprinklers for each pallet shelter. This is a huge request for a relatively small lot, smack dab in the middle of a city neighborhood. The city only sent out a notice to properties within 100’ of this use and gave 10 consecutive days for comments. This seems unfair to me but I did find out that the city is taking comments from anyone and it does not matter where you live. My neighbors and I would appreciate your comments, but time is of the essence. EMAIL comments are due NOT LATER THAN this MONDAY, September 28th by 5pm. The email address to send your comments to is TucsonRezoning@tucsonaz.gov please note that the comments are for the homing project and/or permit application TD-DEV-0724-00194. Thank you!!!
The City has also announced that they are planning on putting a open air TENT encampment “STAR Village” in every Ward. I would like everyone to go over to STAR village on Grant and 7th to see what the City is capable of. It is an encampment with 25 tents for women and non-binary people. Kevin Dahl just put out in a newsletter yesterday that his office picked up 45 bags of garbage around this encampment. People need to pay attention to what is happening to our City.
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