Tucson is rejecting residents’ reimbursement claims under Arizona's new public nuisance law

Last year, Arizona voters passed a new law aimed at giving residents some recourse when their property is impacted by homelessness. Say, there’s an encampment near your house — Proposition 312 allows you to apply for a property tax refund for some damages from your local government.

The Goldwater Institute backed the initiative and describes it on their website as a response to your local government’s “refusal to enforce basic public health and safety laws.”

Tim Steller is an opinion columnist for the Arizona Daily Star and he says the city of Tucson, at least, is routinely rejecting residents who apply for relief.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Tim.

TIM STELLER: Good morning to you.

GILGER: So most of the complaints under this new law, it sounds like, have come from Tucson. What are folks complaining about?

STELLER: Oh, largely they're saying that they have had to fence their properties, put up new security doors, gates and cameras, that sort of thing — security cameras. Or even in the case of commercial property owners, hire security patrols who drive by and do that sort of thing. It's all that. It's all that kind of category of improving security.

GILGER: Yeah. So I said most of the complaints there seem to have come from Tucson. That said, there have not been that many complaints, but how many are coming from your city?

STELLER: So it's a little — we don't have up-to-date data. The data we have goes through Oct. 15. So the the law was passed in November '24 and went into effect early '25. And so through ... the first nine and a half months of the year, there were 24 complaints under the law, and 15 of them came from Tucson.

That is 24 complaints statewide. I should make, I should clarify. And 15 of them came from Tucson, which that's 60-some percent of the complaints, whereas Tucson only has 7% of the state's population.

GILGER: That's notable. OK. So let's talk about the city's response here. Because you that they are rejecting them all, basically. Why?

STELLER: Yeah, I mean they in all the three rejections that I've seen, and apparently they've done nine so far, they cite a series of reasons. One of which is generally that the people are asking for too much money, more than allowed under the law. Another is that they are not reporting a qualified nuisance — because the nuisances are enumerated in the law.

Another will be that they are, let me see — I said that too much money. Well, most importantly, they reject the law overall. The city city says the law is unconstitutional under Arizona's Constitution So they, they told me they've received nine complaints and responded to them and have rejected them all so far.

GILGER: OK, so the city is saying we don't think this law is constitutional, so we are not going to honor it, essentially?

STELLER: That's the way I read it. Yeah. I mean, they told me that they're reserving their rights in case of — by saying that they're just reserving rights in case of litigation. But the way I read it is if you say the law is unconstitutional, then you're going to reject every one.

GILGER: So what recourse would residents have against that in that case?

STELLER: Yeah, they can file in the county superior court that they're in. So basically the city of Tucson in this case is daring people to sue — and nobody has so far. But of course, now that Goldwater is aware of what's going on, I won't be surprised if they support some response to the city of Tucson.

GILGER: That's interesting. OK, so you outlined some specific examples of complaints coming from Tucson. Tell us about those in more detail and the city's specific response.

STELLER: Well, yeah, in this column that you referred to, I quoted somebody. Now, I should mention that these names and identifying information are redacted in all the public records that the Department of Revenue has released so far.

But for example, there's one person who requested $2,025, more or less, from the city of Tucson saying that they had been broke into by people who were camped nearby and had packages stolen from them. And that they had ... to do gate repairs, security doors, security cameras, et cetera.

And you know, the city responded and said that they had not demonstrated a pattern of the city not enforcing its laws as required under the law. But more — the thing that I find really fascinating and a bit troubling, is that under the law, you can only recover the amount up to the amount of primary property tax that you paid to the given jurisdiction the previous year.

... If you're living in county, not a city, then you may be paying a lot in property, primary property tax. But in the city of Tucson, this person was requesting $2,000 some dollars of reimbursement, but they had only paid $145 to the city of Tucson in primary property tax the previous year.

So you can keep collecting that year over year, but you know, first you have to get the, the expenses approved. And that may take a lawsuit. And then you have to keep filing every year until you get up to your approved amount.

GILGER: Right. So tell us about homelessness in Tucson, Tim. Like, like I wonder what the backstory is here. We in Phoenix, when we were focused on homeless encampments, you know, it was much focused around "the Zone," this kind of really major encampment around downtown Phoenix that the city was kind of ordered to clean up.

What's the situation looked like in Tucson? Like, why do you think a lot of these complaints are coming from that city?

STELLER: I mean, it's possible that there's more awareness of the law and such, and that that's skewing the filings. But my best guess is that it's because the city has a more pervasive and also probably less concentrated problem with camps. And the problems that relate to camps, such as drug use, sometimes petty crime and defecation, et cetera, that comes with it.

So. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, it's a kind of a pervasive city, not concentrated in a place like the Zone or anything like that.

GILGER: Yeah. What is the city's response been to that broader problem? Like, how would they rather attack?

STELLER: They certainly have an argument. I mean, they take complaints regularly. They respond to complaints. They have been removing camps, et cetera. But, you know, there's an underlying problem that they have not been able to solve. Which is, you know, there's people who are addicted to drugs or without a home or both, or are seriously mentally ill and unable to sustain a home.

And there's not a place or a way. So far — we haven't been able to house enough of those people. I mean, there's been a little progress, but there seems that the problem seems to increase a pace with the the solution.