It started with just a handful of tents outside Burien City Hall. In less than a year, the city of Burien went from fretting about how to get people indoors to enacting a strict camping law that makes it nearly impossible to live unsheltered there. The push and pull between long-term solutions to homelessness and short-term actions to relieve frustration and fear has long been the background of homelessness debates. Indeed, Burien’s story is America’s story on homelessness today. Cities across King County have introduced or tightened laws around public camping — especially after pandemic-era e…