Congregate Shelters are Not for Everyone.
We commend the City for finding a temporary solution to shelter via “Safe Spots”, and for a select few individuals (roughly 220 of the several thousand), those will be great. But for many, people will yet again have nowhere to go and face continued criminalization and evictions in the middle of winter in a still-ongoing pandemic. One concern is that there are less “Safe Spots” available than there are people being evicted. Many of these safe spots are not appropriate or accessible for people for many reasons. Until the City can take into account the many different people requiring shelter and ways to fully support their needs, people must be allowed to remain and be supported in the minimal shelter spaces and communities they have been able to create for themselves until viable options are offered.
A resident of WJ confirmed that they were informed of the warehouse option at 410 Garfield. When asked how long that site would be open before they would be scooted along once more (as tends to be the City's way), parks staff informed them they "could stay there forever", which we all know is not true. This resident told me he just had to hear the words "Compliance" and "Warehouse" to know it was not a space he would feel safe. I have to agree with him.
Safe Spots, and the warehouse "shelter" might work for some people, but for many with institutional trauma, past trauma with specific service providers, mental or physical illness or a general healthy distrust for government agencies, people do not want to be corralled into what is to be by very looks and definition a concentration camp. The City has been persecuting, criminalizing, corralling, and overall disregarding a specific group of people in our community for years and now working to push them out of the public eye into a structure not usually fit for habitation; it is perfectly reasonable for people to believe they are about to be warehoused and then disappeared altogether.. and it is suspiciously timed with the upcoming World Track Championships..
One of the requests from most unhoused people I have encountered on outreach across every encampment in Eugene right now is to be able to stay where they are and have a stable place to be. No police harassment, no need to hide their existence behind trees or bushes or hold the constant stress of needing to be ready to pack at the drop of a dime; It’s really not asking for much, just the bare minimum--let people exist. People aren’t even asking for long-term housing at this point because they know Eugene has next-to-none to offer. Let them be in their stable, dry, albeit minimal shelters with access to service providers and continued support until an appropriate shelter option is made available to them.
“Offering” people shelter that is not appropriate for them or else face being given citations, going to jail, being moved without a destination or losing property and being harassed continually by EPD and City workers is not “offering shelter”, it’s coercive and it’s violence.
While POS has thankfully held off on evicting all of the residents of WJ this month, the dwindling minority still hanging in have expressed intense anxiety to our team regarding their future plans for shelter and valid concerns that they will be cited by EPD as means to facilitate more rapid evictions if they choose not to "comply" by going to the warehouse in the coming weeks. As City leaders making decisions, but not directly speaking to people in the park or service providers, the gravity of what this means for people may not be fully understood; it is much more than just a citation from EPD. Please see our blog about sweeps and this traumatic experience to facilitate a better understanding.
The City failed to consider that making a plan for people without checking in with said people, is presumptuous, out of touch, and really not any kind of plan at all. They have consistently been vague and avoided transparency in sharing plans with service providers and residents. Not just plans for the 410 Garfield site, but for all of the many people who currently experience houselessness in our community who live in perpetual instability by the hand of our governance and ceaseless practice of sweeps. While they sit in the comfort and safety of their own homes and Zoom meetings, people's lives and belongings are being torn apart.
Currently our team, CORE, The Alliance, White Bird, Shelter Care, Oregon Law Center, and several other groups work with residents at WJ weekly. With the impending closure of WJ on March 16th, the future of what this means for people having a reliable place to access service providers weekly remains to be seen.