No Sign of Caring.
On medical outreach the other day we had the ‘pleasure’ of interacting with parking enforcement officers who cleared two whole blocks of residents on an unassuming industrial backroad in West Eugene. Residents being evicted against CDC guidelines were offered nowhere to safely relocate. EPD, who denied any culpability in the matter, explained they were simply “asked to be present” by the City, and were there in case they were needed while parking enforcement swept anyone staying on that block later in the day. Their presence included a large police surveillance bus, four police vehicles, two parking enforcement cars, at least three tow trucks and several dump trucks. All this for roughly twenty-five residents.
While we met with residents, provided care, and made plans to stay in contact so we could track residents down and continue care following their sweep, the enforcement swooped within the hour. Residents scrambled to move their belongings and jump their engines and the engines of their friends’ vehicles who were at work for the day. They did their best to move their vehicles—their homes—asking officers to give them a few more minutes to allow them to finish packing. It was not until we were in the middle of prepping a patient for sutures (yes, we provided road-side stitches!) that one of our team members looked up to see our own vehicles being ticketed and hitched for tow. EPD and parking enforcement had been watching us and knew full well we were providing care and would be gone shortly. One of our workers ran, still donning PPE to intervene with the tow trucks. The parking agent claimed that their sharpied handwritten “no parking” signs stuck on a tree and inconspicuous were legitimate reasons to ticket, evict, and tow vehicles. They showed disdain for our team’s advocating and supporting of residents whom they clearly villainized and took pleasure in evicting.
We recognize our place of privilege as medical providers to be able to advocate and convince the police and parking enforcement to unhitch our vehicle for tow, and that the residents of the block were not able to. Attempting to tow and ticket our vehicles was an obvious act on their part to gesture at their dislike for who we are and what we were doing and a lame attempt to dispirit us.
We will not be so easily discouraged; in fact, we were and still are deeply incensed and we want the city to take accountability for their continued disregard of basic humxn rights. If the city refuses to listen to the voices of the unhoused, we hope to use our place of privilege as medical providers to help amplify them and ceaselessly advocate.
Rather than budget for how best to support their most vulnerable community members, the City continues to go against Public Health, CDC and OHA guidelines and continue to overfund police, double down on eviction efforts and gentrification projects such as the proposed $10million park blocks revamp. Police surveillance busses and camera towers serve only to increase tensions and can be incredibly triggering for anyone with police-involved trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and other mental health diagnoses.
The City/Parks and Open Spaces is also preparing to displace several hundred people from WJP, once more denying access to care, resources, stability and community under the guise of offering new tent sites elsewhere that will be yet another temporary band aid with the cycle only to repeat itself when that project sunsets. The new proposed tent/vehicle sites to "demobilize" temporary sites such as Washington Jefferson Park where we weekly serve on average 80 people in a three hour period not mention the many other groups that serve that area seems somewhat misguided. Keep these current sites, and add the extra 500+ sites—our city unfortunately has a lot more people than 500 needing a space to safely live. This new proposal also appears to have a fairly hefty chunk of budget devoted to enforcement and sweeps rather than social service, housing or other support for residents.
Yes, there are people with extreme mental health needs and in crisis, yes there is theft and criminal activity and substance use, we will not deny that. But rather than continue to criminalize people who do many of these things solely to survive, we ask the City to support them rather than compound their already difficult situations.
For housed residents equally angry for different reasons than our unhoused neighbors and want to see change, we ask that they direct their rage alongside ours at the systems of oppression creating these cycles of poverty, racism, sexism and trauma, and not at the people underneath them. We ask that if we are providing medical care to suffering members of the community that we are allowed to do our job unimpeded, not at risk of tickets and tows and verbal abuses.
Continuing to evict and disperse residents instills a traumatic and harmful cycle with each sweep, directly impacting a person’s stability, chances of maintaining employment, and removing access to community resources. In the nine months we have been providing direct camp medical outreach, we have lost four unhoused patients that we know of. We fear with the continued sweeps and plans to evict Washington Jefferson Park residents, the death toll will grow higher still.
Until there are tangible long-term solutions for housing alternatives in place, we demand the City of Eugene cease their evictions of unhoused people in tents and vehicles and allow them to safely shelter in place. We would like the city to take responsibility for the current crisis we are in, and take to heart the people whose humxn rights are daily violated and who have been neglected again and again by systems of oppression. As it stands now, the City seems content perpetually moving a humxn rights issue from one side of the street to the other in the hopes it will resolve itself without any action or responsibility on their end and is doing so in a way that the public at large does not know this is happening.
We hope they know we see them and will continue to hold them accountable.