The Cycle of Sweeps
If a sweep doesn't physically kill a person, it's enough to kill their spirit.
As one elderly unhoused person told me, “To be homeless and have to move again and again-it takes its toll on a person. It’s enough to kill a person’s spirit and enough to make them just want to give up altogether. Nobody should be out here like this and no one should be kept in a constant state of disorganization. It's inhumane, what they're doing to people.”
An eviction or "sweep" is so much more than just scooting a person along to the next spot. What sweeps are is a coordinated destruction and confiscation of personal property of unhoused citizens that cause irreparable harm and trauma for the person involved.
It's ass-backwards: Destroying a person's home doesn't help them get housing.
What semblance of stability a person is able to create for themselves gets ripped out from under them, leaving them in a disorienting hellscape. People leave their tents for a day to return and find it gone "deemed abandoned" or they are given 72hrs notice of compliance--not everyone sees or receives this notice and sometimes POS (Parks & Open Spaces) shows up a day or two early with EPD (Eugene Police Department), who gives them 10 minutes to go.
POS shows up and begins the sweep. Belongings are almost all thrown away and POS staff determine what is and is not salvageable; not the person whose belongings they are. Many people have difficulty obtaining transportation to get across town to the storage site to retrieve their items and those that do make it to the site within the 30 day window find that little to none of their items have been saved. In the case of EPD presence, most things are destroyed, dumped or abandoned due to a person having to scramble to collect their belongings and leave in a shortened time frame.
If EPD is present, a person has also likely been issued a Restriction of Use Citation (a park ban) along with additional citations to justify the park ban.
A person is forced to move along elsewhere. Where? They don't know. POS and EPD often offer to call CAHOOTS (which is not a taxi service) to take them to the Mission or Dusk to Dawn. both of which have little to no availability and neither are suitable environments for people for many different reasons.
While navigating where and how to move, a person now also has to navigate court dates and fines. Depending on the citation, their inability to show up at court could land them a warrant and they end up doing jail time. People are also at higher risk of incurring additional trespass citations if they have park bans. The park ban makes it so that a person cannot be in any Park or Open Space in Eugene for 30 or more days making the already limited amount of places a person can safely shelter without trespassing that much more limited. This forces people into neighborhoods or they wouldn't ordinarily venture to set up shelter, which often increases tensions with housies and business owners. Police are often called, a person is trespassed and the cycle repeats itself.
But that's not all!
A person is now more exposed to the elements. Where they once had a dry, safe shelter from elements they now have nothing. They must replace all of their survival supplies, while navigating court dates and fines while navigating where and how to move. People miss work, school, mental, behavioral health and medical appointments and housing appointments. For elderly people or people with certain disabilities, the emotional toll of a sweep as well as moving all of their items sometimes long distances can leave a person incapacitated and vulnerable to theft. The City of Eugene criminalizes survival and is waging war on the poor. Being unhoused, being poor does not, and inherently make someone a criminal. People are pushed into acts of desperation in order to survive. They must find any way they can to exist in a City that wants nothing more than for them to disappear or to die.
In all the years of the City's sweeps--their diligent and endless destruction of lives and homes, the number of people living unhoused continues to rise. How much money has been spent paying EPD and POS to either stand around and watch or actively rip apart tents and harrass human beings? How many belongings have been destroyed out of pure malice? How many lives destroyed out of sheer indifference for human suffering? How much more does the City need in order to see the writing so clearly on the wall:
That Sweeps are nothing more than a fucked up game of cat and mouse that benefit nobody involved.