On Santiam Road, June 28, 2024. In the background, the Cumberland Community Events Center, recently placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision upheld the right of cities to prohibit camping on public property. But don’t expect the ruling to make a difference in what you see on Albany streets.
Or even in Grants Pass.
That’s because in 2021, then-House Speaker Tina Kotek sponsored a bill, HB 3115, and the legislature passed it.
This law restricts what cities can do about vagrants occupying parks, sidewalks and other public places.
The law took effect in July 2023. Among other things it says that cities can ban camping on public property only if there is a place in town where homeless people can sleep.
That’s what prompted Albany to set aside two city-owned lots on Jackson Street, near Ninth and the Pacific Bouevard overpass, for homeless camping.
Those lots are full. So now there’s no place where a city officer, such as the park ranger, can send people who can’t get into one of the private homeless shelters.
In recent weeks improvised camps of one or more people and their stuff have sprung up under the trees along Santiam Highway near Staples, on the island in the center of the Santiam-Pacific-Geary junction, on Santiam Road near Pine Street, and along sections of the Periwinkle Bikepath.
Those are the ones I’ve seen. There are probably others.
The League of Oregon Cities says of the state law:
“HB 3115 requires that any city or county law regulating the acts of sitting, lying, sleeping or keeping warm and dry outside on public property must be ‘objectively reasonable’ based on the totality of the circumstances as applied to all stakeholders, including persons experiencing homelessness. … The bill retains cities’ ability to enact reasonable time, place and manner regulations, aiming to preserve the ability of cities to manage public spaces effectively for the benefit of an entire community.”
Making laws is one thing. Solving problems is another. In this case they have proved to be not the same. Not even close.
Nobody knows how to solve the problem of people reduced to living on the streets in makeshift camps — or choosing to live that way.
But setting aside city lots as group camps does not help. (hh)
HH-
Your 2nd to Iast paragraph succinctly summarizes the issue! (Especially tho “Nobody knows…”)
It’s a damn shame any time perfectly good drug dollars are wasted on such things as rent and trash pickup and water (+9 city grift) . Human feces poses minimal threat to health.
…And it’s nice to see the scattered needle abstract art!
Maybe don’t hand out free money? Instead provide food and shelter and other necessities. This seems to be a modern problem that we are somehow creating. It certainly doesn’t exist everywhere…but it is spreading like a contagion.
If we create it we should be able to un-create it.
Truth
Move the helping hands shelter to the edge of town. It just encourages people to stay homeless when nothing is improving and they can hide under the over pass.” Out of sight, out of mind” never solves anything. That area was never a reasonable location for any kind of public services. If it was we would not be dealing with all the homeless after the 20+ years it has been there. Making a mess bigger is not helping at all. They need to clean up the mess they have made and start over somewhere else.
They should move Helping Hands to the location in North Albany where the townhomes are planned to go. People would be happy with the lower number of cars to deal with going over the bridge I’m certain.
How about they get loaded up on a bus each day and taken around the city cleaning up trash, pulling weeds, and helping to patch city streets? If you’re going to get a hand out, you should be required to work for it. I would bet the homeless population would dramatically decrease.
take the drugs away quit enabling drug use calling everyone in the country to just live free and high its insane NOT A HOMELESS PROBLEM ITS A DRUG ENABLING PROBLEM
When is the City going to clean up or close that “toilet” homeless camp that’s developed at 9th & Jackson!!! Their junk is now piling out onto the curb strip! Mark my words, that Housing site on Waverly will be the same in a year when it opens. Those scumbags have no “skin” in it so why should they care?? Everything is served to them on the city’s silver platter.
Thanks Kotek. You gave them an inch and they TAKE a mile. Why would they want to work when they’re getting free everything. I’m an older person, still working, struggling to stay in my house and buy food. I didn’t get a say on using my tax dollars to support drug using thieves.
Is there limit on the number of days that the campers and tents on the 2 city lots can stay?
No.
I am so tired of the two encampments by helping hands. I live about a mile down the street on Marion and they wander into our neighborhood all the time and cause tons of issues. Stuff goes missing from our yards, people screaming obscenities to themselves….just the other day a homeless person took off her pants, and sat in the neighbors lawn with her privates exposed to neighborhood children, including mine. She was yelling and screaming as loud as she could.
Enough is enough Albany. This was a terrible place to locate these camps. You failed our community.
Do not forget that the state via the legislature and governor made a policy decision 15 years ago that they could not run the state mental hospital system competently and decided to get out of that business. Those who participated in that decision need to be held accountable by the voters. What a mess.
Creating Housing Coalition – check out their website for Their information.
This is the Waverly location that will be a role model for others planned like this. There are four of these types of housing for folks needing housing, including families with children in the Eugene area. This type of low income housing is thriving. The tenants must have some stable income to contribute to their housing. Before they were interviewed, they had to attend some meetings hosted by the Coalition so the prospective tenants-owners of Their Own House – knew what they were signing up for.
Let’s get educated and informed on this well managed housing.
What is an elderly or disabled person supposed to do, when there is a huge shortage of affordable housing? Builders prefer to construct expensive homes for a larger profit. Low salaries and the decline of pensions have made things worse.
It’s time to stop blaming the homeless. If we want to end the homeless crisis, we need to build subsidized housing for low income people
Absolutely! At some point, we need to stop expecting people to jump through hoops to “earn” housing and accept the fact that all humans deserve housing simply because they are alive and it should be a basic human right. Our government has an inherent responsibility to care for it’s citizens and affordable housing, without strings attached, should be one of those responsibilities. People like to sanctimoniously whine about other people freeloading or whatever they justify their total disregard for human rights with and these people also have absolutely no education in addiction and psychology. They do not understand the lifelong trauma histories, medical issues, mental health issues, etc that lead to homelessness and drug use. People use drugs because they are self medicating. Recovering from an addiction takes an amount of willpower and determination that anyone who hasn’t ever overcome similar circumstances could never begin to understand. It is a literal fight for your life, both against a chemical dependency, and against your own mind. When someone has reached the point of homelessness, that person is so demoralized, so depressed, so beaten down by life, so broken that they have no hope and give up. When a person is at that point, they cannot reasonably be expected to endure the mental and physical torture of withdrawing from drugs and then somehow mustering the sheer willpower to continue to not use, to find a job, to figure out how to get to that job every day, to then earn a place to live. If you look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it explains that any kind of self actualization (such as seeking employment) cannot begin to be addressed psychologically until basic survival needs are met. It’s simply not possible to do. And that’s not even addressing the fact that a minimum wage job does not pay enough to cover rent. Providing unhoused people with stabilization like housing and access to mental health and drug treatment is the only way forward for these people. They need their basic survival needs met, and then their social needs for love, support, and safety met. Only after those things are met can a person have the room mentally to begin to address things like trauma and addiction and it’s only after they are able to overcome those things that they have the space and ability to move on to self actualization like employment and independence. In the mean time, our government needs to start taking care of it’s citizens instead of funneling 99 percent of the wealth in this country into the pockets of the rich.
Oh my God! Thank you, thank you. Your comment is the best writing ever written in Hasso’s blog. It was much needed, too. Thank you.
Thank you, well said.
S.W. “Housing first” is a project that I posted on the “new house”. It is exactly what you described and why temporary shelters do not help. People need a home not a bed in a shelter to be successful. Shelters are designed for very short term use but we have made them into long term holding centers without anywhere to live permanently. That is why it is almost impossible to help people overcome homelessness with our current system. Dragging out a traumatic situation is like not walking, the longer you don’t walk the harder it is to start walking. We cripple people with hopelessness and act like we are helping them.
All of you rail against the homeless people and the drugs and the mental illness. I read a while back that if you are not mentally ill when you start living on the street that you will be within a couple of months. Regarding drugs, Albany is fine with more and more marijuana stores. They generate tax money for the state and cities. Marijuana is addictive and leads to the use of other drugs. Of course, the people who “love” marijuana say it isn’t so, but it is.
There are many reasons that people get into drugs and a homeless life style. My kiddos have friends who use programs and group housing to get out of their parents house so they can party. They hang out and live with other users. Their circle of friends keep them using and not taking any responsibility for their problems. Some of the parents give them money, nice clothes and cars hoping that this will allow them to find work. When we keep paying for and supplying them with dysfunctional environments they will never break the cycle. Everyone thinks that they need to be around people with the same issues to feel they are understood. It is true that some people who have survived drug addiction are the best advisors but having large groups of people still suffering only re-enforces the hold drugs have on them. Life coaches all agree that you cannot keep going down the same road if you want to get to a different place. They need the life skills to go down a road that helps them find a life that is fulfilling without drugs. Other druggies cannot help support a lifestyle that they do not have themselves. I have lived a life where people could not help each other out of the hole that they were born into or they dug for themselves. Hanging around people who did what I wanted to do and live like I wanted to live gave me a positive life. No one made it easy to be homeless. They gave me respect for putting in the time to improve my lot and taught me how to role with the punches.
Kudos to you.
we see all this help for the homeless population, tiny houses, etc. my question is… when will we start seeing improvements at the street level?? empty slots in tent city? walk ins welcome at helping hands, and shorter soup lines at the local churches? when will things improve at the street level is my question.
The State of Oregon has created a nice place for addicts to hang out and do their drugs without consequence. Addicts have come from all over the country, boosting our homeless population to crazy numbers. Yes the State has changed the laws somewhat, but the damage is already done. We now have all these new residents to deal with and no good answers to handle all the criminal activity.