This is the section of Jackson Street, shown Tuesday, where the city council plans to make it illegal to park without a permit.
If you’re homeless and living in your car, where in Albany can you park? Not in the city’s so-called “Central Albany Parking Area,” which is near two homeless shelters and should be called the no-parking area instead.
Tonight (Wednesday, Dec. 11) the city council plans to pass an ordinance to add a section of Jackson Street, from the Pacific overpass south to 13th Avenue, to the mostly industrial area where parking without a permit is unlawful.
This part of Jackson lies between the Linn County Sheriff’s Office and Jail on one side and the Second Chance homeless shelter on the other. The sheriff and the shelter asked for the parking ban on Jackson because, they told the council last month, people living in vehicles parking there had been causing problems.
Since that request was made in November, I rode the bike along that section of Jackson Street a few times and didn’t see many apparent homeless vehicles there. If they were there before, where have they gone?
And if people living in those vehicles were engaging in “unlawful activity” and posing “health and welfare hazards to the public,” as the council’s proposed ordinance asserts they did, how does it help the public to disperse them around town?
Seems like a more compassionate and maybe useful policy would be to control the unlawful activity instead of pushing it somewhere else. (hh)
Compassionate? You’re ridiculous! These lazy losers need to get jobs or go away. If they have actual disabilities there is help available, if they have mental problems they need to be in an institution, if they are just lazy and/or addicted let Darwin deal with that. Done with this crap.
Shoosh, son.
I have spent three periods in the last 5 years homeless in Albany.
I used to hoof it down this road almost daily, looking for this so-called “help” (I’m permanently physically disabled).
What help is there?
Walk around some of the lesser patrolled and hidden areas like transit parking off Hickory, or nature areas, and you will see vehicles that seem to be there at all hours and are not necessarily abandoned. These vehicles are actually homes, they are just not houses in the normal sense. Houseless folks could be directed to an area that can provide at least safety and security, access to water and toilets and food and counseling to make their next move to a better situation overall. Would this not serve these people and society better as well? Volunteer groups exist for these purposes. Abandoned or disused vacant properties do exist in our fair City that could be used temporarily for these purposes. Of course if some of these houseless folks work in Albany then that is the greater tragedy and speaks to economic policies that are not working: wages and affordable housing again top that list of broken Americans Dreams.
The area that the shelters are located is a bad fit for any form of apartments, shelters or mass parking. Especially, helping hands is a huge problem for traffic. The “parking” lot they made next to the shelter is not used much now but the traffic in and out is a huge bottle neck for traffic going on to or off of the overpass. Building there in the past was limited due to the need to keep the traffic at safer levels. Why does the city keep this area a big mess? Maintaining homeless people there is not an act of compassion and helping them. It will continue to be a problem no matter what ordinances the city passes.