I found ODOT’s laminated no-camping notice on the ground at Ninth and Pacific Saturday afternoon.
Saturday was their deadline for leaving, and by the afternoon people seemed to be getting ready to move their improvised shelters from the state property near the Ninth Avenue off-ramp on Pacific Boulevard.
The bike took me that way, and I found a laminated copy, lying on the ground nearby, of the no-camping notice the Oregon Department of Transportation had posted there.
The notice said all personal property was to be removed before Saturday, and between Sept. 15 and 24 ODOT “may remove” property left within 1,500 feet of the notice. There’s a phone number to call in order to reclaim property that was removed, and if anybody wants his stuff back, ODOT may charge two dollars for removal and storage.
The encampments sprang up in full view of Highway 99E after Albany officials closed nearby “Marvin’s Garden,” the city’s former designated homeless camping spot at Ninth Avenue and Jackson Street, on Aug. 29.
Now that ODOT is moving the campers off state highway land, the question is where they’ll show up next.
I asked Albany Mayor Alex Johnson II for his thoughts on encampments like this and what might be done about them. In my question I suggested we didn’t have this problem 10 years ago.
Here’s the mayor’s reply:
“I understand the public frustration with the encampments, large and small, popping up in a few areas in our city. As you rightfully mentioned, we saw less encampments 10 years ago. However, encampments did exist but they were relatively hidden from plain view of the average citizen.
“More importantly, law enforcement, mental health professionals and service providers know homeless encampments have been a reality for in Albany and cities across the nation for longer than 10 years. The situation was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, decriminalization of illicit drugs and easy access to clothing, food and other items to those experiencing homelessness. I believe it totally obliterated the notion of accountability for one’s own actions and/or decisions…
“In addition, our mental health system is woefully understaffed, overworked and simply unable to service and treat those in need of continuous care and counseling. I also believe there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to homelessness in our community. A good first start is getting illicit drugs off the streets. Furthermore, it is my hope that one day public and private organizations will come together and create realistic plans to mitigate homelessness with a primary goal of keeping our citizens safe and our city livable for the generations that follow.”
Seems to me that we should look to state authorities to act now rather than make more plans for future solutions. But act how, and do what?
Consider two items:
On a busy Albany street, a woman has been living on the sidewalk for weeks in full view of thousands of passers-by.
On Seventh Avenue under the Pacific Boulevard viaduct, a man keeps staggering back and forth surrounded by trash, gesticulating and shouting.
These two people and others like them cannot help themselves, so society must do it for them.
The Oregon state government has a two-year budget of more than $100 billion. Yet for years governors and legislators have spent ever more money on other things while refusing to face the human catastrophe everybody can see.
What the state government must do is to build, expand and staff institutions where people like the man under the overpass and the woman on the sidewalk can be taken and treated. And if they can’t be cured, they must be kept there, in humane conditions to be sure, but kept.
People on the street would get only one choice: Treatment or jail. Living in squalor on the street would no longer be allowed. If we wanted to call ourselves civilized, we would quit tolerating — and instead act to alleviate — the anguish and suffering we now see every day. (hh)
Agreed. Hasso.
In the documentary “Seattle is Dying”, it touched on a few cities back East that had found solutions. Offer drug-alcohol treatment, work-job assistance and TEMPORARY housing. That was successful there. They need a helping hand, not handouts nor months or years of public assistance. But then what do we do about those that have made living on the streets a lifestyle choice (as many have stated in media interviews with them)? Those that refuse help and even refuse temporary housing offered to them? Ask any police officer; they will tell you that there is also a large percentage of street people that have criminal records, warrants and some potentially dangerous to the public. There is no easy answer. One thing for sure, politicians ignoring the problem is not making it “go away”.
Exactly right, Hasso. Portland was a safe, beautiful town when I grew up there in the 50s and 60s, regular visits and occasional stays in Salem, Corvallis, Cottage Grove, Albany, and Newport were pleasant interludes and nice places to take a walk downtown or neighborhood and try new restaurants, visit the park, and meet new people. If someone tried to live on the street they were either sent to the drunk tank if intoxicated, the “insane asylum” if they were mentally ill, or — when I was very young — sent to the county poor farm and taught to garden and milk cows. It wasn’t legal and wasn’t tolerated — now those same place are dangerous, ugly, smelly, and uncomfortable. And expensive. It’s hard to believe what we taxpayers have done to our own cities and forests.
Just another thing to add to the reasons: In 1960 the US population was 179,323,175 and in 2024 the estimate is 341,814,420.
Of course the “problem” looks much worse because the numbers ARE much higher. Then add in the fact that back in 1960 a much bigger share of the population WAS in mental institutions, “poor farms” and similar institutions.
The increase in populations should include an increase in carpenters, loggers, and farmers, too, to take advantage of the expanding customer base. It shouldn’t be the basis for an entirely new lifestyle based on an entirely new taxpayer-funded industry to cater to the needs of homeless people. There were hobo camps when I was a kid, but they were typically along the railroad tracks in lightly populated areas, and the hobos were known for doing odd jobs and petty shoplifting — not food stamps, free clothes, and free tents and a spot to camp downtown or next to a school. That was illegal and not tolerated. Times change, but this is stupid.
A lot of what is here is correct, but it missed a major factor: Besides the incompetents in Salem, we have also suffered from do-nothings in the Albany City Hall! Those people were elected to deal with problems facing the city, not just find ways to add fees and taxes wherever they could. It is time for the residents to say “no more”…they either need to deal with the issues, or step aside! Enough.
Total agreement, Disgusted.
Was hoping to encounter a root-cause analysis while reading the expose’, which sadly never arrived. I’ve seen no one exploring the economic and/or spiritual depravities that have led, and are leading, Oregonians to depths that we haven’t experienced since before the concept of “Welfare” was a twinkle in the deep state’s eye. Brilliantly conceived to invoke long-term dependence on their “public assistance,” we’re approaching a massive realization that the late, great Gipper was accurate when he declared that “Government is not a solution to our problems; government *is* the problem.”
If Americans went back in history at least 23 years ago, just before the twin towers fell into their own footprints and no fuselage was found at the Pentagon or in Shanksville, PA, the U.S. corporate machine was clearly preparing an apparent attack against the USA’s civilian body, drumming up a reason to invoke war while misnaming their manifesto “The Patriot Act” to be used as its rhetorical shield. This was, and still is, evidence of their deliberately malicious intent that has grown into the continuous societal decline that we Americans are having to experience each and every day.
Why can’t those in city hall be intelligent enough to recognize these serious symptoms as opportunities to mitigate Albany’s woes? Digging at least two layers down, first by asking ‘Why?’ then asking ‘…and why is that?’, a form of Socratic questioning can be applied to locate accurate reasons and formulate logical solutions – those that would last far longer than Hub City Village’s taxpayer-subsidized existence.
We, the citizens of Albany (“We’re all in this together,” right Ray K?), are now having to MAKE WAY for the governor’s ODOT to clean up the city council’s well-meaning(?), yet disgusting, disaster along Hwy 20.
As a mea culpa, would it break Mayor Johnson’s bank account to at least cover ODOT’s $2 charge per broke indigent to help recover the corporate state’s ‘takings’ of personal articles and effects, or is that something that should come from Albany’s $200+ million annual budget? (U.S. Constitution, Amendments IV and V.)
Far too much time, energy, and pants-wetting hysteria have been wasted on this clearly identifiable, long-term, and continuous trend while having to emotional ‘deal with’ Albany’s deplorable conditions. Totally agreeing with Disgusted, ‘Enough!’
How many more wayward tax-and-spend policies will our alleged ‘representatives’ impose on their constituents before the many latter simply push back on the few former, until an economically functional homeostasis between public and private sectors is ultimately achieved? Liberal councilors have been wasteful of taxpayer dollars and need to let this election’s conservative candidates manage the city’s business from here on out. Candidates Trevor Lee, Kevin Kreitman, and Bryan Munson each offer a better approach.
Vast improvements in Albany are sorely needed, and with enough support from Albany’s conservative voters, measurable relief is what we will actually receive. If nothing changes, nothing will change. Onward.
Hilarious! Ya gotta love folks hiding behind their anonymity positing dystopian conspiracy theories and “sky is falling” tropes. Sure glad I live in a much more progressive community that is growing. You live in your world and I’ll live in mine.
Wake up, Ray – Since you’ve been a part of Albany’s poor public policy decisions, might be helpful to know that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt. You’re welcome.
What the heck!!! I say this to both Snailracer and Ray K.
“the late, great Gipper”
um I’m laughing! Fun fun
Where does personal responsibility end with people who are homeless?
Where does family responsibility end with people who are homeless?
We need to have clear answers to these two questions before allowing politicians and bureaucrats to burden all taxpayers with the responsibility (and cost) of the “homeless” problem.
Bring back the institutions that were shut down where they can get clean and sober and treated for mental conditions.
Most of the campers would rather live for free. They shoplift, and take folks property. The streets are littered with feces and syringes, that children may pick up. Children are curious. Yes, help them with housing? HA! within a year the houses that were handed to them, would turn into a rat hole. They should be arrested and made to work community service fighting wildfires.
I don’t have any answers. Doing something is better than nothing at all.
Please keep reporting.
I totally agree with Hasso, spend the $$ to enhance/build institutions for these folks to be cared for and detained, keep our streets & functioning citizens safe
Laudable proposals with your last two paragraphs. All it takes is political will and massive funding to accomplish.
Hasso – many thanks for this excellent article – keep it up – we all need to have the awareness of what is going on – and contact our representatives to do something!
I don’t know what to do. I do think that rebuilding the mental hospitals that were done away with has to be done. Sending homeless people out to fight forest fires is out of the question…not many of them are in any shape to learn the procedures necessary to do that.
Regarding drugs and alcohol, those are big money-makers, and we are a capitalist society. Marijuana shops keep being built in Albany. We had prohibition in the teens or early 20s of the last century. That didn’t work. (Women activists brought that about…they were fed up with drunken husbands.) I think re-criminalizing small amount of drugs in Oregon was a wise move.
Trade agreements started by Republican-light Bill Clinton stopped almost all manufacturing in this country. With automation taking over the remaining manufacturing, there are no jobs for these homeless people. They are in no shape mentally to work anyway.
Maybe if Albany had been working on the homeless problem instead of “salivating” over pipe dreams about all the business that is going to supposedly materialize because of a bricked-over Water Street, we wouldn’t be in such a fix.
And what about the cost to have a place to live they want you to make 3 to 4 times the rent and hard to find anything less than a$1000
I spoke with a fair amount of homeless when working in City Hall. Many of them told me that they liked living homeless. They didn’t like following rules and didn’t need to spend much of their personal money because there is so many free things to be had. If these same people are given housing then they will have to be accountable which doesn’t jive with living on the street.
Accountability is part of the answer. Accountability needs to be taught by parents, educators and society. You are 13 and break street lights then you should feel the sting of accountability. I am sorry that people are ill with drug use, alcohol and mental illness but you still need to be accountable for your actions.
Hasso is correct in many things that were said. Some people prefer to live in tents and not have to work except when they want to. Many times government and other organizations enable people to stay homeless. Soup kitchens, food stamps, clothing places, food handouts, companies like COI who give out heaters and other supplies etc. Government money to purchase propane The city passing a law and then not enforcing it. Not all people living on the streets are on drugs.
The mentally ill should not have to live on our streets. It is not fair to them and the citizens that live around them.
I don’t have a solution but wish I did.
“No accountability” in a country with an industrial, for-profit prison system that incarcerates citizens at one of the highest rates in the world. Got it.
Creating any kind of facility or apartments right in the middle areas of the city is not the answer. The Bonaventure retirement home is built on the edge of North Albany and is doing well. There is room for cars and bus service. Anywhere on the edge of the city of Albany or even Tangent would be good for apartments and any other facility.
The people of Albany need to be able to enjoy living in Albany again. Stop attracting people to hang out near all the businesses and homes ANYWHERE in Albany. Especially under the over pass, as it is just a place to hide and cause trouble. It was not a problem before helping hands shelter started up . The businesses near there have suffered ever since it was moved there. Protecting businesses keeps people employed and brings money to Albany.
The ‘problem’ existed before Helping Hands, in fact the ‘problem’ is what led to the creation of Helping Hands. People have been living under the bridges and choose not to be involved with the local shelters.
Businesses everywhere are and have been suffering from criminal activity and has nothing to do with Helping Hands residents.
The local shelters help to keep 100’s of people off the streets, gives them opportunities for recovery, life-skills, jobs and 3 healthy cooked meals a day. These people would all be living on the streets were it not for the shelters offering them a place to stay.
Instead of complaining about the problems, try actually providing common-sense solutions to those ‘problems’. We’ll wait… they won’t.
Tackling homeless starts with lowering housing prices. Elon Musk’s boxabl homes looks like a good direction to start. These modular homes are more near 50k and built with twenty first century technology. There is a huge gap between “affordable housing” and reality in home prices. If we were to see these modular Musk style homes built at these prices it would shock the housing market for the better. We need a realignment of housing prices or more people who can’t keep up will be left behind and homeless too.
Hasso
I enjoyed and agreed with your story until I hit one sentence in it. The sentence of “And if they can’t be cured, they must be kept there, in humane conditions to be sure, but kept.”. Mental illness is not curable but it is manageable when the person takes their medication. Locking them away because they are not “cured” is not right! I feel that you could have worded that better because a lot of people who are homeless with mental health issues take medication that is needed for their issues and they are fine outside the confines of a hospital ward or institutions. We as a community need to get those voted into office off their duffs and do something to help those that are homeless. For those who do not want a place to live and want to be on the streets then find a place where they can live without it being an eye sore in someone’s neighborhood and make it where they have to actually build something for shelter and for a bathroom instead of letting tents be put up to live in. Have people volunteer to help them build something so they can have something to keep warm in but isn’t an eye sore and if they do not keep it clean or around it clean then they have to face treatment or jail. Some people do better on the streets than they do in an apartment so let them be responsible for making their shelter and keeping it clean and make it where they pay so much a month to live there. That would be something I think could work if done the right way.
There are solutions, some are harsh and inhumane. There are a few viable solutions to help resolve the un-sheltered situation, such as Helping Hands, CHANCE and AlbanyHUTS.org
We can all see the results of addictions and other poor choices. Bad choices affect more people than just those making the bad choices.
We are all in this town together. We are all effected in some way or another. Everyone must come together to help humanely resolve the problems we all recognize.
Arm-chair keyboard complainers will not solve anything except airing their own opinions and causing more division.
Bring your common-sense and humane solutions to the Albany City Council meeting on 25 September. See you there.
Mr. Edwards, I swear there must be something in Albany water that makes people goofy and unable to grasp reality. Helping people is useless when you do not fully understand what is really going on. Nothing that Albany has been doing has helped reduce homelessness. Helping hands is worse than living in your mom’s basement as far as helping is concerned. Talk about arm-chair keyboarders. I drive by the shelter 2 times a day almost everyday. People are just hanging out laughing and talking on their free phones every single time I drive by. Tell us how that is helping them? I do not know what you have based your opinion on but you have been greatly misled on what is truly available for the homeless and how effective it is. There is absolutely no doubt that more needs to be done to alleviate the homeless crisis but continuing to do the same things over and over again that does not work is torturous for everyone involved. Making excuses and denying accountability for all these so called “homeless helpers” that have created a “merry go round” of solutions that just keep people homeless is shameful. Albany has heard all this “love is all you need” rhetoric before and it rings hollow at this point. Common sense requires one to recognize the truth and not believe another sales pitch claiming to be the most compassionate solution.
Still just complaining about the problems, but no real solutions. Keep driving by and doing nothing is not a solution. Talk is cheap. Action costs a bit more. Bring your solutions to the City Council Meeting next week, so we can all hear them.
talk is cheap. if the guy under the bridge and the woman sleeping on the sidewalk are intoxicated, tell us all right here and now how you will help them.
I’d be interested in hearing a no-nonsense public discussion confronting what this epidemic says about modern society in general. Yet are many of us willing to look at ourselves overall as a society? The homeless predicament is not separate from the rest of us, rather it represents us as a society, and it’s manifested in many other areas, such as drug addiction and alcoholism even for people living in homes, along with drug trafficking, human trafficking, etc. Homelessness is merely one microcosm of the current state of society. The problem is much broader than just those on the street. That’s just one of the symptoms.
Less than a generation ago, we weren’t seeing near this level of homelessness, along with the garbage, waste, and toxic material strewn about. What things have changed over the past generation? Some have identified mental facilities, and that seems a key component of it. Additionally, our mindset has changed, and we don’t want to overly upset people’s sensibilities, even when they’re causing havoc. We throw money and programs with no teeth at them, so these things gloss over the core problem.
So bringing back the institutions would need to be accompanied by a more old-fashioned approach, where those who refuse to pull their own weight are not coddled so much. Tough love was working better. It’s obvious we’re not doing the destitute any favors by our recent approach. And that’s just a part of it. Did we lose some of the values over the last thirty years? If we can’t seriously examine those things, then it’s going to continue to get worse.
Since this is a society-wide epidemic with far-reaching implications, we can’t realistically expect local authorities to get to the root of the problem, though they may be able to stem the tide a bit in the meantime. The successful communities may just be pushing the problem somewhere else, so it needs to be resolved across the board. Ultimately, it will take communities and states working together in a unified approach. Until then, the best we’ll be able to do is spin our wheels.
Rusty, is wise to knowledge that the local community’s efforts will never be adequate to help the level of homeless that have accumulated here. Albany is too small of a city to support the facilities necessary to deal with all the crime and mental issues that needs to be addressed. Housing the people that are just homeless is doable and would relieve the homeless due to economic poverty. We have people that are born and raised here that need our help. They are thrown into the pool of people that are homeless due to their own issues such as mental illness, drugs and alcohol addiction. These are the people Albany needs to help. Stop promising to help people who are participating in criminal behavior or just hanging around waiting at the shelters for years to get help because they don’t want to work. Non-profits are big money makers and when times are bad they have a secure income. No one questions their activities and if the homeless crisis is diminished what happens to all these facilities created to help them? Is Albany going to keep attracting homeless here to get funding to maintain them? Compassion is wasted if it does not help and it perpetuates the conditions that created the crisis in the first place.