| This story appeared in the May 1998 issue of Street Spirit. This is a paper originally based in Oakland, California which represents the homeless of the East Bay cities (Street Sheet being its San Francisco counterpart.) We don't have the gas to move 'round every day, But if we're not getting in anyone's way, There's really no reason we should move at all, When it's only paranoid NIMBY's who call. They're always so certain we're up to no good, Since we don't "belong" in their neighborhood. That's why they always are calling the cops And why this ridiculous game never stops! |
| IMPACT OF NIMBY LAWS IN EUGENE |
| The above is a comment on the current "relaxed" state of the anti-camping ordinance in Eugene, Oregon. Vehicle-dwellers like myself can now park in industrial areas and be left alone, as long as we move every 24 hours. But if we can't meet the expectation that we move to a different block every single day, we are still subject to NIMBY complaints, police visits, warnings, citations, threats of impoundment--the whole nine yards. And even this very weak amendment to the anti-camping law only came about as a result of intensive pressure being applied to the city government over a period of years. The vote to amend the camping ban was finally taken by the Eugene City Council after a public hearing last November, at which about 150 Eugene residents were present. The majority of the people who spoke were housed, though some had been homeless previously. There weren't more than about five NIMBY's in the whole bunch. All the others voiced some degree of objection to the camping ban, many on purely humanitarian grounds, if not from firsthand knowledge of homelessness. In various ways they made the point that, if homeless people are in fact committing crimes, then those crimes should be prosecuted--but the mere act of survival known as "camping" should not be treated as a crime. For years, a number of Eugene's journalists and activists had been writing about the futility of prosecuting the homeless as criminals. Danielle Smith has described in vivid detail those scenes that are similar to the TV cop shows, with the four police cruisers and the flashing lights and the radios, as if they were closing in on a vicous axe-murderer instead of a woman merely sleeping in her bus. Nowadays, with Eugene's reduced police budget, it's more likely to be a single cruiser with one cop having a quiet conversaton with the vehicle-dweller, and during normal daytime hours, as opposed to those dramatic midnight raids that require overtime pay. But regardless of the methods of enforcement, and despite slight amendments that supposedly "relax" its severity, the camping ban remains stubbornly in place. The NIMBY's are determined never to give it up, which means that people like me continue to live in a suspenseful limbo, our futures uncertain from one day to the next. We are still (if you'll pardon the use of a few cliches) constantly looking over our shoulders, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and sleeping with one eye open. As long as I'm living this way, I am forced to think about the camping ban and its effects on our lives every single day. In the course of my ruminations, certain questions keep coming up that still have been answered only partially. What can be the purpose of laws that are designed to regulate people's lifestyles rather than actual criminal behavior? And why was Eugene's anti-camping ordinance passed as early as 1971? The numbers of involuntary homeless people weren't exactly burgeoning back then as they are now. But there was no doubt a thriving hippie culture of people who had chosen the alternative lifestyle of sheltering themselves in their own way, rather than making rent payments to a landlord or mortgage payments to a bank. Newcomers to Oregon during that decade, who saw no harm in sleeping in their own vehicles at night, were quite shocked when cops came tapping on their windows and informed them that they were breaking the law. But this law, which was originally enacted to criminalize an alternative lifestyle, is now being used increasingly to punish people who have no choice but to sleep outside. And whenever these camping cases are brought before a judge, no distinction is made between the different reasons a person might camp. There is no recognition of the fact that increasing numbers of people are forced to camp because of poverty. And if this fact is acknowledged at all, it is still assumed that the person's impoverished condition is his or her own fault, and that to charge them a fine is just the kick in the butt they need to get their lives back in order. This is a convenient justification for collecting fines from the indigent to feed into the city's coffers, so that the "haves" can continue running Eugene in the way that suits them. It's easy for a judge or a prosecutor to say, "Well, I have a job, so everyone else can get one too!" They don't have to feel the desperation of someone in less fortunate circumstances than their own--and of course they have a stake in not doing so, being of the "haves" themselves. Judges, who after all have degrees in law and are therefore quite skilled at using fancy language to muddle the issues, have all these clever ways of "explaining" why the camping laws don't really discriminate against the poor. To counter their self-serving logic, we need more activist lawyers who have the courage not to shrink from the truth, and who are willing to take pro bono cases of homeless indigents to make their point. It is because of one such lawyer that I am off the hook myself--at least for now. My camping citation was thrown out of court on February 23, thanks to his excellent work. So finally my name isn't currently on a court docket. BUT it could be again tomorrow, as my camper remains illegally parked on the street, and my life therefore remains in limbo. (click here for next page) |