| Jeff Zenick also suggested I write about other specific parts of my homeless history that he had witnessed himself, and also about the car camp which he had not seen and was curious about. This resulted in another two-part series which I awkwardly titled "A Partial History of My Life as a Homeless Camper".I realized this story would also play well in the street papers, so I sent copies to some of them as well as to the White Buffalo Gazette. Again it was printed in the Homeless Grapevine and Homeward, with some modifications. The former only printed Part One, if I recall correctly, and retitled it "Car Camping Causes Commotion." The latter consolidated the two parts into one and left out several passages. Only the WBG was faithful to the original and reproduced it exactly as written. Here I am leaving in most of the original text: |
| MY LIFE AS A "HOMELESS CAMPER" |
| The Centennial Car Camp for the homeless, where I lived for a total of about seven months in two different years, was formed partially in recognition of the fact that many "homeless" people live in camping vehicles or tents, and can't meet all the requirements to be admitted into a shelter. It ran for parts of three consecutive years: 1993, 1994 and 1995. It was reluctantly funded each time by a combination of four different governments: the cities of Eugene and Springfield, Lane County, and the State of Oregon. The initial start-up costs were high, but the lion's share of this money was used to pay a round-the-clock staff of "coordinators", because these governments insisted that the campers would need 24-hour supervision. The camp consisted basically of a parking lot, each space occupied by a vehicle or tent, with a few amenities like toilets and a sink. It was a very welcome innovation for its time, providing relief from legal persecution for hundreds of homeless campers including babies and school children, a safe haven where we could rest while we were supposedly trying to "get our lives together". But in retrospect it's not hard to see its many shortcomings. As has been the case with all the partial "relaxations" of the camping ban, it meant exchanging one type of hassle or inconvenience for another. For one thing, behind the formation of such a camp is the asssumption that none of us would mind being crammed like sardines into a noisy ghetto filled with people of our own "kind", segregated from the rest of society, and lorded over by a staff of glorified babysitters. For another, the rules at this camp, as in any type of emergency shelter arrangement, only addressed the lowest common denominator of the homeless. We were all assumed to be unruly drunks and violent antisocial idiots who had to be coerced into acting civilized. We were also assumed to be too stupid to have any say in the making of the rules we were expected to follow. Of necessity there is a cerain kind of camaraderie that develops in these ghetto-like situations. Many people described the camp as a "family", a "community" and such. But there was also a tension due to the fact that we had no democratic say in the way the camp was run. There was a large discrepancy between our perception of ourselves as independent camper-dwellers and the government's perception of us as shelter inmates. All in all, I think it was just as well that the Centennial model was not able to continue, as those four governments were not willing to continue paying such high costs. As I said, most of the money was wasted on the salaries of those babysitters whose presence was not even needed by most of us. So that experiment was scrapped after three years and it was back to the drawing board. A few months after the closing of the second car camp, I was dumped by my three-year partner and left no recourse but to become an "illegal camper" on the streets, in a disabled rig that I could neither drive nor repair. Then for almost two years I was able to take refuge in a private driveway (also in violation of a state zoning law that is rarely enforced), then it was back to the streets again. I did eventually get a ticket for the "crime" of willfully and maliciously occupying my own camper on public property. This was in September 1997, at the same time that I was getting ready to go to Seattle for the NASNA conference. I had already secured permission to park my camper in a church parking lot while I was gone, to ensure that it wouldn't be ticketed and towed. The pastor originally said I could park it and camp there for a couple of weeks. After I got back from Seattle, I had to go about searching for a lawyer to fight my camping citation. I was also still trying to figure out how to get my truck running (it needed a new alternator and battery, among other things.) My "two week" stay at the church got stretched out to six weeks while this was going on. The pastor was getting quite antsy for me to leave, as there were these NIMBY business owners in the neighborhood who were complaining about the length of time I'd been there (as if that was a good reason to complain). After a series of friendly warnings and hints that it was time to go, he finally took the gloves off and got ugly, saying I would have to get out in three days or be towed. A fine example of Christianity in action, huh? I managed to find someone with a tow chain who could pull my truck out of there and move it to a new temporary location. At this place lived a mechanic who directed me to a store where I could get a cheap alternator, then installed it himself free of charge. So then my truck was more or less mobile again. Also while I was in the church parking lot, the Homeless Action Coalition was mounting an intensive "Campaign for Legal Places to Sleep", pressuring the city to provide some hassle-free place for the homeless by such and such a date (though they kept extending the date to a later time) or else they would commence civil disobedience actions. This did produce some results in November, in the form of a slight amendment to the camping ban. Now we could park in certain designated industrial zones--but only for 24 hours at a time. We were still required to move every day, which meant that a lot of us were no better off than before. Well, I was going to say a whole lot more, but I see that this story, brief and incomplete synopsis though it be, is already getting to be quite a bundle. So I guess I'll close here and take up the next chapter of the saga another time. (click here for next page) |