homeless_oregon51

In the conclusion of my series on NIMBY'ism in Eugene, I mentioned that the current homeless camping program was set to end or be revived in June of this year. Now that June has arrived I have an update:

The program is continuing, but a new amendment has been added which imposes 90-day stay limits on the campers at each site, combined with case management to see what's up with these folks who have not budged from their rent-free spaces in over a year. Society always has the expectation that once homeless people have been given some breathing room, they should be making diligent efforts to find their way back into the mainstream. The idea here is that maybe they need a little extra assistance in doing so.

This apparently means that Mac has been given a new task of juggling people around, and deciding which ones are worthy of remaining in the program (meaning he would move them to a different site after their 90 days are up) and which ones should be sent back to the street. He never wanted to be in the position of judging people in this way, but on one level it makes a certain amount of sense to me now.

These homeless camping programs are not free handouts from the city. People who think they are, don't know about the history of the struggle it took to get them. They are unaware of the years of labor invested toward them by activists like myself and John, and why these programs are so desperately needed.

There are campers who abuse the program and have no regard for their neighbors, but they probably are not among the ones who put in those years of labor and are therefore ignorant of that history also. The ones who are using the program to advance in their lives are likely to have put some energy into creating it and making it work. So in that sense there is a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" homeless.

Those of us who have spent literally years on the firing line of these battles for homeless rights know exactly how much these programs are worth, and we have the right to be proud of what we have accomplished. But there is also a time to put down our weapons and begin reaping the fruits of our efforts. We also have the right to enjoy the peaceful life of housed people rather than permanently identifying with the role of crusaders in battle.

Unfortunately there are those who get so mired in all of those battles that they lose sight of what they were originally fighting them for, and are unable to move beyond their righteous anger. And there are others who merely scoop up the booty without ever having plunged with both feet into the battle themselves. The most fortunate are the people like us, who spent years in the trenches and may yet live to reap the rewards, while having appreciated the meaning of the struggle all the way through.

I have mixed feelings about the 90-day limits. But John and I are definitely ready to graduate from the ranks of homeless car-campers to small homeowners. This is something we couldn't even have conceived of a year ago. But now we have grown into it through all the trials we've survived.

June 17, 2000

(click here for next page)