homeless_oregon7

My partner Rick and I came to the April 16 BCA meeting to speak on behalf of the homeless people in the Buckman neighborhood. Because of the presence of the St. Francis dining hall and park in this area, there is a large population of "transients" who are always visible but whose needs, feelings and views have traditionally been overlooked by neighborhood groups and others who make decisions affecting their lives.

After telling the group a little about our situation, Rick addressed the previous agenda item of "Community Policing", the policy which is designed to curb the increased drug activity in the neighborhood (which in turn is the result of the "Drug Free Zone" policy which allows the police to issue arbitrary restraining orders to any homeless people they see--which is certainly a violation of their constitutional rights--thus driving them out of Old Town and across the river into Buckman.) He warned that many homeless people will be "caught in the crossfire" of this policy unless the neighborhood residents begin to re-examine some of their traditional attitudes regarding the homeless. I asked the group to take a closer look at the notion of what constitutes the "suspicious behavior" they are pledged to report whenever they think they're seeing it. We are often thought to be engaging in "suspicious behavior" when we are merely sitting or sleeping in our car--which at present is our only home--and have subsequently been punished for it, when in fact we are only doing the same ordinary things that other people do in their homes.

Rick reminded the group that we are as much members of the community as the people with homes: we spend money here, etc. We have been unable to find a place to live only because of discriminatory housing policies. His unemployment checks alone would cover the rent on an apartment, but no landlord will rent to anyone who is living on unemployment and doesn't have local references. (We moved here in November from Massachusetts, where the economy is totally wiped out now; we'd hoped to find better opportunities here.) And besides this, a lot of employers won't hire homeless people, as they assume them to be "unreliable". It's this Catch-22 situation as well as other prejudicial attitudes, which is keeping us on the street, where we are vulnerable to police harassment, which is in turn sanctioned by the neighborhood residents who don't care to understand our predicament, but would rather have us simply "kicked out" of the their neighborhood.

We also pointed out the usual absence of any homeless people at meetings like these, as they are used to being overlooked and not being listened to, and don't expect to be able to make any kinds of changes as long as they are viewed as non-citizens, so they wouldn't bother to come to a community meeting to air their views. The group talked about possible ways this communication gap might be overcome; this needs to be explored a lot more.

We intend to continue this dialogue at future meetings, where we will also discuss police harassment at greater length. We have not only gotten the standard types of hassles that homeless people get all the time, but Rick has also been singled out for more brutal treatment in retaliation for his homeless organizing activities. As several of these incidents have taken place in or near the Buckman neighborhood, we think it's important to alert the residents of the illegal activities their local police are being paid to engage in instead of protecting them from crime. As I said, there will be much more of this to come. Stay tuned.

April 21, 1992

Sometime after this I wrote another article entitled "Homeless Couple Asks for Court Support" in which I told about our camping citation and asked if members of the BCA would come to our trial. I distributed copies of this at another of their meetings. I also intended for it to be published in their newsletter, but I don't think this happened as the group's activities died down over the summer.

However, two of the members did attend our trial on July 6 and listened with great interest. As it turned out, the judge didn't charge us a fine, but simply entered the "conviction" on our record.

By this time Rick and I were in the process of relocating to Lane County, as we had given up on ever finding housing in Portland. We were next to turn up at the Armitage camp, which was made the focus of a great deal of media attention. The following is a photo that accompanied a story in the Eugene Register-Guard about the city's plan to evict us from the camp, then a letter I wrote in response to the story. This letter was co-signed by 38 other campers who remained at the site to resist the eviction, and was printed in the October 2, 1992 edition of the Register-Guard: