City officials had a simple approach to homelessness: Make life so uncomfortable, they leave. Now a class action suit is the first to test the Boise decision and reveals systemic punishment and harassment for sleeping outdoors.
GRANTS PASS — Kirt Morrill died from his injuries after a propane tank exploded at his camp in a Grants Pass city park on Nov. 7, 2018.
The 65-year-old man was homeless and had been living on the streets of the small town in Southern Oregon with his partner, Kellie Parker, for several years prior to the accident.
Police tried to extinguish the explosion’s fire with a nearby sleeping bag but were not immediately able to pull Morrill from the flames. The burns on his body were so severe that officers who responded to the scene in Baker Park that night were given mental health counseling following the incident, according to local news reports.
The night he died, Morrill was burning propane to counter the fall chill. It’s a dangerous but common way to create heat for people experiencing homelessness.
Morrill and Parker were sleeping outside because in Grants Pass, there was nowhere else the couple could have slept that night.
Two months later, service providers counted more than 600 people experiencing homelessness in the small town of just over 37,000.
Like many other communities across the state, Grants Pass has watched its homeless population grow as its housing affordability has declined. The town has no subsidized housing, and just half of those who are lucky enough to get a Section 8 housing voucher are able to find a landlord who will rent to them.
Despite being home to hundreds of people without a permanent residence, at the time of Morrill’s death, Grants Pass offered no emergency shelter, no warming shelter for cold and wet winter nights, and no cooling shelter for hot and sometimes smoke-filled summer days.
Rather than provide shelter to its homeless residents, officials in Grants Pass have worked to make their life as unpleasant as possible in an effort to push them out of town, according to a lawsuit the Oregon Law Center filed against the city just weeks before Morrill died while trying to warm himself.
In a declaration she signed in support of the lawsuit, his partner, Parker, told of his death and her own difficulty finding anywhere to sleep without being ticketed or trespassed. She is disabled due to a seizure disorder and was a resident of Grants Pass for four years before becoming homeless after a break-up.
In signing on to the lawsuit, she joined 11 other people experiencing homelessness who allege Grants Pass police have systemically ticketed, harassed or arrested them or have otherwise tried to them push out of town.
Theirs is the first lawsuit to test the Martin v. Boise ruling, which in 2018 declared it unconstitutional to punish people for sleeping outdoors in public spaces when there aren’t enough shelter beds to meet demand.
When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the landmark case late last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling was upheld. That ruling applies to the eight Western states in the court’s jurisdiction, including Oregon.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege Grants Pass is in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution because the fines and fees imposed on people for sleeping outside are excessive, they are applied selectively, they violate the plaintiffs’ right to engage in life-sustaining activities, and they criminalize a person’s homeless status.
“People should not be punished for engaging in unavoidable human behavior like sleeping, resting and trying to stay warm and dry,” Ed Johnson, director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center, told Street Roots. “That’s what the law says, but also what basic respect for those who are the victims of our failed affordable-housing policies requires. In many communities in Oregon, there are far more people experiencing homelessness than there are practically available shelter beds. Grants Pass is an extreme example of this, with hundreds of homeless people and zero low-barrier shelter beds.”
Plaintiffs are not seeking any monetary relief, only an injunction on the city’s anti-camping and -sleeping ordinance enforcement until it provides a lawful place for people to rest, sleep and find shelter.
“Over a period of years, the City of Grants Pass has taken coordinated steps to drive homeless people out of town,” their complaint argues. “At the same time, city council has voted against affordable housing in the City and has failed to take steps to create a low-barrier emergency shelter for the hundreds of homeless people who live in the City.”
Oral arguments are expected this spring. After it’s decided, it will likely be appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Grants Pass is nestled among the Klamath Mountains, near dozens of wineries in the Rogue Valley and not far from the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest and Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve. The wild and scenic Rogue River winds through the picturesque little town, offering some of the best whitewater rafting in the state. City planners have invested millions of dollars in beautifying the historic downtown district, now dotted with upscale boutiques and a variety of dining options. Between 2015 and 2019, the city brought in more than $7.5 million in lodging tax revenue alone, with the bulk of tourists visiting between April and September.
It was as tourism season approached in 2013 that the city made official its methods for solving its homelessness problems, which business and government leaders perceived as a deterrence to visitors.
At a “City Council Community Roundtable on Vagrancy” that March, city councilors and law enforcement met with service providers and business leaders to brainstorm ways to get rid of problem populations before tourists arrived.
“The point is to make it uncomfortable enough for them in our city so they will want to move on down the road,” said then-City Councilor Lily Morgan, according to minutes from that meeting. Morgan is now a Josephine County commissioner
Ideas discussed at the roundtable for how to do that included:
• Circulate a list of people with “undesirable behavior” among homeless service providers and ban those people from receiving free meals or other services.
• Drive repeat offenders out of town and leave them there.
• Build a sobering center where “aggressive transients” could be taken and locked up. The idea was, according to then-Deputy Police Chief Bill Landis, that they would dislike it so much, they would change their ways.
• Create exclusion zones and blanket trespassing agreements with business owners.
• Encourage tourists, “in a positive way,” not to give money to panhandlers.
Most of these ideas came to fruition over the next few years and have been used as tactics to ostracize homeless people ever since.
The Grants Pass Sobering Center opened in April 2016. It has the appearance of a jail, containing 12 bathroom-sized cells with nothing more than a sink-toilet combination and a floor mat. The sobering center’s board chair, Rick Jones, told the Grants Pass Daily Courier the center would help discourage “professional vagrants.”
“Some of these folks will be looking for the next town,” he told the local newspaper. “It’s not set up to be comfortable.”
Several plaintiffs in the lawsuit testified that police have offered them bus tickets out of town, usually to Medford, about 30 miles east of Grants Pass. Most also stated in their declarations that police disrupt them up no matter where they sleep or sit, telling them to “move along” and encouraging them to leave town. Many believe that no matter where they try to sleep or rest, they are ticketed, fined and prosecuted for camping, sleeping and trespass, according to their declarations.
Public records show that between 2012 and 2019, the majority of the 615 tickets for violating the city’s strict ordinances prohibiting camping and sleeping on sidewalks, streets, alleys or within doorways are officer initiated, as opposed to stemming from citizen complaints. Parking overnight on city streets is also prohibited.
The city has modified and removed park benches so they cannot be slept on and built fences around bus stop benches. The City Council has voted against affordable-housing projects, “sometimes citing non-existent problems, like lack of parking,” according to the suit.
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But most notably, blanket trespassing agreements have made it possible for police to arrest people indirectly for homelessness. Police officers are able to trespass a person from any property without having to contact the property owner in order to press charges, as long as the property owner has agreed to participate in the blanket trespass.
Between 2012 and 2019, people were verbally trespassed from the Grants Pass Walmart more than 10,000 times, according to evidence submitted in support of the lawsuit. If a person returned within a year of being trespassed, they could be arrested and charged with second-degree criminal trespassing.
Parker noted she had been trespassed from several places in town, including empty lots.
“I have been trespassed by city police from countless properties throughout the city,” Melody Cacho testified. “I have been trespassed so often that I have lost track of where I am allowed to go.”
Cacho suffers from several illnesses, including cancer and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. She thought she had finally found respite when she and her companion were given permission to sleep on church property. But, she said in her declaration, “the church approached me saying they had received a letter from the city asking that they fill out a Trespass order.”
At one point, she went to the police station and asked about the city’s laws and where she could sleep. “I was told that I needed to look that up myself,” she said.
In Grants Pass, being trespassed from one park extends to all other city parks, and even the town’s main homeless resource provider, United Community Action Network, or UCAN, has an after-hours trespassing order. That’s because the property owner the service provider rents from signed a blanket trespass order for the building.
For plaintiff Debra Blake, the fines associated with her many citations and arrests were too much for her to pay. The 61-year-old disabled Grants Pass resident lost her job 10 years ago and soon after became homeless. She’s been living outside ever since.
“I cannot afford housing, and there is no available bed for me at an emergency shelter anywhere in Grants Pass,” she testified. “I have been repeatedly told by Grants Pass police that I must ‘move along’ and that there is nowhere in Grants Pass that I can legally sit or rest. I have been repeatedly awakened by Grants Pass police while sleeping and told that I need to get up and move. I have been told by Grants Pass police that I should leave town.”
In September, Blake was cited for camping and for prohibited conduct when an officer found her lying in a sleeping bag at Riverside Park. Her original fine was $590, but she couldn’t pay it, and it has since ballooned to more than $1,000 with additional fees for not paying on time. Later that same morning, the same police officer cited Blake for criminal trespassing and fined her another $295. That fine has since ballooned to $537. She was also trespassed from all city parks. In all, Blake owes the city more than $5,000 for crimes and violations related to her involuntary homelessness.
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“I am now afraid to go into any parks in Grants Pass and often sleep at night outside of city limits in an area that I’m worried is not physically safe for me and that is far from food and other services,” she testified. “One time I was on state land near Grants Pass with some other homeless people, who were also trying to avoid punishment in Grants Pass. A state trooper came along and told us that we could not stay there, had to move along, and that they would be clearing the area soon.”
Grants Pass has argued it is not in violation of the Boise decision because the tickets and fines it issues for camping and sleeping in public spaces are civil penalties, not criminal. But Oregon Law Center argues that civil penalties are still a form of punishment and that the city’s systemic practice of trespassing people who are homeless and then criminally charging them is done selectively.
The League of Oregon Cities submitted an amicus brief in support of Grants Pass in the lawsuit. It claimed more people are choosing to sleep outside as homelessness increases in cities such as Portland. It said if the plaintiffs win the injunction they seek, cities will be left with no tools for enforcing sleeping and camping regulations, therefore affecting their ability to maintain livability.
The league also argued that even with enough shelter beds for every person who had no home, it’s not clear it would be enough: “What if shelters, even if not religious, have rules that would preclude some people from using their services, like restrictions on pets, single people, drug and alcohol use, and time of entry? And what about the many unsheltered homeless that will not go to a shelter, regardless of the availability of beds?”
The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty also submitted a brief, but in favor of the plaintiffs. It argued that contrary to the League of Oregon Cities’ argument, local law enforcement would still be able to enforce a slew of other laws pertaining to livability, such as laws regulating littering, harassment, public urination and illicit drug use.
“As the Cities note,” its brief read, “‘Oregon’s cities are obligated to provide safe and livable communities for all residents.’ But laws that punish people because they are unhoused and have no other place to go — like the ones that Plaintiffs are challenging here — undermine cities’ ability to fulfill this obligation.”
The Oregon Law Center’s class-action lawsuit, Blake v. Grants Pass, was originally filed in October 2018 on behalf of three Grants Pass residents experiencing homelessness. Debra Blake, Gloria Johnson and John Logan.
Grants Pass denied all the allegations in the plaintiffs’ complaint the following March. The city’s attorneys also argued two of the defendants were not truly homeless because Blake had moved into transitional housing and Johnson was living in her van by choice because she receives $1,600 a month in Social Security benefits.
Oregon Law Center filed a motion to make the lawsuit a class action. A magistrate judge at the U.S. District Court in Medford, Mark Clarke, granted class-action status this past summer.
In his opinion, Clarke admonished Grants Pass’ arguments, writing: “Not only are these personal attacks on the Plaintiffs’ situations insensitive, they reveal that Defendant may misunderstand the nature of modern homelessness.”
Nearly 2,400 households in Grants Pass spend more than half their income on rent, according to a 2019 state report. That’s about a third of all renter households. Since 2010, rent has increased 42% in the community, but incomes have increased just 9% during the same period.
“Our housing is very expensive for the area that we live in, and it is difficult to obtain — there just isn’t enough of it,” said Kelly Wessels, the chief operating officer at the United Community Action Network in Grants Pass. “We have a lot of people who work, who don’t have housing.”
The 2019 Point in Time count for Josephine County revealed more than 1,030 people who were unhoused or chronically homeless.
Service providers agree that most people experiencing homelessness in Grants Pass are locals, and that’s true for most plaintiffs in the case, as well. Some have lived in Grants Pass for decades and previously lived indoors and worked in the community. However, the local government has done little to help them.
Some residents point to the local Gospel Rescue Mission as a place where people can go for shelter, but it hasn’t functioned as a homeless shelter for the past five years. While it once served that purpose, it now operates as a transitional program that a person has to be accepted into in order to obtain residence.
The program has strict rules requiring participants to work full time at the shelter and nowhere else. This prevents anyone who is already employed, who wants to seek employment, or who has certain disabilities from being able to enroll.
Several plaintiffs in the case said they had been evicted from the mission for minor infractions or turned away due to disabilities or because they smoke cigarettes. Participants can be kicked out for behaviors that include smoking a cigarette or failure to attend church services. For all these reasons, the Gospel Rescue Mission no longer meets HUD’s definition of a homeless shelter, and no other shelter has opened in Grants Pass to fill the void it left when it changed its policies.
Governance in Grants Pass is shifting its approach to homelessness, little by little. The City Council, for the first time, has moved housing and homelessness onto its list of top-five priorities, and the new police chief, Warren Hensman, came to Grants Pass from Ashland and has brought with him a new perspective, said Wessels.
In response to an inquiry, Hensman told Street Roots his department has not ticketed anyone for violating the city’s camping and sleeping ordinances since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
He said he tries to pay close attention to his community’s concerns regarding “the unhoused.” His terminology stands in stark contrast to the language used to described unhoused populations at the city’s Roundtable on Vagrancy seven years ago. Hensman does enforce the city’s laws, however, which means continued camp sweeps and moving people along.
This past winter, United Community Action Network opened the city’s first warming center. It’s authorized to open when temperatures drop below 30 degrees, although it cannot be open for more than 90 nights per year without special approval. It has 40 floor mats, and aside from its inaugural night, it has filled up quickly every night it’s been open. Operators have to turn people away once it’s filled. Single people often offer their mats to families seeking shelter, and then leave to face the elements.
“A warming center is nice,” Wessels said, “however, it’s the least efficient model for supporting unsheltered individuals. It is extremely expensive, and there isn’t anyone who has come forward to financially contribute to the project other than Oregon Housing and Community Services (a state agency).” She said aside from one business with a vested interest, “No one, no one, is putting any money toward the effort.”
About a year ago, a handful of Grants Pass residents decided they wanted to do something about homelessness in their community. With their own money, they purchased two lots off Foundry Street near the railroad tracks for about $70,000, said Doug Walker, who was one of them. He’s a retired builder and community volunteer, and he said originally, they wanted to build an apartment building for people who are houseless. Now, the larger of the two lots is slated to be a transitional tiny-home village that will house 17 people and will be run by Rogue Retreat, which operates shelters and transitional housing facilities in Medford.
The project hit a roadblock in November when Grants Pass City Council voted 5-4 against an ordinance that would have made building the village easier, but after councilors received more than 300 calls and emails, said Walker, they changed their minds and voted to pass the ordinance.
Walker said his grassroots group has raised about a third of the $560,000 it will take to construct the village, and another third of the cost is pledged. They had hoped to break ground in June, but the pandemic will likely delay construction.
While the village will be the first transitional housing available to people experiencing homelessness in Grants Pass, the town still has no plans for a year-round shelter for the hundreds of unsheltered people who live there.
Until Grants Pass lawmakers prioritize establishing adequate shelter for people experiencing homelessness, said Wessels, people living outside will continue to face harsh weather conditions.
The warming center received special permission to remain open during the COVID-19 pandemic, however once it goes back to being a warming center only, there will be no shelter available most nights of the year.
Wessels provided a declaration to supplement Oregon Law Center’s lawsuit, and in it she described how in February 2019, her outreach staff at UCAN discovered an individual who was living outside who had severe frostbite. They rushed him to the hospital, where he had to undergo an amputation.
“It was one of the most horrifying things I’ve had to work with staff on in a long time,” Wessels told Street Roots. “And that individual wasn’t alone. It’s well documented in the health care system that there are others that weren’t elevated in the same way."
She said according to a hospital chaplain who recently participated on a task force with her, children in the area have also suffered amputation due to frostbite.
“If there had been just the basic, fundamental sheltering resource in our respective communities, perhaps it wouldn’t have got as bad as it was,” she said.
Recalling the propane explosion that killed Morrill two years ago, Wessels said she doesn’t want to see the community lose any more people.
“An individual who was trying to stay warm ended up blowing themselves up,” she said. “We had a loss of life because they had nowhere else to go to stay warm. Those are the kinds of things we have to keep reminding people — we haven’t fixed it yet.”
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.
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