Inside, Oregon lawmakers and special interests wrestle with homelessness. Outside, on the streets of Salem, people experience it.
As Oregon legislators grapple with homelessness, a woman living on the streets outside the state Capitol in Salem grapples with surviving one day to the next.
“She developed the worst case of trench foot I’ve ever seen,” Jimmy Jones, the executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, told lawmakers Feb. 23.
“The condition was so bad that she couldn’t walk 30 yards to a public toilet,” he said.
Jones told Street Roots on March 26 that the woman, in her mid-50s, now lives in transitional housing. Before Jones’ agency stepped in, she was among the unsheltered people who literally live in the shadow of the Capitol.
“They ought to be put some cameras out here. Then people could see how we live. It’s ugly out here, and someone needs to care.”
Because of the ongoing pandemic, most legislative meetings are held remotely this year. Yet the Capitol remains the seat of state government. A public access station and laptop outside the building enable people to offer remote testimony.
It doesn’t matter to the people who are unable to reach the Capitol to testify on the bills that affect them, including many of the estimated 10,000 Oregonians living without shelter.
A lot of people have a lot to say this legislative session about homelessness. They come from nonprofit organizations, activist groups, official departments, local governments and the Legislature itself.
They all have one thing in common. They sleep indoors.
Almost none of the voices addressing homelessness at the Legislature belong to people who are experiencing homelessness. Yet those people, many of them just across the street or a few blocks from the seat of state government, often have much to say.
Kevin Harris, 58, spends most nights in the doorway of a church near the Capitol. “They ought to be put some cameras out here,” Harris told Street Roots. “Then people could see how we live. It’s ugly out here, and someone needs to care.”
House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) would argue she does care. Among the bills affecting homelessness this session is her proposal to allow homeless people to remain on public property without being rousted by the police.
Many local governments have so-called sit-lie laws that prohibit people from sleeping and generally staying on specific types of public property such as parks and downtown streets.
House Bill 3115 would overturn the local laws unless city officials can prove people have enough alternative places to go. A decision in 2019 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals already makes such laws problematic. The court ruled that banning people from sleeping on public property violates the “cruel and unusual punishments” clause of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
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“Local governments should be following the federal rules regarding enforcement against people experiencing homelessness right now,” Kotek told members of the House Judiciary Committee on March 9.
That would be nice, Harris told Street Roots. “I don’t know many people these days who haven’t been arrested,” he said.
Gabriel Snyder, 50, told Street Roots he doesn’t know about other local governments, but police in Salem don’t seem to care what the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals thinks is cruel and unusual, he said.
“Every day, you get up, and it’s like the Army,” Snyder said. “Everything is regimented. You always have to move. You can never stay in the same spot. The police tell you that you have to move.”
Snyder was a union iron worker who helped build extensions to Salem Hospital before he was laid off. After his money ran out, he found himself living on the streets of downtown Salem. That was three years ago.
He said he gets tired seeing people experiencing homelessness fill up Marion Square and Wallace Marine parks and lining up along Northeast Liberty Street.
“Who wants a bunch of people on the sidewalk?” Snyder said. “I don’t want to see that, and I’m one of them.”
However, he said, that’s not the point. “No one should have to go to jail for trying to live,” he said.
FROM APRIL 2020: Homeless residents, advocates in Salem area take issue with government response
The Salem City Council passed a law March 23 last year that bans people from sitting or lying down on public sidewalks.
Public parks, plazas and benches aren’t covered by the law. There are also exceptions for medical emergencies and people in wheelchairs.
Violation of the law carries a fine of $250, but no criminal penalties apply. The law also stipulates city officials can’t enforce it until people have sufficient daytime alternatives that include access to toilets.
“Importantly, it’s not currently being enforced as conditions to do so have not yet been met,” Gretchen Bennett, the Salem mayor’s liaison on unsheltered residents and houselessness, told Street Roots.
Bennett, who is also the city’s human rights and federal compliance manager, said downtown Salem near the Marion Parkade has been particularly problematic. The parkade is a downtown parking structure located several blocks from the Capitol.
“We’re genuinely struggling with that area as a site with a number of people in the stairwells and in the elevators and challenges with community conversations there,” she said.
Bennett’s assurance that Salem’s sit-lie law is not being enforced conflicts with what many unsheltered residents downtown told Street Roots. They said they are constantly rousted by police.
Officers removed people staying along the parkade March 24, ostensibly to pressure-wash it. However Jean Hendron, a Salem homeless advocate who lives in a camper, told Street Roots there was no evidence work was done on the structure.
Campers returned to the parkade by the end of the day.
Snyder acknowledged that spending three years on the streets of Salem has made him cynical. Legislators talk and pass laws, but in the end, he’s not sure if what happens inside the Capitol makes any difference to what happens outside its marble walls.
“I don’t know what I’d tell legislators,” Snyder said. “There’s nothing good or bad.”
Some homeless Oregonians helped draft House Bill 2367, the Right to Rest Act, introduced by state Rep. Wlnsvey Campos. The bill is similar to House Bill 3115. It allows homeless people to use public spaces the same way as everyone else without discrimination based on their housing status. It’s scheduled for a public hearing and work session before the House Judiciary Committee on April 13.
A similar bill died in committee during the 2019 session. House Bill 3115, built with a coalition that includes the League of Oregon Cities and local governments with less input from the homeless community, seems to be getting more traction this session.
Hendron noted the irony of most legislators talking about a group of people without talking to them — especially when so many of those people are right outside the door.
Homelessness is grim everywhere, Hendron told Street Roots, but nowhere in Oregon more dramatically than Salem. She sees a difference between homelessness in Oregon’s capital city and other communities, she said.
“One of the things I noticed about Portland and Eugene is the tents are distanced — at least 6 feet — and the garbage is picked up,” said Hendron.
“Here in Salem, the camps are hemmed in with tarps, so no one can see what’s going on,” she added. “The city refuses to pick up the garbage even when it’s in sacks, so the campers give up, and it’s everywhere.”
Sherri Marcott Stlouis, 58, spends much of her time wandering Marion and Polk counties — Salem straddles both counties — trying to find places where she can park her car and sleep undisturbed by the police.
“People are targeted by city police who drive around parking lots and park close by and wait for you to leave,” Stlouis told Street Roots. “Then they either follow you or pull you over for no other reason than the way you look.”
Police are a daily presence in her life, she added.
“I have been pulled over, asked to get out of the car and asked if they can search the car,” she said. “If you decline, you aren’t allowed to leave until you give consent. I have been searched by a male officer just because he could.”
Living in her car also prevents her from using medicinal marijuana or having a service animal, Stlouis said.
“It’s a vehicle,” she said. “And for many people, vehicles have become home.”
Stlouis told Street Roots she wants to live in Dallas, the community of 15,000 people 16 miles west of Salem where she grew up. However, she said the police there are tough on anyone without a traditional home.
“Dallas has a history of officers abusing their power and making threats to put you in jail, tow your vehicle and to take your possessions,” she said.
“I’m ashamed of my hometown,” she said. “Things must be done to ensure human beings stop being treated worse than animals. Something also needs to be done about the good ol’ boys who are running the shit show.”
House Bill 3115 could make a difference in the lives of Stlouis and other people in daily conflict with police and local sit-lie laws.
It could also make a difference in how city governments, often faced with residents angry about being confronted by visible poverty, deal with homelessness.
While people experiencing homelessness may cross their fingers, city officials may be biting their nails.
The McMinnville City Council passed a sit-lie law in 2019. It allows people to sleep overnight on public property — except public parks, parking lots, parking structures, downtown streets and residential neighborhoods.
“We will continue to track the bill, and should it pass in current form or amended, we will carefully review our ordinance at that time,” he said.
The bill requires local governments to prove people have sufficient alternatives to staying on the street. McMinnville officials hope some of those alternatives will come as a result of House Bill 2004, which designates funds for select cities.
Under that bill, McMinnville would receive $1.5 million for a navigation center to provide shelter and social services. Roseburg would also receive $1.5 million, Bend and Medford would receive $2.5 million, and Salem and Eugene would receive $5 million. Cities in the Portland metro area are not included in the legislation.
Companion legislation, House Bill 2006, requires local governments to allow emergency shelters that meet local land-use laws and regulations.
Jones, of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, told the House Committee on Housing in February that the need for action could not be more urgent.
People are dying, he said.
“In a normal year, we lose 12 to 14 people in Salem,” Jones said. “We’re pushing 30 in the last 12 months. People are dying outside every week, and the creation and funding of these navigation centers will stem the tide.”
Jones stressed equal urgency when he testified on House Bill 3115 before the House Judiciary Committee March 9.
“A society, in the end, is judged by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members — those without power, those who have long been forgotten by so many,” he said.
“A good society, a just society, acts to ensure that those who cannot protect themselves are in fact protected.”
By that measure, Stlouis told Street Roots, society is far from good and just.
“No matter what, no one should have to live like this — nobody,” she said. “Everyone should get a floor, ceiling and walls with electricity and running water.
“Is it OK to turn a blind eye to people who are elderly, mentally ill and former inmates?” she added. “Or do we stand for the people who have no voice or someone to advocate for them?”
Status of legislation addressing homelessness
House Bill 2004, to create navigation centers in various communities, passed through the House Committee on Housing on March 15 and is now before Joint Ways and Means Committee. No further hearings or work sessions have been scheduled.
House Bill 2006, to require local governments to allow emergency shelters that meet local land-use laws and regulations, passed the House Committee on Housing on March 15 and awaits further action.
House Bill 3115, to restrict local sit-lie laws, went through public hearings March 9 and 23 before the Housing Judiciary Committee and a work session on March 25. As of press time, the bill was awaiting transfer to the speaker’s desk.
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