A Facebook group, gaps in service and the death of a young man: How a battle about homelessness is enveloping a Southern Oregon town
Southern Oregon is known for its relatively mild weather. But, in mid-December, an unusual cold snap in Medford left one unhoused person dead.
Manuel “Manny” Barboza-Valerio, 29, was found deceased on a section of the Bear Creek Greenway on Dec. 15, 2021. Though investigations are still underway, and Medford police say multiple underlying conditions could have contributed, initial reports attributed his death to hypothermia.
“We’re responsible for this,” city council member Sarah Spansail said after his passing. “Manny’s death is on us.”
As temperatures dropped below freezing, Barboza-Valerio slept outside without a tent, a common occurrence in a city where tents are prohibited on all public property. His death reignited debates over the city’s controversial camping policies, which — since enforcement began in May 2021 — left few legal camping options for unhoused community members and resulted in hundreds of camp sweeps.
In Medford, a purple city with a tight housing market, public opinion is split when it comes to homelessness. Some citizens are calling for heavier enforcement of the city’s prohibitive camping ordinance, while many housing and legal advocates are pushing the council to overturn the policy entirely.
As of Jan. 14, police had swept 274 individual camps since May 2021, successfully disbanding large encampments along the greenway. While 133 of these camps were vacated before their removal, many were not: the sweeps have affected 309 homeless people, some of whom have their camps posted for removal on a weekly basis, giving them a 72-hour notice to leave or have their belongings confiscated.
Many unhoused people are hiding, afraid to put a tent up for fear of it being taken.
According to the city attorney, Eric Mitton, the ordinance has been successful at doing what it was put in place to do, though he said it’s an ongoing process.
“I think the greenway is safer than it was before,” he said. “We have more services available than we did a year ago, and we have more people engaging in those services.”
Mitton pointed to the city’s urban campground, operated by the nonprofit Rogue Retreat, as a way for people to tent camp legally. What started as a short-term coronavirus response has morphed into something much bigger, Mitton said.
“That has been a real game-changer,” he added.
The city depends largely on Medford Police Department’s Livability Team to forge relationships with unhoused campers and offer resources, often acting like social workers. Since May 2021, 101 people have accepted some form of shelter, such as the urban campground and the Kelly Shelter, which is also operated by Rogue Retreat.
Chad McComas, the executive director of Rogue Retreat, said Medford isn’t trying to criminalize its unhoused population.
“They’re trying to help them get to something better,” he said.
Still, a large part of Medford’s unhoused population doesn’t want these resources, leaving them in what housing advocate Maig Tinnin described as a “cat and mouse game,” continuously moving between sites to avoid having their belongings taken. Even though Medford does have more shelter options than any other Southern Oregon city, Tinnin said this isn’t enough.
“These services cannot be a justification for enforcement,” she said.
Any campers found tent camping or sleeping in prohibited places can be charged with a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine. So far, nine people have been cited and/or arrested.
“If there’s actual housing available for people, that’s one thing,” Tinnin said. “But there’s not.”
Inhospitable Market
The rental vacancy rate has long hovered around 1% in the Medford area, but the 2020 Almeda fire, which destroyed about 2,500 homes in nearby towns, put even more strain on the housing market.
A 2020 count found 727 people experiencing homelessness in Medford’s Jackson County, and this was before the pandemic and wildfires. Homelessness became increasingly visible in Medford when people were told they could shelter in place on the Bear Creek Greenway at the start of the pandemic.
The greenway, a 20-mile paved trail that connects several Southern Oregon towns, is often referred to as the “jewel of the Rogue Valley.” However, with increased homeless camps, groups like the Greenway Recovery Project, a Facebook group with almost 4,000 followers, said the greenway has become a “blight for Southern Oregon communities,” citing health and safety concerns.
Last spring, under pressure from citizens to restore the greenway and prevent fire danger, the city council revised its prohibitive camping ordinance to ban all camping along the greenway during fire season from May 1 until Sept. 30, 2021.
They also banned the use of tents citywide and implemented other restrictions. People may, for instance, sleep on sidewalks with bedding materials, but they must leave at least three feet of walking room.
Revising the policy was, in part, an attempt to bring the city up to speed with legal code. Though narrowly enforced, the ordinance previously banned sleeping with any bedding material on public property.
This was made illegal by the landmark 2018 Martin v. Boise case, which declared it unconstitutional to punish people for sleeping outdoors in public spaces when there aren’t adequate and accessible shelter beds. A later ruling against Medford’s neighbor, Grants Pass, set further precedent that it’s illegal to use violations and fines to punish people for sleeping outside when there’s nowhere else to go.
But, cities can still decide the time, place and manner in which people can sleep or camp outside. And, according to Mitton, the city’s attorney, this is just what the city is doing.
“The line that the city is trying to draw is not tents versus no tents, but regulated versus unregulated camping,” he said, highlighting that tent camping is allowed at the urban campground and often during severe weather events.
But, many housing advocates, lawyers and even some city council members still take issue with Medford’s camping policies.
“The law (Martin v. Boise) states that you should be able to keep yourself warm and dry,” city councilmember Spansail told Street Roots. “I think it’s really hard to stay warm and dry without a tent.”
Spansail, along with councilmember Clay Bearnson, were the only councilors to oppose the ordinance last spring and have continued to take aim at the policy.
In a city council meeting on Dec. 16, amid pressure from housing advocates following Barboza-Valerio’s death, Spansail motioned to not enforce the tent ban during the winter.
The city had declared a severe weather emergency in December and partnered with a nonprofit, ACCESS, to operate an additional warming shelter on the coldest nights, but there still weren’t enough beds for all those on the streets. Spansail had been volunteering at the city’s warming shelter on the night of the death and had seen its limited capacity firsthand.
The shelter had beds for 38 people on Dec. 15. After Barboza-Valerio’s death, the city and ACCESS increased capacity to 50.
“If an individual arrives at the shelter and a bed is not available, that individual will be able to rest in the building, out of weather conditions,” the city wrote in a statement.
Still, Spansail said that — following Barboza-Valerio’s death — “the time was of the essence” to strike down the tent ban in the winter.
But, the council voted 6-2 to uphold the ordinance. Tim D’Alessandro, one councilor who voted against Spansail’s motion, cautioned against having a knee-jerk reaction to Barboza-Valerio’s death.
“I’m just concerned about reacting to something that I’m not sure how much we have control over,” he explained in the meeting.
The council did clarify that, when a severe weather emergency is declared, the city will not enforce the ordinance. But many advocates noted houseless individuals often can’t acquire a tent on such short notice.
“My question is, if you already lost your tent, or have not had one, where do you get one?” Spansail said.
But, on the other end of the spectrum, the city still faces pressure to enforce the ordinance: The Facebook group, the Greenway Recovery Project, took issue with this slowed enforcement during the winter storm.
On Jan. 18, the page’s organizers wrote, “Recent cold weather has caused the city to slow enforcement of the camping ban and the transients have taken full advantage and spread camps along the Greenway and other locations in the past few weeks.”
The post continued, “We cannot let the cancer that has killed major West Coast cities do the same here.”
Competing Narrative
Many unhoused people tell a different story.
For more than a year, Travis “T-Bone” Greiner had lived on a quiet end of the greenway in South Medford.
Nearby, campers lined both sides of Bear Creek.
“This was my community,” Greiner said. “This was my family.”
After the greenway ban went into effect last May, Greiner attempted to hold his ground on the greenway. But eventually, on Aug. 3, Greiner awoke to heavy machinery and several officers at his camp.
Police told Greenway campers to leave for months and issued Greiner a 72-hour notice the week before.
Greiner and one housing advocate were arrested. They were bailed out after eight hours by community members, according to Griener, but the camp was already destroyed.
The Medford Police Department Livability Team did not make a representative available to Street Roots.
Now, Greiner moves back and forth between different spots on the greenway, trying to avoid the weekly sweeps. He has been cited three times and received fines he does not intend to pay.
“All that ordinance did was create more of a problem,” he said. “Somebody’s gotta do something.”
Greiner is one of about 14 unhoused plaintiffs involved in a class action lawsuit against the city. They are represented by the law office of Justin Rosas, a former public defender who is also representing several unhoused people probono to fight charges related to the camping ordinance.
On May 18, 2021, Rosas and his colleague, Justina Lara, filed their initial complaint against the city, urging a federal judge to declare the camping ordinance and other related rules unconstitutional and ban their enforcement, among other demands. Rosas expects other big state and national organizations to support their suit.
In their complaint, the lawyers write, “The City of Medford is trying to run homeless people out of sight, out of view, out of town or into the jail.”
In its response, the city denied the claim, arguing it has taken “multiple and varied innovative responses” to combat houselessness. This includes supporting Rogue Retreat’s urban campground, among other initiatives.
Even with the city’s efforts, however, Rosas argues there are still too few spaces for people to go.
“(The city) has an obligation to create a true space for any of the individuals that they’re going to move around, prior to doing so,” he told Street Roots.
Barriers Remain
One couple, John Stacey and Brooke Amlin, had been living on the streets in Grants Pass before moving into a tiny home-like pallet at Rogue Retreat’s urban campground. With the help of a case manager, they got replacement social security cards and IDs, along with taking other critical steps towards independence.
“The help is out there if you want it,” Stacey said, grateful for Rogue Retreat’s services.
But, the city and Rogue Retreat acknowledge there are not enough beds for every unhoused individual in Medford. On Jan. 18, the Kelly Shelter had 12 open beds, and the urban campground had zero spots.
The waitlist for the Kelly Shelter is about six months, staff said, with about 280 people in line. Even with this waitlist, beds are often hard to fill, as unhoused people can be hard to reach. Staff said that if people check in all the time, they can often skip the long line and get in sooner.
“We don’t want empty beds,” McComas said, adding many unhoused people don’t utilize their services.
Since the urban campground opened in July 2020, about 30% of its campers have continued to other forms of housing, according to McComas, including the Kelly Shelter and Hope Village, Rogue Retreat’s tiny home village. The majority of the remaining campers either left by choice or for misconduct.
“They’re just not able to play in the sandbox well, and it’s probably because they have extreme mental health issues,” he said. “The campground can’t serve everybody. I wish we could … but we need more mental health help.”
Many people living on the greenway told Street Roots there are barriers to access these services. For one, Rogue Retreat partners with the Livability Team to refer people to the urban campground, and many unhoused people distrust the police.
People can also reach out to Rogue Retreat directly to express interest in the campsite, but the organization will often check with the Livability Team to see if they’d be a good fit.
In addition to the partnership with the police, other campers mentioned being turned off by the curfews at the shelter and campground.
“They want to trap me in these resources,” said Donald Clem, one greenway camper.
The other large shelter option in Medford is the Gospel Mission, which requires shelter-seekers attend church weekly. On Jan. 18, the Medford Gospel Rescue Mission had 11 spaces open for women and 11 for men.
“I had religion forced upon me as a kid,” Greiner said. “I’m not doing it as an adult.”
Other local organizations, including Hearts with a Mission, the Maslow Project and St. Vincent de Paul, also offer a small number of beds.
Despite this, Greiner added, “I guarantee there’s someone out there that needs (the bed) more than I do.”
Looking Ahead
With the help of Rogue Retreat, the city has plans to create more options to get people off the street. State Sen. Jeff Golden (D-Ashland) recently helped the city secure a million dollars in federal funds to make the urban campground permanent, funding services like restrooms, showers and electricity.
The organization also has plans to open a “navigation center” in a city-owned building by the end of June, which will absorb the Kelly Shelter and expand capacity from 64 to 100. They are also planning to add several family rooms and are considering a commercial kitchen, as well as on-site legal help for people needing to resolve tickets.
The goal is to provide a one-stop shop for people to get all of their needs met.
“I’m excited about it because I think we can do an even better job than we do now,” McComas said.
Still, housing advocates plan to continue to put pressure on the city to strike down its camping policies and invest in more housing-first solutions.
“It feels like something big would have to shift to make city council listen,” Tinnin said. “We’re also just trying to respond by getting out survival gear to people.”
On the legal front, it could be another year before there’s a ruling on the lawsuit against the city’s camping policies.
Meanwhile, on the greenway, enforcement of the camping ordinance will continue.
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