Providing housing costs less than criminalization

DJ Suss D (KEPW News): Okay, I went to the Municipal Court demo(nstration) on June 26 to support the people that had been fined for helping, trying to help people that were being removed from a railroad track sweep of the homeless. All right, so what’s your name?

[00:00:21] Jesselyn Perkins: My name’s Jesselyn Perkins.

[00:00:22] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): All right, and so you’re standing out here on the corner of 11th and Lincoln in front of the courthouse because you’re going in for a hearing.

[00:00:32] Jesselyn Perkins: Yes, this is my sixth court appearance to face down a trespassing charge I got while trying to distribute resources to people on the tracks who had to live out there.

[00:00:42] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): And so you weren’t living illegally, you were trying to help people? (Yes.) All right. And so what what did they do, how did they approach you?

[00:00:50] Jesselyn Perkins: Well, I got a call from my friend saying that EPD (Eugene Police Department) was down there and that they were going to trash people’s belongings, so I thought it might be beneficial to go down there and help them move their things. And I often go down there with other people to take things like water and food and to do wellness checks to see how people are doing and so it was pretty normal for me to go down there. And in this instance I went to help people move their things and to film any destruction of property or illegal activity on the part of the state.

[00:01:26] But as soon as I walked up, without a word, the officer that was there that day, (Officer Jackson) Stramler and (Officer Lane) Doggett also were there, they opened up their pads to write me an $800 trespassing ticket that also is a misdemeanor charge.

[00:01:42] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): And because there’s a zone around the railroad tracks that is owned by them, you’re trespassing.

[00:01:49] Jesselyn Perkins: Yeah, yeah, the Union Pacific Railroad owns the tracks.

[00:01:55] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): All right and so how do they justify moving indigent people, people that don’t have resources?

[00:02:03] Jesselyn Perkins: Well, there is no real justification. We ask them all the time, ‘Where do you want people to go? What would you prefer they do? What are the answers to this problem of people existing in spaces that the city doesn’t want, the public doesn’t want, the private sector doesn’t want?’ And the answer is always, ‘Well, we don’t know. We can’t speak to that. We can’t tell people where to go. They just can’t come here.’

[00:02:25] And the only reason people are on the tracks—they don’t want to be out there. It’s loud. It’s dangerous. A lot of that land is actually poisoned because of the manufacturing and the factories. They’re there because every square inch of Eugene has been criminalized to exist on if you’re poor or if you don’t have a house. But there’s no justification. They don’t even try to justify it.

[00:02:47] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): And so things haven’t changed. This is right straight out of ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ too, Steinbeck. They’ve been doing this since—they haven’t changed their policies. This is the same thing of just move on and move out of town.

[00:03:00] Jesselyn Perkins: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of direct quotes from people, that vary city to city or state by state. But they just want people to leave, to disappear. There’s no answer to the question, ‘Where do we go?’

[00:03:12] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): So what’s the solution? What should be done differently?

[00:03:16] Jesselyn Perkins: What should be done differently? Housing. Housing is the only solution. And there is precedent like cities and states that have provided housing for people that don’t have a place to live have solved the problem of the inhumanity and, like, absolute evil of, like, hurting people that are the most vulnerable. But they’ve also solved their economic problems. People that have houses, it’s much less expensive to provide housing to the population than it is to criminalize the population.

[00:03:49] We have to increase the budget for Public Works, we increase the budget for the cops, we increase, we pour all this money into criminalizing people that are poor and don’t have a house when it would actually just be cheaper to give them houses. So it’s not only, housing people solves all the problems, but they’re just not doing that.

[00:04:11] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): Well, and so I’ve noticed they’ve twisted, ‘defund the police’ into something negative where what they’re saying is you’re wasting your money by funding the police, that money could be spent helping homeless people and at least give them a foothold to move up from (Oh yeah) to get off the street so that they can move forward.

[00:04:33] Jesselyn Perkins: Yeah, the concept of funding around police and the carceral state is constantly twisted. Every time there’s public awareness and campaigns and meaningful protest around the criminalization of people who are poor or oppressed, the narrative gets twisted into, ‘Well, we just need to train them better,’ or ‘We just need to like equip them better.’ And that always means more money for cops and less money for the resources and the people and the groups that would actually help.

[00:05:04] It’s constantly twisted, it’s constantly co-opted, and our budget for our police is higher now than it ever has been, and it gets higher every day, just so people can spend our money, taxpayer money, on criminalization of the poor and unhoused instead of solving the problems with solutions that we have at our fingertips.

[00:05:27] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): All right. And so what happens when you go down to City Council and ask for change?

[00:05:31] Jesselyn Perkins: We’ve done tons of protests at City Council. We’ve had like dozens of people speak at City Council meetings when there’s public comment and they just nod along and they say, ‘Wow, this is a lot of really important stuff to consider,’ and then the next week they pass higher criminalization, like they passed more statutes criminalizing parking. They just raised a few weeks ago in the city of Eugene, they made parking limits shorter, parking prices higher, and are giving authority to more state agencies to tow vehicles and arrest people who are sleeping in public places.

[00:06:11] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): And I know they’re going to tax—they’re going to add something to the electric power and power tax to pick up trash is another thing, rather than spend that on helping people with their trash. But the other thing is, and I’ll wrap it up, the City Council has encouraged businesses like Walmart that don’t pay a very good wage. And they gave tax breaks to people like companies like Walmart. So aren’t they facilitating the problem? We don’t have well-paying jobs for people that match the rents, the price of rents.

[00:06:50] Jesselyn Perkins: Yeah, are corporations facilitating the problem? Of course they are. It sucks money out of the communities and into corporations and they get tax write-offs, and they get to spin this public narrative that they’re doing something good for communities, when they’re the ones that are robbing us, they’re the ones that are making it harder and harder for regular people to operate businesses, for regular people to have decent paying jobs, and then the city is constantly shaking hands with them and passing laws and statutes that allow for them to continue to expand.

[00:07:23] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): And then they wonder why downtown—

[00:07:25] Jesselyn Perkins: They don’t wonder, they know. They have the—they have the public wondering, but the state knows what’s happening.

[00:07:31] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): But the downtown has been extracted, the wealth from downtown has been extracted by these corporations. (Yeah, constantly.) All right. So, anything else you want to cover?

[00:07:40] Jesselyn Perkins: I guess I would just reiterate what our demands are for today. I mean, we’re here at the courthouse because 32 people were given trespassing charges in one day, and four of us have managed to come to six court dates. We’re demanding that the city drop the charges, to stop criminalizing poverty, and to work with the county to build real no-income permanent housing units. Those are our demands.

[00:08:06] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): Well, and these people can’t afford the $700 fines, $700 plus fines.

[00:08:10] Jesselyn Perkins: It has to be no-income housing and that would still cost the city less than they’re spending now to criminalize them.

[00:08:17] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): But what happens to these people when they can’t pay the fine, they go to jail?

[00:08:20] Jesselyn Perkins: Yes, oh, as soon as you can’t pay your fine, as soon as you can’t show up to your court date, you have a warrant out for your arrest and you go to jail.

[00:08:28] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): Which costs the taxpayers money?

[00:08:30] Jesselyn Perkins: Every part of this costs the taxpayers money.

[00:08:33] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): The trial and everything?

[00:08:34] Jesselyn Perkins: Yeah, the trial, the public defenders, the arrest, the trespassing tickets, the constant patrolling of, like, unhoused encampments. All of that is millions and millions and millions of dollars from our pockets.

[00:08:47] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): And aren’t these people an asset to society in a way? They have knowledge—I mean, if you’re living on the street, you’ve got to be pretty smart to live on the street. Wouldn’t they be an asset to the community rather than a burden?

[00:08:59] Jesselyn Perkins: Every human being can be an asset to the community.

[00:09:02] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): All right. So, any events coming out that you want to promote?

[00:09:06] Jesselyn Perkins: Yes, we’re going to be doing a public protest campaign that’s going to go on for a week called ‘Where Do We Go?’ and it’s going to start on July 15. So that’s going to be a high-visibility public campaign to raise awareness and build solidarity between housed and unhoused neighbors.

[00:09:24] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): All right. Any websites you want to give out? How do people get involved?

[00:09:28] Jesselyn Perkins: They can follow the Stop the Sweeps Eugene Instagram or the BareFoot Defenders Instagram or they can email StopTheSweepsEugene@gmail.com.

[00:09:41] DJ Suss D (KEPW News): All right. Thanks very much for your time and for doing this. For KEPW News, I’m DJ Suss D.