Eugene commission hears reports of frostbite, hypothermia, human rights abuses on the streets

Presenter: Homelessness is a housing problem, which means the current crisis represents the failure of long-range planning in Eugene.

But the city’s political elites aren’t the ones being punished with hypothermia, frostbite, and chronic health issues. It’s not their emergency shelter and gear that is being slashed and trashed by Eugene employees. On Jan. 21, Human Rights Commission Chair Blake Burrell:

[00:00:24] Blake Burrell (Human Rights Commission): Taking someone’s tent at 11 p.m. means that that person is going to get cold exposure.

[00:00:30] No one who gets cleared from Parks and Open Spaces is going to be able to go and access a shelter program at 11 p.m. That person, if we take their property, we take their shelter, the city is saying: ‘It’s okay if you don’t have a place to be tonight, and you can’t be in this location.’

[00:00:51] Egan (Warming Centers) has resources—there’s a whole initiative to try to do encampment-centered outreach and provide shuttle programs. But if someone doesn’t have a cell phone, they can’t call that shuttle. If someone’s on the other side of town, they’re not safe necessarily to walk from point A to point B to access a program like that.

[00:01:12] If these clearance events are happening after intake, hours of intake, a lot of these shelter programs aren’t accessible.

[00:01:19] If we take someone’s shelter option, if they don’t have shoes, if they’re in a wheelchair, how do they get from point A to point B?

[00:01:27] These are real human rights concerns that we really need to be considering. And the organizations that we are advising right now are not necessarily making these considerations and I am talking to people on a daily basis during these extreme weather events that are navigating this and they don’t have resources.

[00:01:46] These are people who’s like, they’re getting hypothermia. They’re getting frostbite.

[00:01:53] They don’t have a shelter program that they can enroll in. They’re coming and asking for tents because their tents have been thrown away by law enforcement. They’re coming and asking for blankets because their blankets were lost in a clearance event.

[00:02:07] These are real people in our town. They’re citizens. They’re people that live here. They make up a very small proportion of our population, but they’re real people experiencing very real and raw things.

[00:02:19] And I am in a position constantly trying to answer questions: Where should people go? These hazardous weather events are called hazardous because they’re lethal. Are we really okay as a city and as a society saying it is okay to take someone’s only form of shelter?

[00:02:38] I just can’t sit with that. And as a person that’s been really actively working to try to resolve this crisis and to alleviate this on a daily basis: Why are we taking someone’s tent if they don’t have anywhere else to live?

[00:02:53] I… I am really struggling with this as a member of our city and as a Eugenian, that we have not taken the time to do due diligence and that I’m in a position like this, talking about this very publicly.

[00:03:11] Presenter: Last April, the Human Rights Commission recommended that the city take into account extreme heat, smoke from wildland fires, and extreme cold. The city has done nothing. Blake Burrell:

[00:03:22] Blake Burrell (Human Rights Commission): We put this on paper, got it approved by our commission. This is a year ago now and I’m in another winter spending my days talking to people who are struggling.

And I know we’re investing a lot in shelter programs. I know that we’re investing a lot in outreach services but like this is a lot. I’m struggling with this as a person and I don’t know what to tell people when they come to the door of organizations I work for and ask: ‘Where do I sleep tonight?’

[00:03:55] Two-hour notices are not ethical or humane practice. Two-hour notices, 24-hour notice, park rules that were put in place, those were not brought to the Human Rights Commission for review.

[00:04:09] This was a procedural decision made by a department that did not engage the Human Rights Commission. And I am looking and saying: This two-hour notice is not okay. It’s just not okay. We have people that are trying to survive and we cannot be doing this.

[00:04:32] And that’s beyond the hazardous weather protocols. This is a practice that’s happening year-round that within two hours, if you’re not there, all the stuff that you’re using to shelter can be removed and taken away.

[00:04:46] This is a really large human rights issue for me in this community. And I grapple with our ability as a city to call ourselves a ‘Human Rights City’ while a practice like this is in place.

[00:04:58] Can we say that we’re a ‘Human Rights City,’ and go to a person who is unhoused, if they’re not there, put a posting and then in two hours come and take their tent, their sleeping bag, their sentimental objects, their identification, their book bag, medications that are in that book bag, their wheelchair?

[00:05:19] Two-hour notices are not okay. They’re not okay. And why don’t we have places for people to go? Why are we telling people to move from point A to point B to point C, and why are we not engaging our Human Rights Commission in conversations about something like a two-hour notice? And then why are we, a year later, having a conversation about this? We talked about this last year at this time, and we’ve got people who are trying to survive.

[00:05:48] And I’m getting reports again saying, ‘Hey, we’re having clearance events. It’s causing people to have hypothermia.’ These are medical providers. These are people out doing street outreach and medicine. They’re trying to alleviate people. They’re telling us that, ‘Hey, this happened and they got hypothermia. Hey, this event happened. Hey, this person got frostbite.’

[00:06:12] And that is a municipal practice.

[00:06:13] And this time of year is really hard for anyone who’s trying to provide shelter and keep people alive, and the consequences are lethal. The consequences are losing a hand, losing toes, not being able to walk. Long-term chronic illness and disabilities come forth whenever people can’t survive on the streets during this time of year.

[00:06:33] Presenter: At the Human Rights Commission Jan. 21, Blake Burrell speaks out against city camp clearances in fatal weather conditions. In response, Central Services Director Mia Cariaga:

[00:06:46] Mia Cariaga (Eugene Central Services, director): Can I clarify? So, EPD doesn’t actually, they don’t ever clear any space. That is a different team. So law enforcement wouldn’t ever pick anything up.

[00:06:57] And then anything that occurs on private property, our protocol doesn’t apply to, because at that point it’s, you know, we’re looking at trespassing, criminal activity. So that’s, there is definitely a distinction there between what happens on private property, like the railroad property, which is owned by Union Pacific, or what happens in our public spaces.

[00:07:22] We have a public space team who works on anyone who is trying to, you know, sleep or live in a public space.

[00:07:31] I would like at some point—and I don’t know, they’re really, really busy—but it would be great if someone from that team could visit with you because this team is totally different than teams we’ve had in the past. I mean, these are folks who are committed to this population, care and worry about this population, share a lot of the concerns that Blake just voiced.

[00:07:51] And so they’re coming to this work from a really different place than others who have, at other times in our organization’s history, been tasked with carrying out this work. It’s a really passionate crew that are doing this work because they want to do this work and they want to take care of people and understanding that they can’t be in public spaces but wanting to make sure that they’re taken care of.

[00:08:16] But again there are two different—there are two different pieces here. There’s what occurs on private property and what occurs in public space.

[00:08:23] Presenter: At the Human Rights Commission Jan. 21, Mia Cariaga praises the public spaces team, which she says is ‘totally different than teams we’ve had in the past.’

[00:08:34] HRC Chair Blake Burrell hopes to meet with the city manager in the coming weeks to change a policy that he says is violating five separate human rights, including the right to own property.

[00:08:46] We followed up by interviewing street outreach workers. They named two EPD officers and alleged they are participating by slashing tents. We’ve asked the city for a response.

Image of frostbite courtesy Wikimedia Commons, by CheckDO – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.