After latest court ruling, homelessness group looks for the positive

Presenter: At the Homelessness and Poverty Work Group of the Eugene Human Rights Commission June 3, sharing one final announcement, Richard Self.

Richard Self: The Eugene Weekly focused on a discussion that we’ve had many times in this group: The city of Eugene for four years has been skirting a state law that requires unhoused people camping in public to receive a 72-hour notice and the city and police found a way to go around all the laws that were protective. Said one homeless person, age 56: ‘They found a way to criminalize homelessness.’

[00:00:33] And the law says, and we’ve discussed this many times, that 72-hour notice is required before removal of camps that are ‘established.’ So there was no definition. So city officials made up their own definition deciding any tent that had not been up for at least a day was not an established camp.

[00:00:58] Judge Deborah Velure found loopholes in the law that allow city workers in many cases, to keep clearing homeless encampments without regard to the 72-hour notice law. Eugene Weekly just highlighted all of that, and I just wanted to bring that to our attention.

[00:01:15] Presenter: HRC Commissioner Blake Burrell:

[00:01:17] Blake Burrell (HRC): Yeah. Thank you for doing so. And yeah, an ongoing conversation and we’ve been really explicit, that we view that practice to be a violation of human rights, and I wish that we were listened to and that that practice ended.

[00:01:39] And that when that original Catalyst Journalism Project came out, indexing those two-hour notices and just the depth to which those have been utilized to clear individuals who are trying to establish an encampment—what a horrendous practice.

[00:01:56] So I appreciate you bringing that to this group, and I’m glad that there’s more attention happening on a public level to the impact of that. And it doesn’t sound like their rights have been protected or validated.

[00:02:10] Richard, I don’t know if you have a—you sometimes end with a positive anecdote and I don’t know if you have anything of that nature either.

[00:02:17] Richard Self: Yeah, I do.

[00:02:19] Blake Burrell (HRC): I knew I could count on you!

[00:02:22] Richard Self: This is a firsthand account from a woman who is, you know, well-to-do and employed, but kept track of a homeless person and his dog while she was at work during the day. So she said:

There was a homeless man who camped in the covered garage of where my office was located. You’d see him huddle down for the night, along with his little dog, a small, scruffy little terrier mix.

[00:02:50] And when I walked through the garage on my way to lunch, I would often check to see where he was and bring a burger and a drink. He tore the sandwich in half. One half he ate and gave the other half to his dog.

[00:03:02] I started bringing him a bag of dry dog food every month, and he took great pains to keep the dog food dry.

[00:03:10] His little dog rode in the child seat in the grocery car whenever they went to the store. One especially cold winter morning, I noticed the dog was missing and the man was seemingly utterly forlorn.

[00:03:25] I went to the shelter because it was bitterly cold and explained how the city rounded up homeless and took them to a shelter because it was bitterly cold and took his dog away from him.

[00:03:39] They took her to a shelter with no license, no rabies vaccination, and no tags. She was appalled. She said: I took the morning off. I picked him up from the garage and drove him to the shelter where we asked to look for the little lost dog.

[00:04:00] When we found her, she put up such a racket of pure joy, seeing him yipping, yelping wiggling uncontrollably, paws squeezed between the chain links, and his fingers stroking her little face.

[00:04:15] I paid for the license, basic shots and retrieval fee, and rode back in silence as he was hugging the dog so tight, I thought he was going to break her when we got out. I told her to keep her safe and he hugged me and made his dog give him a smooch and thanks and hurried off to where he had hidden his cart.

[00:04:36] I understand, she says, the need to keep the soul safe. But taking his one undeniable friend, while legally founded, was gut-wrenchingly wrong on so many other levels. Any act of kindness can change lives, no matter how great or small.

And that was a Facebook post from a friend of mine.

[00:05:03] Blake Burrell (HRC): Thanks for that positive anecdote, Richard. I appreciate you bringing that lens.

[00:05:10] Presenter: Richard Self likes to end the meetings of the Homelessness and Poverty Work group with an uplifting story.