Blinded by the plight: Street homelessness ruins everything

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by Ted M. Coopman

We are vastly underestimating the moral and economic catastrophe of homelessness. With Eugene’s city budget in tatters and Lane County taking a draconian $7 million cut (about 50%) on state support for homeless services, we are moving in the wrong direction on homelessness. 

Sixty fewer beds mean 60 more people camping on Eugene’s sidewalks and in open spaces. Progress already had stalled and now we have shifted into reverse. We currently have a third of the shelter beds we need.

Ask a politician about homelessness and you get the same pat answer: “Homelessness is a complex problem.” Sure, obviously. 

But the glassy-eyed look you get from elected leaders and city managers when you start talking comprehensive solutions is mostly about the cost and somewhat about the liability considerations of dealing with people who refuse help. 

California finally is facing this Gordian Knot. Oregon needs to wake up and smell the human waste in neighbors’ alleys and community open spaces.

Lose-Lose

The moral catastrophe and epic failure of addressing the needs of the unhoused and their suffering have been the overwhelming focus of activists and the press. But a more compelling and relevant argument is the impact of street homelessness on the thousands who live, work, or own businesses in areas where most of the unhoused congregate—neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly lower-income, renters, and marginalized communities. 

The class implications are obvious and curiously ignored by many self-identified progressives. In practice, political leaders are forcing the working poor to suffer the costs of failing to adequately address the plight of the indigent poor. 

Businesses that are affected overwhelmingly employ these same neighbors and many in the struggling working and middle class. 

The financial burdens are extreme. This is important to consider because seriously addressing homelessness, as in the Eugene Chamber’s words, “To shift from our current state of managing our homeless crisis to truly making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring” would be hugely expensive. 

The massive price tag of seriously addressing the problem is only acceptable when you honestly calculate the exorbitant current and ongoing economic costs of managing the problem instead of solving it. When considering these externalized economic costs, let alone the social costs, the price tag of a solution becomes reasonable (if still unpalatable).

Between the private and public sectors, we are spending more every year than it would take to put Lane County’s unhoused into managed shelters.

Fortress Eugene

The local economy may be struggling, but it’s a boom time for fence companies as homeowners and businesses fortify their properties. 

We have nine churches in Jefferson Westside. You cannot simply open a door and walk into any of them. Two of our churches on West 8th Avenue have a combined investment of over $100,000 in fencing and locked gates. 

Early Childhood CARES, which provides early intervention and childhood special education to infants, toddlers, and preschool-age children (free for qualifying children) in Lane County has a massive metal barrier across its property that was demanded by clients and staff. 

César E. Chávez Elementary put up a fence across a decades-old access point to the Fern Ridge Path (closed when school is in session) due to unhoused behavior issues, trash, and worse. 

The 52 acres of Lane Events Center is fenced, closing off through north/south access for pedestrians and cyclists via Monroe creating a huge barrier in the middle of the neighborhood. 

These formerly friendly, open spaces and places now resemble prisons and often at night are lit up like one. You can read a newspaper at midnight in the middle of West 8th Avenue by New Frontier Market, a small mom-and-pop operation that nearly has been put out of business several times because of unhoused theft, vandalism, threats of violence against owners and staff, and drug use on its property.

Exclusionary infrastructure

We are in the process of completely rebuilding our public and private infrastructure at the cost of tens of millions of dollars primarily to deter homeless people from trespassing or damaging facilities.

Recently, city leaders have determined that pedestrian injuries and fatalities on Highway 99 near St. Vincent de Paul’s Eugene Service Station are unacceptable and are likely to spend millions of dollars to make that transit corridor safer. 

Called “Death Row” by one homeless man, many pedestrians are in this area unhoused. People seeking services cross the highway while in a mental health crisis, dealing with drug addiction, or just burdened by untreated chronic health conditions from life on the streets. Police, emergency services, and hospital emergency rooms are stretched to the limit in large part due to addressing the daily emergencies of homeless people.

Eugene’s Parks and Open Space just purchased a new Utility Terrain Vehicle (UTV) to access natural areas and bike corridors such as the Fern Ridge and Ruth Bascom Path Systems. The reason for spending about $30,000 was to improve responses to illicit activity and support cleanup efforts. 

According to the city, the UTV enables the Illicit Activity Team to more effectively address camping and conduct debris cleanups in these areas. Cleaning up after homeless encampment costs Public Works more than $300,000 a year. The Groundhog Day experiences of city and county staff are devastating for morale.

On a more personal level, a neighbor had a homeless man walk into their home via their back door. They did not have a secured backyard and now are looking to spend thousands of dollars they really cannot afford to build yet another fence. Another neighbor spent thousands of dollars to landscape their parking strip to keep people from pitching tents on it and still another spent several thousand dollars to bring in large rocks to deter camping in their alley.

Moral corrosion

As a neighbor who sold their home and fled in response to unhoused behaviors put it: “I was the guy who was always ready to help. If I saw someone prone on the street I would be there seeing if they needed help. But at a certain point you just weave around or step over people. I don’t like becoming that guy.”

For those of us who regularly walk and ride on our streets or trails it is not unusual to dodge piles of trash, see people immobile in a “fentanyl slump” or simply passed out, and veer around people with stolen shopping carts and bike trailers overflowing with possessions blocking the paths and underpasses.

We see knots of people waiting around for a drug dealer, having screaming fights, or simply yelling and cursing in public and at all hours. Much like car alarms, we learn to tune them out.

This builds up a social and emotional callousness that corrodes society. We lose our compassion and are simply angered and annoyed for having someone else’s trauma foisted upon us. We are exhausted finding possessions taken from our yards and porches as well as clothes, trash, and worse left behind for us to deal with. 

I know of a dozen neighbors who loved our neighborhood and neighbors but simply had had enough and moved. Consider for a moment what it would take to get you to involuntarily sell your home and all the emotional trauma and time that would go into leaving your neighborhood and community. 

Public spaces become unwelcoming, kids are afraid to ride their bikes or walk to school, and employees are fearful of leaving work late. 

A neighbor recently recounted how he was approached by a grocery store cashier who asked him to walk her to her car because of the group of homeless men loitering in the parking lot. To be clear, the situation in my neighborhood has improved overall, but issues remain and any success is tenuous and dependent on state funding.

These experiences do not show up on government balance sheets, but the costs are real and ongoing. As a society, we simply cannot survive the coarsening and isolation of hostile public spaces and insecurity of our homes. It exacerbates our epidemic of loneliness. It is not just a bad feeling; it damages both individual and societal health.

Homelessness is as much a catastrophe as any earthquake or wildfire. We need to start addressing it in the same fashion. I will lay out some suggestions in “Part 2 – Blinded by the Plight: X Marx the Spot.”

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Western Exposure is a semi-regular column that looks at issues and challenges from a West Eugene perspective – a perspective that is often ignored or trivialized by city leadership and influential groups and individuals largely based in south and east Eugene. 

Western Exposure rejects the fauxgressive party line, performative politics, and “unicorn ranching” policy in favor of pragmatism focused on the daily experiences of residents and small businesses in Eugene—and West Eugene in particular.

Ted M. Coopman has been involved in neighborhood issues since 2016 as an elected board member and chair of Jefferson Westside Neighbors and has 30+ years experience as an activist and community organizer. In a 2025 national competition, JWN’s neighborhood e-newsletter was awarded first place and its print newsletter awarded third place.

He earned a Ph.D. in Communication (University of Washington) and served on the faculty at San Jose State University from 2007 to 2020. Ted’s research on social movements, activist use of technology, media law and policy, and online pedagogy has been published and presented internationally and he taught classes ranging from research methodology to global media systems.

He and his spouse live in Jefferson Westside with an energetic coltriever and some very demanding and prolific fruit trees.