Poverty and Homelessness Board members seek accountability for deaths on the street

Presenter: 2024 featured the Supreme Court Grants Pass decision and back-to-back ice storms that revealed gaps in our ability to provide emergency shelter. Are we ready for another winter? The Lane County Poverty and Homelessness Board held an all-members meeting Nov. 21.

[00:00:18] Kris McAlister (PHB member): Hello, dear PHB members and members of the community. My name is Kris McAlister. We as a people very much value what you do as a county entity and as a charter county and a charter city.

I feel like my community has more need than what is represented in our current programming.

[00:00:41] When we dealt with the ice storm, we had to deal with things around the county apparatus and I personally as a provider reached out to the state through COAD to get help in Cottage Grove when there was not help provided from the county lens.

[00:01:00] And I am asking as someone as we go into the winter policies and into the winter extremes, that we look at how do we access federal and state options to serve our entire community.

[00:01:16] When we have people without oxygen, when we have people without the ability to charge their phones to get help from their counselors, from their prescribers, and to make and receive the calls that need to go to their next lens from the medical vulnerability lens, that is where we suffer.

[00:01:35] And whereas we as providers, as shelter providers have made room when there was no room afforded to us, we have taken in people who would have died, had we not done more with the community trust, I ask and implore you as the advisors to our county mechanism, as the voice to the state, to make room for all peoples in our community.

[00:02:00] The fact that we have churches who still push out gay, lesbian, trans, and other underidentified, underserved communities, I ask that you see their truth and make sure that they have a roof when it’s raining, when it’s freezing, and when the smoke is too much.

[00:02:20] I value my service with this body and I trust the staff members and the appointed members of this community to serve the needs that are not identified and to recognize where we are not doing enough.

[00:02:37] Richard Self (LEAGUE, Lived Experience Advisory Group for Unhoused Experience): In light of the recent decision from the Supreme Court on Grants Pass, I think it’s important for this body to know and to possibly act upon this, as Grants Pass was given that ruling and did, in fact, make it impossible to even step on public property if you’re homeless, let alone sit by or sleep on any public spaces. They did do that, but along with that, they did designate, they did designate four spaces where the unhoused could go.

[00:03:17] Yes, there’s rules and regulations and you can only stay so long in each space and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but the thing is they designated four spaces where unhoused people could go and not get ticketed or harassed or what have you.

[00:03:35] We don’t have any such designated space either in Eugene or Springfield. People are left to their own devices and the amount of sweeps and the amount of turmoil this has caused is unfathomable.

[00:03:51] This should be not left to stand and in light of what’s coming with this new administration of possible internment camps for the unhoused, I think we need at least one designated space in each city where the unhoused can go. And I don’t say this lightly. This really needs to be done.

[00:04:14] Presenter: (Later in the meeting)

[00:04:17] Richard Self (LEAGUE, Lived Experience Advisory Group for Unhoused Experience): I’ve said this before. I’ll say it again: Unless the political will changes and that climate changes, we will not get anything done whatsoever in the next 30 years or in the next three days. We’re not going to get anything done unless we change from a self-centered, self-interest community to a community-interest community.

[00:04:42] We need to have community interest all across the board, and if we’re not going to do these things, then we’re just talking to hear ourselves talk, then we’re not going to get anywhere.

[00:04:55] I would like to ask the electeds here that are on this board, the mayors or anyone else that would like to chip in: What are we doing? Are we actually looking into these vacant buildings? Has anyone taken a look at what could be done with these? Many of them are owned from out of state, out of the country. They’re part of a big giant corporate portfolio that is a tax write-off, some of these buildings. Who’s looking into all this?

[00:05:26] I mean, actually doing these things as opposed to just hearing ourselves talk is two different things and we need to change the political will or nothing’s going to change in 30 years. It hasn’t changed in the seven I have been part of these groups so far.

[00:05:47] And I know there’s a lot of advocates that have been around doing this for a lot longer. One of them is Martha Bryson, who’s done this for 40+ years and nothing has changed. We’re doing the same thing we’ve done since the time of the hobos. Does anyone want to take a look and see how statistically, we’re getting nowhere fast?

[00:06:09] Kris McAlister (PHB member): Our local municipalities tried to get on the right side of Grants (Pass) v. Johnson and set policies that harmed the sickest of our sick while not actually providing options for them. While we still consider cops as the way to fix our city policy while waiting for the county to save us, the same people are hospitalized, sent to prison, sent to jail, and then back on the streets with no accountability.

[00:06:37] So my biggest concern is that we keep talking about a stabilization center that’s moved two and three and four and five years down the road, while the same people we have known for the last decade are harmed.

[00:06:51] My biggest concern is that we continue to criminalize for the sake of the few housed people and the businesses who are harmed by the people, but we don’t have a safe place for people to be, which was the whole entire premise between Martin v. Boise. And our cities keep pushing it up to the state, to the state, to the state, to the state, to the county, to the county, to the county.

[00:07:16] And then when we advise as lived experience, when we advise as people with lived experience as homeless people, we are denied in our truths, whether it’s current or recent or in the past, the reality of our communities are not what are tasked.

[00:07:34] And so we can’t keep punishing the homeless and set draconian measures such as a $720 fine that is on a sliding scale, depending on whether or not the judge is in a good mood to help fix what we need to do.

[00:07:49] And so I believe in this work and I believe in the efforts. But the people who are the most chronic, the most needing of help are not the ones served. In the utilitarian method, they are the part that is not the most acceptable for the greatest good. And that’s why our people are dying in our neighborhoods.

[00:08:11] Richard Self (LEAGUE, Lived Experience Advisory Group for Unhoused Experience): I think, breaking back out the report that former Law Center lawyer Laurie Hauber did on the criminalization of homelessness is much appropriate at this time and except for the outdated numbers in the how much this all cost to continue down the same path that we’ve been going all this time, again, since the time of the hobos. We were using law enforcement to deal with the unhoused and it just hasn’t made a difference whatsoever. So we need to change how we’re doing this.

[00:08:53] And also I think it would be time not just to have lived experience people but people from the other side of the fence—those who are not advocates for any of this those who would not like to see a help for the homeless. We need to hear them and and speak with them so that we can generate a community, a community interest in these things

[00:09:21] And I think we should also keep the community as a whole informed about what we do. A lot of what we’re doing is not out there. And so the community still thinks that we can put the unhoused on a bus and send them to Cali. So we really need to keep those people who are on the outside who differ with us informed and even have the opportunity to speak on so that we are taking in all sides on this.

[00:09:54] Kris McAlister (PHB member): I respectfully disagree with Richard in that I feel like the housed community has had so much voice that people are dead because of it. And because of the fact that we continue to not meet the mark about what we need to the people who are in the immediate emergency, the people who the EMS of the both Springfield, Eugene, and South Lane community leave on the streets because they don’t like their attitude, because they don’t understand the values of what is harm reduction, and they are not held to follow the same protocols that we as providers are required to.

[00:10:31] I feel like we have heard so much truth that our shelters are dead, that our communities are left hanging and rely on outreach and push towards the CCOs and the county infrastructure and 211 more so than what is actually needed.

[00:10:47] If we actually defined community-based plans, we would be in a better situation. But there are dead people responsible only to the City Council of Cottage Grove who said that they believed in the people who were housed, not the people who were serving the people, the displaced social workers, the unheard prescribers, the unheard recovery agents, and the unheard shelter providers. We hear so much from the housed people who have no stance in this work that our people die while waiting for them to have work.

[00:11:23] So yes, we need to be an engaging community, but that’s what city council and county commissioners are for. Not what this board is for.

[00:11:31] Presenter: Responding to Kris later in the meeting:

[00:11:34] Richard Self (LEAGUE, Lived Experience Advisory Group for Unhoused Experience): I don’t know how else we can turn this from a self-interest community to a community-interest community without engaging those who have opposing views and sometimes drastically opposing views.

[00:11:50] I may be in agreement with Kris: This body might not be where we can do that. But unless we engage them, we’re going to have half the people or more that are going to be against everything we do.

[00:12:03] So with that said, the evidence of the political will of this city and county are evident in the fruits that they lay. So we’re waiting with bated breath, all this time, all this advocates for housing, some kind of housing, any kind of housing, what do we get? We get the new Riverfront District apartments with studios for $2,100 apiece. That’s the political will of this county and this city.

[00:12:33] That is where we’re at with this, where they can’t designate a place for the unhoused to go, but they can designate a new sports complex area that will be worked on later. So again, the political will is evident by its fruits. And by its fruits, we know them.

[00:13:01] Brittani Manzo (Brittani Manzo Consulting): I think the community has the opportunity to make some of these spaces, maybe not the whole board space, but under this umbrella, some space for some of the community organizing and political power-building. That’s what’s keeping us on track toward the 30-year vision is the idea of working together and (Kris, Richard) in a community-based way is the hope and plan here.

[00:13:23] So I appreciate everyone’s input. I’m going to pass it over to Josh for us to get into some of the system design clinic recommendations and see what resonates there. Josh, over to you.

[00:13:35] Josh Johnson (National Alliance to End Homelessness): Thank you, Brittani. And a powerful, powerful conversation. I think the energy for change in the room is palpable. And I think that what that, you know, with my optimistic view, that’s what leads change is speaking truth to power, continuously speaking from the heart.

[00:13:54] And I think this room for you all, I think change is possible. I believe one of the agreements that Brittani kind of led us to earlier was the belief in change, you know, and it’s hard. It’s scary. It’s unclear at times. It’s about healing from pain, even if somebody doesn’t say sorry.

[00:14:13] But in order to get to the place where, you know, very few people are experiencing homelessness, are dying on the street, as I heard, we have to believe in change. We have to be able to pivot to a vision where housing is for all in the community, no matter what they look like, no matter what their mental health status, no matter if they drink, whatever the substance use is, we should have housing for all.

[00:14:33] Again, focusing with the end goal in mind is ensuring that homelessness is rare, brief, and one time, right?

[00:14:41] So one of the things that we outlined as a need is we need to strengthen relationships and decision-making across all areas of the COC, right? We have to work collaboratively. We have to create systemwide buy-in, right?

[00:14:55] There’s been a lot of harm that’s been done. There’s been a lot of blaming of why we’re in this current predicament. There’s a lot of finger-pointing. There’s a lot of just a lack of clarity and why decisions are made. And I think there has to be a reckoning, a healing, a moment for us to really go forward, right?

[00:15:10] Because if not, it’s going to be very hard to sit in the same meeting and have a collaborative approach with, if there’s a deep, deeply-rooted pain that has been caused by maybe somebody sitting across. We have to have that open conversation. We have to lean into discomfort. …

[00:15:24] So how do we have conversations? I think knowledge is power. And knowledge is how we can transform our system. And that’s not just who’s getting funded now. It’s all folks in the community.

[00:15:33] We have to establish a system of housing problem-solving as we know that folks are experiencing homelessness for the first time (at least who haven’t been in the homeless system for the last two years) at a higher rate than we’ve seen before.

[00:15:44] Presenter: With comments on the strategic plan:

[00:15:48] Lucy Vinis (Eugene mayor, PHB member): (Lane County Housing Manager) Kate Budd and I have been sitting on a state sustainable shelter work group and so I do think there’s a piece here in terms of aligning with where the governor is going and what’s likely to happen… They’re looking at sustainable shelter options that are currently not generally supported in the Continuum of Care. So we should not lose track in our strategic plan that there’s significant shift in policy, expansion of policy direction at the state level.

[00:16:15] Terri Hsieh (PHB member): …You know, in my lifetime, if the system has not changed, nothing is going to change in our community, right? If we’re still working with the same resources, with the same barriers, with the same white supremacist values that are peppered in our systems, nothing is going to change.

[00:16:35] And so I like that we have, like, a bullet point that talks about eliminating barriers to housing policies and practices perpetuating racial inequity. But what’s the origin of that racial inequity? It’s the oppressive white supremacist system at hand. And we have to have a conversation, however uncomfortable it may make folks, of that. We have to acknowledge that’s the problem if we’re going to have any type of solution.

[00:17:03] Presenter: We also have to start holding elected officials accountable.

[00:17:08] Kris McAlister (PHB member): My city always pushes up to the county. The county pushes up to the state. The state says, ‘Why didn’t the county ask on behalf of your city?’ The county says, ‘Well, the city did not actually ask for your need.’ And so we as providers have to work in a vacuum 90% of the time.

[00:17:27] And so when we have our people dying, when we have our people struggling, when we’re waiting on the HRSN to roll out, but then they say, ‘We can’t do any flex funding for the next three months because we’re working on this,’ we as providers who are in the trenches, who don’t have electeds come see us, who do not work with us in the work but make the 10,000-(foot), 80,000-foot view that has nothing to do with our personal truth, that is what’s letting people die without recognition.

[00:17:58] I’ve got four dead people who are homeless on my mantle because nobody in our community could see them before they died.

[00:18:07] So I hear you and I see you, but there needs to be more accountability for our actual electeds and the people that they hire through the infrastructure.

[00:18:17] Presenter: Poverty and Homelessness Board members ask that officials be held accountable for deaths on the street as growing numbers of people are being reported as unhoused for the first time.