Dr. Bruce Murray was livid. He sat inside a van at a new city-designated site for homeless Grants Pass residents, holding draft copies of a letter he planned to give medically fragile people with complex health problems.
The letter said they should not move to a different site as instructed by a new city ordinance requiring people move from one sanctioned site to another every week. The temperature reached 103 degrees later that day Sept. 5.
“The likelihood of serious injury due to their limited mobility, intolerance of temperature extremes and physical, and possibly behavioral health issues is too great to warrant the risk,” the letter said.
Murray’s concern was not theoretical. Chad Patty, a 43-year-old homeless resident with multiple diagnoses, went to the emergency room with severe gastrointestinal issues on Aug. 21. The hospital discharged him back to a local park Aug. 23, where Patty said police soon told him he had 20 minutes to move to one of the designated sites.
NEWS: Grants Pass scrambles to meet humanitarian standards at new outdoor homeless sites
“They really did nothing for him but send him back to a very hot, blank slate campground at that point with absolutely no shade and inadequate water when I saw him,” Murray, the Mobile Integrative Navigation Team, or MINT, internist told Street Roots.
Patty moved to the J Street site, a shadeless concrete and gravel lot at the edge of downtown Grants Pass — one of two places the city allows homeless residents to sleep. By the morning of Aug. 25, Patty’s health was deteriorating. Dangerously dehydrated with high blood sugar, Patty could not wheel himself over the gravel to the outhouses, so he used a garbage bag for a bathroom. He passed out, woke up again, and was unable to see his phone to call for help, due to his condition.
A MINT volunteer, Charles Utley, happened to see him and immediately called Murray, who provided emergency care. MINT volunteers paid for two nights in a motel room so Patty could recover.
“It's just a blessing from God and from these individuals that they were out there for me, and I feel that they literally saved my life, brother,” Patty said. “If it wasn't for them, I'm pretty sure I would have died.”
Patty was not alone in his experience. Another woman said the hospital discharged her to recover in a hotel for two days, but she was back to J Street shortly thereafter. She and a friend huddled closely to the fence where a narrow patch of shade slowly disappeared. Two puppies arrived at a nearby tent as Cassy Leach, MINT cofounder and nurse, ran outside the fence to provide medical care to a patient’s leg. Another man sat in a chair, drinking and muttering.
“That’s how bad things are,” Leach said. “He doesn’t drink.”
‘Unconscionably bad circumstances’
Grants Pass opened two sanctioned sites for homeless residents Aug. 23 and gave people 24 hours notice to leave the parks.
One site is on a dead end on J Street, beside the railroad tracks behind a Home Depot and adjacent to a local semi-truck repair company. Dust wafted across the lot from a neighboring landscaping supply business. The other site is on A Street, directly across from City Hall.
The city created the sites in response to a favorable ruling in its eponymous U.S. Supreme Court case, and, in their telling, to align with ORS 195.530, or HB 3115, the Oregon law requiring local regulation of homelessness to be “objectively reasonable.”
Emboldened by the Supreme Court decision, the city may ultimately be a road map for other Oregon cities, many of which are led by officials calling for state law changes in the upcoming legislative session. If the Oregon Legislature decides to tweak the law, it could either remove protections for homeless residents or clarify what basic humanitarian rights define “objectively reasonable.”
Roxy Mayer, Gov. Tina Kotek’s press secretary, said Kotek, who co-sponsored HB 3115 as Speaker of the Oregon House in 2021, maintains support for the law’s requirement that a city choosing to regulate “survival activities” must be reasonable “and take into account the resources available to houseless individuals and the impact of the regulations on people experiencing homelessness.”
Kotek’s office, however, refused to say if the governor believes Grants Pass is adhering to the law or has contacted the Oregon Department of Justice about Grants Pass. Kotek’s office also did not respond to Street Roots’ follow-up question asking what her message is to the homeless Grants Pass residents hoping she would ensure cities follow the law.
To the city of Grants Pass, the sites provide a place for homeless residents to go, thereby providing legal cover for the city’s threats of fines and jail time for people caught sleeping elsewhere in the city or refusing to pack up and move between the sites each week.
Advocates, some of whom worked as medical staff in refugee camps around the world, said the material conditions inside the camps reveal a humanitarian crisis as the city renounces any standard of living for its most vulnerable residents.
“These are disabled people being forced to live in unconscionably bad circumstances,” Murray said. “Somebody should care about that. All we can do is advocate for their care and safety.
This isn't political, this is medical. This is intolerable at this point, there's been no real communication, no help.”
The city argues state law requires it to provide a place for people to go — and nothing more. When MINT showed up the first day, the newly opened sites had no shade and no drinking water. The city later provided four outhouses to J Street, four handwashing sinks and a $29,000, 24-hour surveillance tower observable by the Grants Pass Police Department. A Street, roughly a quarter the size, has half as many outhouses and no surveillance tower, as the site is in view of the police station.
All other survival materials, including shade, water and ice, are left to MINT, a few other local organizations, and the residents forced to live on site — many of whom are elderly, disabled or both.
‘Now we can’t be mean’
Grants Pass City Council is caught between the Supreme Court ruling it’s constitutional to punish homeless residents for sleeping in public, and the reality of needing to address people’s basic needs or live with the consequences of not doing so if it chooses to prohibit its residents from doing so themselves.
In a Sept. 4 meeting, housed residents and City Council members blamed an array of suspected causes for its current crises, including Measure 110’s temporary decriminalization of drugs, state lobbyists’ attempts to reduce proactive policing’s racial impacts, Oregon’s sanctuary state status and state laws providing a framework for local regulation of homeless residents.
“Due to this state law, House Bill (3115) and 3124 — they've only made it worse,” Dwayne Yunker, Grants Pass city councilor, said. “Now we can't be mean, we have to allow them to rest. So, that has caused another problem. Every time we create laws, probably causes two or three other problems.”
City Council declared a state of emergency in that meeting, amending municipal code to align with the park exclusion order process for the temporary sleeping locations. That means residents will be allowed to stay at the designated sites — with an eight-by-eight footprint and six feet between each tent — for one week before police give them 72-hours to move to another site, and vice versa. The council left room for “officer discretion,” saying officers may choose when and who they enforce the rules against.
A renewed sense of patience
“We’re still in the education and warning phase,” Josh Nieminen, GPPD Sergeant told Street Roots Sept. 6.
Nieminen patrolled the local parks the morning of Sept. 6, first at A Street, caddy corner from the police station. He warned residents he will charge them with theft if he sees them with shopping carts, and told people to “tighten up” any “scattered rubbish” around their tent — a familiar phrase for people at risk of a $295 fine for the violation over the past few years.
As he drove through Riverside Park, Nieminen talked about the impacts of Measure 110, saying it took away the leverage police needed to compel people into treatment.
“The criminal charges must be worse than it feels to get off drugs,” he said.
Oregon drug laws changed Sept. 1, after the Legislature decided to alter voter-approved Measure 110 and make possessing a controlled substance a misdemeanor. Under the new law, funding for treatment services will continue as it did with the seminal Measure 110.
It took 15 months between Measure 110 going into effect in 2021 and the end of the first round of funding in 2022. Like many elected officials, Yunker, who is running for Oregon House District 3, urged a renewed sense of patience in the Sept. 4 council meeting.
“I'm not saying it's going to change like that because we know it's going to take a long time to fix the damage we did,” Yunker said.
A host of local service providers worked in an alternative stream, providing harm reduction, outreach and St. Vincent de Paul lunches for people in need of resources at J Street, as they do every Thursday.
“All of these agencies here in Grants Pass, we're really trying to help the people and push for them to get the help they need and to be able to live a better life,” Brandi Fogle, Max’s Mission regional manager, told Street Roots.
Fogle, who lost her 24-year old fiance to an overdose, said harm reduction provides safety both to those who use drugs and the broader community.
“It's dear to my heart, you know, because I wasn't able to save him,” Fogle said. “I was saved, and I've been able to save people since, and I've been able to train other people who have saved people.”
Max’s Mission and the HIV Alliance both provide walk-in needle exchanges and safe disposal in local parks. Those relationships are imperative to addressing addiction over the long term, Fogle said.
“People that use harm reduction services, in the numbers, it shows more people seek services, right?” Fogle said. “But we have to gain that trust, and that takes time.”
Grants Pass community members waved as Neiminen drove by, as if he was a local celebrity. At J Street, Nieminen stopped at tents, and engaged in warm conversation, mostly answering anxious questions about whether each site’s condition was worthy of a penalty. Nieminen said he didn’t see a lot of people with disabilities or mobility devices, adding that well-meaning advocates may be exaggerating how many people are unable to move.
By Sept. 11, the warm conversation and education phase appeared to be over. Officers ticketed some J Street residents — including people with disabilities — $75 for “utilization of open city park space” without notice, giving everyone 72-hour notices to leave, according to a citation obtained by Street Roots.
That may become a legal issue. The Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, maintains specific requirements for governments to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities. There is a tension between the formal, medical definition of a disability and the informal discretion offered to police officers.
State and local governments must “make reasonable modifications to policies, practices, and procedures where needed to make sure that a person with a disability can access the state/local government’s programs, services, or activities,” according to the ADA website.
Not an emergency
Not wanting to deal with the threat of penalties, an increasing number of homeless residents started moving out of town to land owned by Josephine County or the Bureau of Land Management. Advocates continue building relationships with people living outside of the city limits, particularly at a place called Devil’s Slide — a three mile walk down the railroad tracks from J Street, deep in the woods past a wealthy Grants Pass neighborhood.
The line between the city and county carries political complications as well. In late February 2023, Josephine County declined to declare a state of emergency which could unlock millions of dollars in state homelessness funding as part of Kotek’s Executive Order 23-02.
Grants Pass City Council unanimously voted to declare a state of emergency March 1, 2023, and Mayor Sara Bristol sent a subsequent letter to Kotek’s office March 8, 2023 requesting funding.
“The fact of the matter is that the City is overrepresented with the number of homeless individuals in the County and does not have adequate resources to continue addressing the critical services and infrastructure necessary to humanely serve the homeless population,” Bristol said.
Josephine County declined to route the letter to OEM, as the process required, according to a March 10, 2023 email from Augustus Ogu, Grants Pass city attorney, to City Council.
Vanessa Ogier, Grants Pass council president, said the funding could have helped initiate a low barrier homeless shelter, adding the city struggled with each attempt at creating a local shelter since 2021. She said City Council had opportunities, but has been unsuccessful in negotiating and investing in a low-barrier shelter.
“It’s hard to say if this council would at this point,” Ogier said.
However, with state funding comes more responsibility, complicating the dynamic between local governments uninterested in service provision and the requirements embedded in state law. State-funded shelters are subject to the same requirements as federally funded shelters, according to James Kwasnik, Oregon Housing and Community Services communications coordinator. That includes ensuring the buildings are structurally sound and the sites have access to basic amenities, including heat, electricity and restrooms.
“Progress only lives up to its full potential when livability and quality standards are not sacrificed,” Kwasnik said.
No one will save us
Mayer said the state only regulates state-funded shelters with established habitability standards to serve as a model for all shelter operators, while non-state funded shelters are subject to requirements set by the funder.
That leaves homeless residents with little more than platitudes from elected officials and few options for improving their condition.
“There is currently no statewide law that requires licenses or sets standards for shelters funded by other entities like municipalities, churches, or non-profits,” Mayer said.
Asked if she was concerned about the civil rights of homeless residents enduring the conditions in Grants Pass, Mayer said Kotek “strongly believes in protecting every Oregonian’s safety and civil rights.”
“She expects cities and counties to protect every resident, regardless of their ability to afford a permanent home,” Mayer said.
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