Scott Swanson
It sure was good to see city workers clearing away the blackberries and leveling the nearly three acres of land the county has donated to the Family Assistance and Resource Center for use as a center for Sweet Home’s homeless population.
It appears this is the home stretch for a process that has been a little messy, perhaps unnecessarily so, but will be worth it in the end.
As noted in our story on page 1, local high school construction students have gotten involved in this effort, building “Conestoga Huts” that will provide shelter for houseless individuals, some of whom have lived in the Sweet Home area for years – in doorways, on sidewalks, under bridges, in parks, in the woods, etc.
The move to locate the homeless in a particular spot, designated as a location where they can find shelter and services, is not only a compassionate move by the Sweet Home community, it is also practical and astute.
The Church of the Nazarene parking lot and the space behind the old City Hall were both intended as temporary solutions to an ongoing problem and they were problematic. However, although some neighbors and businesses complained about odors and messiness, and police call numbers went up to those locations while they were occupied, despite those downsides, overall, those camps worked reasonably well.
The New Era faces the 1300 block of Main Street and for years our staff has witnessed multiple homeless individuals who basically lived downtown, sometimes spending the night in our own doorway. While the City Hall and Nazarene encampments were operating, the flow of homeless individuals through downtown slowed to a trickle, almost nil.
Giving these folks a place to stay, where they have ready access to services and other necessities, benefits just about everyone – particularly if it’s a supervised operation, as the new one will be.
As we’ve reported previously, recent federal court rulings require the city to have a designated location to which police can refer people they’re trying to remove from said doorways, bridges, parks, etc. Bottom line: Officers cannot tell someone to go somewhere else if they don’t give them somewhere to go.
Sure, this is costing the city money, but it isn’t costing us what it could be.
Thanks to the FAC, which has agreed to run the shelter and which agreed to take possession of the property donated by the county after the city backed out, this is going to be less expensive to local taxpayers than it could be. Plus, FAC personnel know what they are doing in handling people with the significant needs that many of the homeless exhibit.
While the new location may not be perfect, it’s about as good as it’s going to get for Sweet Home residents – reasonably accessible from public transit drop-offs but not abutting neighborhoods with large numbers of residences. It will be fenced, and it will be staffed 24-seven. And it will be run by people who, again, are very experienced at addressing the issues faced by the homeless.
We realize that this will be FAC’s first go at running a shelter, and the city will still pay for night-time security, but this shapes up to be a better situation than either of the previous camps. There will be some bumps in the road, a learning curve, maybe, but this looks like a viable solution to a real problem.
Sweet Home residents should appreciate the patience and farsightedness displayed by county commissioners, who have stayed the course when the city exhibited last-minute qualms – badly timed in some instances. The commissioners made it clear they wanted the Sweet Home community to benefit from that land – if not the city, at least someone who was capable of putting it to good use.
Anyone who’s been paying attention to this situation knows that the Sweet Home facility will be modeled after another in Walla Walla, Wash., which has turned heads as a successful solution to a problem that nearly every community in Oregon is dealing with.
There will likely be glitches and this isn’t going to be perfect, but having a well-ordered location to which we can refer people in need is a lot better than what we had a few years ago, which was blankets on sidewalks.