Sean C. Morgan
James “Jammers” Warrington proposed to the City Council last week that the city allow the establishment of a homeless camp on the old mill property located in the area between 22nd and 18th avenues and Tamarack Streets.
Warrington said he had collected about 120 signatures in support of the idea in a few days leading up to the regular council meeting held on Aug. 12.
“My petition is to set up a homeless camp, a tent city like other major towns have done, such as Springfield, Eugene, Salem, Portland, Seattle,” said Warrington, a transient. “I think a good place would be where we used to have an old camp, 18th and Tamarack, because the mill is still willing to allow us to use their barrels and their mill ends because it saves them money as long as we’re burning it.”
Warrington said there are around 45 homeless individuals in the area, people who have no place to go, without any viable way of finding some place to stay.
The location is in the 2200 block of Tamarack Street, said Police Chief Jeff Lynn. The business located there makes pallets, and Linn County owns the property.
“We’d be self-governing, meaning we would clean up after ourselves,” Warrington said. “We would not be defecating or urinating. Of course, we’ll have police assistance because they’re only 3½ blocks away from us.
“It also helps cut down on the expenses of the police having to bust illegal camps and clean up after them. If we were all centralized and located, the police and y’all and everybody would know exactly where we were at.”
“We can’t speak for private property or property owned by other people,” said Mayor Jim Gourley.
“This is just Step One to find out what I need to do,” Warrington said.
“We have some issues, charter issues, as well as ordinance issues,” Gourley said.
Ordinance issues include regulations regarding dwelling units and requirements for anything beyond seven days for camping in a tent, City Manager Craig Martin said.
“There’s some big issues that would have to be even talked about before we would start any process,” Gourley said. “If you’re talking about that property, that property is Linn County’s property, and they would need to be the ones to even bring that forward to us, I think.”
“You’re also potentially going to be looking at some zoning issues too because that property is not zoned for residential use,” Martin said. It is zoned for planned recreation and commercial.
“Most of the other places that are doing it, a lot of them are doing it in the county,” Gourley said. They’re doing it outside the city’s so they don’t have to deal with city ordinances.
“I just know the businesses are tired of people sleeping outside of their business, sleeping next to abandoned buildings, sleeping in people’s yards in some cases,” Warrington said. “I was just wondering, besides this, where’s my first step. This is my first step, but where’s my second step?”
“Essentially, it’s whether or not the city as an organization wants to look into establishing that type of use inside the city,” Martin said.
It will involve public meetings to see what the community wants to do, Gourley said.
Most of the other communities are trying to eliminate those and provide more permanent sheltering to get rid of the tent cities, Martin said.
A good example is what Eugene has done, said Robert Daniels Jr., a resident of Nandina Street, adding that Eugene residents seem happy with three tent cities the city established.
Eugene crunched the numbers, the cost to court system and law enforcement, he said.
“It’s cheaper for them to provide a Port-A-Potty and a dumpster than it was to write tickets, and it got a lot of them off the street,” Daniels said. Eugene has rules. Among them are no drugs, no urinating on the side of the road and no fighting. They have to use the dumpster to keep the garbage from the street.
Gourley said he thought the proposal was “a good first step.”
“I think we need to talk about some of these issues. I think there are things that happen that cause some of the problems that we have with the policing and other things that could be worked out better. And I think if we can work some of those things out, maybe we could go down a better path.”
“As most people know, a number of cities are trying to come up with answers for those who are homeless,” Lynn said. “Oftentimes with tent cities, problems are associated with that as well. There was one off on 22nd. We had a number camped there for a time on county property, and there were problems even with that that we were forced to deal with.
“My biggest concern is in a community of our size there’s really no other resources. The closest real resources for somebody is 25 miles away. We have limited ability to support that type of population.”
“Some of these things we’re struggling (with), we’re going to have to struggle with them as we grow as a community and as a city,” Gourley said. “How we get to deal with them is not always the way we want to deal with them. I know we’ll talk about it and see if there’s some ideas of what can be done.”
Gourley suggested he talk with Lynn more about ideas.
“I have to find some sort of private property,” Warrington told The New Era later. “I will try to contact Santiam River Club.”
People already camp and fish there, he said. “I’m just tired of being told where I can’t sleep. You don’t want us in front of your buildings sleeping or sleeping in your backyard.”
It will save money and will save lives, he said.
“I’ll go ahead and talk to the county too,” Warrington said. “I just think it makes sense all the way around.”