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Task Force recommendations target getting transients off the streets.
Vagrancy
Group uses hard glove,
soft fist with vagrants
Two well-dressed women walk briskly through
Eugene’s Downtown Mall as daylight fades into darkness,
casually exchanging ideas about an upcoming meeting.
Suddenly, they lower their voices and quicken their
pace, trying to hurry by a group of shabbily-dressed tran
sients "hanging out" on the street corner.
The situation is a fairly common one in Eugene: the
homeless, even if harmless, produce fear in passersby.
It is this fear the city of Eugene is working to
eliminate. And the only way to eliminate the fear, say city
officials, is to eliminate its cause.
That's why, following a preliminary report by council
member Mark Lindberg, the City Council formed a task
force in January to research the city's vagrancy problem
and possible solutions.
Lindberg, who also is with the University's planning,
public policy and management department, helped the
council appoint 12 members to the Vagrancy Task Force.
And Sept. 12, after eight months of research, com
munity outreach and interviews, the task force completed
its task, offering the City Council a 16-page report recom
mending 24 ways for Eugene to deal with its homeless.
Is Eugene too attractive?
Although it's difficult to figure the number of
vagrants in Eugene — one report estimates between 500
and 4,000 — Lindberg says Eugene has a higher than
average transient population.
One reason for this, he says, is the beauty of the Nor
thwest, especially during summer months. Eugene, in
particular, may attract the homeless because it is close to
Interstate 5 and the railroad, and because the police
department and social services are "fairly civilized."
"It's kind of a blessing and a curse that we're nice
people," he says.
But Eugene's transients don't represent a large crime
factor, despite some misleading statistics, Lindberg says.
In its final report, the task force cites a Eugene Police
Department statistic that says 82 percent of "consump
tion" or alcohol-related crimes are committed by "tran
sients or street alcholics." And 26 percent of people
taken into custody for minor disturbances cannot give an
address or they give the address of the Mission, a local
shelter for the homeless, Lindberg says.
But he says that vagrants rarely are involved in "ma
jor crimes," and that "at least three-fourths" of violations
involving transients are for minor disturbances such as
drinking in city parks.
"We came to the conclusion that a segment of the
transient population — maybe 15 percent — were pretty
much criminals," Lindberg says.
But the other 85 percent are harmless.
"The fear that something is going to happen is
greater than the chance of it happening," he says.
That fear and the "physical blight" of wanderers
became the target of the task force.
A hard line with a soft touch
While trying to use force to eliminate those pro
blems, the task force also took heed to the problems of
the homeless. Since the project combines enforcement
with an increase in services for the homeless, it has been
called a "soft glove, hard fist" approach.
Because transients tend to congregate downtown,
many of the task force recommendations concentrate on
that area.
In fact, three suggestions target the city's two plasma
donor centers, where indoor waiting rooms often
overflow onto the sidewalk.
The recommendation to improve waiting-room
facilities already is paying off. Remodeling of the Hyland
Plasma Donor Center and construction of Lane Transit
District bus shelters downtown have "resulted in a
noticeable reduction in the number of pedestrians
stagnating on that corner," says the final task force
report.
The other two recommendations concerning donor
centers may be a little slower coming.
The report suggests requiring conditional-use permits
and licenses for proposed plasma centers before develop
ment. This would force center operators to meet specific
regulations and possibly to pay a fee. It might even pro
hibit them from operating in certain zones of the city.
That idea doesn't go over so well with Kim Bedell,
director of the Eugene Plasma Corporation.
"Some of the solutions I don't agree with because
I'm running a business here. I don't want to move. This
is a good location here," Bedell says.
The task force's final recommendations also deal
heavily with parks and camping areas.
As a result of one suggestion, the City Council ap
proved an ordinance July 11 prohibiting camping in parks
and public places.
The task force also recommended establishing low
cost or free public camping near Eugene and issuing per
mits for groups who want to provide "public services,"
such as free lunch programs, in public places.
And shelter facilities such as the Mission received the
group's support. This should take some transients off the
streets, the report predicts.
High hopes
Will the work of the task force prove helpful, or will
downtown mall customers and the rest of Eugene have to
continue dodging the city's transients?
So far, almost everyone involved with the project has
high hopes and positive expectations for its success.
The City Council praised the task force's work at its
Sept. 12 meeting, calling it "sensitive and constructive."
And Dave Fidanque, of the Lane County chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union, says the task force
Graphic by Shawn Bird
has been "very sympathetic to our concerns,"
The ACLU approached the task force because it was
worried certain recommendations might promote selec
tive enforcement.
One original task-force recommendation called for ar
resting vagrants instead of issuing citations. But the final
report dropped that suggestion, partly because of ACLU
complaints that it was unconstitutional, Fidanque says.
"We're going to continue monitoring the situation,
but in general, this final recommendation is a big im
provement over the initial recommendation," he says.
Lindberg has high hopes for the project, saying he
already has noticed positive results.
Reports from merchants and downtown customers
have signaled measured success there, he says. With the
improvements at the corner of 10th Avenue and
Willamette Street, seniors are less intimidated.
"You can drive down the street and see that it's dif
ferent," Lindberg says.
Story by Michele Matassa
Photo by Polly Kaplan
The task force hopes to erase the "physical blight” of
transients.
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