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Advocates discuss using proposed City Hall funds to help the homeless
• Close on the heels of the news that conservative
Councilor George Poling was stepping down from
the Eugene City Council, longtime conservative
Lane County Commissioner Faye Stewart
announced his departure from the Board of
Commissioners. Appointments for replacements
will be made in April, and the replacements will
probably reflect their predecessor’s right-leaning
values, but here’s to hoping that these transitions
leave some openings for electing progressives who
prioritize the environment, human rights and
helping those in need.
• The Trump administration is making the
Watergate scandal look like a tempest in a teapot.
How much longer can the Teflon Cheeto hold on?
• Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, former state
treasurer, is a political leader we’re watching with
hope. The Oregonian reported recently that he led
a group of mayors, mostly from the Portland area, to
lobby the Legislature on help for the homeless.
Wheeler’s message: “Local government in America
right now is the dumping ground for all of society’s
problems. To be honest, we’re not going to take it
anymore.”
• Tom Giesen’s byline showed up frequently in
Eugene Weekly over the years, usually addressing
the looming specter of climate change on our letters
and opinion pages. His family tells us Giesen’s
byline will appear no more. Giesen passed away
March 4. Giesen was an adjunct research associate
in the University of Oregon’s Public Planning, Policy
and Management Department and had master’s
degrees in forest ecology and creative writing.
Giesen’s Celebration of Life will be noon-3 pm
Saturday, April 15, at the McKenzie River Ecolodge
in Vida. His family tells us, “We will have brownies
and cheese, his favorites, and invite anyone who
would like to attend to share stories of him with all of
us. People are also invited to bring food to share, if
they like. We may be outdoors a bit and walk down
to the river so folks should dress accordingly.”
• The Oregon Arts Commission this week
announced $25,670 in grants to Eugene arts
organizations. Recipients include Lane Arts Council,
$6,000 to support Fiesta Cultural; Eugene
Symphony, $7,000 for a program to bring music to
people who experience barriers to cultural
participation; Eugene-Springfield Youth Orchestras,
$5,700 for its String Academy program; and the
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, $6,970 for the
Club de Arte para Mamás (Mothers’ Art Club). About
a third of the arts commission’s funding comes from
the National Endowment for the Arts, which
President Trump’s proposed budget would abolish.
• It’s encouraging to see the Home Energy Score
program get attention and funding in Eugene. The
national initiative is being pursued locally by the UO
Office of Sustainability and its Director Steve Mital,
who is also an EWEB commissioner. Mital talked
about his Home Energy Score Pilot Program
Partnership at a recent monthly meeting of the
Eugene Sustainability Commission. UO students
have completed 93 out of 240 assessments of
Eugene rental homes with the purpose of scoring
energy efficiency. Portland last year adopted a
Home Energy Score Policy that quantifies residential
energy efficiency for buyers and sellers, and also
requires disclosure to renters at time of lease.
Eugene renters “are often unaware of energy costs”
when they move in, Mital says. They find out later
when they get their power bills. Awareness and
disclosure, he says, can encourage thousands of
landlords to do energy upgrades and allow potential
renters to make more informed decisions. The city
of Eugene provided $10,000 toward cost of the local
pilot program.
8
March 23, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
ccording to the city of Eugene, roughly 3,000
people in the community have no home to return
to on any given night, and many others are on the
brink of becoming homeless.
Yet for the past four years, the city has poured
money, time and energy into designing a new City Hall that
has yet to come to fruition, while the unhoused continue
spending their nights on the streets.
The Eugene City Council voted
in 2013 to demolish the old City Hall
building citing as its reasons that
it could no longer serve Eugene’s
growing population as well as failing
to meet new building code require-
ments. Opponents of the teardown
argued for a remodel. The council
earmarked $18 million for the new
City Hall project.
The city has already spent close to
$6 million on a design it may not use
and has proposed adding another $8.7
million to the budget from a legal set-
tlement with Comcast. If passed, the
HEATHER SIELICKI
Comcast money would bring the City
Hall budget to more than $26 million,
with about 20 percent of it already spent.
The City Hall project currently sits in limbo as a land
swap with Lane County and deed restriction on the Park
Blocks are negotiated.
The city has done some things to provide shelter for
the homeless, such as investing money in the homeless car
camping and rest stop pilot programs, but local homeless
advocates say just a fraction of the $26 million would go
miles in terms of providing sufficient services and shelter
for the community’s unhoused.
Heather Sielicki, president of Southeast Neighbors, says
the city should set aside the Comcast money for a public
shelter. And while deliberating on plans for constructing a
new City Hall, Sielicki says the city should use the empty
lot to shelter the homeless in the meantime.
“It’s frustrating to see the City Hall site sitting vacant
when there is the capacity for us to immediately offer shel-
ter to those who don’t have it,” Sielicki says. “Why can’t
they stay at the City Hall site? We know that’s not going to
get resolved anytime soon.”
A
Councilor Emily Semple says it seems “unreasonable” to
worry about building a City Hall given the “incredible needs”
the city has right now, such as providing affordable housing
and shelter for the homeless. She says it costs the city about
$70,000 per year to rent spaces around town in the absence
of a City Hall, but says she is not convinced that using the
Comcast money toward a city hall is the best use of the one-
time money.
Sue Sierralupe, the clinic man-
ager of Occupy Medical, says the
city can ill afford not to have a pub-
lic shelter. She says several church
buildings currently for sale could
be used for a shelter and would fall
well within the budget of $26 mil-
lion.
Others say operating and main-
taining a public shelter would be
costly, recommending instead a se-
ries of smaller-scale fixes that can
be implemented quickly.
Terry McDonald, executive di-
rector of the St. Vincent de Paul So-
ciety of Lane County, says he favors
the expansion of programs focused
on moving people from public shelters and into housing, such
as rest stops and dawn-to-dusk camping, which are far more
cost-effective than traditional brick-and-mortar shelters.
McDonald also recommends putting more money into
preserving mobile home parks, which cost about $40,000 per
space, and Housing First options, which place people in per-
manent housing quickly while also providing them with the
support to keep it. St. Vincent de Paul recently purchased the
Saginaw Trailer Park, just north of Cottage Grove.
Pastor Dan Bryant, executive director of SquareOne Vil-
lages, says it will take “an effort equal to that of City Hall”
to fix the current shortage of shelter and affordable housing,
adding that he knows this will not happen anytime soon. In
the interim, Bryant says, the city could modify its camping
ban to allow sleeping in designated public places and provide
grants to neighborhoods willing to host their own rest stops.
EW asked city spokesperson Jan Bohman to comment on
the idea of spending money on a shelter instead of a new City
Hall, but did not receive a response before press time.