Eugene weekly., July 06, 2017, Page 11, Image 11

NEWS
BY CORINNE BOYER
NEWLY ADOPTED CITY BUDGET INCLUDES
$1 MILLION FOR SHELTER
The ongoing debate over solving homelessness in Eugene
O
n June 26, the city of Eugene’s 2017-2018 pro-
posed budget, presented by City Manager John
Ruiz, was adopted by Eugene City Council.
Before approving the budget, the City Council
amended the budget to include $1 million to fund
a homeless shelter from a settlement the city received from
Comcast.
Twylla Miller, city budget and analysis manager, tells
EW via email, “The original budget did not contain money
for a shelter.”
Funding for a shelter in Eugene is critically needed,
as the city does not have a shelter that can accommodate
people struggling with substance abuse or address a major-
ity of the unhoused population. While the debate over how
to provide for the nearly 3,000 people the city estimates
are living on the streets, in parks, wooded areas and under
overpasses persists, $17.85 million is designated for the
construction of a new City Hall.
Except, currently, the total $17.85 million is no longer
available. In March, Eugene Weekly reported the city has
spent nearly $6 million on plans for a City Hall that may
not be used.
While the city has wasted money on the City Hall proj-
ect, City Councilor Emily Semple says none of the Com-
cast settlement funds have been designated to the project as
of now. “I am not convinced that we need a new City Hall
right now,” Semple says. “I’m so disappointed we took
down our old City Hall, but it’s gone.”
Semple says she hears people constantly saying the city
isn’t doing enough to address homelessness. “Well, every-
thing we need to do costs money. Like most people, the
city is short on money,” she says. “So we decided to al-
locate the one million dollars and at that point it was seed
money for a shelter and or day center and/or continuing
support of the rest stop, tiny houses and stuff like that.”
But Semple says, “if we decided not to build a shelter,
we were not obligated to spend that money on a shelter, we
could then use it for something else.”
In February 2017, the Register-Guard reported the city
of Eugene spent $160,000 on an out of state consulting
firm to assess its downtown area and the firm’s findings
labeled downtown as in “crisis.”
Semple says, “A shelter is not going to solve the prob-
lem.” She says the biggest obstacle is finding money and
finding an organization to operate the shelter. “But the
problem with homelessness is it’s such a conglomeration of
many problems. Unfortunately, they all take money to fix.”
Heather Sielicki, a member of the city’s Homeless-
ness Work Group, says public education in Oregon
is at the root of the homelessness, citing that the
state has one of the worst dropout rates in the
U.S.
“We’re not investing in our children,”
Sielicki says. “There’s an obscene rate of
kids going into foster care. A lot of the social
services that we used to rely on and people
being foster parents relied on, a lot of that’s
gone now. A lot of children are faced with
situations where the odds are against them.”
Mental illness is a crux among the
complexities contributing to homelessness.
Semple says the city lacks entry-level liv-
ing wage jobs and affordable housing. She
also cites education as an additional
predicament.
The city’s budget also provided
an increase of one-time funds of
$154,655 for the Dusk to Dawn
winter warming site program.
Sielicki says she’s glad the
city now has a fulltime policy analyst, but one person ad-
dressing homelessness is not enough. “It takes a lot lon-
ger to get things accomplished,” she says. “I can’t say that
people aren’t working on it, sometimes it’s hard to get your
arms around it. Everyone is doing the best they can, but we
can definitely be doing things a lot faster.”
Semple says now the biggest hurdle the city faces is
building or locating shelter and finding an organization to
run it. “Between the public perception of what it would
be like and impacts on business or livability of neighbor-
hoods, it makes it a really hard problem to find a location,”
she says.
Semple says she has said to people that
if they know of a place — industrial land,
a commercial building that isn’t being
used, then perhaps money could be
found to rent it. “Not huge market
rate rents,” she says, but perhaps
there could be some compensa-
tion from the city. “I’ve asked
that direct question and been
told yes,” Semple says.
Ruiz was not available
for comment. ■
E M I LY S E M P L E
WE’RE SO SKEWED .
C O M PA R I N G D O N A L D T R U M P VO T E R S A N D H I L L A RY C L I N TO N VO T E R S
%
73.7
38.8 %
Trump voters
overestimated odds
Clinton voters
overestimated odds
This line graph reveals that sampled Trump voters, more
than the Clinton voters, tend to overestimate the chances of a
person in America dying from a “legally documented refugee
committing terrorist act.” The actual U.S. statistical estimate is
1 in 46+ million (National Safety Council). PolicyInteractive
has previously reported that conservatives and liberals have
more in common than one would think, but the current political
climate is seen to be driving increased political polarization. PI
asks the question why are some people attracted to the
conservative ideology and others attracted to the liberal
ideology? What are the issues that are pulling us apart and
why? Watch this space for continuing exploration of why
“we’re so skewed.”
(N=407; 198 Trump voters; 209 Clinton voters; nonprobability sample)
National survey conducted by PolicyInteractive out of Eugene, OR; See
full results and methodology at goo.gl/Cf5Xcp. Robin Quirke is an associ-
ate researcher at PolicyInteractive.
eugeneweekly.com • July 6, 2017
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