Scarab Powers, 17, sits on an Igloo cooler in front of their tent, marked with yellow string tied around stakes roughly 12 feet apart. A plethora of art supplies, books and blankets envelops Powers as they draw characters in a black notebook.

The sound of a volunteer group’s church singing and murmured conversation floats on the air, and Powers says hello to everyone that passes.

By March 16, Powers’ home — a tent in Washington Jefferson Park — will be gone, and the park will fall silent except for the hum of cars on the I-105 bridge above.

After Washington Jefferson Park closes, there will be no more sanctioned camping in the city of Eugene. Instead, the city wants to focus on moving people without housing to safe sleep sites, which are safe and lawful places for people to sleep, according to the city.

The city also announced in a Feb. 23 work session it will lift the COVID-19 temporary camping stay-in-place criteria, which extends leniency to urban camping to reduce the spread of the virus, on March 19 in conjunction with the state lifting indoor mask mandates.

Advocates and some people without housing said they are perturbed by the change, since the safe sleep sites do not have the capacity to house everyone that needs them in Eugene. This will push houseless people in front of residences and businesses, resulting in more interactions with the police, citations and fines for those without housing, they said.

Other people without housing who have secured spots at safe sleep sites are happy to get away from the camps, they said. Some community members and city officials also said they are looking forward to the transition.

How close is Eugene to catching up with the numbers?

Eugene approved an ordinance on April 28, 2021 to create more safe and lawful places for people without housing to sleep. By late October, the city council approved five safe sleep sites: Chase Commons Park, Rosa Safe Sleep Site, 410 Garfield St., Everyone Village and 310 Garfield St. Chase Commons and Rosa Safe Sleep Site have yet to open.

Eugene currently has the capacity to support 1,023 people in its shelter and alternative shelter programs, according to a presentation in the Feb. 23 work session.

Eugene accounts for 78% of Lane County’s unhoused population which was about 4,000 as of January, according to the work session. Almost 2,500 people were living without housing in Eugene in January 2021, and that count increased to over 3,100 by January 2022.

The Daily Emerald asked Kelly McIver, communications manager for the city’s unhoused response, how houseless people could find out if these shelter programs had spots available. He provided some phone numbers and directed the Daily Emerald to a website listing all shelter programs in Lane County. These include shelters for adults, families with children, youth and people fleeing domestic violence.

The Emerald called those phone numbers and all of the adult-only household programs in Eugene listed on the document on Feb. 14 and asked what their availability was. Seven to nine spots were available for walk-ins across all of those programs on that day. Four programs said they had some openings each day, but they had a waitlist.

Closing Washington Jefferson Park and 13th and Chambers

The city designated two sanctioned camping sites at Washington Jefferson Park and 13th and Chambers, which made them legal to camp at, in the fall of 2020.

By March 16, Washington Jefferson Park will close to everyone, be rehabilitated and reopen as a city park. “The convergence of the homelessness crisis and COVID-19 led to the temporary use of the park for camping, but the land is a park and was always intended to be used by the community as a park, not as a camp,” McIver said.

The residents of Washington Jefferson Park will get priority at 410 Garfield Street,, one of the safe sleep sites, which opened Feb. 22, has 86 spots and is indoors and heated. There are 75 recognized camp spaces at the park, according to the city. Powers said more than one person usually lives in each tent. Steve Kimes, a member of Eugene-based housing advocacy group Stop the Sweeps, said the group counted 120 campers at Washington Jefferson Park when the city announced the closure.

Since the site does not allow animals, residents with pets are being offered tents at Everyone Village. Gabe Piechowicz, a leader at Everyone Village, said it will likely be able to fit the 14 people with pets identified by the city.

Kelsy Somntiz, a resident at Washington Jefferson Park whose black and white kitten sits perched on their shoulder, said they were offered a spot. They said they look forward to leaving the camp and arriving at Everyone Village.

Andrew Lima, a current resident at Opportunity Village, a transitional micro-housing community for people without housing, who used to live in the park, said he was glad to leave the park, since it is dangerous at night.

Powers cannot go to safe sleep sites, since residents have to be at least 18 years old. They have had problems receiving assistance at Eugene’s youth programs, they said.

Having lived in the park for more than a year, Powers said they are sad to see the camp close and do not know where they will go after. They said the park has become a community.

A few weeks ago, Powers walked over to a neighbor’s tent to ask for supplies for a mattress, they said. They found some foam, which they glued between two pieces of cardboard sandwich-style.

“And now I have a mattress,” Powers said. “How many housed people can go walk two doors down from their apartment and be like ‘Ayo, you got a mattress?’”

Jean Woest, who for three years has been a manager at Nick’s Old Pub next to the park, said the business has coexisted with the park and has even created a pay-it-forward program to serve people who cannot pay for their food.

“People really assume that being so close to the vicinity of the Washington Jefferson Park camps that we would get a lot of issues from that,” Woest said. “But honestly, throughout the years that I’ve been here, we’ve only had a very small handful of incidents.”

13th and Chambers closed on Jan. 18 due to deteriorating conditions at the camp, according to the city. Of the 56 residents, the city helped 51 people move to different shelter programs. Four chose not to go and one was ineligible for relocation after being arrested, according to the city.

Saint Vincent de Paul communication and marketing coordinator Joel Gorthy said the transition went well except for minor behavioral issues.

“This is intended to be a short-term shelter option, creating a warm, dry, safe place for people to get out of the winter weather and away from the 13th and Chambers site, which the city deemed uninhabitable,” Gorthy said.

A member of Stop the Sweeps who wishes to remain anonymous due to fear of retribution by the Eugene Police Department wrote in an email to the Daily Emerald that the camp faced some struggles, but residents wanted to make it work. “They organized themselves to arrange de-escalation trainings, advocated for sanitary conditions and made demands of the city,” they said.

McIver said the land will be returned to its former status as city surplus property, and it is not intended for future use as a camp or a shelter site.

A Eugene without sanctioned camping

Kimes, a pastor at Eugene Mennonite Church, runs Laundry Unicorns — a service that goes around 18 camps a few times a week and does the laundry of people without housing.

Kimes lobbied the city council last year to create sanctioned camping in Eugene. The city needs options for houseless people besides the safe sleep sites because some people do not like the environments and restrictions of certain sites, he said. Village models like Everyone Village are favored because houseless people are involved in the leadership, he said.

“Government-run encampments take away what can be empowering about living in a community camp by turning the encampment into a patrolled and policed ‘service,’” the Stop the Sweeps member wrote in an email to the Daily Emerald.

Lima, the resident at Opportunity Village, said he left Dawn to Dawn — a shelter program run by Saint Vincent de Paul — because he did not receive the services he needed, he had disagreements with the staff and his items were removed when he left for a few days.

In the Feb. 23 work session, Councilor Claire Syrett, whose ward includes Washington Jefferson Park, said many of her constituents are happy about the campers leaving the park, but she also has constituents concerned about the people who will not go to safe sleep sites and have already moved to surrounding sidewalks and planting strips.

“When you move people out of the park or out of the sanctioned spaces, they still have to be somewhere,” Kimes said. “They move in front of residences and businesses because they don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Sabrina Schimscheimer, a junior at the University of Oregon, said several unsheltered people live on sidewalks near her residence. She said she is disappointed that the city will end sanctioned camping sites because they protect the safety of unsheltered people and other community members. She believes more people without housing will head toward campus due to a greater amount of green spaces, she said.

Houseless people need to follow many criteria for camping to be legal. For instance, campsites cannot be a hazard to traffic or sidewalk users, in a planting strip between the street and the sidewalk, on road surfaces, in a neighborhood park, in riparian areas like the Willamette River, within 50 feet of private property or within 300 feet of playgrounds or Eugene Rest Stops and microsite locations, according to the city.

If these rules are violated, the city gives a 72 hour warning before it takes the belongings, according to the city. Between July 1, 2021 and Jan. 31, 2022, the city removed 193 dump truck loads of debris related to unsheltered houselessness, according to the work session.

Kimes said he has helped an elderly, houseless woman with disabilities who has had to move nine times. “This is a person who should have help, but instead she’s being moved from place to place,” he said.

Advocates and people without housing said tensions between police and campers have been high lately, and they worry no sanctioned camping will result in “the criminalization of houselessness,” meaning the everyday activities and locations of houseless people not in shelter programs are deemed illegal.

According to a presentation in the Feb. 23 work session, Eugene police responded to 4,430 calls for service — an average of 26.5 calls a day — related to houselessness between July 1, 2021 and Jan. 31, 2022. During that time, parking and neighborhood service officers took over 1,800 actions related to storage on the streets, which includes issuing parking warnings and citations.

Powers said many people at Washington Jefferson Park have park bans, which bans people who have violated parks and open space rules from city parks, open space, facilities or from participation in city-sponsored programs or activities, according to Parks and Open Space rules. Being in these spaces with a parks restriction constitutes trespassing.

“Citations and trespassing tickets can mean fines and court fees that these community members are unable to pay, which can result in jail time,” the Stop the Sweeps member wrote in an email to the Daily Emerald. “It perpetuates a cruel cycle of poverty and incarceration for our community members.”

Charles Petty II, a resident of Washington Jefferson Park, said he wants to go to a safe sleep site but cannot because he has a 1 year parks restriction. Many safe sleep sites ask for references as referrals in their applications as well. “I’ve come to learn it’s about who you know,” Petty II said.

Kimes said he believes the city of Eugene will eventually get sued because of the Ninth Circuit’s landmark 2021 decision in Martin v. Boise, which declared that city laws criminalizing sleeping outside on public property or outdoors when no shelter alternative is available violates the eighth amendment.

Kimes believes the city should continue to set up more village models with 12 to 18 spaces.

In the next six months, Eugene plans to add 115 more shelter and alternative shelter spaces, according to the city.

C