Homeless Controversy in Pendleton, OR
A recent letter to the editor in the local paper, East Oregonian, got me a little fired up over the position taken by some people over the homeless crisis that’s happening in Pendleton. His letter is first and my response follows.
Homeless a Drain on our society
In response to “Let’s stand with the homeless”: How do I say this without hurting anyone’s feelings” Do you want Pendleton to look and smell like Portland? This is just crazy talk (oops, I failed already).
When you give people free stuff, all you do is create more and more people wanting ever more free stuff. These folks care nothing for our town or its citizens. They care nothing about Pendleton, other than to use us for a free ride (oops, let me try that again). Most of these folks are not “homeless” due to circumstances. They are “transients,” a lifestyle choice.
You will notice as you walk the river levee between Main street and Eight Street the so-called “homeless” have phones, bicycles, cigarettes and an abundant supply of marijuana and other drugs. The path is littered with soda cups, used clothing, furniture, plastic bags, and all types of trash. Trash that could be place in a city-provided refuse container.
Most receive EBT cards and free health care, yet they have no desire to use the help they receive to better their situation. They are perfectly happy to continue their lifestyle — and make no mistake, it is a lifestyle — — and grab more and more from the public trough.
When the warming station opened I am sure many thought this shelter would provide the help these transient folks needed. But did it? Just giving the transient population a place to get out of the cold only attracted more person(s) wanting to get out of the cold.
Walk down the well-worn path (not alone) below the Arts Center just under the Main Street bridge. You will find sewage and trash, along with hypodermic needles, as well as an ever-growing transient camp. Ask yourself a few simple questions. Where do these people go too relieve themselves? What will be the cost (to us) for the cleanup when this camp is abandoned? Who will clean this camp when either fire or cold move the campers to our local warming station? Check with the county sheriff if you want to know the cost of cleaning a transient camp lst year. I think you may be shocked.
I believe the solution calls for a three-pronged approach if we want to assist our city and these folks. First, we must use legal deterrents to put an end to the selfish lifestyle of the majority of these transients. The stealing, offensive littering, and panhandling must be stopped, Second, if you want a program that is designed to help, it needs to be based on getting them off drugs and helping them get jobs to better themselves, not giving them free stuff. If you think free stuff is the answer, then by all means let some of them camp in your back yard. Thirdly, mental assistance for those truly in need. If they do not wish to partake in these type of life-changing programs, they should be moved, one way or the other, by strict enforcement of current state law and/or city ordinance.
Action needs to be taken before it is too late and we go the way of bigger cities like Portland, San Francisco or Seattle and her citizens.
In Response to “Homeless Drain on Society”
Humphrey is correct. The homeless situation needs to be addressed or we will suffer like Portland with trash, used needles and unwashed people on our streets. I don’t believe that he would agree with lining them up and shooting them, a solution that would indeed rid us of the problem but would leave us with blood on our hands. However, he seems to be in favor of jailing or driving them from our town using the law. After all, we don’t need a bunch of people around looking for free stuff. This way they can be contained in a cell away from our sight or they can go outside of the city limits to die where we won’t see them. Perhaps instituting the Sundown Laws that Pendleton had at one time would help. His plan of getting them off drugs and getting mental health is quite humane.
The problem with Humphrey’s rant is that we are dealing with human beings. Humans don’t fit into nice little manageable cubby holes. Some have jobs but don’t earn enough to keep a home and others have tapped out with medical expenses they cannot meet while still others had a bit of bad luck. Not all of them are druggies. Not all of them are thieves and some who are thieves are just trying to survive. All of the homeless are humans and deserve to be treated with humane respect. With the inequality in our society where 4 people own more than the bottom 50%, wages kept low over the last several decades and prices rising, the tanking of our economy which will affect 90% of us and the worsening ecological disaster we are facing, we can expect the numbers of the homeless to rise. Passing and enforcing laws that negatively affect the homeless will not address the problem. What would be smart is to accept that we have a growing problem and plan for it.
The first part of the plan, and this goes for the rest of the country as well, is to grow up, stop playing cowboy and face our problems head-on instead of allowing them to be covered up. It will be necessary to cease name-calling and look at our fellows as humans and not libtards, Rethugs or racist names. The second part would involve looking at where all the money is, who runs things and what are wages in comparison to prices. The third step would be to identify unused resources that could be repurposed. An important part of the plan is to ask the homeless what they think. We could extend this to those who are just hanging on. After all the information is collected, we can then have a public discussion on how we can deal with the problem.
If we confront the problem in a rational manner, conflicts could be reduced and we could make Pendleton a model others could follow.