On Friday morning, homeless residents in Grants Pass, Oregon, dragged tarps and carried piles on their backs, heaping their belongings just outside the fence. They were given until 9 a.m. to get their possessions off the city-owned site.
The newly-elected city council decided earlier this month to close this campsite, calling it unsightly and unsanitary.
Rachel Beeman, who had been living at the now-closed camp site since it opened last summer in Grants Pass, Ore., keeps watch over her and some neighbors' belongings piled up outside the fenced area.
Jane Vaughan / JPR
Rachel Beeman had been living at the site since it first opened last summer. She was keeping watch over her belongings and other people’s belongings, just outside the fence, but said she wasn’t able to get everything out.
“There’s still stuff in there, but I just got the important stuff,” she said. “I thought helping everybody else get their important stuff out was worth more than trying to get all the little stuff, but I just got what was important.”
She said she’s already been arrested three times for camping in city parks, and she doesn’t know where she’s going to go next.
“We wouldn’t be out here like this if we had somewhere to move,” she said.
Police Chief Warren Hensman said residents were given ample notice to leave.
A bulldozer was scooping up tents, clothing and other leftover belongings.
“The equipment you see is equipment that can support the cleanup, protect my officers from biohazard and specific wastes and also getting hurt,” he said.
Hensman said his officers were working to determine what was waste and what was personal property, which the law requires must be stored for 30 days so owners can reclaim it.
There is also another city-owned campsite, next to the police station at 712 NE 7th St., which was closed on Tuesday and is now only open in the evening, from 5 p.m. until 7 a.m. Residents must remove all their belongings from the site during the day.
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According to a post on the Grants Pass Police Department Facebook page, the department “has been working with its community partners to ensure the transition was fairly implemented and that those impacted had access to available resources.”
“Grants Pass police officers communicated the upcoming changes repeatedly over the past two weeks so that those utilizing the resting sites had ample awareness of the resolution,” the post continues. “The officers worked to notify the unhoused community of the new rules so that they were prepared in advance. We will continue to work with the houseless population to link them to resources as we always have.”
Former residents of a city-sanctioned campsite for homeless people in Grant Pass, Ore., gather their belongings as they are evicted from the site on Friday, Jan. 24, on orders of the city council. The city closed the site as unsightly and unsanitary.
Jane Vaughan / JPR
The campsites have received a lot of criticism. They have been called “concentration camps” and a “public health disaster”, and there were concerns about fire hazards and mud. The city did not provide shade or potable water, and Disability Rights Oregon has claimed the campsites violate federal and state law.
“It is unconscionable to me to allow people to live there like that,” City Councilor Indra Nicholas said at a meeting in January. “So to me, wherever they go is better than where they are now.”
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Friday’s sweep comes after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last June, which upheld Grants Pass’ ban on homeless people camping in public. But the city still has to comply with a state law that says rules regulating where homeless people can camp must be “objectively reasonable”, although that term isn’t specifically defined.
“Now, there is no sanctioned site for anybody to go, no legal site for anybody to go. So it kind of, to us, seems counterproductive,” said Ruth Dailey, board member of the local nonprofit MINT. “It’s just pretty much the most inopportune time to do this, the coldest part of winter.”
Grants Pass officials say these two campsites were always meant to be temporary. The site that was closed on Friday, at 755 SE J St., is the future site of a new water treatment plant.
The City Council has not announced any plans for an alternate resting site, and the city has no low-barrier shelters.
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