After Grants Pass city officials shut down a homeless camp and restricted camping to one site, they face a lawsuit from five homeless residents and advocacy groups
By Ben Botkin, Oregon Capital Chronicle
Two advocacy groups and five homeless people sued Grants Pass on Thursday in a bid to force the Southern Oregon city to change its restrictions on homeless camping that put people with disabilities and others in peril.
Disability Rights Oregon and the Oregon Law Center filed the emergency lawsuit in Josephine County District Court. It seeks an immediate temporary restraining order that prohibits the city from enforcing its current ordinances and policies towards homeless people. The city has limited homeless people sleeping outside to just one site, which is overcrowded and lacks drinking water. It also forces people, including those with disabilities, to pack up their tent and leave at 7 a.m. each morning before returning at 5 p.m., the lawsuit said. Violators face $75 citations.
The lawsuit comes almost seven months to the day after after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city can impose criminal penalties on illegal homeless camping without violating constitutional provisions against cruel and unusual punishment.
The new case argues that Grants Pass does not follow requirements in Oregon state law. Last year, after the Supreme Court ruling, city officials designated two sites for homeless people to camp in August.
On Jan. 7, city officials decided to close the larger of two designated camping sites, which held about 120 tents. Only one site remains that can have about 30 tent sites at any time. And now, tents can only be there from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. each day.
“Putting the lives of people with disabilities at risk in the dead of winter because they don’t have housing is cruel and illegal,” said Jake Cornett, executive director & CEO of Disability Rights Oregon. “Without adequate shelter space available, forcing a person in a wheelchair or someone with a chronic illness to pack and move their belongings daily is not just impossible, it’s inhumane. Grants Pass’s dangerous actions must be stopped.”
Grants Pass city officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges the city’s policies violate state laws that prohibit discrimination based on disability. It seeks a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction that prohibits the city from enforcing its current ordinances for homeless camping. The lawsuit, if successful for plaintiffs, would force the city to adopt new ordinances that regulate camping and sleeping by homeless in a different way, with fewer restrictions and impacts.
For the homeless people named in the lawsuit, the impacts of the city’s policies are acute.
‘I’m a human being’
One of them is Janine Harris, 57, who suffers from arthritis, vertigo and chronic headaches. For years, she worked as a caregiver until health problems made her physically unable to do so.
Homeless now for four years, arthritis in her hips and knees forces her to use a cane.
“I’m not afraid of work,” she said. “I just can’t do it anymore. I’m physically unable to do it anymore.”
She is too weak to carry anything and has to use a wagon to cart her belongings around.
She never knows where she is going to stay.
To set up her tent, which is in storage, would take her an hour, so she’s more inclined to sleep without it.
“With my luck, it’d probably just be best to open up my cot and put the blankets on and pray I get no rain,” she said in an interview.
She asks Oregonians to remember people like her, who fell into homelessness through no fault of their own.
“I just want people to realize that I’m not a monster,” she said. “I’m a human being, and I have a right to be treated as one. I put my dues in. I’ve worked my ass off.”
Another plaintiff is Jeffrey Dickerson, 57, who worked in construction until 2006, when an aneurysm sidelined him and ended his career. Since then, he has bounced from homelessness on the streets, living with a friend and renting a room. With a $967 Social Security disability check each month, he cannot find an affordable place to live and has been homeless, most recently, for nearly a year.
He has chronic nerve pain in his hands and feet, arthritis in his neck and walks with a cane. Once, his cane was stolen when he left it outside his tent.
At the campsite, he awoke one morning ahead of the 7 a.m. deadline to pack up and found his tent’s zipper was frozen shut. He had to break it to get out. Outside the tent, he has to walk with his cane over gravel to reach the portable toilet.
He no longer has a tent and carries an olive green backpack. He keeps his sleeping bag stowed away out of sight.
At night, he looks for somewhere to sleep, often outside the campsite.
“I don’t see how they could let that happen,” he said. “It’s inhumane.”
Ben Botkin covers justice, health and social services issues for the Oregon Capital Chronicle.
