Retired SOU sociology professor Echo Fields discusses homelessness in talk at Jefferson Center forum
By Damian Mann for Ashland.news
A thought-provoking discussion Sunday about Ashland’s evolving homeless situation was overshadowed by fears the country is on course to treating it more as a criminal issue.
The Jefferson Center, a Rogue Valley nonprofit focused on critical thinking using secular humanist values to understand and engage with issues, sponsored the discussion at the Historic Ashland Armory.
Guest speaker Echo Fields, a retired Southern Oregon University sociology professor who has been actively involved in homeless issues, spoke to 20 people.
Fields said the country appears to be reverting to 19th century laws that penalized the poor.
“We’re kind of swinging back in that direction,” she said.
As a result, there is considerable push-back over the “housing first” model to address homelessness.
“’Stability is a privilege, not a human right,’” Fields said, describing what she hears as the current mood.
She said it requires considerable wraparound services to keep the homeless off the streets, but she said that some homeless may never find their way to recovery.
“Some people are so irretrievably broken that there is no fixing,” Fields said.
At the same time, she has seen some who have successfully found their way out of a cycle of addiction or mental illness.
Many audience members described their hope of finding ways to help the unhoused or those on the verge of losing their homes. Others said they wanted to help, but also described fearful situations.
One woman, whose house was almost broken into in the middle of the night by someone high on meth, said she lived on Bush Street near a church that previously provided a lot of help to the homeless.
“The crime was out of sight,” she said.
Some neighbors in Ashland have complained that too many homeless services attract bad behavior, and businesses near The OHRA Center on Ashland Street have complained customers and employees have felt vulnerable and afraid.
Fields said the majority of homeless don’t usually engage in this kind of behavior, but she said younger males tend to be more predatory, sometimes targeting older homeless males.
Nevertheless, Fields said she takes these fearful feelings from local residents seriously.
Fields described an increasingly difficult situation providing the ongoing help the homeless need, as well as public sentiment that has soured on using tax dollars to provide assistance.
“I wish I had answers for you, but I don’t,” she said.
Fields serves as chair of the Ashland Housing and Human Services Advisory Committee, and recently facilitated the subcommittee that prepared a comprehensive assessment of homeless services for Ashland at the request of the City Council.
Fields said that her opinions about the state of homelessness were her own and not the city’s.
After Fields described an increasingly bleak situation for the homeless in Ashland, Sandra Coyner with the Jefferson Center wondered if there was anything residents can do to improve the situation.
“Does anything work?” she asked.
Fields said Rogue Retreat, a homeless organization that primarily operates in Medford, is doing good work in its current version, though she said many of the people living on the street might not agree with that assessment.
ACCESS, another organization that helps the homeless and poor, is a good option. Rent Well and OHRA are all good local programs, she said.
One resource that is often overlooked, Fields said, is the Ashland Public Library, which provides a warm place to hang out during the day. Breakfast is served in the downstairs Gresham Room, usually for about 24 people at a time.
“The library is the de facto warming center and day center,” Fields said.
The downside is that some Ashland residents are afraid to go to the library because of the homeless, she said.
Churches in Ashland used to provide many of the services the homeless need, but COVID effectively shut down many of those outreach operations, Fields said. Rogue Valley Street Dogs is another program that helps provide care for pets of the homeless.
Not only do dogs provide warmth and safety, but, “People take better care of their pets than themselves,” she said.
Ana Witt said she has lived here for 18 years and has tried to help the homeless through all stages of homelessness.
Even if they are provided shelter it can take time for them to adjust to their new environment after living on the streets for some time, Witt said.
“It’s difficult for them to be inside when they have been outside,” she said.
Natural disasters, such as the 2020 Almeda Fire, can cause an impact to the homeless population, she said.
Another issue affecting the response to homelessness is the reliance on statistics, particularly the county’s annual point-in-time survey that Fields said doesn’t adequately capture the full picture of how many people are homeless. Also, other categories of homelessness are not reflected, including car camping or residents who have recently lost a job and could soon become homeless.
In January 2023, the point-in-time survey showed 1,143 homeless in the county.
“That’s far below any real number,” Fields said.
Ashland’s count was 181.
She said officials rely on these numbers, but she said because the statistics are broadly viewed as unreliable, it creates uncertainty.
“Uncertainty results in inaction,” she said.
In Ashland, a homeless master plan calls for potential “enhanced law enforcement areas.”
Fields said this plan, if enacted, could lead to trespassing some homeless from certain areas, with the possibility of jail time for those who continue to trespass into those areas.
As the pendulum swings back to criminalizing homelessness, Fields said there are a number of different emotions that play into this sentiment, such as fear, anger, stigmatizing, stereotyping and religious narratives.
Fields said she often hears people quoting the Bible verse, “The poor will always be with you,” which some interpret as saying there is nothing that can be done to help the poor.
Instead, the actual verse from the Bible is “the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”
While housing for the homeless was an issue brought up many times, Bill Mansfield, whose legal career has involved civil rights, free speech and has also taught at SOU, said he would be very cautious about calls for expanding the boundaries of Ashland to encourage building low-cost housing or to modify building codes to make housing cheaper.
He said there’s a reason Oregon has strict land-use laws to help prevent turning the state into another California with its sprawling suburbs.
“Watch out,” he said. “Let’s not make dangerous housing. We need to be careful about what we do.”
Reach freelance writer Damian Mann at [email protected].