Current News You Can Use

  We have a big problem across this country.   We have failed to serve the bottom of the housing market for over 50 years.   Grants Pass had people camping in our parks for about 5 years, protected under court order, until the Supreme Court said otherwise this year.  They are still somewhat protected by state law that cities must have places for people to go, but we still have no places for the vast majority of them to go.   Now the tent campers are in 2 small so-called campgrounds that have no water or shelter from sun and wind apart from their own small tents but they do have porta potties which the city must pay for.  Both are supposed to be temporary; one is where the new city water plant will be built.  Many are camping in their vehicles on the streets and often using shopping carts for their property.  There are well over 1000 people in Josephine County who have no secure place to live.   Grants Pass has a little project run by a non-...

In our last meeting, a Councilor asked where huge hostels have been done.   This Councilor asked some time ago where any city has restored the rate system that for fifty years kept water and sewer rates throughout the world low and stable.   To some public servants, any new idea that has been tried somewhere else is a good idea whether it works or not, but old tried and true ideas from their own constituents cannot be good. Huge, cheap places to sleep are not new; they are an old business that is occasionally mentioned in song and historical fiction.   They were called flophouses.   They were not comfortable, private, or safe, but their customers were out of the weather for a nickel or a dime. Flophouses disappeared in the first half of the Twentieth Century with the advent of cheap used cars that people could sleep in.   In the eighties, states started mandatory car insurance, which kicked a lot of people out of their cars and into doorways, alleys, and bus...

              Rogue Retreat is not ready to take on an urban campground.   Maybe the City should build a real solution for the homeless that will satisfy the federal judge that has put our city under an injunction to allow sleeping through the night in the parks because the city lacks low-barrier shelters that can handle all comers.   You don’t need a non-profit to do this.             None of the solutions you have considered is adequate to cover the problem, helping too few people and having too high of a barrier for most.   Non-profits are not willing to do anything big, and they want to help only those who pass muster.   We have a homeless population that is around a thousand.   As long as we have too few shelter beds, or are too picky about who gets them, we will have people sleeping in our parks.   Tiny houses and urban campgrounds take...