Waking up bundled in warm blankets, being able to prepare a meal for yourself, and having some place to use the restroom serves as a normality for a lot of people.
According to Jean Stacey, leader of the Safe Legally Entitled Emergency Places to Sleep campaign in Eugene, having a place to sleep at night and keep warm is all that some people want.
The movement is seen as an offshoot of the Occupy movement, although SLEEPS has shifted the focus to “safe protection for those that are unhoused” as Stacy says. It started in August and gained momentum after a very visible protest in the Wayne Morse Terrace (commonly known as the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza) in downtown Eugene and was championed by many local activists.
“Around July [the city] decided to do a sweep all at the same time, and left people with no place to go,” Stacey said. “These people came into town, and some of them became so desperate and started camping, and more and more people joined them.”
This, according to Stacey, is how SLEEPS began.
According to Stacey, Eugene has lost 900 shelter beds in Lane County in the past six to seven years. The homeless have lost transitional housing, shelter care, and even the mission has cut back on beds that are open to the homeless every night.
Some local students have taken it on themselves to get involved. Alex Froehlich, recent graduate of the UO’s School of Architecture, has provided “the most exceptional help to SLEEPS.” To Froehlich, it is about representing SLEEPS in important city council meetings and helping support SLEEPS in any way that he can.
Froehlich is a part of Design Bridges, a group on campus that is currently working on a project called “The Common Good.” This project will “partner directly with houseless folks” according to Froehlich. He supports the SLEEPS campaign, and hopes to work more with Stacey in the future.
Lane Community College student John Price says Eugene has four facilities to provide shelter to the homeless, and it “isn’t enough to provide to the percentage of homeless folks who are not choosing to be homeless.”
“[The homeless] have been taken away from their homes, and being homeless is a hard thing for folks and a lot of people aren’t aware of it,” he said.
Price also says that “people are dealing with [it] as an out-of-sight-out-of-mind kind of issue, and it shouldn’t be like that.”
Members of the SLEEPS camp have said they mostly see students filming, shooting photos or generally collecting content for various class projects.
The Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group leadership board does everything it can among the community to help with hunger and homelessness in Eugene, although it has not been directly involved with SLEEPS.
Hannah Picknell, OSPIRG chair at the UO, says in regard to the SLEEPS campaign that while it is “important to find solutions for people to sleep,” OSPRIG focuses its resources on volunteer opportunities for students involving food needs in Lane County.
Since the movement began, several developments by the city have been rolled out, including installation of a 24-hour bathroom in Washington-Jefferson Park.
Others have been in progress for longer, such as Opportunity Village, which began last year when the Occupy movement got part of what they were looking for: a micro-housing village for homeless citizens in Eugene. Opportunity Village provides housing for 30-40 individuals at one time. The houses for this complex will be 60-100 sq. feet in size, and less than 8-feet wide. The houses include cooking facilities, living room areas, private space and restrooms.
Opportunity Village provides a sense of home for homeless citizens who are currently living on the streets, and the purpose of the village is to provide protection for those who are un-housed in Eugene. Basic rules are upheld in Opportunity Village, including restrictions on drug and alcohol use, stealing and violence. Before Opportunity Village the homeless would gather in the land of the Oregon Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Land Management, as well as Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza.
“Every city in America has a fear that if they are not abusive to the people that are un-housed, then their cities will become a magnet for homeless people,” Stacey said.
This stigma against the homeless, according to Stacey is precisely what needs to be fought through in order to find a solution to house the homeless in Eugene.
Yuliana Barrales and Jennifer Fleck contributed to this story.