Whoville held a rally Thursday to protest against the Eugene City Council’s reluctance to recognize them as a legal campsite. Whoville is a homeless camp that’s been home to over 50 residents for the past four months.
On Jan. 17, the Eugene Police Department was sent out by the city to give an eviction notice to the residents of Whoville on the grounds that their presence is illegally occupying ground intended for public use.
For the residents of Whoville, it’s not that easy to find a new place to stay.
“There are no other places to go,” Nathan Showers said, a resident of Whoville that’s been with the site since the beginning. “All of our resources are here. We have dining services, and the hospital and bathrooms are all within walking distance. Other sites like this don’t have any of these amenities right near them. At some places, getting to the hospital would be a three mile walk.”
The purpose of the rally was to get the City Council’s attention, and to ask them why they’re evicting people of Whoville right now, in the middle of Winter.
“Our city is embarrassed,” Dan Bryant, the President of Opportunity Village Eugene, said. “I’m sure that they’re getting pressure from people in the public who don’t like seeing this site. We should be embarrassed, but we should be embarrassed of how many people we have who live in Eugene that are fighting just to have their human rights.”
Vickie Nelson, the organizer for Occupy Eugene, the grassroots income inequality protest group, says that the next call to action is to have Mayor Kitty Piercy declare Whoville as a state of emergency, which will legalize the Whoville site for an indefinite amount of time. Although it’s in Piercy’s jurisdiction to do so, a one time exception might set the precedent for other illegal homeless campsites to petition the same.
“It’s winter, it’s cold and we have fewer beds and more people seeking shelter than ever before,” Nelson said. “It’s only January and already two people in our area have died outside in the cold with no one nearby to assist them or call for help.”
Bryant says that Whoville shouldn’t be looked at as a permanent situation. To Bryant, the campsite is a transitional place for people with all sorts of harsh backgrounds to sleep safely while they focus on improving their life situations.
“Very few people want to be here. They would prefer to be in better housing,” Bryant said. “Finding ways to get them better housing is what we need to be doing right now. Once we do that, then we can close it down, but that’s the right way to close it down… not forcing them out like this.”