By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com
YACHATS — How big an issue is homelessness in Yachats? You might gauge its scope by the turnout for a public meeting on the topic — 45 people, streaming into the Commons Pavilion for a session led by City Manager Heide Lambert.
“This is a difficult topic that we’re not going to fix today,” said Lambert at the start of the session, “but we will have more meetings.”
Additional chairs had to be brought in to accommodate the crowd, which spent 90 minutes hearing the latest on legal and local aspects of the unhoused — a term some feel is more accurate, and less derogatory, than homeless.
The pavilion itself is not heated or weatherproofed, but it was used last winter as an overnight, bad-weather shelter. It was opened, closed and maintained daily by Yachats Community Presbyterian Church pastor Bob Barrett and other volunteers. Lambert acknowledged that Barrett is “carrying a huge burden” of helping homeless residents, which number almost two dozen full-timers.
With winter now approaching, there was talk of repairing the pavilion roof, and/or bringing in heaters, which would require supervision due to fire hazards.
Altering the pavilion “seems like a Band-aid,” Lambert told YachatsNews after the meeting, which came out of an idea by she and Councilor Ann Stott. Instead, she would like to see the city look into Conestoga huts — small, 6-by-14-foot pods, or pallet houses, that are lockable and give the homeless someplace dry to store their belongings. Their arched tops are shaped like the Conestoga wagons that first brought European immigrants West.
Lambert said they are already going up in Lane County, and are being considered by Lincoln County authorities working on a homeless plan under a two-year $1 million state grant.
“The problem is, we have unhoused people spread out all over public spaces,” she said. “If we could provide a space to get them out of walkways and parks, they’d have someplace to lock up their things, go to work and come back.”
Concerns about crime, alcohol/drug use and sanitation regarding the homeless were voiced when the Pavilion was opened as a shelter last year, but they proved mostly unfounded.
Nevertheless, “People still have concerns … valid concerns,” Lambert said.
Some of the concerns voiced by attendees at the meeting were:
- Crime: Lambert quoted the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office as reporting that crime from homeless people posed no greater risk than from any other segment of the population;
- Sanitation: One resident said she cleans up human waste deposited by homeless people in front of her property;
- Liability: Another resident wondered about the liability that might be incurred by allowing homeless people to camp on his property. Lambert suggested that homeowners’ insurance would cover that, but “We’re more liable as a city if we tried to keep the unhoused out, and someone died on the street.”
One of Lambert’s objectives in staging the meeting was sharing the legal aspects of what the city can and cannot do regarding the homeless. In 2019, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that homeless people can’t be punished for sleeping outside on public property if no adequate alternatives are available.
But, a law passed by the 2021 Oregon Legislature allows cities or counties to regulate the acts homeless people “sitting, lying, sleeping or keeping warm and dry outdoors on public property” but such rules have to be “reasonable as to time, place and manner.”
Church stretched thin
Using the pavilion as a temporary, overnight shelter was considered an alternative to having the homeless sleeping in the entries to the Commons or City Hall. But as winter approaches, handling that shelter in addition to its other community outreach may be too much for the Presbyterian Church to handle on its own.
The church opens a food pantry on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, feeding upwards of 150 people per week.
“I want to stress that they’re not all homeless,” Barrett said in an interview. “So many are working poor, struggling to make ends meet. So many are just one paycheck away from being on the streets themselves.”
Still, it’s often Barrett who’s called when there’s an issue with a homeless person. Helping the homeless has become ”almost another full-time job; it’s stretching our resources.”
One other resource that’s helping, at least a bit, is a Lincoln County program called Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program. It’s a partnership originally formed among the sheriff’s office, the district attorney’s office, the police departments of Newport, Lincoln City and Toledo, and ReConnections Counseling of Newport. Its purpose is to de-criminalize low-level homeless crime, and instead direct people to counseling and rehabilitation services.
“A LEAD staffer comes to Yachats once a week,” Lambert said. “He has a list of unhoused people that he checks in on. They’re incredibly busy and understaffed.”
The city manager expects to hold additional meetings on Yachats’ unhoused issue, and urged residents to check for notices on the city’s website under Community Calendar.
Lambert wasn’t surprised by the turnout for the meeting in the pavilion, even though it was held at 10 a.m. the day after a three-day holiday and without much public notice.
“I knew people were passionate about it; it’s a subject that comes up a lot,” she said.
Lambert urged city residents with comments or concerns to contact her at by email or calling 541-547-3565. Residents outside the city should reach out to the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion via the sheriff’s non-emergency line or ReConnections Counseling.
- Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance reporter who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. She can be reached at Wordsell@gmail.com
Below is my email to Heidi Lambert, our city manager, regarding the discussion that took place at the pavilion on September 6. Please note I made a couple of very minor updates so Heidi’s version is not word for word identical.
Heidi,
Thanks so much for inviting community feedback on the homeless situation.
I was the guy in the red pullover that asked a number of questions.
A couple of items:
1) Suggesting the city create a homeless “village” as was done in Florence (tiny houses) is unrealistic. The city of Florence has 4,700 households and a population of 9,400. Yachats has 562 households and a full-time population of 1,000. Florence is approximately 10 times our size and has bigger budgets and more capacity to undertake this kind of thing.
2) Converting the pavilion to a temporary shelter would be fine as long as we have proper liability insurance. This insurance should include protection of the city in case something should happen to the men, women and children(?) who might seek shelter there. However, I would advise against having men housed with women and kids.
3) Regards picking up around homeless encampments on city property, signage and trash services should be made available for this. I think providing jobs for a couple of the homeless men to clean up encampments would encourage responsibility within the homeless community.
4) Regards regulations, I would ask the city to consider making parking temporary on city streets. I for one remember one van recently parking down by the river that was filled to the brim with trash. It stayed there for at least three or four days, if not more. Parking regulations could state NO OVERNIGHT PARKING and these vehicles could be ticketed and towed if necessary. Please note that vehicles parked on city streets for long periods of time is not a good look for the city, especially one that thrives on tourism. And one more thing – in Lawrence, KS, where I moved here from, there was a constant problem with aggressive panhandling on city streets downtown We simply do not need that problem here in Yachats.
5) Furthermore, a more broader effort to police homeless through regulations in our city should be made. To this point, I would suggest the city consider hiring a public safety officer (or two) whose job it would be to write tickets for speeding, parking violations, etc. These would not be persons who could make arrests but hand out tickets. Please note that people parking on the streets would be subject to these regulations and might lose their vehicles should they violate these regulations. There is nothing in the 9th Circuit ruling that would restrict this effort.
6) Finally, I’m concerned that making an effort to provide for the homeless may simply encourage an increase in the homeless population. As such, I believe accommodations should be satisfactory but not generous. A public restroom on the commons might make sense (like those at the state parks in the area). Trashcans should be readily available. But creating housing or providing for taxpayer funded hotel stays are not advised.
Thanks for taking the time to listen and hold this meeting!
You only need to look as far as Eugene and Veneta to see what accommodating transients does to a community. We do not need that here, nor do we have the resources for that level of services. There are social services for those people in Newport and Florence which is where they should be directed. The pavilion being used as a shelter did have a negative presence for a nearby preschool and playground. There was also an violent assault that happened near the market between people from the pavilion and the store did have to refuse to sell alcohol to intoxicated individuals also from that shelter situation. I personally witnessed a fellow ranting, screaming obscenities, and menacing people between Luna and the market. Don’t enable this further.
Cutting the absurd number of vacation rental licences in half would go a long way to solving this problem. There are a lot of people currently living in in-law units and cottages that make enough to move up to single family homes. The in-law units could then be rented to a new generation of lower-income people that just need a roof over their heads so they can “rejoin society”. A lot of people think the unhoused choose to live rough, which is ridiculous. I guarantee you, every single one of them really would rather be cozy at night than cold and damp. Wouldn’t you rather have a town with fewer homeless and less tourists? Having more year-round residents would result in a healthier, more vibrant community.
And I’d also like to push back against Don Phipps’ suggestion of full-time law enforcement officers. Call them what you want, but I do not agree that we should go down that path. We have seen, time and again, that power corrupts. Having someone watch over the behavior of other people begs the question, who will watch over the watcher? Who will watch over them? Crime in Yachats is miniscule. Nearly everyone is insured.
Furthermore, it is always a good idea to show compassion to unfortunate people. Everyone is a human being. I really doubt that we would suddenly see a hoard of discarded schizophrenics and abused teens if we showed struggling people a little love. Heck, if it were up to me, I’d put a $100 surcharge on every Air B&B transaction, all of it going towards a decent shelter. Give people a hand, allow them some dignity, and they will most likely love you back and be extremely loyal to you. Drug addiction is mostly just the result of people trying to medicate their sadness away. Give them a support system, give them friends and a social life and an opportunity to work, and that desire can fade away like a bad dream.
Finally, I think we all owe it to ourselves to look at ourselves and think about how we have helped create the situation in which there is plenty for all, yet still there are still those with nothing. If your attitude is, “I don’t want to give my money to gross poor people – it’s mine” then I have bad news for you: it’s only yours because other people built the infrastructure. It’s only yours because other people grew your food. What is “yours” is a result of many years of hard work and major sacrifices of other people. Yes, our taxes go to things we don’t like – bombs, petroleum subsidies, too-big-to-fail bank insurance. But that is not the fault of your downtrodden neighbors. So why are you so mad at them? The people we should all be after are the ones rigging the system for the ultra-rich.
Thanks for reading. Oh, and by the way, I am currently homeless in Yachats.