It Is Raining And Not Raining

The Fucking Oregonian:

A lesson from Dignity Village is that “temporary” homeless camps have a way of sticking around

Mayor Tom Potter extricated the city from a tense confrontation this week. He had let the overnight campout at City Hall swell into a party and spin on too long.

But he did end it, finally, on Tuesday. He got involved personally and negotiated intensively. And he brought the campout to as graceful a conclusion as anyone could have hoped for. That’s especially true given the fact that he didn’t budge on the campers’ basic demands.

They were asking for something inherently unreasonable, unfair and just plain wrong: the right to usurp city sidewalks or city parks as campgrounds.
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There is a worrisome loose end, however: the notion of a “green zone.” Potter said he would at least be willing to discuss the idea of designating a zone where homeless people could camp temporarily and link up with mental health or social services. He’s not wrong to discuss the idea. The problem is in that word “temporarily.”

How would the city ensure any camp or zone of this sort is truly temporary? Dignity Village, as you’ll recall, was supposed to be temporary, too. Eight years later, it’s still going strong.
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The protest leaders deserve some credit, too. And they deserve housing. But no one deserves permanent “temporary” campgrounds.

Way to miss every goddamned point in every way possible whilst mischaracterizing the protest and Dignity Village with ignoring basic human decency as the cherry on top.  I can understand why they were so brave to print this as an unsigned editorial.

ntodd