Earlier this month, the Oregon governor’s office announced that Malheur County has been included in the homelessness state of emergency. Officials say that the rural county has few resources to help people experiencing homelessness. Tom Vialpando is the mayor of Vale. He joins us with more on what he hopes to see happen in the county.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Earlier this month Governor Tina Kotek announced that Malheur County had been added to the areas in Oregon’s homelessness. state of emergency. It followed Clatsop County in that designation, another acknowledgement that homelessness is not simply an urban issue in Oregon. Tom Vialpando is the mayor of Vale, that’s the county seat, just a little outside Ontario. He joins us now to talk about homelessness in the area and this new state of emergency. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Tom Vialpando: Thank you, Dave.
Miller: What does homelessness look like in Malheur County right now?
Vialpando: Well, most people wouldn’t recognize homelessness here because homelessness has many faces. When people say homeless, they think of the tents along the city streets in Portland. In Ontario we do have those, but in Vale we do not. As a rural community in Eastern Oregon, many would assume homelessness is not an issue for us. Unfortunately, like most cities in Oregon, Vale has a significant amount of population who find themselves unhoused or unstably housed, and facing extreme rent burdens. We’ve had recent data from the point in time that just occurred at the end of January, and some numbers that came out of that where we found that 58 of our local students are experiencing homelessness. That point in time also pointed out that at least 20% of Vale’s residents live in poverty. Vale’s residents, be they unhoused or unstably housed, right now are being forced to make decisions on how their limited dollars are being spent; food versus gas, rent versus utilities, et cetera.
Miller: One of the reasons that the governor included Malheur County in the state of emergency is the percentage of people experiencing homelessness who are unsheltered. One of the ways to be included was to have that percentage be over 80%, and my recollection is that in the county it’s 83%, which makes me wonder what kinds of services are available right now in the county?
Vialpando: Well, the services that we have are limited because it’s hard for the folks, the agencies mainly based in Ontario, to reach the outer outer limits of Ontario. So there needs to be some collaboration between our cities and county and agencies so that we can make sure that what resources we do have are available to everyone.
Miller: Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, when she included Malheur County in the state of emergency, that was after the county court approved a local state of emergency, that was one of the requirements. What do you hope is actually going to come from this?
Vialpando: Well, what I’m hoping is that the governor sticks to what she committed to. She was committed to addressing homelessness in every corner of the state. As you might know, there’s eight continuums of care in the state of Oregon. They include Central Oregon, Clackamas County, Jackson County, Lane County, Portland/Multnomah County, Salem/Marion/Polk, Washington County, and then the rest is left to the left to the balance of the state, which includes what she was saying, all the corners of the states, which weren’t included in her first day of office when she declared the emergency on homelessness. So I’m hoping that the state can provide us with at least some funding so that we can get a coordinated effort in our area to address homelessness.
Miller: Obviously, you’re right on the Oregon/Idaho border, and it’s an easy slip, the verbal one you just made, saying Idaho instead of Oregon. But is it also an example of feeling forgotten?
Vialpando: The reason I said Idaho, I was born and raised in Idaho. So I do say Idaho a lot. When I lived in Idaho, it was the same thing as what we feel here in rural Oregon. I lived in rural Idaho, and we felt that all the decisions were made in Boise, Idaho. And rural feels the same way, it seems that everybody’s thinking, and it possibly could be true, that the farther you get away from where decisions are made, the less voice you have.
Miller: Are you thinking when you say that primarily about money at this point, that you want more resources to flow east from Salem? Or are you asking for something else?
Vialpando: Well, it all starts with money, Dave. We cannot do anything without the funding. We don’t have the funding that metro areas do. So we rely heavily on the state to provide us with extra funding for situations such as this. Our tax base doesn’t allow us to put up a permanent building for camping areas, such as for sanitation and for bathing and such. So we rely on the state.
Miller: You are now on the homelessness task force for the Oregon Mayors Association. This has been going on for something like six months or so. What does that work look like?
Vialpando: There’s 241 cities in the state of Oregon. And come July 1st, every city has to have an ordinance for describing places that are safe for folks to sit, camp, and situations like that. The Oregon Mayors Association task force was set up so that we’re all on the same page. Even Mayor Wheeler has been a great supporter of our rural cities, because he realizes the situation we’re in. And Mayor Wheeler has said, if rural cannot take care of their homeless, where are they gonna go? They’re gonna go to the resources, to his city and other big cities. So we all need to be on the same page and work together on this.
Miller: For people who aren’t familiar with this, in 2021 Oregon lawmakers passed a law requiring that cities codify where and when people can camp on public property, as opposed to simply banning it outright. And as you noted, these rules have to be in effect pretty soon, by July 1st of this year. Where does that process stand right now in Vale?
Vialpando: What’s happened now is I’m in talks with our other cities around, which would be Nyssa and Ontario, the other bigger cities around here, so that we can be on the same page, so that one ordinance isn’t weaker than the other, and if I can say it, we’re not kicking the can to each other, that we’re all on the same page, and so that we can deal with this as a community. Our whole county only has 33,000 residents. So it’s imperative that we are as one going into this.
Miller: Has that been the case historically? You talked about the idea of kicking the can down the road. In this case, cans are people, right? Has it been the case in the past that if someone was forced to move on, say, from Ontario, that they would end up in Nyssa or Vale?
Vialpando: It’s actually been told to me, I don’t know what the truth is to it, that sheriffs had a fund at one point to where they would buy bus tickets for folks out of town. And you don’t want to be that town that receives the homeless that other folks don’t want to or can’t deal with.
Miller: The phrase you’ve used a couple of times now is that you want to make sure that people are on the same page, people meaning different city or county leaders in the area, as well as even more sort of statewide coordination. Has that been happening? What kinds of conversations have you been a part of just within Malheur County?
Vialpando: I don’t wanna say I’m the spearhead, but I kind of am right now. It started off with joining the Mayors Homeless Task Force. Part of taking on that role was making sure that other mayors within our region, we’re considered region 12 for the League of Oregon Cities, is that that I communicate with the other mayors and other councilors so that we are unified.
Miller: You were quoted in the Argus Observer recently talking about these issues, saying “I don’t want to see on July 1st cities put something in force and kick everyone out into the county. You’ve seen what happened at Bully Creek with stripping copper, and that was with two people living out there full time.” Can you give us a sense for what you were referring to? Where is Bully Creek, and what happened there?
Vialpando: Bully Creek is about three miles outside of the city limits of the Vale. And it’s a campground. We have two folks there that are employed full time to oversee the grounds. Well, with two folks on there, you wouldn’t think that you’d see the property crimes that were happening. But there were some individuals that went in and stripped every piece of copper out of all of the hookups for the RVs. That cost the county quite a bit of money to get that back up so that the park was operable again. It’s situations such as this where we’re starting to see, if the cities aren’t able to address some of these issues, the folks are gonna go out into the county. We’re starting to see more property crimes.
And, and I feel for this because there’s actually a human side to this homelessness. It’s not that we don’t want to deal with it, it’s being able to deal with it, and getting, as you said, not just city leaders and county leaders, but we need to have agencies and providers on board to address this also.
Miller: And just to be clear, you’re saying that the rise in property crimes that you’re seeing, and in particular the stripping of copper pipes in this campsite, you attribute that to homelessness?
Vialpando: Well, I wouldn’t say that it wouldn’t be somebody else that wasn’t homeless. But, out at Bully Creek outside of the campground all last summer, there were encampments that were set up. I wouldn’t really attribute it to those folks themselves, but it’s not a coincidence that we are seeing property crimes go up.
Miller: Tom Vialpando, thanks so much for joining us today.
Vialpando: Thank you, Dave.
Miller: Tom Vialpando is the mayor of Vale. That’s the county seat of Malheur County, just a little bit outside of Ontario.
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