It’s been eight months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Grants Pass v. Johnson, which determined that cities can punish unhoused people for sleeping outside, even if they have nowhere else to go.
Since then, Grants Pass officials have restricted public camping to two city-owned lots, one of which closed earlier this year. The city council recently voted to reopen the site after Disability Rights Oregon filed a lawsuit alleging that the city’s restrictions violated state law.
Amid the back-and-forth, homeless services providers have continued to provide aid to the city’s unhoused residents.
Scott Nelson is the board president of the Mobile Integrative Navigation Team, or MINT. He joins us to share more about what providing services in Grants Pass has been like since the Supreme Court decision last summer.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. It’s now been eight months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which found that cities can punish unhoused people for sleeping outside, even if they do not have anywhere else to go. In response, Grants Pass officials restricted public camping to two city-owned lots, and then closed one of those lots in January. Then, just two weeks ago, in response to a lawsuit brought by Disability Rights Oregon, the city council reopened that site.
Homeless service providers have continued to provide aid to the city’s unhoused residents throughout these changes. Scott Nelson is the board president of the Mobile Integrative Navigation Team, or MINT. He joins us now to talk about what is happening. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Scott Nelson: Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
Miller: Your organization is about two years old. How did it start?
Nelson: Well, the founder of MINT is a young lady by the name of Cassy. She is a nurse by training. During COVID, she was instrumental in helping facilitate a lot of COVID vaccination programs throughout Southern Oregon. One of the findings that we had during that time was that there was a large population that was being unserved, and that was our unhoused population. So, she took it upon herself to literally take out a little wagon, walk around through the parks and try to vaccinate our unhoused population.
She was then joined by many other people who also felt that something else needed to be done to help them. The program has really just taken off from there, from providing healthcare services and vaccinations, to now trying to find places for people to live and get them off the streets.
Miller: It’s striking that … I didn’t mention this earlier, but in your day job, you are a surgeon – a general and colorectal surgeon – and as you noted, the person who founded this came from a health background as well. How much of what MINT provides these days would you put in the category of healthcare?
Nelson: I would say about 50%. I mean, that is the original intent of what MINT was. We recognized that there were a lot of health issues related to this population; but it has evolved to adapt to the needs that we have in our little community. We still provide an outreach once a week where we provide some basic healthcare services.
Really though, the opportunities that we recognize are to bridge the gap between the structure that’s already in place with either food and shelter, and/or receiving health care from some of our other community partners who are charged to take care of this population and helping bridge the gap between getting people to those appointments or doing other things to provide simple services. So, a lot of it is how it started, and we’ve been evolving ever since.
Miller: How many other service providers are there in the immediate area?
Nelson: We have hundreds of healthcare providers, either nurse practitioners or physician assistants, or physicians themselves working in various clinics throughout the city. But we haven’t had a dedicated team, I think, to go out and meet people where they were at – that’s the gap that MINT fills.
Miller: I’m wondering as well, not just about healthcare, but more broadly, in terms of services that would be offered to people experiencing homelessness. How robust is that safety net?
Nelson: Well, it’s been a little bit in evolution, I think. As you pointed out, the city has had its own internal turmoil on how to handle a population like this. And there were camps that were developed, then closed and now being reopened. The city itself is struggling to find the best way to treat these individuals, or to provide assistance for them.
We do have many wonderful programs and organizations, non-profit organizations that are reaching out and trying to provide services. We work closely together in alignment to help. But I think getting the city and the population here in our community to recognize the value of these services has been a little challenging at times.
Miller: Let’s turn to that. I’m curious, first of all, just what went through your mind immediately after the Supreme Court ruling in June, what you thought it was going to mean for Grants Pass?
Nelson: For me personally, I think it was a mixed reaction. I support the Supreme Court’s decision, ironically enough. I think that cities do have the right to control their public spaces. However, I didn’t think that the Supreme Court’s ruling did enough to provide some guidance. And maybe that would be naive, to assume that the Supreme Court would provide guidance, but the city was left with the question of, “OK, we can now control our spaces, but what do we do?”
And there was no one who had, I think, thought deeply enough about that question – what do we do now that we control our spaces? Something has to be done. And the Supreme Court’s decision stopped short of answering that question, or even providing some guidance. So the city, I think, like many other cities, is now grappling with the ramifications of the decision. Great, we get to control our parks and our sidewalks, but there has to be a solution. And that’s really where the city and organizations like MINT and others are trying to find the best way forward.
Miller: What was the city’s first response, in terms of a camping ban and where people who didn’t have a home or had been camping somewhere were actually allowed to camp? What was the first iteration, post Supreme Court ruling?
Nelson: Well, initially there wasn’t one, which was a little surprising. I don’t know, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t know that there had been a lot of thought about what we would do if the Supreme Court rules in our favor or against us. So I don’t know, I’m not on the city council. I wasn’t sure – maybe what those discussions were behind the scenes.
But ultimately what happened was, the city opened up a few camping sites in various locations. And they literally were just a piece of land that’s got some gravel on it, and they put a chain link fence up around it, and they said, “Everybody who’s unhoused can stay in this location.” They made a number of rules or recommendations that individuals would have to move from campsite to campsite over several days. That became untenable. And they realized, OK, well, we need to change some of those things. So it was an evolving process over several months to say, “OK, maybe we do need to provide some toiletries,” or, “We need to have some water.” It kind of evolved into just a lot that people … It became an eyesore for the community and there were a lot of people that were angry at the solution.
Ultimately, the November elections … Most of the city council members were not reelected and a new city council came in place. As you pointed out, [they] disbanded the camps. Then a lawsuit was filed and now they’re starting those camps up again. So, we’re still in the throes of trying to figure out, what is the best solution for this issue in our community? And right now, it’s still a soap opera. We’re still trying to figure this out.
Miller: What are you hearing from the people that your organization serves about all this back and forth, about what this has meant for their lives?
Nelson: It’s been very frustrating for them because there aren’t any rules or regulations for them to follow. We’ve provided a place for them to stay, then we’ve taken it away, then we’re providing something again, so there is no stability in the services that can be provided or the location that they can stay. So, it has been very frustrating for them. I think they’re grateful for all of the help that they receive, but it’s been a challenge for all of them.
Miller: I can imagine that some people in Grants Pass were thinking, when this ruling does come down, no matter what happens, we’re going to have clarity and this debate is going to be over. But it seems from the outside that you’re still having a version of the same debate about how to best respond to a now seemingly intractable problem. Does that ring true, that not that much has changed in terms of the public debate?
Nelson: I would say the public debate remains. And that, I think, is because of the perception that many people have about the unhoused. I think that there are perceptions that everyone who’s unhoused is on drugs, or that they have addictions, or that they’re criminals, or that that’s how they choose to live their lives. So, we should help them, or we should not help them. And that perception really drives a lot of the attitudes that we see, probably not only in our community, but in many communities across the state and across the nation.
And the Supreme Court didn’t provide any guidance. That was not the question that they were asked to rule on, so I don’t think it’s fair to blame the Supreme Court. But we are left with, what do we do? And this really is, I think, the question that all communities are going to have to grapple with – what’s the best way to serve this population, and treat them humanely and equitably, and move forward? And we are still in the throes of figuring that out.
Miller: There’s also the Oregon-based question of what Oregon’s current law really should mean, when you drill down into the language. The language is that restrictions on camping have to be “objectively reasonable,” and that’s obviously now the subject of various legal questions. What does that mean to you, though: “objectively reasonable?”
Nelson: Well, I think it does mean that we provide a safe place for people to go. If you take away the parks and the sidewalks, then we have to provide a location for people to gather. And the best way forward, in my opinion, is to have a managed site where there are rules and regulations, and where there is some oversight. That is really what MINT is trying to provide. We are trying to work with other organizations within Southern Oregon who have some of these low-barrier sites that are managed, that seem to provide a safe place for people to go and still follow all the rules, laws and regulations that a city and a community would like to see.
But this isn’t a problem that’s going away, as the news article in between your two interviews here indicated. I mean, the SNAP program is being cut down, social services will be curtailed a little bit. We are going to continue to see individuals who struggle, both economically and for other reasons, that will require assistance and help. And this is going to continue to be a problem that a lot of people face.
Miller: Scott Nelson, thanks very much for your time.
Nelson: All right, thank you very much. We appreciate it.
Miller: Scott Nelson is a general and colorectal surgeon in Grants Pass. He’s also the board president of the Mobile Integrative Navigation Team, or MINT, which provides services to people experiencing homelessness in Grants Pass.
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