A live audience of Grants Pass community members joined Dave Miller at the Performing Arts Center at Grants Pass High School on April 29, 2025. Guests included Scott Nelson, the board president of MINT and Susan Clark, the executive director of Mid Rogue Foundation.
Allison Frost / OPB
For the last year, Grants Pass has been at the center of a national conversation about where people who are homeless can stay. A lawsuit brought against the city by a group of homeless people had made its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court: Grants Pass v. Johnson.
Last June, the court released a 6-3 decision finding that it is not cruel or unusual punishment to penalize people for living outdoors even if they have nowhere else to go.
But that ruling was not an end to legal battles about homelessness in Grants Pass or around the country.
Earlier this year, after the city council closed one of its two sanctioned camp sites, a new lawsuit was filed, leading a judge to order another injunction — and the city council to re-open one of those sites.
Scott Nelson is the board president of MINT, a homeless services nonprofit. Susan Clark is the executive director of Mid Rogue Foundation, a nonprofit focused on housing. Indra Nicholas is a city councilor and small business owner. Brock Spurgeon is a tile contractor and one of the founders of Park Watch Grants Pass. They joined us in front of a live audience to talk about homelessness at the Performing Arts Center at Grants Pass High School on April 29.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller, coming to you in front of an audience at the Performing Arts Center at Grants Pass High School. Just over a year ago, the city of Grants Pass was on the national stage. A lawsuit brought against the city by a group of homeless people had made its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case was called Grants Pass v. Johnson. Last June, the court released a 6 to 3 decision. It found that it is not cruel or unusual punishment to penalize people for living outdoors even if they have nowhere else to go.
But the ruling was not an end to legal battles about homelessness here in Grants Pass, let alone homelessness itself. Earlier this year, after the city council closed one of its two sanctioned camp sites, a new lawsuit was filed leading a judge to order another injunction, and leading the city council to reopen one of those sites.
We’ve come to Grants Pass to talk about all of this and to hear how the issue of homelessness has divided this mid-sized city in the Rogue Valley. We’re gonna get a number of different perspectives over the course of this hour, first separately and then together. We start with Scott Nelson and Susan Clark. Scott Nelson is a surgeon here and the board president of the Mobile Integrative Navigation Team, or MINT. Susan Clark is the executive director of Mid Rogue Foundation. Welcome to you both.
Scott Nelson: Thank you very much. It’s nice to be here.
Susan Clark: Thank you. I appreciate you having us.
Miller: It’s great to have you both here. Susan, first – what was the mission of Mid Rogue Foundation when it started 14 years ago? What did you do?
Clark: Mid Rogue Foundation started out, which might also explain the name “Foundation,” as an independent physicians group. They had gotten a grant for $750,000 from the federal government to help doctors in rural areas transfer onto electronic records. So as a foundation they were helping, giving money to doctors in rural areas.
The name stuck with Mid Rogue, and in about 2019 they sort of reinvented themselves around the social determinants of health, which is about housing, transportation, education and the built environment.
Miller: It sounds from the outside like a gigantic shift, going from software to help doctors have digital access to records to helping people with housing. On the inside does it seem as big as it does on the outside?
Clark: So both of those things are about health. So the foundation was the genesis from AllCare Community Health. And turning to the social determinants of health is another way to ensure that people are healthy. It did shift from the doctors to people in the population for sure.
Miller: What were the challenges of doing something that this foundation had never done before?
Clark: Well, my board is very adventurous. They’re risk takers. They’re trailblazers really. They’re not afraid of getting out in front and doing things first. So one of the first things they did after the shift was they built Foundry Village, which is the first transitional housing in Grants Pass and Josephine County. They just went out and made it happen. It has been an all volunteer board, all the way until November of 23 when they hired me. And now we are a staff of four.
It’s a board that sees a need – they’re about stabilizing housing that’s really what they’re focused on right now – and tries to fill it. They’ve done that with Evan’s Place, which is low income housing for seniors. It’s a home with six bedrooms and four baths. They saw a need because seniors are the fastest growing population of the unhoused, and they wanted to fill that need or at least provide something for that target population.
Later this year, we will break ground on a veteran’s village, which will be the first housing specifically targeted for veterans in all of Josephine County. There is housing in Douglas and there is housing in our neighboring county Jackson, but there hasn’t been anything until this comes to fruition in Josephine County. So this board is really about trying to help unmet needs in our community.
Miller: You mentioned Foundry Village. What happens there?
Clark: Foundry Village is transitional housing. It’s 17 little, tiny houses that fit a full bed, little drawers, has a little rack for hanging clothes, and everyone has their own unit. But there’s also a community center with five bathrooms – one’s completely ADA – a large living area with a dining room table and a big screen TV, couch and chairs. And then we have a kitchen with a walk-in refrigerator. There’s two stoves, two microwaves, two toasters, two of everything for 17 people.
We also do programming there. We have life skills classes. Right now we have a rent well class going on. We do weekly case management and the participants have house chores. They pay a program fee and they work towards their own goals, which, for most of them, is to have a place of their own.
Miller: Transitional housing, the idea is that this is temporary, that they go from there to somewhere else, as you’re saying most of them living independently. How often does that happen?
Clark: Well, we’ve been operating since August of 2024. Prior to that, other community-based organizations had operated it for us. And since we’ve been there, I did not get the count before I came, but I’m aware of at least five people who have gone on to get housing. Usually, they’re waiting for a HUD voucher or waiting until they can save up enough money to get to the next step.
So I think it is successful. We have a time limit of 24 months, but that doesn’t mean if you get your HUD voucher in the 23rd month and you have 120 days to find a house that we would necessarily kick you out. That’s not the purpose. The purpose is to help people get to the next goal.
Miller: Scott, you are a surgeon here in Grants Pass. How did you get involved in homeless services?
Nelson: Well, that’s a great question. Our founder of MINT, the organization that I’m a part of, is Cassy Leach. She was a nurse. I heard of the organization and the work that she was doing. And I was anxious to participate because this is a huge problem in our community, and not just in ours but in communities across the United States. I have a strong desire to participate and help where I can. Many of our patients are homeless, so we see the ramifications of being unhoused and the health consequences that incur. So that’s really how I got started in the whole program.
Miller: What does MINT do?
Nelson: Our mission statement is to bridge the gap. We began with Cassy toting her little red wagon and COVID vaccines during the pandemic out to the parks and the locations where our unhoused population were residing, and offering those individuals. And it really has transitioned from there. MINT’s purpose is to help individuals have better health, but we have also recognized that in order to do that there has to be other needs that are met. We can’t just take care of their wounds, their cold bodies or their empty bellies. We have to provide a stable location for them to go. So we have transitioned from not just providing healthcare services, but really to try to find a place for individuals to stay.
Miller: In a special session a few days after the new members of the city council were sworn in, a majority voted to revoke a grant agreement to MINT that would have helped you buy the property where your navigation center has been operating. Members of the council took issue both with the location of that building and also the state of the buildings there. What did that vote mean?
Nelson: The vote meant that we needed to go back to the drawing board and continue to find ways to be successful. For us, it is a mission of love and one of urgency. And we will be successful in whatever shape or form that needs to take as we move forward.
I don’t fault the city council for the actions. I think they were trying to look at the problem in a different way. And actually it’s turned out to be a blessing in disguise for us as we’ve found other ways to continue to move forward our mission, and to find ways to be better partners with other organizations in our community, and with the city council and the mayor and all of those entities. It’s really forced us to come together and look at, how do we tackle this problem? I think in that sense it’s been a blessing for us.
Miller: Most people don’t say that if they don’t get $660,000 they thought was coming, that it’s a blessing. So what do you mean by that?
Nelson: Well, I think in this work you have to always be optimistic. There are always tons of challenges that come to an organization or individuals, that is just the population that we’re working with. They’re there a number of reasons. And if an organization or an individual feels that every bump in the road is going to upset the apple cart, we’re not gonna get very far. So we’ve just adopted the attitude that we will take life as it comes and we’re gonna continue to move forward. We feel that the work is that important and the people that we are trying to help are that important.
Miller: Earlier today, our team went to the MINT Navigation Center just to look around and talk to some of the people who were hanging out there. I talked to a man named David who is 37 years old. He said he’s been homeless off and on since he was 12. Most recently he was living at a shelter in Portland, then he came to Grants Pass some number of months ago because his father lived here.
I asked him if there were differences in being homeless in the two cities. I want to play you a short part of an interview that I had with him. This is in response to that question, the differences between Portland and Grants Pass in terms of homelessness.
David [recording]: Oh, big difference. For what help is out there, like needing the help and everything, there’s not that much help. In Portland, there’s so many organizations that are for the homeless. This is a blessing, MINT, this is a good structure for the homeless. And U Turn For Christ, they’re starting up too. Everyone is starting to notice they need help. We need help. And I think we’re gonna get there.
Miller [recording]: What do you want people in Grants Pass who are gonna listen to this to know about homelessness right now?
David [recording]: There’s a lot of struggles. It’s a lot of anxiety and fear, because there’s a lot of people out there that mean harm. Drugs is another thing. It’s rampant. If we could figure out how to house people and how to figure out how to get rid of drugs, we could start helping with the psychosis, mental illness and what people need help with. Some people just needed help with filling out an app, literally. And it’s these type of people here that help go out of their way and do that.
It’s rough out there. But there’s positives to it.
Miller [recording]: What’s one of the positives?
David [recording]: Having people that care. Having places to go that gives us hope.
Miller: Susan Clark, you’re working with Mid Rogue Foundation, a little bit further down the line in terms of transitional housing. But I’m curious what stands out to you in what you heard from David.
Clark: Actually, we have mobile navigators too. So when he said sometimes we just need people to help us fill out paperwork, we do that. We help people fill out their HUD paperwork, we help them navigate those processes. We have a grant for birth certificates, sometimes they’re stolen or lost or damaged. The very first document they need is that birth certificate to move forward. So we do a lot of that work.
And that really made me smile to hear him say that, because that validates that we are actually making a difference in some people’s lives.
Miller: I want to run a comment by both of you that we got from a community survey that we did in the last couple of days. This is what somebody wrote:
“What we’re doing right now is not working. We keep offering help and people keep refusing it, and meanwhile, the rest of us are left picking up the pieces. I’m talking about the needles in the parks, the fires, the small businesses that lose customers because nobody feels safe anymore, the homes losing value because they are near a homeless camp. We can’t just keep pretending it’s all OK.
“So here’s what I think: we sort people based on what they actually need and how they’re behaving. If you’re just down on your luck and want to get back on your feet, we help you, no barriers. If you’re addicted or mentally ill, but you’re willing to get better, we house you, but you’ve got to show up for treatment and stay accountable. And if you’re the guy who refuses everything, who keeps wrecking public spaces, starting fires and putting people in danger, then yeah, you’re going into a structured facility. You’ll get fed, you’ll get help, but you’re not gonna get to keep doing whatever you want and making the rest of us live with it.”
Scott Nelson, what’s your response?
Nelson: Well, I wish the world was so easy, right? Wish we could solve all of those problems in that very way. But each of those suggestions requires a lot of money and people to participate. And I don’t know that that’s always the best way to look at people. We have many examples of people who have had to turn their lives around who have failed over and over and over again. I think there’s a lot of ways to look at the problems that we have. We can be angry, mean and say you have failed, so we are going to institutionalize you or we’re going to do this or that to you. And if we were to do that, I think we would have to build really big institutions. Because people fail all the time. We have a unique population that we’re working with. Many of these individuals have made choices that put themselves in these positions. I think that that can be very hard and it takes some time for them to kind of dig themselves out of that hole.
As you pointed out, I’m a surgeon. I spent a lot of time working with individuals who need colonoscopies for colon cancer. I had an experience this last week where I had a gentleman that came in who was 55, he had never had a colonoscopy before and we found a large colon cancer. And I could have approached this in many ways. I could have said “sir, you should have come in at 45, that’s the age when screening begins. And because you didn’t you now have a problem. And because of your bad choice, I’m not going to help you. You should have come in before we could have prevented this.” But because of the choice that you made for not coming in, for whatever reason, “you’re now in trouble and I refuse to help.”
That is almost kind of what we’re doing here. We’re saying “Hey, you are causing problems. You made a choice in your life that is bad, and now we’re all suffering the consequence for that, and you too. And because of that we refuse to participate in doing anything for you.” And I think that that’s kind of what we do when we see individuals on the streets. We prejudge them, we say “you’re here because of drugs, we’re here because of your background, we’re here because you made bad choices and now the onus is on you to figure it out, and we don’t want to have anything to do with you.”
Miller: I take your point and it would be obvious cruelty for a doctor in your position to say that. But I imagine that the difference that maybe this commenter would say – and maybe there are societal costs to medical care like colon cancer that are not insignificant, so that is a societal burden – but the rejoinder might be that the effects of some aspects of homelessness are different than the the personal ramifications of not getting that colonoscopy. And that’s I think what is driving so many of these comments. That does make it seem different than the cancer example.
Nelson: Yes, and I would agree with that. I think that there are a lot of societal implications as people are unhoused. And it is frustrating. We moved here 15 years ago. And to see the parks be taken away from us, it’s not a place where I will send my kids anymore. That’s very frustrating to me. I get frustrated by that when I see there’s tents in all of our parks, when there’s needles on the streets. That frustrates me as a community member and as an individual. That’s not how we should be living. That’s not what we want our city to look like.
But I think that there’s ways to try to fix that. And being angry or forcing people out or not coming together as a community to say “what can we do to fix this” – that’s where I think we need to be. I’m excited. In your example with the young man that you interviewed, he said, “I think we’re getting there,” and I would echo that. I do think we’re getting there. I do think that we are coming together as a community to really make a difference so that we can get rid of the anger that we have about the parks being full or the needles on the streets. Nobody wants that and I think all of us are looking for ways to make that better. And how we do that is really the debate that we’re having as a community. How can we do this well?
Miller: Susan, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that comment I read as well.
Clark: From my perspective, we have a personal obligation to help our neighbors. And these are our neighbors too. It takes some courage. In the time that I’ve been at Mid Rogue, I have seen a personal shift in myself in terms of my level of comfort around unhoused people. It was just two days ago I was at the post office. And it was not post office hours, it was after five. I ran in and I ran out, and I was getting in my car and this unhoused gentleman asked me where the campground was for the homeless. And I couldn’t really hear him very well. And I walked up, stopped what I was doing, went over and talked to him for a little bit, and then gave him directions as to where to go.
I’m not so sure that I would have been comfortable talking to a man that was unhoused and unkempt, to some extent, prior to my experience with working with the unhoused, and realizing that they’re just like us, many of them. And it could happen. It could have happened in my family at one point in time. My father had been ill so many times that the insurance company said, “if you go back to the hospital in the next six months we will cancel your health insurance.” To which my mother sat us down and said, “if dad goes back in the hospital, we’re going to have to sell the house.” Not that we would have necessarily been unhoused, but that was her out for being able to pay for his medical bills.
So personally, I feel like we’re not always all in control of our circumstances. And that plays a role. I think we have an opportunity here to help our neighbors.
Miller: Scott Nelson and Susan Clark, thanks very much.
Nelson: Thank you.
Miller: We’re gonna get two different perspectives right now. Indra Nicholas owns Udders Ice Cream and Gelato here in Grants Pass. Earlier this year, she was sworn in as one of the new members of the Grants Pass City Council. Brock Spurgeon is a tile contractor, and one of the creators of the group Park Watch. Brock and Indra, welcome.
Brock Spurgeon: Thank you.
Indra Nicholas: Thank you.
Miller: Indra, first – you moved to Grants Pass in 1996, I’ve read … hopefully that’s accurate.
Nicholas: That’s correct.
Miller: How have you seen the city change in the last 30-plus years?
Nicholas: First of all, I do want to say I’m a city council member, but I’m speaking just personally for myself, so I want to make that disclaimer.
We moved here from Sacramento, which was booming at the time because we wanted to come to a small town to raise our children. I had four children here, and lovely, loved growing up. My kids went to public schools, played in all the parks, felt safe, just great.
I would say I would not want my kids to come home with my grandkids and live here now. It’s just gotten that bad.
Miller: How much did homelessness and the city’s approach to homelessness play into your decision to run for city council?
Nicholas: It played a large part. And there were other reasons as well, my children are all out and so I have more free time. And the community’s given so much to me. We have so many wonderful people. I’m usually an optimistic person, but I’ve gotten so depressed and kind of negative over the last few years I’ve noticed. But we’ve always had really caring wonderful people here, so I wanna say that. Just being a business owner and the experience that I’ve had, all that the city and community have given me, I felt that I wanted to give back, and that I could be productive and problem solve and really help with the issues that we face.
Miller: What do you want to accomplish in terms of homelessness? It’s a tricky question to ask given that you say you’re here as an individual not as a city councilor. So answer however you wish, but this is, I suppose, a city policy question that I’m asking.
Nicholas: First, I think we need real data on what the main problem is. You hear all of these things from different organizations and nonprofits on the ground. How many are substance abuse, mental health, families, I’ve heard children are unhoused, veterans. I would really like to get solid data on what we’re dealing with. And no one seems to be able to come up with that. I’ve asked for that because I think we need solid data on what we’re dealing with before we can say what we need to do. Do we need more of a mental health program and facility? Is it mostly all substance abuse, which is mostly what you see out there in my belief, but we don’t really know. So I think we need the data before we can really decide on a program and how to help clean up our city.
Miller: I mentioned one of the first votes that the new city council took in early January. Part of that was to not go forward with a grant to MINT. Part of it was to restrict the hours of one of the camps, which is actually very close to here, about three blocks from here is where the city sanctioned parking lots are. So the vote restricted the hours in one, closed another, and that led to, as I mentioned briefly in my introduction, a lawsuit, a judge saying, “no, this does not suffice.” And then the city council said, “OK, then we will open two more in the same place.”
One question I was wondering about – the city attorney, as far as I understand, did have a warning about that vote, saying that this may not be a good idea. A majority, including you, went forward anyway. What did you make of that city attorney’s warning?
Nicholas: It was a difficult decision. Where that J Street camp was were so many problems. The businesses were being destroyed, and the businesses were actually getting together and looking at suing the city as well. And then when you looked in that J Street camp, the conditions were horrible. I just thought, that’s no place for someone to live. I just looked at that as inhumane. And what can we do? We have to do something. So I think the thought was, at the time, that just getting them out of that situation, that we have so many nonprofits and so many people helping, that they will step up and fill that gap.
You mentioned MINT … because we have to balance spending taxpayer dollars wisely. So we’ve heard a lot about helping people and we want to help people. But the other side of that is we have a lot of citizens that don’t want to spend money on the homeless because they’re struggling. So when you’re struggling with your bills and your house, and you can’t pay your mortgage or buy groceries for your family, and then you see that money going to people who are really a lot refusing help, that’s hard. So listening to them as well.
So we did take that money back from MINT and then they stepped up and did it, just like we kind of knew nonprofits would. Like Scott said, if they have the heart, they have the passion and they’ll find a way to do it. And I’m really glad that they did that.
Miller: As I mentioned, Brock Spurgeon is here as well, one of the creators of a group called Park Watch. What is Park Watch?
Spurgeon: Park Watch started with a bunch of us that were going to city hall meetings when the whole problem started happening, the first injunction, and the parks filled up. So we just started going to city hall meetings to find out what is an injunction and what can we do about it? We’d meet every Sunday morning and talk about the previous meeting. And after a while we just thought, well, maybe there’s something else we can do? So we started a Facebook page and connected neighbors around all the parks, so they can kind of keep each other informed [about] what’s happening in the parks. We started doing rallies on the streets, had some signs made up. And then we volunteer our time, every Sunday morning we clean a park. It started off on Morrison Park. We’d go every Saturday morning and clean before the ball games. They were gonna, they were gonna cancel the Little League baseball.
Miller: What were you cleaning up?
Spurgeon: Needles, foil. We clean everything up while we’re there. We started seeing it because people didn’t believe how much we’re picking up, but it’s needles, burnt foil, tie offs, pipes.
Miller: So drug paraphernalia largely.
Spurgeon: Yeah, just everywhere. So we cleaned a park, but then the next day it’s dirty again. So we’re kind of just chasing our tail. But we didn’t give up and we don’t give up. They got them out of the parks when the first injunction was lifted, and we went through the parks and they’re all clean. We weren’t finding any more needles or anything again. So we started thinking about what we’re gonna do now. But now here we are again with dirty park. So everybody’s worried.
And of course we gotta worry about the homeless. The circumstantial homeless, the drug addicted homeless, there’s two different camps. And they need two different solutions. If we don’t look at them as two different problems, we’ll never gonna fix them. There’s a community that we have to think about too. There’s kids that don’t get to use the parks. So if we can go clean a park and say we cleaned it today, go visit it tomorrow before it gets wrecked again, that’s what we do and that’s what we’re still doing. I guess you’d call us park stewards, we clean the parks and make sure that the community and kids have a safe place to play.
Miller: You’ve said in interviews in the past that you have close family connections to homelessness. Do you mind sharing that aspect of your story?
Spurgeon: My father was a drug addict, so I was raised by him. It was just the two of us, I was a little gypsy kid. He died at 48. He was homeless, with the drugs and stuff. So as far as drugs, I understand that too. I was using cocaine at 12 years old, I was freebasing with my dad at 19. I got out of it in my early twenties. My wife and I decided this is not the life we want, and it was easier for us to get out of it. But it got my father, it got my brother who also died at 48 in Medford on the Greenway. They pulled him out of Bear Creek about seven years ago. And my son’s been a heroin addict for 19 years now. He’s homeless here in town, so he’s one of these guys in town with the packs and stuff. And we love him dearly.
Here’s the deal … technically he’s homeless. But if he were to join any rehab facility, or any kind of anything, just try to get off the drugs, we have a room for him and he knows it. I’ve got a full time job for him. He was kicked off the job site by the foreman because he was drinking on the job and they saw him nodding out on his feet. So I can’t bring him back to work until he gets some sort of rehab. And I look at these young guys walking up and down the street, and I’m like you know how many are just like my son. If you could just get them away from the drugs, they have family that will take them in. We won’t have to use all our money. You don’t need all the outreach. You got families that are ready to bring people back into their homes if we can work on getting them clean.
Miller: That’s a huge “if” though, right? I don’t need to tell you that after the story you just told us.
Spurgeon: See, that’s part of the problem. They say with drug use there comes a mental health problem. That mental health problem is that little voice in their head saying “say no to recovery.” If you go talk to these people in town, 95% are gonna say, “I don’t want help.” They do. They just don’t realize it. Who wants to wake up in the morning in a tent, cold and freezing, wondering how you’re gonna get high? There’s no way to live.
My views have changed over the years. I used to have very liberal views on it. They say you have to wait till they’re ready and they gotta hit rock bottom. But nowadays we’re not letting them hit rock bottom. We’re giving them just enough cushion to where they can just barely survive. I had one time my son called up, and I knew he hit rock bottom because he was cold, he was tired, and he was lonely and he was broke. And when he called me I could hear it in his voice. Back then I didn’t have the same connections I do, I know a lot of people in town. I know recovery people and a lot of specialists. So I’m just waiting for him to hit rock bottom again and I’ll be there for him. A lot of people will be there for these kids walking up and down our streets.
Miller: This is an important point I just want to keep following up on. If your suggestion is that the help that we’re, in a piecemeal way, providing in our society … We happen to be in Grants Pass, which is a kind of national epicenter of a version of a homelessness conversation, but we could be having a version of this conversation all over the country. It’s worth sort of pointing that out. But if you’re saying that we’re not letting people hit rock bottom, what would letting people hit rock bottom look like? What would the policies be that would lead to that?
Spurgeon: I think we’re kind of past that now. I think the problem is too big. There’s too many people suffering from it. And it’s growing. What are we losing, 110,000 people a year now? Six, seven years ago it was 30,000.
Miller: And I suppose with fentanyl rock bottom just means death.
Spurgeon: Yeah, I guess so. But I’m not opposed to forced rehab now. When people are saying if you mess up too many times and you say no to help, finally we’re just gonna lock you up, we’re gonna give you the help. Well I’ll tell you what, the only times my son has ever considered recovery is after he spent a couple of months in jail. He goes to jail and then he gets his head cleaned. And then he talks to me, we have this communication, and he’s ready.
He needs massive mental health help, so getting them clean is just part of it. That’s what we’re overlooking – you can’t just get someone clean and say you’re better. He’s gonna need a lot. He’s gonna have to have meetings, he’s gonna have to know other people to talk to, he might need to have some sort of medication. I don’t know. But we have to try something else, because we’re running out of options and we’re not saving enough people. They’re all worth saving, everybody.
So Park Watch, we’re communicating a lot with U Turn For Christ, we’re friendly with MINT, we try to be. Some people don’t like Park Watch. But we’re there to help people. So we direct people towards them if they’re ready for help.
Miller: Brock, thanks very much.
Spurgeon: You’re welcome.
Miller: That’s Brock Spurgeon, one of the founders of the group Park Watch, here in Grants Pass.
We’ve come here to talk about homelessness, which is both a super entrenched problem and the source of years and years of political conflict. We’ve heard a variety of points of view in the first two segments. We’re now bringing back some of those guests from segment one to be in conversation with one another.
Before we hear from them though, we have a comment or a question from our audience. What’s your name and what do you want to say?
Audience Member: Yeah, thank you. My name is Lionheart. I’m a person experiencing homelessness, but I’m also a researcher. I have been staying in the parks and the camps, and I would like to make a comment. I do think that this is a very important conversation. And I think there’s a voice missing from this conversation, I think it’s the voice of those experiencing homelessness.
I think if they were to be here and to hear the talk about the J Street encampment being unconscionably torturous, I think that the response might be that things are significantly worse without a place to legally exist. And without that space, even if it’s well intentioned, even if you’re trying to foster a situation where people are going to hit rock bottom and hopefully respond positively, unfortunately you’re creating the circumstances that are just so torturous that sometimes people turn to self-medication, turn to the very drugs which are perpetuating the cycle.
Now, I’m very blessed in that I’ve never had any issues with substance abuse. I’ve never had a drink of alcohol in my life, never had a cigarette. But it is hard. Last summer, when it was over 110 degrees in the J Street encampment, and over 120 degrees inside a tent, and you’re not allowed to put up the means to thermoregulate with shade, you’re making it impossible for people to survive, let alone thrive, to move back into a community that seemingly doesn’t want them to exist.
I think that if you’re going to have meaningful conversations with people, where are the surveys, where are the interviews, where are the focus groups? I think we can do better. And I think if you win the trust of the people you’re trying to serve, you will be able to have a meaningful relationship, a positive relationship, and actually help people out. Thank you.
Miller: Thank you for that.
Indra, I’m curious. Apropos of what we just heard, to what extent are people experiencing homelessness a part of the city’s decision making about how to proceed?
Nicholas: Well, first I would like to give kudos to Park Watch. They do a tremendous job for our community, so thank you.
And I would like to just clear up a misnomer that a lot of people seem to think if you’re not for housing the homeless or giving them all these things that you’re not compassionate. And that is so far from the truth. Everyone involved in the discussion in the city is compassionate. And I would say that almost all of us go around and do speak with homeless people, and do know them and do find out things about them. But I wanted to say I agree with Brock and that we do a lot of enabling homeless. I had a sister-in-law – I think we’ve all been touched by people who have been on drugs – and she was heading towards death. The only thing that saved her was a year in jail and she came out clean.
So I think we need a different approach for substance abuse. Because you can’t make people do things, as much as you’d love to make them do things. And we hear over and over that sometimes people fail 15, 16, 17 … and it’s OK to fail. We still want to help them. But we’re not helping them by allowing them to live in any way on the street. So I think we really do need to look at more permanent solutions. And perhaps it is mandatory treatment for substance abuse, because they’re not thinking clearly. For sure for the mentally ill and get them help and medication.
So we all have the same goals, which is to help people get better, lead productive lives and have good relationships. I think we disagree maybe on just how to do it sometimes.
Miller: I do want to play one more short interview that I did earlier today. This was also at the MINT Navigation Center. This is with a woman named Crystal Cameron, who is now living with her 15-year-old son at the tent site at 6th and A. She told me that she thinks people have a lot of misconceptions about her.
Crystal Cameron [recording]: Well, let’s see. I’ve heard that I’m a druggie, I’m this, I’m that, because I’m missing my teeth. Well just so everybody knows, my kids busted my teeth out with a door at one point in time. I smoke a lot of pot. I’m not a druggie. I’m a mom. I look like I’m one thing, but I’m not. Everybody thinks I’ve been in prison and stuff. People need to understand you’re only one paycheck away from where we are. In a heartbeat you could be right here where we are. Then what? Then how would you feel if you’re walking on the street with your kid, and just because you’ve done interviews and your face is out there that people wanna talk [beep].
For me, it hurts my feelings. It hurts me for my kid. But we’re pretty tough-skinned. We don’t yell back at people because that’s just pointless. But people need to take the time. Come down and see some people. Not everybody is a crazy, cracked out druggie. Not everybody is this, that and the other. There’s some actually really good family-oriented people down there. And that’s one reason why I don’t mind not moving away from where I’m at, because I know that my kid’s protected regardless. And that’s one nice thing, is that people think “it’s all these separate people and they’re all on drugs.” No. We’re actually very family-oriented. My kid going to school down on 6th Street, by 10 o’clock everybody’s quiet because they know that he has to get up and go to school.
Miller: Susan, where do you see room for productive agreement right now?
Clark: I find that right now – and actually I was saying this five months ago in a different interview – I am very impressed with the way the nonprofits and community-based organizations in this community work together. Even before Pathways to Stepping Stone Stabilization Center gathered some momentum to be a new facility or opportunity for people who are unhoused to make progress toward being housed, even before that I was impressed with how we all work together and refer clients to one another. And we’re very collaborative. It’s striking how collaborative we are here.
We had a client, grandparents and some children, and they had just got into housing, and the grandfather passed away. And immediately we called on our partners, and the fire department brought them a dining room table and set of chairs. People just called all their contacts and made something happen for this family at this very horrific event in their life. What I would say is that we have a real opportunity here to do something and we have a community where I think something can happen.
Miller: Let me run this by all of you to sharpen this point. I mentioned the survey that we asked … We got dozens of responses from folks in the community. It was a very open-ended thing: “What do you think about homelessness right now in Grants Pass?” Something like that.
One person wrote, “I want to remind all that houseless folks are people. Some are disabled, some have mental health diagnoses, many are from Southern Oregon. Most need resources and direction. They do not need condemnation or hate.”
Somebody else wrote this: “The homeless policies are garbage. These are trashy, feral criminals who are mostly drug addicted.”
I bring this up because there is obviously so much divergence of opinion and so much anger. I’m wondering where you see agreement that could lead to a better overall community?
Nelson: I think just the fact that you’re here and we are here. We have a member of our city council here, the mayor is here in the audience. We have many of our nonprofits that are here. I think those, maybe, who aren’t polarized to some extreme or other are all coming together to say, “we recognize that there is a problem.” This is a complicated problem. If this were easy, we would have figured it out a long time ago, and we’re not alone in that. Portland hasn’t figured it out, San Francisco hasn’t figured it out. And everyone is struggling with this.
I do think that there is a lot of different perceptions out there – they’re all drug addicts, they’re all economically challenged or whatever. The reality is that there’s a broad spectrum. I think it’s incorrect to paint the unhoused population with a single brush. There are those who are drug addicts. There are those who have just fallen on hard times. There are those who are there because they have made bad choices in their life. It’s a whole broad spectrum of individuals.
But I am encouraged by what we’re seeing moving forward in that we’re dialoguing, we’re communicating, we’re working together to figure it out. We will figure it out. There’s only one way forward for our city. We don’t want to see our parks going back to how they were. I would like to see Park Watch out of a job, there’s nothing left to clean up, we’re all good. We all want the same thing. We want our city to be clean, we want it to be healthy, we want our parks back. And I honestly believe everyone in this room wants to be compassionate and find the right way to help.
So that’s the starting point. We all agree on the end goal. How do we get there? That’s the challenge, and that comes through a lot of talking, communication, meeting together, working with people and figuring out what are we gonna do? There will be compromise, give and take, and it may not be perfect. But ultimately, I think if we have a group of individuals who are dedicated to moving this forward, we will come up with a solution that will be equitable for everyone.
Miller: Indra? We have about a minute-and-a-half left.
Nicholas: I would say, first of all, not every place deals with this. When you travel, you do see cities that aren’t dealing with homelessness. I think Oregon is one of the worst states that deals with homelessness and throwing money at the problem doesn’t help. I think because of the drug decriminalization that’s been fixed, we attract a lot of people here that aren’t from our area. So I think that is a big problem. And then the state having unfunded mandates that make cities provide places I think is a problem. I think we would do better if we didn’t have that over us as well. And then the lawsuits are very difficult. I wish we could just get together and talk, have conversation with people before they sue to figure things out because that makes it hard for everyone.
Just having a business here, I will say businesses are struggling. What you see in our town is a detriment to economic growth like you’ve never seen. When you have people walking across the street in the middle, swerving, defecating outside your shop and sleeping, it’s damaging to our business. Yes, I do fully agree we have different types of people that we need to address in different ways. The children, there should never be a 15-year-old in that camp. I don’t know why that child is there. But we really need to educate our children and protect our children from all of this.
Miller: Indra Nicholas, Susan Clark and Scott Nelson, thanks very much.
All: Thank you.
Miller: Indra Nicholas is a city councilor and small business owner here in Grants Pass. Susan Clark is the executive director of Mid Rogue Foundation. And Scott Nelson is the board president of Mobile Integrative Navigation Team, or MINT.
“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.
Contact “Think Out Loud®”If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.
