More than 140 residents of two homeless camps in Cottage Grove will be evicted on August 22 and moved into a much smaller “kennel-type” dusk-to-dawn camp built on a former dog park. The site can house no more than 60 people, who will need to move their belongings every morning by 7 am.
“They say that it’s unsanitary in here,” says Ashlie Armstrong, an unhoused resident at the 12th Street camp. “However, you’re going to put us in a dog park where dogs shit all goddamn day?”
The move is the latest chapter in the controversial history of how Cottage Grove treats its homeless population in its city politics.
St. Vincent de Paul raised $2.3 million to operate Cottage Grove’s existing homeless shelter, and build a new, permanent shelter. However, the nonprofit withdrew its bid due to a July 30 recall vote that pushed out city councilors Mike Fleck, Chalice Savage and Alex Dreher.
The city will now pay for everything, including a private security company that will manage the former dog-park-turned-homeless-camp.
The recall vote — led by right-wing group Community Strong Cottage Grove, Mayor Candace Solesbee and Beds For Freezing Nights President Johanna Zee — will be certified by Lane County Elections August 26.
Fleck, who runs the basic needs safety net nonprofit Community Sharing — a nonprofit that helps people meet basic needs like food, clothing and rent — says he thinks the city will never get another chance to bring in that kind of funding to help the community’s homeless population. It’s rare for a seven-figure dollar amount to fall into their laps, Fleck says.
Currently, there are no homeless shelters in Cottage Grove. “We ran out of money,” he adds.
Davette Anderson, a fifth-generation Cottage Grove local — who relies on oxygen tanks to breathe — says she’ll likely have to leave the town she grew up in. “I’m leaving every morning at 7 am with the generator, breathing machine and an oxygen concentrator,” she says. “To go where?”
Fleck says that “90 percent” of the current issues surrounding the unhoused would have been solved by St. Vincent de Paul’s plans, but then Community Strong — and Solesbee — turned their sights onto the nonprofit.
“Our mayor went on the attack and basically scared St. Vincent de Paul out of town,” Fleck says. “It’s a shame.”
Fleck says that even after serving on the council for 17 years, he is slightly relieved the August 12 meeting was his final one as a city councilor. “I love serving our community,” he says, “but I’m just gonna serve in other ways.”
According to Fleck, this “mean-spirited” effort is spearheaded by anti-vaxxers who protested COVID-19 vaccination clinics with brandished firearms and aggressive dogs. “They’ve been harassing us for three years,” he says.
After a while, the homeless became the subject of their vitriol. While he admits Cottage Grove’s response to the homeless crisis could have been better, the city successfully mitigated homeless camps in parks by keeping both camps open.
“I’m proud of my service, and certainly I’m happy to debate with anybody the issues on their merits,” he says.
The city’s only existing shelter on Highway 99, managed by the nonprofit Carry It Forward, closed on June 30, due to a lack of funding.
Two open-air camps opened as overflow sites for the Highway 99 shelter when it was still operating. One is behind the Dari Mart on South 12th Street and the other is behind the Public Works Building off of North Douglas Avenue. Now they’re all that’s left.
Both had free access to water until Public Works reduced the flow to one-third of its usual capacity last month. The camp on 12th Street had power until the city’s Public Works turned it off a few months ago.
Both are now unmanaged, and now there’s nowhere else for Cottage Grove’s homeless campers to go.
Bethany Cartledge, executive director of St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County, says that the decision to withdraw could not have been more difficult, but because of the recall vote, the actions of City Councilor Greg Ervin, and the community-at-large’s stance on the issue — their original timeline to offer services by this month could not happen.
According to a letter Cartledge sent to Cottage Grove’s City Council, Ervin appeared at the nonprofit’s Eugene Service Station unannounced, on behalf of the mayor, “disrupting a planned volunteer event.”
Cartledge tells Eugene Weekly, “When we saw that there wasn’t really a uniform strategy or uniform approach to how to address homelessness in Cottage Grove, we realized this is just not the right time for us to go in, because they, as a community, need to determine what their goals are.”
St. Vincent de Paul would have reopened the Highway 99 site, Cartledge says, and built a brand new shelter and service center at the city’s water reclamation site, while also managing the two open-air camps — all at no cost to the city
Jack Boisen, St. Vincent de Paul’s director of operations, says they returned their $900,000 grant to the state since rescinding their bid. “If you apply for a grant, receive the money and then have to return it; that can make things more difficult in the future,” he says.
If Cottage Grove changed its mind and wanted the nonprofit to come in and help, St. Vincent de Paul could not make it happen since its funding cycle has already lapsed. “It’s not as easy to just slip on if in 60 days the new City Council decides they want to revisit the conversation,” Cartledge says.
On August 22, Cottage Grove will be evicting around 140 people, moving them to a new dusk-to-dawn camp at LuLu’s Dog Park. The site can accommodate no more than 60 people.
Campers are expected to pack up all of their belongings by 7 am every single morning, and will not be allowed re-entry until 7 pm, according to Public Works Director Faye Stewart.
Without any services open during the day, Cartledge says “it’s typically not a successful program.”
The city is now on the hook to pay for a private security company to manage the new dusk-to-dawn site. There is no place in town for the unhoused population to go during the day.
Many of the camp residents are employed, but are worried about how they’ll pack up their stuff before they go to work.
Armstrong, a senior-care provider who works for the state of Oregon, says this new dog park plan won’t work for her. “I work nights. I’m not going to be able to set up at seven o’clock at night, leave at seven in the morning. I go to work at seven,” she says.
This isn’t the first time camp residents had nowhere to go due to exposure to the elements.
During the ice storm in January many, including Armstrong, used propane generators and heaters to survive. “We put a burn barrel out in the middle and burned fire that whole week, because what else were we supposed to do?” Armstrong says. “We survived.”
This was without the help of Beds For Freezing Nights, the Cottage Grove nonprofit that operates warming centers when it gets below 30 degrees. Its president, Zee, led the recall effort, which focused on the council’s homeless crisis response and Community Strong Cottage Grove’s perceived failure of it.
According to Fleck — a former volunteer with that organization — the warming centers haven’t been activated in at least two years since Zee took the helm.
Zee claims she is a “retired nurse.”
However, she surrendered her license after the California Board of Registered Nursing received a complaint stating that Zee took morphine from a deceased patient to “use it as a tool” to admit another patient in her care into hospice.
Records show that Zee then disposed of the extra morphine in a dog poop bucket in her backyard.
When Zee did not activate Beds For Freezing Nights, Armstrong says it was life or death at the camp behind the Dari Mart. Many became trapped in their own tents due to thick layers of ice.
“And so at one point we went around, we started beating on tents just to knock it off, because people were going to die if you didn’t,” she says.
Michael Towner, a homeless U.S. Army veteran and landscaper who lives at the 12th Street camp, says that he has become comfortable with this battle for survival. “It just becomes natural after you do it for so long,” he says.
He says he doesn’t know where anybody can go in town. “You’re taking somebody that’s struggling already, and you’re just gonna do more harm than you would helping out,” Towner says.
Now the 140-some-odd people at both camps will be funneled into the newly constructed 60-person dusk to dawn site at LuLu’s Dog Park, into 8-by-10 “kennels” that won’t fit anybody’s current tents, says Armstrong.
In 2018, Stephen and Mary Nisewander donated LuLu’s Dog Park to Cottage Grove and in city documents, the Nisewanders stipulated the park be used as a dog park for at least five years.
Stewart says that the houseless residents are being moved into the dog park temporarily to allow the other sites to be cleaned. Once they are sanitized — which could take up to two months — everyone will be moved into the 12th Street site.
Armstrong asks how a former dog park with “dog piss and shit” is more sanitary than their current living situation.
“We try to keep the area clean, but they’re pushing us out,” says Curtis Miller, who lives at the 12th Street site, “I just don’t know what to do. We have no help. We have nobody to fight for us.”
This story has been updated to indicate the dog park was not named for a dog named LuLu.