Since the encampment at Washington Jefferson Park was removed on March 16, the park has been closed. The city of Eugene has estimated the renovation cost to be $810,000 or more. I can’t make sense of why this is so expensive. In my opinion that money could have been better put to use by providing services to our homeless, rather than kicking them out into our community.

Now they roam our streets lacking basic human needs like access to a bathroom, handwashing stations and clean water. This has made many of our neighborhoods, specifically in downtown Eugene, unsafe and unpassable to people walking down the street. As of now a portion of the park is still fenced off from the public, until the park reopens sometime this winter.

We have an estimated 3,000 homeless with more than 2,000 of them unsheltered every night. I strongly believe that the money should be used to do more, perhaps by hiring a group of people with resources and information to actually help the homeless instead of further displacing them.

Jose Tafolla

Springfield