Being homeless, especially in Eugene, means being on the move.

They shift from one spot to another, moving their tents, their possessions, perhaps a bike or a shopping cart. They are never truly stationary — moving every two hours or, at most, 72 hours. Many housed people look past them, as if the totality of homelessness has become an accepted background fabric of life in Eugene. 

As Blake Burrell, the chair of the Homelessness and Poverty Workgroup for Eugene’s Human Rights Commission noted to Eugene Weekly, “The crisis is growing.” It’s growing in part, he adds, because “We don’t have the political will to change it.”

According to the Oregon Health Authority, 63 homeless men and women (domiciles unknown) died in Lane County through October 2024, the latest OHA has records for. Those people were honored Dec. 21 — the day of the Winter Solstice and the longest night of the year — by the Homelessness and Poverty Workgroup for Eugene’s Human Rights Commission. It was the annual Homeless Persons’ Remembrance Day Memorial Service, this year held at Farmers Market Pavilion and which was interrupted by protest.

The 2024 numbers are down from the 71 who died in the same time frame in 2023 and when overall 84 homeless people died homeless in Lane County.

In prepared remarks to open the formal service, Burrell spoke with passion about the lives lost this year, many of whom he and others on the stage knew and were friends with.

“Tonight’s really a sad night,” he said. “Folks should not die on the streets. We should not be talking about this. There are names being read tonight that I loved.”

There was, too, a raw anger to this year’s service that had not been seen in previous memorial services, and outgoing Mayor Lucy Vinis felt the wrath of it all when it was her turn to speak.

“Lucy Vinis is a snake!” headlined an anonymous statement left on many tables inside the pavilion. “She’s the last person that should be giving a speech tonight! She has refused to listen or be a voice when people living on the streets have asked her to be one.” The statement concluded: “Most of these people’s blood is on her hands, and we must honor the dead and fight like hell for the living! Stop the sweeps, end death on the streets!”

Just as she was about to speak, a man walked from the edge of the audience to the makeshift stage and threw a bowl of chili toward Vinis, mainly missing the mayor and mostly hitting Burrell instead, then flipped a table. “Bullshit,” he bellowed and he stormed out.

More than a dozen men and women stood  — some next to their chairs, others at the back of the room — and turned their backs, even as Vinis read the names of the 41 men and women known to have died homeless in Lane County, their names provided by the Homelessness and Poverty Workgroup and Black Thistle Street Aid.

David Strahan, who sat next to Vinis and spoke just before her on behalf of Egan Warming Center, says the Barefoot Defenders was the organization that made a show to turn its backs to the mayor, and that he has been told a homeless man was responsible for tossing the bowl of chili and flipping a table. In a post on Instagram, Jetty Etty of Barefoot Defenders says the man was not associated with the group, and that “Lucy your voice should’ve never been included in this event.” 

Strahan tells EW of the thrown bowl: “That was not what this moment of reverence is about,” adding that he felt vulnerable on the stage at this time. “It’s not unlike disgracing a funeral. It’s like throwing paint at the curtain and missing the mouthpiece. Our protesters can do better.”

Vinis appeared unnerved, but she pressed ahead. She acknowledged the failures on the city’s part during her tenure. One man gave her the finger. 

On Dec. 23, the mayor released a statement to EW: “As mayor, I am the face and voice of the city. Both anger and praise are directed at me on this and other issues. It is my job to show up, listen respectfully and take peoples’ concerns seriously.”

She writes that she shares the frustration of those who turned their backs on her, saying, “Their frustration and anger that the city has not been able to meet the needs of people living in our public spaces is completely understandable.” 

The actions of the man who threw the bowl of chili, she says in the statement, “was not acceptable, but it did not deter me from speaking and reading names to the tolling of a bell of those we have lost.”

Burrell acknowledged before the memorial service that volunteers at nonprofits in Eugene have had a rough time navigating bureaucratic entanglements, especially since the June 2024 Grants Pass v. Johnson case when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that local governments can enforce camping regulations against homeless people without violating the Eighth Amendment.

“We’re failing to communicate on a city level,” he said.

A representative of the Lane Independent Living Alliance, which tabled at the memorial service, noted that Eugene Police Department officers have said they have cleared out city parks so that people with disabilities can better use the parks — even though many of the homeless suffer from physical disabilities as well.

Richard Greene is a long-time volunteer with Neighbors Feeding Neighbors: A breakfast ministry, formerly Breakfast Brigade, that has dealt in a widely covered dispute with the city over allegations of insurance and parking violations while serving the homeless at Washington Jefferson Park. The group has also said it faced threats of arrest.

“They don’t see the people face to face,” Greene said. “We don’t take anything from the city. We just don’t want them to hinder us.”

Among the problems nonprofits face helping the homeless, explains Bridgette Butler of Black Thistle Street Aid, is the Byzantine nature of park rules and other new rules since Grants Pass v. Johnson. Is the homeless person camped for two hours or 72 hours, and what constitutes an established homeless encampment? 

A volunteer from Black Thistle, she notes, can quickly run and get a prescription for a homeless person, only to return and discover that a sweep has taken place, and the homeless person is gone.

“That kind of enforcement does make it hard for us,” she said to EW.

Butler and others lent their names to a recommendation to the city by the Eugene Human Rights Commission to revise the unsanctioned camping posting and removal weather protocols. “Sweeps are deadly,” she wrote. “People have died each year, and continue to die, because of this violent practice.”

That recommendation was made in December 2023, and Burrell notes that absolutely nothing has come of it in the year since.