Homeless Residents of Eugene, Ore., Get Monopoly on Park Place

EUGENE, Ore. — An old van sits alone in a downtown parking lot near a trash bin and a portable toilet. The van doesn’t run and it’s in sore need of some TLC. But it’s home sweet home to Kathy Obert, a 60-year-old homeless woman.

Obert can’t find anyone willing to hire her. “Would you want a hand like this pouring your coffee?” she asked, showing a shaky hand.

She uses jugs of water in her broken-down van to wash herself because she can’t afford to take a bus to a relief agency that has showers for the homeless.

But at least Obert doesn’t have to worry about a police officer coming along and chasing her away.

Obert is one of scores of homeless people who live in old cars, vans or recreational vehicles on sites set aside for that purpose by the city of Eugene, which has a reputation for being one of the most liberal places in the country.

A leafy university town just west of the Cascades, Eugene is apparently the only city in the country with such a program for homeless people with wheels, according to the National Coalition of the Homeless.

Camping on the streets of the city of 137,000 is prohibited. But for the last three years, city officials have been making an exception for homeless people who live in vehicles.

The city has supplied 15 sites where people living in vehicles can stay for as many as 90 days, a limit that is flexible. About 60 more sites have been supplied by churches, businesses and nonprofit organizations.

Each site is provided with a portable toilet and a trash bin and is limited to a maximum of three vehicles.

The program is run by a Roman Catholic relief agency, St. Vincent de Paul. The agency coordinates with city officials to find places for homeless people to park the vehicles they are living in.

“For every space in the parking program there are 10 applicants,” said William Wise, who works at the street level for St. Vincent de Paul.

On any given night about 1,800 people will try to get into one of the city’s homeless shelters. Richie Weinman, the neighborhoods and affordable housing manager for Eugene, said the real number “is two or three or four times that; nobody knows for sure.”

The number of homeless people living in cars is equally hard to calculate, Weinman said, but estimates it is many more than 100.

Eugene’s program aside, a 1998 survey by the National Coalition of the Homeless determined that Oregon does not have a good reputation for down-and-outers.

“There are anti-camping ordinances that many cities have, anti-panhandling laws and drug-free zones,” said Chuck Currie, the Portland representative of the Washington, D.C.-based group. “Eugene has a reputation as an open and progressive community, and it would be hard to replicate something like that without the political dynamic they have.”

Even though Eugene regulations stipulate that homeless people who live in cars and vans have to park their vehicles on designated sites, those who don’t do so are only told to move on if there are complaints from neighbors.

“The police are compassionate about this,” Wise said. “They don’t want to write a ticket or take a homeless person to jail or tow their homes, but they can’t ignore the complaints of the other citizens, either.”

A van owned by Lori Harward, 60-ish, is parked illegally with two other home/vehicles on an isolated street in west Eugene’s industrial area.

A bed is tucked in crosswise in the back. There is a card table. Strands of costume jewelry hang from a hook.

“I’d rather be in my van than have to adapt to other people, or to my kids, God forbid,” she said.

So far, she has not been ordered to move on.

Eugene officials chose their current approach to the homeless car dwellers because strict enforcement of the no-camping ban was failing.

“It was a cat-and-mouse game,” with the car dwellers just moving on to some other location, Weinman said.

There are few complaints against the legal car-dwellers because they are scattered around in groups of one to three, instead of being bunched together in large groups, said Weinman.

But the homeless car dwellers must follow certain rules, including no drugs, no alcohol and no pets.

Harward can’t get onto one of the legal sites because she refuses to part with her large brown dog.

“I’d [go crazy] without her,” she said.

Gary Donahue, 37, lives on an undesignated site in a 1983 Audi. He’s been there for 2 1/2 months, since arriving here unemployed from the San Diego area. He had vacationed in Oregon, liked it and came north when his job as an assistant construction supervisor vanished.

He eats sandwiches in his car. A homeless woman parked nearby in a camper lets him heat water in a bucket for a sponge bath. Other needs are met in an adjacent wooded area.

“I was really depressed in the beginning, sleeping in my car,” he said. “But I’m finding more and more people in this situation. Some sleep in the bushes. I’m grateful I have a car.”

He is trying to find a job and gets California unemployment benefits.

Donahue, who is divorced, keeps a box of mementos of his 10-year-old daughter in his trunk. She lives with her mother in Utah. She is on an “on-and-off-track” school schedule in which she goes for 90 days and has 30 days off.

“This was supposed to be my month to have her back, but . . .,” he said, looking at his surroundings and shrugging.

Wise arrived at Donahue’s site to say there had been a second complaint and that he would have to move. He said he would but didn’t know where he would set up next.

“Signe [his friend] is on the list for a legal place, but she has a dog and some cats,” Donahue said.

The lives of the car campers aren’t easy.

Randy Mellen, a 50-ish unemployed welder whose vehicle is parked across from an industrial concern, has complaints about some of his fellow car dwellers.

“Most of the campers are good, but some are terrible slobs and leave garbage everywhere. I tell them, ‘Get it out of here.’ ”

A bigger concern is thugs who harass, intimidate and even attack the homeless.

“Some of the nastier people out there drive by and throw things, and shout all kinds of obscenities,” said Mellen. “On Halloween, people shot at us with high-powered pellet guns, and someone threw a pumpkin through one of our rear windows.”

Living in a motor home behind Mellen is Jeff Hennington, a 52-year-old unemployed Vietnam veteran. Hennington said he has been beaten by thugs.

“I ain’t going to be here long. They come along and crittel [steal from] you. They crittel your TV. If your pets are valuable, your pets get stolen,” he said.