On Friday, Grants Pass, Oregon will begin enforcing an updated version of the camping ban that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling on homelessness two months ago.
Under the revised ban, camping is only allowed on city-owned campsites in places the Grants Pass City Council chooses.
“Our homeless population has been moving between the parks essentially every three days for the last three years,” Mayor Sara Bristol said by email. “The constant shuffle is very hard on people.”
She added: “I don’t know exactly how this will play out once it goes into effect, but I hope this will provide at least a little relief.”
The plan has led to anxiety among unsheltered residents and service providers, who are worried the city’s insistence to not provide drinking water at the campsites will lead to health problems that in some cases could require hospitalization.
Bristol and Grants Pass City Manager Aaron Cubic previously said the city would need to wait until an injunction against its original three camping bans, two of which were repealed this month, was lifted before beginning to enforce its updated ban.
But the city’s legal counsel recommended Grants Pass enforce the new camping ban now, as long as officers don’t cite people for camping in the parks from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., Cubic said during a council planning meeting on Monday.
So with the injunction still in place, the city will begin directing unsheltered residents to its two new campsites on Friday.
“I want to get this moving this week,” Councilor Dwayne Yunker said during Monday’s meeting. “We got kids going to school, and I don’t want to wait until something happens or we have any more unrest out there from people saying we’re not doing something in the city.”
Grants Pass City Council nixes plans for two campsites it already approved without seeking public comment
Two weeks ago, the city council chose locations for four campsites.
But on Wednesday during a three and a half hour city council meeting, which veered into a one-hour discussion on the merits of feeding feral cats, councilors cut two locations from that list without holding a public comment or explaining reasons for the change.
The vote on the campsites was buried at the bottom of a consent agenda, which is reserved for routine items that city councils approve in a batch, typically without commenting or asking questions.
Bristol said the change was in the consent agenda because the council already discussed it during a workshop meeting on Monday. Those types of council meetings are open to but usually not attended by the public because they’re often held during the day.
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The main campground is the future construction site for a new water treatment plant at 755 SE J St., where people can camp up to 96 hours.
Bristol said by email that the city wants to incentivize unsheltered people to use the treatment plant site by allowing them to stay there longer than the other campgrounds. After they reach the four-day limit, they’ll receive a three-day notice to leave.
The second site is 704 NW Sixth St., a 24-hour campsite near city hall and the Josephine County courthouse.
Dr. Bruce Murray is chief medical officer for the Mobile Integrative Navigation Team or MINT, which provides medical care to unsheltered residents in Grants Pass. He said that the people MINT serves are concerned about that location because Park Watch, a group that has tasked itself with monitoring unsheltered people in the city’s parks, regularly uses that corner to protest homeless camps.
“There’s so much fear, uncertainty and intimidation that they are frightened,” Murray said. “There’s just a real prevailing sense of, Why do they hate us so much?”
City councilors approved spending more than $2 million on properties they’d floated as potential campsites
Aside from a potential campsite near the police department, the city might create two more camps. That would bring them up to five, which Grants Pass’ insurance provider said exceeds the number of public campsites among any of its insured cities or counties in Oregon.
[ Read more: Lack of shelter beds emerges as key issue in Supreme Court camping ban case ]
Portland, with a population of about 630,000, compared to Grants Pass’ 40,000, currently has two city-funded campsites. Last year, the city of Portland estimated its first campsite would cost more than $7.5 million annually, including staffing, maintenance, pest control, food for residents and other services.
Grants Pass staff haven’t provided many details on expected costs for its campsite project, but the city is poised to spend. On Wednesday, councilors approved about $2.2 million in real estate purchases without mentioning they had discussed those properties as potential campsite locations to replace two sites deemed unpopular with the public.
During Monday’s meeting, Cubic said the city could potentially use a cluster of parcels making up the closed Washington campus of the Three Rivers Community Hospital.
On Wednesday, councilors approved buying the campus from health care nonprofit Asante, based in Medford, for $2 million.
According to Josephine County property data, the campus properties are worth more than $2.8 million in assessed value based on an in-process 2024 appraisal. But nine of the 23 tax lots the city is buying haven’t received an appraisal in at least two years, county records show.
The most valuable in the bundle of properties is 1505 NW Washington Blvd, a 3.5 acre property with assessed value of about $1.6 million.
[ Read more: Homeless shelters don’t have enough beds in many communities ]
The city is buying the old hospital campus using the Grants Pass Urban Renewal Agency, which focuses on improving blighted areas and can buy property for public or private development, according to the city.
Cubic said Grants Pass could use the property to develop a mixed use or housing development, “which will definitely deal with the blighted issue but also will put on the books a number of houses. We have yet to determine what that is, but with the acreage and size, it can have a positive impact, especially if you went multistory with this, and you could do that in this area.”
During Monday’s meeting, Cubic said 601 SE I St. had potential for becoming a campsite.
Two days later, councilors approved buying the property from Smith Five Electronic for $175,000 using money from the city’s transportation, water, wastewater and stormwater funds. The agenda said the city could use the property to expand its facilities and fleet services for the public works department.
But the purpose for the purchase seemed less clear to Public Works Director Jason Canady. When Councilor Brian DeLaGrange asked him what he thought would be the best use for the property, Canady said: “Initially, nothing springs to mind, I’ll be quite frank,” before adding that it might hold potential for office space.
In an interview request, Streetlight asked Bristol, each city council member and Cubic why they didn’t mention the possibility of using the properties for its campsite program during Wednesday’s meeting.
Only Bristol responded, saying by email that the properties “weren’t discussed because the city doesn’t own them yet. … Right now we’re focused on properties that are immediately available—properties the city already owns.”
[ Read more: A record number of renters can’t afford housing, a new study finds ]
She added that the city is buying the old hospital campus for housing or mixed-use development, not a campsite. But since that development would take several years, the property “is a possible future (and still temporary) location for a campground” after construction begins on the new water treatment plant next year, she said.
For the I Street site, Bristol said: “While it could be used for a camp or tiny home village, I haven’t been involved in extensive discussions about that idea. The reason for the purchase is really to provide flexibility for expanding the city yard or other municipal functions.
The city won’t provide water at its campsites
MINT started as an initiative to vaccinate unsheltered residents during the pandemic.
Now the nonprofit runs the emergency cooling shelter, provides resources like high-protein breakfasts to unsheltered residents and does weekly homeless outreach.
“A lot of people that are unhoused have some distrust of systems, medical systems, whatever kind of systems, and may have had bad experiences in the past,” said Ruth Dailey, a nurse and board member for MINT. “There’s a lot of time spent out in the community just building trust.”
Worry surrounds unknowns with the new campsite program, but that tension began with the Supreme Court case ruling before that, which caused some unsheltered residents to leave Grants Pass.
“People have been moving out of town, which is scary for us because we can’t really reach them when they’ve gone out and about, and they’ve got to get into town for help,” Dailey said.
[ Read more: Three states have new camping bans this year ]
A major concern for MINT is that the Grants Pass campsites will open Friday without commitment from the city to provide people staying there with a potable water source. The city plans to provide handwashing stations at its campsites, but Murray pointed out those aren’t an adequate source of drinking water.
Murray said at Grants Pass parks, unsheltered people sometimes haven’t had access to bathrooms or running water when the city has shut off access to bathrooms to discourage camping. When that happens, unhoused people often use unsafe alternatives, like the Rogue River, increasing the likelihood of health issues like wound and intestinal infections.
“Now that they’re down to just two places,” Murray said of the city campsites, “I hope they’ll show some compassion and common sense and realize particularly people who are not really mobile need fresh water to drink and to survive.”
Contact Streetlight editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@streetlightnews.org. Follow her reporting by joining our newsletter.
Streetlight, previously BigIfTrue.org, is a nonprofit news site based in Oklahoma City. Our mission is to report stories that envision a more equitable world and energize our readers to improve their communities. Donate to support our work here.
