We’ve respected Rev. Jennifer Butler’s work on homelessness in the community, and quite specifically her work opening the SafePlace microshelter program at the church she serves. So, when she fired off some criticism in our direction in a Monday email, we got interested. A letter she attached is below.
In her email, Butler expressed “disappointment” over our October 25 endorsement of City Councilor Jan Napack’s bid for reelection. She also challenged our directly quoting a statistic from Napack in a news story four days later, a stat that turned out to be wrong, for which the councilor herself forwarded us a correction. We had updated the story and published a correction that explicitly states what the error was, and how it happened.
We stand by our endorsement and the news story – neither was based on just one statistic. As for Councilor Napack, she was straightforward in correcting the statistic, and we believe her account that it was an honest error on her part.
Butler also forwarded us comments she planned to read at the Monday evening City Council meeting, the aforementioned letter.
Rev. Jennifer Butler’s Corvallis City Council Comments
Good evening … my name is Rev. Jennifer Butler, I am the minister of the Congregational Church on West Hills road and the founder of the SafePlace microshelter program, and I’m here tonight to re-introduce a conversation in the public arena regarding the posting and clearing of camps.
Over the course of the summer, the public may have noticed that in what I think was an act emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision on the Martin v. Boise case, tents have disappeared from the Skate park, the BMX park, Pioneer Park, and Michael’s landing – to name a few of the very public spaces that have been occupied by campers in the last several years.
There is a false narrative in our community about where those campers have gone. Perhaps the city manager’s sleeping guidelines are being used – perhaps they have “gone back to where they came from” – perhaps they have been housed by the county’s new programs – perhaps they are in our overnight shelters. In fact, on October 29th, the Corvallis Advocate reported that Councilor Napack informed them that over half our areas unhoused are currently, housed. One of your incoming councilors reports on a social media platform that our shelters have as many as 30 open beds a night. The newspaper also reports that Mayor Maughan regularly volunteers at the shelters – so Charles, you should be able to debunk that myth.
None of those things are true – and I remain appalled that city staff and government are the source of so much misinformation. What is true is that our community’s approach to the most extreme end of the housing crisis has become more cruel with aggressive posting and clearing policies and unreasonable time, place, and manner policies.
I want to remind you that the city manager’s sleeping guidelines were not supported by the social service provider community. Not one agency agreed that these were objectively reasonable options for people who live outside. What they are is another barrier to existence, another step in the act of criminalizing poverty.
If people had “gone back to where they came from” then our daytime service providers would see decline in clients served…instead, they are experiencing increases. It is impossible to find safe sleep in overnight shelters because the available bed space we have pales in comparison to the number of people living outside. The county’s Flexible Housing work has indeed housed some people – 14 households.
I will remind you that at the beginning of 2024, there were at least 420 homeless individuals in Benton County.
I can tell you where a large number of individuals went after the city began to implement a strategy of aggressive posting and clearing – they went to the West Hills Tree Farm – private property.
ODOT directed campers to the Tree Farm. Parks and Rec have relocated campers there in the past – CPD, too have dropped individuals off in the Congregational Church’s parking lot – to head back to their camps on someone else’s property.
So the population in the Tree Farm has swollen – desperate humans with nowhere else to go.
How convenient for the city. That the “problem” moved to private property. A space they were no longer responsible for….pushing the burden of care out of sight, and onto an individual citizen’s private property.
On Monday, October 28th, CPD informed me that they would begin arresting people for being on the West Hills Tree Farm. And when those campers (many of them senior citizens in poor health with broken bodies) ask where they should go – the city says, “follow the sleeping guide.” Which has already been determined to be absurd and unreasonable by the provider community.
Where will the 40+ bodies go? Downtown? Back to the skate park?
I want to remind you of a conversation that took place in 2022 that was supported by the entire social service community. In good faith, we worked with Parks and Rec and the County Health Department to create a strategy for a rolling moratorium. We had a plan for identifying camping space that would be supported by the provider community and had been identified as appropriate by city staff. It was killed at the eleventh hour by the city attorney saying it was too much liability for the city to carry.
When the city says that, it does not mean the City’s insurance will not insure a managed camping site or even, unmanaged but designated camping – it means the city has decided the care of these particular humans is too great a risk. Someone with enough money and power will threaten to sue the city and THAT is the risk they are not willing to engage.
The community of Corvallis should know that failure to care for our most vulnerable is not because it is not possible – it is because we are uninformed, fail to fact check, and are playing victim to authoritarian policies about whose lives matter.
I do not expect you to do anything with my comments tonight. You have a long history of refusing to engage this subject in an effective way. I am here because our community should know the whole story and because I feel accountable to these humans living in absolute, unimaginable circumstances. I do believe that we are our brother’s keeper. It is the only thing that makes us human. I don’t know how you feel individually, but collectively, this body of government appears to have rejected that fundamental ethic. I wish you would do better – I don’t believe you will.
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