1. In 1862, Congress passed and President Lincoln signed into law, the Homestead Act. This law decreed that pioneers (invaders for sure, but that’s another story) could eventually own up to 160 acres of federal land almost free of charge by satisfying requirements to live on the land for five years and improve it. Any drive along Oregon’s rural roads reveals a significant number of abandoned homes, ranches and farms that have gone to seed and most likely foreclosure. There are probably thousands of such properties all across Oregon. I’ve seen them everywhere and shake my head at the lost opportunity here to house working people. Who knows how or why these properties ended up going to seed, but the state or counties should create a type of Homestead Act or Habitat for Humanity-like program that partners with local lenders to attract people to inhabit and rehabilitate them with the goal of eventual ownership. These places already have water, septic systems and are wired for power. Many people long to escape urban existence and try something less hectic. Remote work makes rural living possible for many Americans. A family living in a $1800-a-month apartment (not including utilities) in Roseburg might take a shot at starting a new life, say, near Myrtle Point, if it meant the possibility of owning a home in five years. True, Myrtle Point suffers from a lack of living-wage jobs, but then again, so did the frontier back in the day and people often made that work. Why not at least set up a pilot project in a rural county and see how how it plays out.
2. To celebrate my 58^th birthday I toured around Silver Falls State Park. The CCC and WPA built this magnificent state park and recreation area during the throes of the Great Depression. Hundreds of men lived on site and worked for $1 a day for seven years because there was no other employment until WW II arrived. Every man who worked there is dead now but the stone walls, stone buildings, bridges, lodges and trails they constructed largely by hand continue to enhance the lives of Oregonians and tourists alike and will for many decades, if not centuries to come. What a great notion! Put unemployed people to work, a certain kind of physical work in the woods that restores damaged watersheds or creates or maintains recreational opportunities. So why not employ a similar CCC/WPA strategy with some of the willing and able bodied homeless population in Oregon? And let me suggest the first place to start. Two months after my visit to Silver Falls State Park, I drove Highway 224 past Estacada to see the charred aftermath of the 2020 Riverside wildfire that burned almost 140,000 acres of the Mt Hood National Forest and destroyed hiking trails, bridges, campgrounds, fishing holes and boat launches. It was an awesome spectacle to behold but I came away with some joy because the forest was regenerating, as forests always do after fires. After my trip, I returned to Estacada and struck up a conversation with a bookstore owner who told me he’d heard from Forest Service officials that it would take five to ten years to rebuild the recreational amenities wiped out by the fire. Indeed, some probably would never be rebuilt because of a lack of funding and manpower. In the bookstore, I instantly flashed back to the story of the CCC/WPA boys building Silver Falls State Park and how it was still a great notion. Why not recruit a hundred or two hundred homeless men and women from the Portland metro area and set up a camp in the woods and let them rebuild the recreational amenities with their hands. Pay them a decent wage, feed and house them, provide Wi-Fi, let them bring their dogs, let them drink malt liquor or vape weed after work like many other Americans do. Have a couple of social workers labor alongside the men and women and do some case managing out in nature. Nature is a case manager! Just imagine how this purposeful work could help certain homeless people find a new footing. There is nothing quite so therapeutic as hard work outdoors and I would know that better than most Oregonians of my generation. Is this a preposterous idea? Why hasn’t anyone or agency at least launched a pilot program? It seems shocking to me that no one has pitched an idea in Oregon, at least that I know of. Would homeless men and women enroll in such a program? Of that I have no doubt. I have met many homeless men and women who live along creeks, rivers, in the woods, in the dunes, and chose these sites because of their close proximity to nature. Sometimes their residence destroys these areas, but many times it does not. I met an able bodied, middle aged homeless man the other day who exemplifies the latter. He lives in a tent/tarp domicile in the Mt Hood National Forest along a creek up a draw that escaped the Riverside wildfire. He would jump at the opportunity to live in a CCC/WPA style camp and work on a restoration project. He’s already living in the area, catching trout and shooting wild turkeys for sustenance! There are a lot more like him, and perhaps some urban homeless that just might have their lives changed immeasurably for the better with some work in the woods. They’d also leave something positive behind with their labor, and not enough Americans can claim that distinction. I have come to theorize that one reason some people become homeless is because the work they were performing was utterly worthless and one day they just decided it wasn’t worth it anymore.

3. I walked a beach in Bandon on a December morning and looked up and eastward. Perched atop the cliffs above me were hundreds of ocean-front homes. Almost every one was a vacation rental or used once or twice a year by their absentee owners. Some undoubtedly had remained vacant for many years. Many had fallen into varying states of disrepair. It occurred to me there was all this unused or underutilized housing, some luxury, some middle class, some dilapidated, and there were homeless people living in the area and people who needed better housing. Such a contradictory condition exists up and down the coast. I thought: there has to be a solution to put some of this housing to a more humane use rather than just standing empty. Surely an organization could invent a program to match vacant homes with people who need affordable places to live at the Oregon Coast. Housing some of them in these vacant homes could free up other lower-tier housing for homeless people to occupy and begin their transition off the streets or out of the willows.

4. In my mind, one of the more jarring and vexing images of the homeless crisis in Oregon is the amoral juxtaposition of storage complexes and homeless encampments. I frequently drive past one such complex, a recent construction of gleaming steel and glass with exquisite landscaping, that advertises move-in specials, heated units, around-the clock security, Wi-Fi, and other amenities. Below that complex rests, if rests is the proper word, a tent and tarp encampment of approximately 20 residents. We build nice and secure places to house and heat shit we aren’t using and likely will never use. (Why do you think they broadcast all those cable shows about auctioning off the contents of these units whose owners died or stopped paying rent?) I have read (and observed) several stories of homeless people renting storage units and secretly staging their lives or living outright in them, particularly if there is no onsite management. And why not? They can suffice as a suitable minimalist studio apartment. They are affordable. Why shouldn’t cities or state purchase or rent some of these complexes, quickly retrofit them for temporary shelter (they already have water and restrooms) and throw them into the mix to get people off the streets and out of riparian areas as they make a transition to permanent affordable housing? Legislate some zoning changes and make it work! These complexes are everywhere in Oregon, typically removed from residential areas, and I’ve driven by dozens that have gone almost to seed as newer fancier ones come on line. I know somewhere in America, perhaps in Oregon, an agency or organization has repurposed a storage complex into housing. I can’t be the only one thinking how this might work.

5. Suppose a tsunami smashed into Oregon’s Rockaway Beach and left most of the residents homeless. It’s going to happen one day. What would the state and federal government do? They would treat it as a crisis. They would immediately erect temporary shelters. The Red Cross and other relief agencies would show up to help. There would be little or no debate. The governments would act because elected members (politicians) of government swore an oath to act, to serve, and as a result, place their reputations on the line in defense of their actions and service because that’s the nature of the political beast. State and federal governments always act this way in the wake of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, forest fires, floods and tornadoes. It’s the chief reason governments exist—to act decisively and efficiently in the face of dire emergencies. Of course, sometimes they bungle it criminally like Hurricane Katrina, but sometimes they get it right. Think Herbert Hoover’s timely and unprecedented federal response as Commerce Secretary in the Coolidge Administration to the catastrophic Mississippi River flood of 1927. He set up tent cities. He went on the radio to raise millions for the Red Cross. (Unfortunately, he forgot all about this when he became President and the Great Depression hit two years later.) The current homeless crisis in America represents a grotesque and cumulative human-made disaster of greed and capitalism and should be treated like the dire emergency it so obviously is. Erect the shelters immediately as if a tsunami hit Portland and displaced tens of thousands. Convince or compel homeless people to move in and self govern. Administer services there, then direct them to various options of affordable housing as they emerge. Extinguish the burning building and take it from there! I never thought I would live to see the day when progressive people paid excellent wages in the public and private sector stood around and watched people in dire need of immediate action die because of policy disagreements, bureaucratic incompetence or because progressive people couldn’t get off their asses and die trying. You can’t take weekends off during emergencies.
6. If every person daily performed a concrete act of kindness toward one homeless person, over time, these acts would accrete into something concrete to help alleviate the crisis. A ride. A shower. A meal. A book. A greeting. A conversation. A tent. A sleeping bag. Gloves. A job mowing a lawn or raking leaves. An internet search for services. A bottle of Old Crow. A tin of Old Kentucky pipe tobacco. A night in a garage. A quote. A story. A bag of dog food. Acts of kindness bestow gifts upon the giver and receiver. Often these gifts are known in the moment of giving and receiving. Often they are not. It might take days, months or even years before knowing where the kindness went and worked its magic. Usually the results are never known. But I believe with all my heart that performing daily acts of kindness on behalf of homeless people will help many of them find a better life. And Americans don’t have to look very far to help. Just walk out your front door and begin

Modest Proposals to Address the Homeless Crisis (Part 2)

1. A state program funded by a tax on sports gambling winnings would fund the hiring of a battalion of photographers, writers, filmmakers and podcasters to fan out across Oregon and document the stories of the homeless under a series editorial guidelines modeled after the New Deal-era Farm Security’s program of investigating the terrible working and living conditions of agricultural workers in the South. Think Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and James Agee. These artists would publish and publicize their efforts on multiple print and online platforms and archive them for future scholastic and artistic use. In this endeavor, America may discover something about the homeless and our collective responses to the crisis that we don’t know yet or can’t even conceive of knowing. The creative process might also assist the homeless in telling their stories, and for some, perhaps even many, this could be the first step to making the transition out of homelessness.
2. Every public or private secondary school within walking distance of a homeless encampment (which means about every secondary school in Oregon) should implement some kind of regular outreach to that encampment that involves students and teachers. Many students would balk. Well, they don’t have to participate and can remain back in the classroom on tablets and complete boring rote tasks. Let willing students meet and interact with residents of the encampment, gather stories, provide basic living essentials, clean up sites, perform a street concert, whatever drives the curiosity of the students and/or assists residents of the encampment to begin a transition to housing or an improved existence where they are. This would require some truly extraordinary teachers to implement. They exist in Oregon.
3. Dumpsters should be dropped unannounced at every encampment of significant size and pay the residents right then and there under supervision to clean up the area. It’s one-day only so the neighbors don’t bring their crap to fill up the dumpsters.
4. Right now, across Oregon, there are hundreds of unfilled positions with various non profits and government agencies tasked with alleviating/solving the homeless crisis. Community colleges should offer an associates degree that trains students to work in all areas of the homeless crisis, from grant writing to street outreach to case working to shelter management to drug and alcohol counseling to assembling tiny homes or retrofitting RVs. You don’t need a bachelor’s degree. And this associates degree shouldn’t cost a student a cent to earn. On the contrary, how about a cash incentive to pursue this profession?
5. Recently I read an article about a man who owned and operated an auto repair garage in Fairview and had hired a homeless man as a grease monkey and let him live on site in an RV the owner supplied. Great idea! I’d written about exactly the same arrangement months ago in this newsletter, although the garage owner in my neighborhood let his employee live in a battered sedan on the property, rather than the relative comfort of an RV. I have since noticed several other businesses in the neighborhood that host someone living in a RV. Why not encourage more of these tidy arrangements by offering used trailers, subsidies, tax credits, or all three. It might also fill chronic employment shortages because virtually every garage/service station I’ve patronized displays Help Wanted signs. I know of three homeless men living near me that would instantly become housed and employed as a security guard/gopher if they could score a sweet gig like the Fairview one. I first recall seeing this type of arrangement years ago at a Gold Beach service station/repair garage, a real old school establishment that still sold paper maps and didn’t serve nachos. One of the employees lived in an RV parked next to the shop. This lasted for six months and then the RV vanished and I think the employee found traditional housing. That arrangement made quite an impression on me for its brilliant simplicity and practicality and I began noticing other such ones in Reedsport, Molalla, Gladstone, Oregon City, Portland, Lebanon, Astoria, Sweet Home, Jacksonville, pretty much everywhere in Oregon I traveled. With one exception (a metalwork factory) all these were automotive-related businesses, and of course, independently owned. It is interesting to remember that generations ago, many Americans lived in the retail establishment where they worked. The arrangement was also a staple of novels and films. Remember the drifter in The Postman Always Rings Twice who lived in the house with the married couple and worked in their diner and filling station?And the Wilsons in The Great Gatsby, who owned and operated the auto garage? Okay, those ended in adultery and murder, but you see my point. Many two-storey buildings from that era were constructed for strictly this dual purpose and I routinely bicycle past several of them, including a saloon where I occasionally imbibe, that still function as originally designed, meaning someone/a family is living in the building where the business is located. Perhaps developers should be encouraged to build this type of mixed-use housing/retail space and/or dedicate apartments in the larger buddings for specific free/reduced rent use by those who run businesses on the ground floor. Sometimes good old ideas are good new ideas.

I stopped at Wagon Wheel Park off Highway 213 on the Mollala River to eat breakfast before meeting a farmer in Mulino engaged in a unique history project for Oregon. He contacted me and asked for my editorial assistance and I was happy to oblige.

It was 8:30 on a Thursday morning in July. Sun shined as I parked and took a short path through the brush to the river’s edge.

Several signs alerted visitors to the potential for drowning. The signs also reported six people had died in this well known swimming hole. As I neared the river, I noticed several white crosses nailed to some trees with names and dates written on them. Someone had drowned here last month.

The river came into a view and a tan bird dog resting on the gravel barked at me. His owner, a young bearded man fishing from the bank, told the dog to be quiet and the dog complied. I made my way around the dog and walked toward the water. I passed a dozen choice cuts of beaverwood and various fire pits and cairns. I found a flat rock to sit down upon, eat, admire the river, and watch the man fish.

Thirty yards away, across the river, two men captured my attention. The one wearing a black hoodie was fishing. The other man, shirtless, was knee deep in the channel holding a large multi-branched piece of driftwood. He was trying to lodge it in the mud in a way that suggested a sculpture of some kind. Several other such “sculptures” stood nearby.

I put both men in their 50s or 60s.

It was clear from the stuff around them that they were camping out and illegally, because it was no campground. They had apparently hacked a trail off Highway 213 down an embankment through blackberries. Part of their encampment was situated under the bridge across the river. So in other words, these two men were a kind of homeless trolls and one of them was fishing for salmon and the other one was making art with what I presumed was beaverwood.

As a deranged meth freak named Todd told me decades ago along a tributary of the Clackamas River, “It don’t get no more Oregon than that!”

No, I think not Todd. Not on this summer morning in Wagon Wheel Park.

A couple of years ago, I would considered the sight of two older homeless men living under a bridge alongside a salmon bearing river, one fishing, one making art, both probably addled, as something bizarre and inexplicable to behold. Not anymore.

As I ate my breakfast, it occurred to me: this scene is unfolding daily on every comparable watercourse in Oregon. Everywhere. From Burns to Brookings. From Astoria to Ashland. From Mollala to Medford.

It’s also going on a half mile from where I reside in Portland, in three different directions, and I get the idea it’s not going to end in my lifetime.

A man held an acoustic guitar in the playing position while standing near a tent in my local homeless encampment. His back was turned to me as he talked to a man inside the tent.

It was a gray May afternoon and I bicycled past him.

I said to myself: You gotta turn around. You gotta go deeper. You want people to go deeper with you. Do the same with a homeless person if the opportunity presents itself.

Here one was.

It was the guitar that made me do it.

I turned around and bicycled to the man. I stopped my bicycle and straddled the top tube. I reached into my pocket, fished out my wallet and found a $20 bill.

“Hello,” I called out. “I’d love to hear you perform and I’ll pay you for it.”

The man turned around.

He was young and lean with short black hair and a slight beard. His guitar was a black Yamaha electric/acoustic. He wore a threadbare blue tank top, fatigue pants and a black paisley bandanna tied around his neck. Also strung around his neck were three necklaces, one of wood, one of stones, and an amulet of a satanic-looking lion. His wrists sported a dozen bracelets each.

“Sure,” the man said, “you want a cover or an original?”

“An original,” I said.

“I play metal.”

METAL!

“He fucking shreds,” said the man in the tent.

The man fingered the frets, closed his eyes, waited a few seconds, then began to play.

He strummed, picked and hammered a slow instrumental that lasted about three minutes and then stopped. Five seconds of silence elapsed and he started singing, eyes still closed, and he sang well, a song about someone emerging into a mystical kingdom after wandering in darkness and confusion. I was desperately trying to commit some of the lyrics to memory but I was so enthralled by the music that nothing stuck.

As he was performing, I thought about recording him with my phone, but decided against killing a magical moment as so many people do with phones these days.

The song ended. He opened his eyes. I clapped. The man in the tent clapped. I dug out the $20 bill, walked my bike over to him, and handed over the dough.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome. The song was incredible,” I said. “I want to take some notes. Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

I whipped out a tiny notepad and scribbled some lines.

“What was the name of the song?” I said.

“Euphoric Forest,” he said.

“Can I take your picture?”

“Sure.”

He posed a rock pose. I took the picture. Rock lived.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Brendon,” he said.

I introduced myself and we shook hands.

In short order I learned Brendon was in a metal band called Apophis Theory and their music was available on Spotify and Apple Music. They were booked to play three Oregon metal festivals this summer, including one in Medford.

A MEDFORD METAL FESTIVAL!

I then asked, “So do you live here in one of the tents?”

“No,” he said, “I live over there.” He pointed in the direction of several derelict RVs surrounded by a mountain range of inexplicable accumulations. “I’m the one with all the wood, my art. You want to come over and see it?”

THIS WAS THE WOOD MAN! This was the place where I had seen the weird display of writing on plywood that I had given up trying to interpret.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

Seconds later I stood in front of a sprawling junkyard/domicile I had walked or bicycled past 150 times the last six months and watched as it grew into a small mountain range of mostly wooden in nature: pallets, chairs, tables, hutches, shelves, stumps, branches, rootwads, plywood, lumber and coat racks.

Brendon had also collected dozens of dolls and mannequins, some bicycles, a few lawnmowers, oil and watercolor paintings, Santa Clauses, barbecues, table lamps, a jet ski on a trailer and about a thousand other items.

Somewhere buried in the mountain range was a tent camper covered in tarps. The camper had several plywood annexes to it.

I had seen many a strange domicile constructed by homeless people, but this one easily topped them all. I had always assumed it was assembled as a result of extreme mental illness and/or a serious drug addiction. This was the same encampment where I had witnessed multiple scenes of deranged and inexplicable behavior.

And here Brendon was, standing in front of his ramshackle domicile after inviting me to see it and I had a thousand questions, but I slammed on the brakes and let him narrate as he saw fit.

In due course, with a stray follow-up question here or there, I learned:

Brendon was building a stage (I saw it) and would hold an acoustic metal festival in the summer.

He collected interesting natural woods from the park, creeks and roadsides for his art. He didn’t carve the wood, but rather saw animal shapes and faces in them and displayed the wooden objects as art. He showed me one branch from an oak that was a “turtle turning into a clown.”

He was building a kennel to host a friend’s dog and a stripper pole for inside his tent camper.

He had taught three people in the encampment how to play guitar.

There was a thought of rigging up an art gallery for the dozens of people who walk, run or bicycle through every day. He wanted to start selling some of his art.

He had grown up in Oregon, not far from here. He was 36 years old. He’d lived on the streets for years.

His previous domicile had been a two-storey pallet shanty (with a dumbwaiter!) that had burned down six months ago in act of arson. Luckily no one was killed. (I had seen this fire the morning it occurred.)

A friend of his had been murdered in an encampment where he used to live. The murder had been solved. (I had read about this murder in several newspapers.)

The neighborhood sometimes treated him meanly.

I had to ask him. I had to go there. You gotta go there.

“Is your accumulation and art drug fueled?” I said.

“No,” he said.

I believed him because of the way he said no. I also believed him because I had waited for him to explain his art and living space. Thus, the zany accumulations now made sense and the entire area resembled one big outdoor studio space for an eccentric, impassioned artist. I’ve seen similar such mismatched and messy art studios but of course, they weren’t situated on a public street.

Brendon continued. “I never had much going growing up. I guess I’m making up for it. There is such great stuff here that people gave away on the sidewalks and I took it and then people think I stole it.”

I asked about the writing displayed on the plywood.

He told me his former girlfriend had written the words but he hadn’t read it yet. Now he didn’t know where the display was, but would find and read it.

I said that was a good idea, there might be something there, although I couldn’t discern anything.

It was at this moment I thought about asking if his presence degraded the quality of life for the residents of the two-storey apartment building directly behind him or visitors to the park directly in front of him, but I didn’t.

“Are you the mayor of this encampment?” I said.

“No, the beekeeper,” said Brendon, smiling.

I laughed at that and said it was time for me to go. We said our goodbyes and I promised to attend the metal festival. He threw up a kind of rock salute and then vanished inside the mountain range.