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Today's Board of Commisioners Meeting. | Curry County

Commissioner Court Boice recited a 133-year-old “hobo code of ethics” before proposing a homelessness plan for Curry County on Wednesday that he says will help residents and veterans and provide incentives to non-residents to seek resources in more metropolitan areas.

Boice proposed “properly identifying” Curry families that are homeless through local churches, service providers and other residents and do “everything they can to separate them out.”
Boice then proposed transporting the “non-Curry residents” to Salem where the services are.

These “non-Curry residents” would be taken to metropolitan areas on a volunteer basis, Boice said. They would be required to sign a consent form, be offered an incentive of $50 to board a bus to Salem and another $50 when they disembark, he said.

“Curry County does not have the services and resources available for our residents, let alone the people that are coming through or deciding to live here,” Boice said. “Sending them to an area that can help is the most empathetic and compassionate thing we can do.”

Boice’s proposed homelessness plan comes after AllCare Health, which serves residents in southern Curry County, and other regional health care groups surveyed 400 residents across Curry, Douglas, Jackson, Josephine and Klamath counties regarding homelessness.

Their survey showed that 90 percent think homelessness is an important issue and 67 percent believe it’s getting worse, Jefferson Public Radio reported on Monday. JPR’s report quoted Josh Balloch, AllCare Health’s vice president of health policy, who said 92 percent want local government to act on the “homelessness crisis.”

Boice referred to that JPR article and read from a Wednesday opinion piece about how homelessness is affecting residents in Illinois. The Curry County commissioner also brandished a picture former Del Norte County supervisor Roger Gitlin took of someone Gitlin said was a transient in the median at a Crescent City intersection exposing himself to motorists.

However, Boice said, his homelessness plan is still in its infancy. He said he wanted to determine if his colleagues were interested before proceeding.

“No matter what we do or don’t do, I know criticism is coming,” Boice said. “And everybody I’ve talked to privately about this wants a program that is compassionate. But they want action. They want solutions. They want to protect their communities.”

According to Beth Barker-Hidalgo, director of the Curry Homeless Coalition and a candidate for Chris Paasch’s seat on the Board of Commissioners, the organization already moves non-resident homeless individuals out of the community. Through its Homeward Bound program, the coalition moved 12 households out of Curry County, some as far away as Alaska, she said.

But Homeward Bound is out of money, Barker-Hidalgo said.

“We’re writing grants frantically to get more money for that program, but in August alone, we moved eight households out of Curry County,” she said. “I talk to these people and (I say), ‘You have no idea what it’s like to be here in the winter. We may not freeze, but you will be wet until March or April.’”

Barker-Hidalgo, who was unable to stay for Boice’s presentation on homelessness, urged commissioners to involve those who experience homelessness in the solution.

Brookings CORE Response Executive Director Diana Cooper and Resource Navigator David Hubbard also urged commissioners to involve those who are experiencing homelessness.

“And not just as a token,” Cooper said. “(They) are able to give valuable input and we hold it as just as valuable as everybody else’s.”

Cooper also cited the AllCare Health survey regarding homelessness and noted that those who responded stated homelessness was the result of a lack of affordable housing. Brookings Core Response, which focuses on health equity, finds that senior citizens, people with disabilities and veterans are those who have the most trouble finding an affordable place to live. Cooper urged commissioners to consider seniors especially when trying to find solutions to homelessness.

“When we’re working on getting people on the wait list for housing, it’s two to three years,” she said. “When you’re talking about seniors, it’s five to seven years, and obviously seniors don’t have as long to wait and it’s more life threatening for them out there on the street.”

Hubbard said one gentleman he worked with, an 80-year-old veteran, was on the street despite struggling with mental illness and dementia. Hubbard said Brookings CORE Response representatives were lucky to get him into memory care.

Another gentleman was also a veteran, Hubbard said. Brookings CORE Response tried finding housing for him for about three years and finally got him into assisted living.

“That was basically his only option because we don’t have affordable housing here in Curry County, and he’s had a HUD-VASH voucher we could have utilized,” Hubbard said, referring to the collaborative program that pairs the U.S. Department of Housing’s housing choice voucher with case management services through the Veterans Administration. “If we could maybe possibly get more support for a housing project that would allow veterans to utilize their HUD-VASH vouchers in our communities, that would be fantastic in our eyes.”

A Gold Beach resident also urged commissioners to focus on housing, stating that a housing complex was how his previous home of Big Bear Lake in Southern California helped alleviate their homeless problem. He noted that most people who live in that Big Bear Lake housing complex are from elsewhere.

“It was funded by the state and also private,” he said. “It’s not unusual. It’s just the way you control the establishment once it’s been build and since it’s a resort area, we didn’t play around with it.”

Boice’s colleague, Board of Commissioners Chair, John Herzog, said that while he thought Boice’s plan sounded good, he noted that Salem has problems with homelessness as well.

“There’s blocks that are blocked off with homeless,” he said. “I think you’ve probably seen it too and these are just tent cities on a street that they just blocked off. It’s a homeless camp in town and I’m thinking, if they have services, they can’t fix it.”

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