Roughly two dozen picketers gathered outside the Downtown Athletic Club at noon today, demanding Eugene businesses support a homeless shelter in the area.
Protest organizers say the City of Eugene had proposed a downtown homeless site on the old city hall parking lot, but claim a coalition of more than 30 local businesses influenced officials into cancelling that decision.
Karl Eysenbach is with the group, Coalition for Compassionate Community. While this protest follows one held at another business two weeks ago, he isn’t calling for a boycott.
“I would much rather see, the City Council, quickly adopt a camp and other shelter strategies as soon as possible," he tells KLCC.
"Because people are going to die this winter, people have been dying every year in the homeless community, for lack of services.”
Eysenbach acknowledges complaints from businesses and visitors about some homeless, including drug use, defecation, and panhandling. He says while the newly-formed Camp 99 homeless site in north Eugene helps, there are still people who wish to be in the downtown area. He thinks a homeless shelter on EWEB properties would be a win-win scenario.
“That would be kind of like an out of sight, out of mind kinda thing, that [city officials) could wrap minds their around," he says. "They could immediately reduce the population downtown by a factor of 50 percent.
"And the people that were troublemakers, people that could not fit into a group setting, would be more likely to stand out and get intervention from police, for example.”
Protesters also planned to assemble in Kesey Square for speeches, and distributing flyers.
Copyright 2018, KLCC.
