Letter: How I would improve the county’s homeless plan

In 2007, Lincoln County Commissioner Claire Hall co-authored a plan “for eradicating chronic homelessness” within 10 years. Seventeen years later, how did this plan work out?

Not well. Rather than ending homelessness, the number of unhoused people in Lincoln County has swelled to an estimated 2,000, according to a new report. Once scenic parks and trails have become campgrounds for the unhoused, typically littered with unhealthy garbage. Brazen trespassers stake out private forestlands and vacant lots. A Newport official told me that streams we need for fresh water are becoming polluted with fecal bacteria from illegal campsites.

The houseless usually live in appalling conditions we have to improve. They endure addictions, diseases and mental health disorders we are obligated to treat. But an example of how residents also suffer from the county’s failed homeless policies was a neighborhood bus stop that was taken over by rowdy homeless men and women (I documented the incident with interviews and photos). Their drinking parties often spilled onto Highway 101, but no citations were issued, no consequences imposed, no treatment delivered. Instead, the county closed and removed the bus stop, reasoning the privileges of the homeless superseded the rights of students and seniors that use the county transit system.

In 2023, commissioners spent thousands of dollars to come up with a new 170-page homeless plan that is also shockingly naïve, despite its price tag. Titled, “Where We Call Home,” it envisions a permanent new bureaucracy to solve a problem made overly complex — and thus unsolvable. The strategy sees homelessness as a social justice issue to be tackled by more taxes, state housing, wage advocacy and the elimination of vacation homes.

This new scheme overlooks the reality faced daily by county residents that homelessness is primarily a public safety issue, with enormous costs to the environment. The plan ignores the role of law enforcement and the courts, the front line of contact with the chronically homeless and a gateway to treatment. This crisis is solvable. Using existing laws and recent Supreme Court edicts, Lincoln County could end homelessness with the tools we have, now.

Why wait another 17 years to fix the problem? On May 21, vote Rick Beasley for county commissioner.

Rick Beasley

Depoe Bay