Homeless see camp as alternative to jail

Opponents of plan cite past problems

Many of Jeremiah Crooks’ friends and neighbors have spent time in the Douglas County Jail. Some are there now.

That’s not surprising, because most of them are alcoholics, drug addicts or battling some form of mental illness. And, like Crooks, they’re homeless.

“I’m not saying they shouldn’t be in jail. They’ve all done things,” said Crooks, who has lived in Lawrence for about 11 years — sometimes in a house, more often in a tent. “But I am saying there’s a way to keep them out of jail.”

Crooks, 32, wants the city of Lawrence to designate a 1- or 2-acre site — near the river, preferably — where the homeless could legally set up a camp and live undisturbed.

Currently, camping is not allowed within the city limits. When found, campers have 24 hours to pack their belongings and be gone.

Shutting down the camps, Crooks said, forces the homeless onto the streets. Trouble, he said, soon follows.

Lacking options

“The people I’m talking about just want to be left alone,” Crooks said. “They don’t want to be around other people because they’re going to drink, but you can’t drink in public. They’re going to do drugs, but you can’t do that in public. Or they’re mentally ill — you can’t do that either. Ending up in jail gets to be sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Shown a list of people now in jail, Crooks identified two men and a woman as perennial campers.

“There might be more,” he said. “I know them by their street names, so I may not recognize them by the names they got listed here.”

Jeremiah Crooks, 32, a homeless man in Lawrence, would like the city to designate a 1- or 2-acre site where homeless people could stay without getting hassled by the police or anyone else. Crooks was photographed last week in a clearing where homeless people sometimes stay near the Santa Fe Railway depot in East Lawrence.

The proposed campsite, he said, would appeal to only a small part — 20 percent, maybe — of the city’s homeless population, mainly those who shun the Salvation Army overnight shelter because of past run-ins or resistance to authority.

Lawrence City Manager Mike Wildgen thinks a camp for the homeless is a bad idea.

Past experience, he said, has shown that campsites quickly turn into irksome eyesores.

“I’ve helped with some of the cleanup,” Wildgen said. “They’re absolute dumps; trash everywhere. You wouldn’t believe it. Hygiene is definitely an issue.”

Where camping is legal

And it’s not long, Wildgen said, before neighbors are calling City Hall with complaints about unwelcome trespassers. It’s these complaints, he said, that prompt the city’s routings or destruction of homeless campsites.

“We try to be reasonable,” Wildgen said. “We give them 24-hour notice. If they need more time than that, we’ve granted extensions.”

He said he doubted that creating a campsite would result in fewer homeless ending up in jail.

“That’s quite a leap” in logic, Wildgen said. “They’re still going to be coming into town for services.”

And, he said, it would not be in the city’s best interests to take on the liability issues tied to condoning a campsite.

Threadbare belongings dot a homeless camp near Santa Fe Railway depot.

“If they want to camp, they can go to Clinton Lake. It’s legal there. They’re set up for it,” Wildgen said. “We’re not.”

But Clinton Lake isn’t an option, Crooks said, because it is too far from town and too expensive.

“It’s seven miles from (downtown) and you pay to camp; it’s like $210 a month,” he said.

Also, camping stays at Clinton Lake are limited to 14 days.

Police support

“What makes more sense,” Crooks said, “paying $500 a week to put these guys up in jail? Or letting them camp somewhere out of the way” but closer to town?

If sanitation is a concern, he said, the city could supply a Dumpster, a portable toilet and, perhaps, a faucet with running water.

“The city could do that, and it would still cost less than what it costs to put people in jail,” Crooks said.

Lt. Dave Cobb, a spokesman for the Lawrence Police Department, said the campsite idea may be worth exploring.

“I understand where (Crooks) is coming from — believe me, we’re familiar with the people he’s talking about,” Cobb said. “But the question becomes: Once the word got out, how would you keep it from turning into a hangout? And if there’s going to be alcohol and drugs, then how are the norms and values of society going to be enforced? You can’t expect everybody to look the other way.

“There’d have to be a way to keep the little problems at first from turning into bigger problems later on,” Cobb said. “I don’t know how you’d do that.”

Works in Portland

Crooks’ idea is not without precedent. In Portland, Ore., a city-sanctioned campsite called Dignity Village was started in 2000.

“It’s going great,” said Mike Dee, an advocate for the homeless in Portland.

The 1-acre site is eight miles from downtown on a parking lot that borders the city’s composting facility, which is between a community corrections program and an airstrip at the Portland Airport. It’s equipped with propane-heated showers, portable toilets, a kitchen and access to wind-generated electricity.

Dignity Village is home to about 60 people, all of whom live in tents or one-room shacks. Drugs and alcohol are not allowed. Children are discouraged.

Residents are expected to look for work or take part in job-training programs. About half of the residents have full- or part-time jobs. Some have cars; others ride the bus. Most receive food stamps or disability payments.

“We do our own policing,” said Dee, a past resident of Dignity Village. “If something big comes up, there’s a pay phone over by the community corrections center; we can go there and call the cops. But that doesn’t happen very often.”

Pros and cons

Marshall Runkel is an assistant to Portland City Commissioner Erik Stein, who oversees city housing and community development. He doesn’t share Dee’s enthusiasm.

“Reviews are mixed,” he said.

The good:

l “Dignity Village appears to be a safe place,” Runkel said. “There haven’t been any serious assaults or rapes, even though national statistics show that the average homeless woman is raped sometime during the first three months of her being on the street.”

l “It’s a better alternative for the community at large in that the chances of waking up and finding someone sleeping on your back porch are reduced.”

l So far, Dignity Village has cost taxpayers “virtually nothing,” Runkel said, noting that residents pay a trash-collection fee. Other expenses are offset by area churches and charities. Also, a local philanthropist has put up $40,000 a year for the past two years.

The bad:

l “There’s really no documentation that shows that Dignity Village has helped people come to grips with their addictions and get their lives back on track,” Runkel said. “For a lot of people, it’s a flophouse.”

l “It’s an impossible land-use site,” he said, noting that a yearlong effort to find a better, permanent site has stalled. “No neighborhood wants a Dignity Village — a shelter is hard enough, a Dignity Village is out of the question.”

A better approach, Runkel said, is to build permanent housing — small apartments, for example — attached to social programs aimed at helping residents find and hold onto residences of their own.

Lawrence City Commissioner Mike Rundle favors such an idea.

“That would be the way to go,” he said.

Worthy goal, but …

Rundle said he was “resistant” to Crooks’ idea because it would set the stage for groups other than homeless to camp out.

“I know at least one individual who, by choice, put up a teepee on the river,” he said. “This was somebody who had the means to pay rent.”

Rundle is chairman of a city-appointed task force on homeless issues.

At the Community Drop-in Center, director Tami Clark said Crooks’ idea probably wouldn’t get far.

“But he has some really good points,” she said. “In a perfect world, no one should have to live in a tent. But this isn’t a perfect world; we’ve got a lot people living in tents, and a lot of them do, in fact, feel threatened.

“If we don’t want their anger walking on the streets, then we need to provide a place where they can live and survive until they’re ready to make the changes needed to live a quote-unquote ‘normal life.'”

Crooks said he was not giving up.

“This is something I really believe in,” he said.