ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Homeless shelters around the country are having to close or limit capacity to avoid spreading the coronavirus. In rural southern Oregon, civic leaders told the homeless to camp in nearby woods. Now with wildfire season around the corner, law enforcement is relocating them again. April Ehrlich of Jefferson Public Radio in Oregon has our report.
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APRIL EHRLICH, BYLINE: On their morning patrols, Jackson County sheriff's deputies use ATVs to maneuver around massive blackberry thickets along an 18-mile greenway. It's a strip of forest that runs through the city of Medford, and it's recently become home for many people who have nowhere else to go during the pandemic. Sheriff's deputy Noah Strohmeyer is part of a special, grant-funded team that patrols the greenway and connects people with resources.
NOAH STROHMEYER: Whether it's mental health, housing opportunities. It's getting them simple things like identification that they can use to go get housing, go get a job, things like that.
EHRLICH: But not everyone here welcomes their assistance.
UNIDENTIFIED DEPUTY: You mind if we come down in your camp real quick?
WHITNEY STINSON: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED DEPUTY: Yeah.
EHRLICH: Deputies find Whitney Stinson, who camps here. They offer to connect him with nearby service providers. It's a conversation they've had before.
STINSON: Stop, dude. Just stop with your help, dude, because your help doesn't help me. All it does is move me from here.
EHRLICH: Like Stinson, many people sleeping on the greenway have contentious relationships with law enforcement. It's illegal to camp here, but they've mostly stopped issuing tickets and clearing camps during the pandemic. It's part of the county's effort to keep unsheltered people in one place. Many here are wary, including Wanda Garcia.
WANDA GARCIA: I've had them really be mean to me - like, cuss at me and pushing. It's not OK. I'm just - I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being harassed.
EHRLICH: The sheriff's office and police department have each helped bring resources to the greenway, including port-a-potties, handwashing stations and lunches. But so far, there have been problems. Toilet paper isn't stocked, there's no water, and there've been reports of spoiled food being delivered.
DEREK DEFOREST: They're fundamentally not suited to be social workers.
EHRLICH: Derek DeForest is among a group of Medford residents who banded together to help unhoused people and monitor police activity during the pandemic. He argues that police and deputies are still clearing out camps that they consider to be abandoned, and they're waking people up in the middle of the night and arresting them if they have any outstanding warrants.
DEFOREST: If somebody comes to your house in 3 a.m. and they arrest your roommate and then you wake up a few hours later and they're bulldozing your neighbor's house, like, you're very frightened now. You are actually traumatized.
EHRLICH: Meanwhile, wildfire season has just begun, and local officials are concerned that greenway campers will start fires in the middle of the city. So they're planning to redirect people to a different outdoor site, one managed by a nonprofit. The problem is that one can only accommodate 25 people, and there are nearly 200 currently camping on the greenway. All of this is happening during a national debate over whether law enforcement groups are suited to do what's essentially social work. Back on the greenway, Jackson County sheriff Nathan Sickler says yes, they are.
NATHAN SICKLER: Police officers get a lot of training. And a lot of people say, like, maybe this isn't the best fit. And I don't think they really realize what goes on day to day with police officers and what their jobs are and what they actually do.
EHRLICH: Sickler says his department is already financially strained, and he'd rather not see its grant money get shuffled to social service providers. Meanwhile, those living on the greenway feel like they're being shuffled and reshuffled from place to place.
For NPR News, I'm April Ehrlich in Medford, Ore.
(SOUNDBITE OF HVOB SONG, "GHOST") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
