Lynn Porter: Yes, you can fight City Hall

Presenter Contrary to the popular saying, you really can fight City Hall, but you’ve got to organize. Lynn Porter says it’s time for a political movement so that the city starts helping—not harassing—local residents like Jetty Etty and Lisa Levsen, who have been caring for the homeless.

Lynn Porter There’s an old expression, ‘You can’t fight City Hall.’ Well, you sure as hell can. But it takes organization and hard work and a lot of people doing it. And right now, on the homeless issue, we have no real political organization at all. 

I’ve been following this for almost sixteen years now, and it’s very frustrating and disheartening. But I do appreciate what Neighbors Feeding Neighbors is doing, and I admire what Jetty and Tim Lewis and some other people who have joined them recently. They’re bringing their smartphones and they’re videoing the cops. 

Jetty has really put herself out there. She works with other people to give direct aid to the homeless. She’s been doing that for a few years now, basically going out and rescuing people and getting to know them. And also she’s been taking videos of them for quite a while and posting them online. 

And recently she’s working with Picture Eugene to take videos of the homeless feed in Washington Jefferson Park, and focusing on the police harassment of the homeless people who come to these feeds and then posting that online. 

I admire what Neighbors Feeding Neighbors is doing in terms of homeless political activism. I’d say they’re the only game in town right now. The only political homeless game in town. Neighbors Feeding Neighbors, sort of by its nature and its location, is making the homeless very visible to traffic going by. And they’re also defying the city and the process, which is a brave political act. So I admire what they’re doing. 

I really respect the liberal churches in Eugene. I’m not part of their world, but they have been leaders, not the only ones, but for sure. But they have been leaders in providing shelter and services to the homeless, and I really respect what they’re doing. I think what they’re doing is great. 

My only reservation is that they’re not political. There’s a lot of people and a lot of little nonprofits out there, but most of them are not public and they’re not political. And, you know, there are reasons for that, partly because the nonprofits get some money from the city. And basically you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. 

There’s also legal limits on how political nonprofits can be. And so there’s all that. But yeah, the city still continues its bad policies. And the only way to stop that is through politics.

Presenter The movement would have two goals. Long time homeless advocate Lynn Porter:

Lynn Porter The first and most important thing I would ask them to do is stop harassing the homeless. It’s a deliberate policy, and it’s designed to push the homeless out of sight because the respectable people, the homeowners and the business people don’t want to see the homeless. They just don’t want them in their sight. 

And the City Council, the majority of them, gives the police the power to harass the homeless. We’ve told them over and over again over the years. I mean, people have gone to council meetings and talked at them, and they just sit there stone-faced and don’t respond and don’t change their policy. 

And we’ve told them over and over again that this is a really bad policy. The homeless people are already living in a nightmare and harassing them, giving them tickets because of wherever they are and constantly forcing them to move their camps. So it’s hard for them to get any sleep. 

And also, they’re making it harder for the people who are trying to help the homeless to find them consistently and give them the aid they need. So the Council has been told this over and over again and they just will not change. 

So that’s the first thing I’d like them to do is to stop the harassment. The second thing is, I would like more homeless shelter. 

We have something like 3,000+ homeless people in Eugene and only have shelter for about a third of them. So, you know, the dead of winter when it’s cold and raining, these people are just out on the street with no protection unless they have a tent. 

Also, the city, when they shut down their camps, keeps confiscating their tents and other materials they need to survive, and theoretically they’re storing them. But from what I read online, it’s hard to get them back. And sometimes they just toss it all in a dump truck and it’s a horrible, horrible policy. 

But as far as shelter goes, the state legislature in its last session cut back funding. You know, the city depends a whole lot on state funding for the shelter system. 

They also depended a lot on one-time federal funding, which is no longer available. That paid for the largest shelters that we have, but they don’t have the money to support that. And state funding has been cut back. And at least one of the shelters in Eugene has closed. 

So stop the harassment, increase the shelter, you know, and that will cost money. But it also costs money to keep the homeless unsheltered on the street. 

And if you add up all the costs in law enforcement courts and emergency hospital visits and cleaning up—cleaning up the messes in the parks, we’ve told the city they should just put out more dumpsters and trash cans. They won’t do it because that would be like recognizing these camps.

Presenter  Lynn said the City Council will be getting at least one new councilor next January, and there could be a second with Athena Aguilar challenging Mike Clark in the November election.

Lynn Porter We may see some changes on the City Council. The only solution that Mike Clark offered was to expand the urban growth boundary. And, you know, besides the environmental impact of that and more traffic, more air pollution, and so forth, it seems to me that all that would do is create space for more single-family houses. 

And that’s not what low-income people need. We need very low, low-rent rental housing. We need apartment buildings that we can afford to rent, not market rate, which is what they’re building mostly, and what the city is subsidizing with their tax breaks. And I don’t agree with that.

For working-class people, especially on the lower end of that category, I don’t see what expanding the urban growth boundary, what good that would do us. Maybe there’s something I’m missing here, but that’s how I see it. 

In the last year, they voted down a proposal by Randy Groves to further harass the homeless by fining drivers if they passed cash or anything else to homeless people from their cars. I don’t think that Mike Clark or Randy Groves or Greg Evans or what’s his name—the fourth conservative on the council—really has any good solution.

Presenter Lynn later identified that fourth conservative councilor as Matt Keating. With the vote on the unlawful transfer ordinance Feb. 18, 2026: 

Councilor Matt Keating Mayor, can you read the motion, please?

Mayor Kaarin Knudson Council President, I’ll have you reiterate. 

Councilor Lyndsie Leech Move to adopt an ordinance concerning unlawful transfer on vehicular portion of right-of-way, adding Section 5.170 to the Eugene Code, 1971, and amending Section 5.990 of that Code. 

Mayor Kaarin Knudson And we have a second. So we’ll now take a vote on this motion. All in favor? I see two votes in favor. And all opposed? Five votes opposed. And the motion fails with a vote of 5-2. Motion fails… Yes, Councilor Keating.

Councilor Matt Keating I, because I’m on my mobile device, it’s hard to hear and see and navigate this, so apologies. Who were the two affirmative votes on the last motion?

Mayor Kaarin Knudson The two affirmative votes on the last motion were Councilor Groves and Councilor Keating.

Presenter Lynn Porter:

Lynn Porter That lost, and if we could replace the conservatives on the Council, then maybe we could actually get somewhere. 

It all comes down to the city budget. Everybody’s saying, including all the councilors, that they’re going to have to make some really hard choices next year because funding has declined. But no one is really saying what choices they’re going to make. 

You know, my top priority is homeless shelter and affordable housing, and I think that should be the city’s top spending priority. But right now, I don’t think it is. 

They need to raise more money. One way they could do that, which I’ve been writing about for years, the city’s construction excise tax, which feeds into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and City Council—the state law set the maximum at 1%. Our City Council, unlike a lot of other cities, set it at 0.5%.

I’d like to see it raised to the full 1%, which would double the amount of money that puts into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. You know, we need all the money in that fund that we can get. 

But about financing shelter—I think we need a city bond issue for that. If they can put a bond on the ballot for the library and the police and the parks—I mean, they even put one on the ballot for that baseball park! Why can’t we put one on the ballot for homeless shelter? Whether it would pass or not, I don’t know. But why not try?

You can pay now, or you can pay later. There’s research that if you don’t provide shelter, you actually pay more in a whole lot of ways. People have done the research and added up all the figures, and you would think the City Council would know this. 

They will spend a whole lot of money to clean up the mess that unsanctioned homeless camps leave, but they won’t pay the money to provide the trash collection and legal places where people can camp. 

And we’ve been saying this for years. They should designate places on public land where the homeless can set up their own self-managed camps in the city, just because it’s cheaper.

You know, if we can’t afford to finance more nonprofits, then we need to designate spaces for small, self-managed homeless camps, and the city just provides port-a-potties and trash pickup and leaves them alone, as long as they’re not causing trouble. 

And I actually, when (Lucy) Vinis was mayor, I sent her an email suggesting that, and her answer was no. One of the activists said a while back, ‘The problem the city has with designated places where people can legally camp, and providing a map to show us where they are, is that then people would go there. (laughs) We can’t have that!’ 

The legal sanctioned camps run by nonprofits, that’s really the best way to go. But it costs an amazing amount of money. They should just designate places where homeless people can camp and run their own camps, you know? And it’ll either work or it won’t. 

But when people say it won’t work, I say: ‘As compared to what, you know—the present horrible system where they have to camp out in the bushes and hide and the cops keep forcing them to move?’ 

People who are on the ground and have stories to tell, like that woman in the wheelchair at Washington and Jefferson who had her foot amputated and the cops took away her wheelchair—it sounds like an atrocity.

Presenter Longtime homeless advocate Lynn Porter says it’s time to get organized and change city policies. He praised Jetty Etty, Tim Lewis, and Neighbors Feeding Neighbors, but says individuals and small nonprofits shouldn’t have to do the work all on their own.