Medford, Oregon Panhandlers Face Tough Penalties

According to the Medford Mail Tribune, beginning January 1, 2008 some types of panhandling became illegal in Medford. While a new city ordinance won't prohibit someone from holding a sign asking for help, it will make it illegal for him or her to accept help. In other words if I hand a homeless person an orange, she could face a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail.

I used to think that as a society, we wanted to give people opportunities to work their way out of poverty and homelessness. There was a time when I even thought there was a safety net that existed, something that would keep people from becoming homeless in the first place.

And then about six months ago we watched, rather helplessly, as friends lost their home and wound up living up in the hills above town-- camping out as they called it. Their children spent the summer months catching lizards and picking blackberries and asking when they would have a place to live again.

We urged them to work with local charities to try to get back on their feet. They were told that the only rental assistance they could hope for was one that would pay part of the deposit-- they would need to come up with first and last months rent and have steady enough employment to get into a place. This meant that the father had to leave his wife and children alone in their makeshift campground while he searched for work.

Months passed and by August we really worried about how they would manage to survive. How would their girls get to school every day? What about when it started to get colder? Fears of scraped limbs and broken bones were replaced by new ones. Would they ever find a place to live? Why weren't local agencies holding a tighter safety net underneath this family? These were not people who were addicts. They had a history of employment but had lost jobs when the family business closed up last spring.

Finally in October they were able to find seasonal work at Bear Creek Corporation and found a mobile home they could get moved into. Currently their seasonal employment has ended and they are again precariously close to homelessness once again.

Poverty is a slippery embankment. It is far too easy to lose your balance and fall down.

Ideally we would all have living wage jobs, access to health care and basic human rights. Until then, we have to fight for the rights of people who are largely silenced by economic oppression and protect a basic human right to ask for help when needed. We can't hide poverty or will it away, or force it off of our street corners. We have a responsibility to act.

Source:

Damian Mann, "http://mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071226/NEWS/712260319/-1/ARCHIVE" Medford Mail Tribune