A week ago, a few locals at a community meeting about policing asked the Ashland Police Department increase efforts to eliminate loitering and criminal behavior from the downtown area.
On Saturday, at least one of those residents stood up in a forum about community policing held in Medford to ask what could be done to reduce panhandling around the Plaza. He called begging illegal and took several minutes to calm down while APD Chief Mike Bianca explained asking people for money is not against the law in Ashland.
In the weeks since the Mail Tribune profiled the “affluent beggars” on the front page, the fierce reaction from locals has not been contained to public meetings. Word that Jason Pancoast and Elizabeth Johnson support their three children through panhandling in downtown Ashland and regularly make $300 a day incensed some.
“That story made a lot of people think about the homeless situation, in particular the panhandling, in ways they hadn’t before,” Ashland Mayor John Morrison said. “When people give money to people on the street, they can be duped and it offends people’s sense of fair play. It makes a lot of people angry.”
Local and regional talk radio have torn the topic apart. Letters to the editor condemning or condoning the behavior of the couple have been published, and panhandlers throughout the Valley have reported drops in the donations they receive.
But the dialogue not generated by the controversy is defining what the problem is — panhandling, homelessness, a lack of resources — and how to help.
“Panhandling is a sensitive issue,” said Megan Amort, a freshman anthropology student at Southern Oregon University who helped the Oregon Student Public Interest Group with its campaign on hunger and homelessness in the fall. “There are definitely those people out there. I don’t know how you would stop it because while there are those people who are begging for a living, there are also people who are doing it because they need to eat.”
Ignoring the causes
Most homelessness can be traced back to three sources, according to Emily Folmar, who does outreach through the Havurah Shir Hadash in Ashland.
Overwhelming medical expenses, a drug or alcohol addiction or a mental health condition typically force people out of their homes and onto the street, Folmar said. Homeless panhandlers like the affluent beggars are rare, even in Ashland.
“I think it discredits and inaccurately portrays the real situation and the real cause of people being on the streets and people being homeless,” said Sean Gordon, a member of the Ashland Homeless Alliance. “It misrepresents the reality of people on the street and the options that are open to them.”
There was no mention of medical costs, addictions or mental illness that started the couple in a downward spiral to the life on the streets, although Pancoast and Johnson talked about recreational drug use in the initial story.
However, a volunteer with a local outreach group the couple has had contact with told the Daily Tidings that Pancoast appeared to suffer from “paranoid delusions” when she met with him. The woman spoke on the condition of anonymity in hope she wouldn’t further alienate the pair, who have moved their family twice since the first article was published on Jan. 8.
“People are humiliated by this process to begin with,” the woman said.
A failing system
Ashland has “a very high transient rate,” and the poverty rate for Jackson County is one of the highest in the state, according to Amort.
But those embedded in the issues believe the town is not geared up to approach the homelessness issue with a cohesive strategy. Churches, synagogues and other charity groups try to connect people in need with social programs that could help them move off the streets and into low-income housing. They help families register kids in public school, apply for food stamps and get rent assistance.
For most, however, those avenues don’t achieve a permanent fix.
“People get bounced around,” Folmar said, explaining the Havurah Shir Hadash limits the amount of assistance it gives per person to spread out what is available. “It’s the nature of the situation that everyone is getting bounced around.”
Some faith-based charities want to band together with the help of AHA to establish a homeless shelter in the city and pool their resources. The closest shelters right now are in Medford. Discussions a year ago about creating a home for the homeless in Ashland withered when debate between a homeless camp and a shelter went unresolved. The group split into factions and the question of what to do has lingered ever since.
“In terms of homelessness, I’m not sure anyone has a really good grasp of what we’re talking about when we say ‘homeless,’” Morrison said. “We have to understand a little better before we can begin to devise measures to deal with it.”
Morrison plans to appoint a task force to study homelessness in Ashland and he expects the Ashland City Council to dedicate a study session to the topic in the spring.
