Eugene’s streets are not a home — they are a prison

Walk through downtown Eugene, along West 11th Avenue or Highway 99 on any given day and tell me what you see. 

I see people sleeping in doorways. Tents beneath overpasses. Makeshift camps in parks, along roadways, and in places never intended for human habitation. The most recent Point-in-Time count estimated 3,509 people experiencing homelessness in Lane County in 2025 — a 14% increase from the previous year. The number grows despite years of increased spending and expanding programs.

Behind every one of those numbers is a human being. Someone’s son. Someone’s daughter. Someone with value, dignity and unrealized potential.

This is the legacy of one-party Democratic rule in Oregon. Gov. Tina Kotek declared a homelessness state of emergency on her first day in office, has extended that emergency twice, and has committed over $700 million to the problem in her current budget — yet unsheltered homelessness in Oregon rose 32 percent in 2024.

Our congresswoman, Val Hoyle, has gone further, supporting the same Housing First framework that drove these results. She has been so committed to it that she actually voted to allow homeless encampments in our national parks and forests. This is what more-of-the-same looks like.

The root problem is ideological, not financial. Oregon’s leaders have embraced a version of “Housing First” that has quietly become “Housing Only.” The philosophy: give someone a roof, no conditions attached, and everything else will work itself out. It hasn’t.

Addiction and serious mental illness — the primary drivers of street homelessness — don’t resolve because someone has an address. Treating fentanyl addiction requires more than housing. And handing someone a taxpayer-funded apartment with no accountability attached is not compassion. It is managed chaos and decline.

I reject the premise that questioning this approach is cruel. Real compassion means helping people recover. It means treating addiction as the disease it is, demanding results from the programs we fund, telling the truth when those programs fail, and seeking lasting solutions. Here is where I stand — plainly:

• First, federal funding must follow recovery, not just shelter. As your congresswoman, I will work with anyone to drive policies and laws that redirect federal homelessness dollars away from housing-only programs and toward organizations that make addiction recovery and mental health treatment their mission. Programs that produce results — sobriety, employment, lasting independence — must be encouraged and rewarded. Programs that merely manage cyclical homelessness without reducing it must demonstrate outcomes or lose public funding.
• Second, reasonable strings must come with public assistance. I reject the argument that it is inhumane to require sobriety participation as a condition of publicly funded housing. If a person is receiving taxpayer support, we have both a right and a responsibility to require that they not bring fentanyl or meth through the door. 
• Third, law enforcement must have the tools to intervene. Our officers and behavioral health providers need the legal authority to intervene when individuals are a clear danger to themselves or others. Allowing vulnerable people to deteriorate on the street while calling it compassion serves no one — not the individual, not their family, and not our community. 
• Fourth, we must stop funding failing systems that drain every other public service. The camps in our forests are causing fires. Oregon Department of Transportation, parks and recreation departments, and county agencies are spending enormous resources managing encampments and property crimes rather than serving the public. This is a cascading failure, and every dollar diverted from core services to maintain an endless cycle of homelessness is a dollar taken from working families and our local businesses. 

I have lived and worked in Eugene for three decades. I raised my family here. And I have watched this crisis worsen while Oregon’s elected leaders declared emergencies, spent billions, and asked for patience — then declared another emergency and spent billions more. 

Kotek and Hoyle have had their chance. The numbers tell the story. The faces and the stories of the homeless tell the truth.

People sleeping outside in Oregon’s rain and cold do not need another press release or emergency declaration. They need recovery. They need accountability. They need leaders willing to say the hard thing: a sidewalk is not a home, addiction is not freedom, and compassion without results is not compassion at all.

That is the standard I will bring to Congress and to our Oregon communities. The people of this district deserve a leader who convenes stakeholders, solves problems, and produces results.