To the Editor:

I’m all for helping thy neighbor, but putting the homeless camp next to City Hall is stupid. Just because it is an empty lot, you invite the homeless in and put them on Main Street? Why?

You want tourists to come here, families to move here and what do they see? A homeless camp. And we all know they don’t keep a tidy camp. Dirty, messy, garbage and filth accompany these people. Look at Portland. Look at Bend/Redmond.

Why can’t our churches, who give out money so easily and often, put up a few showers a week and laundry? The Nazarene Church has a nice piece of green land next to the river. Put the homeless camp there. Put it next to the Riverside trailer park. Put it down on the community garden area and move the community garden to the huge greenhouses we paid so much money for that haven’t been used in two or three years.

Put the camp out of sight. There’s no need to have to see it. It will be just like the time the Rainbow people came in. They said, “We will leave the land as good or better than we found it.” Well, guess what? They tore that piece of land up.

I get it if the law says we have to have an ordinance, but don’t look to invite this. Our small town has a few homeless — none annoying, for the most part. You make this public for all to see and hear, they will come in droves. Again, look at Portland, Bend, Redmond.

Out of sight — we keep giving handouts for free and they, like others, will take and take and not give anything back. I know, I can just hear it — but they are down and out, they lost everything, they are poor.

I’m sorry! I didn’t have any part of their issues, but I’m sick and tired, like a lot of people, of working my rump off for what I do have and others who don’t work get all the free this and free that. Meanwhile my taxes go up and we pay and pay.

S. Lee Pierce

John Day