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WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2024

Brookings, Oregon

Ruling in Grants Pass homelessness case shelter oneself in a public place. This would make it illegal for any homeless person to shelter in a public space, meaning they would effectively have no place to go, especially considering the City does not have an adequate number of shelter beds to accommodate its unhoused population. Through invoking another case, Martin v. Boise, the district court ﬁled an injunction, seeing these ordinances as a ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ of the status of homelessness. It essentially allowed jurisdictions to criminalize the status of homelessness, using the threat of ﬁnes or jail time to keep the homeless out of a community entirely.

BY NATE SCHWARTZ Curry Coastal Pilot

The US Supreme Court issued a ruling on the case of Johnson vs Grants Pass today, June 28th, 2024, in what experts are calling the biggest case in the realm of homelessness in decades. The conservative majority on the SCOTUS ensured that the defendant, the City of Grants Pass, was favored by the ruling. The initial case was a class action suit brought against the City on behalf of its homeless population. Grants Pass attempted, through a city ordinance, to restrict the use of pillows, blankets, and cardboard boxes to

It should go without saying that a hefty monetary ﬁne would be a huge hinderance to someone trying to get back on their feet. That is without even mentioning how jail-time and a mark on one’s record would make it even harder to ﬁnd a job or housing. These measures are counterproductive for getting the unhoused back into society, it just allows for cities to sweep them under the rug by forcing them out or locking them up. The case then made its way to the highest court in the land. After deliberation, the SCOTUS ruling favored the City. The SCOTUS argument for why this is not ‘cruel and unusual’ is that

the ordinance does not specify homeless people, but just seeks to cut down on ‘public camping’. It also argues that ﬁnes and jail-time do not constitute as ‘cruel and unusual’. “Grants Pass’s public-camping ordinances do not criminalize status. The public-camping laws prohibit actions undertaken by any person, regardless of status. It makes no difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building,” states the SCOTUS Syllabus for the case.

A look back on pride in Brookings BY NATE SCHWARTZ

Curry Coastal Pilot

Pride Month returned to Brookings this June, including Southern Oregon Coast Pride’s (SOC Pride) now-annual Pride-in-thePark celebration! The festival brought in a great turnout of both attendees and volunteers for its second year returning to Azalea Park. “The support from the community was outstanding. We tabulated the number, and it was over 240 volunteer hours that day. Which doesn’t even include all the months leading up to it,” estimated Laura Erceg, SOC Pride’s director. And all that planning paid off, the event went off without a hitch. Attendees were treated to music, refreshments, and an opportunity to be around community and allies. A band with local LGBTQ+ ties, Rat Boy, played along with a DJ and other acts. There were booths with vendors and activities to build community, inspire individualism, and Please see PRIDE, Page 3

Myth vs. reality: What’s the truth behind some common gardening practices? For the Pilot

important.

Reality can get skewed when there are so many sources of information - books, magazines, newspapers, nurseries and, most of all, the internet and social media open up lots of room for contradiction. So, how do you ﬁnd the right answer for gardening questions? Experts from Oregon State University Extension Service stepped up to bust some common gardening myths. Read on to get some research-based answers to 10 common misconceptions. For additional questions, call the OSU Extension Master Gardeners in your area or submit a question to Ask Extension, an online question-and-answer service. Providing a photo is

MYTH: Lime will remove moss from your lawn. REALITY: Lime will not ﬁx the problem. Moss prefers to grow in wet, shady conditions. Lawns with moss need more sunlight, i.e. trimming, pruning and thinning trees. If you like the trees the way they are, you will continue to have moss and you should think about shade-tolerant alternatives to grass. Moss also grows well in infertile soils, which includes acidic (low pH) soils, but more importantly it also includes nitrogen-deﬁcient soils. Lawns, like a lot of cultivated plants prefer nitrogen-rich soils. Regular fertilizer applications (four applications per year, two in the fall and two in the spring)

with products containing nitrogen, combined with improved sunlight will result in a green, dense lawn that can out-compete moss. – Alec Kowalewski, OSU Extension turf specialist

slight drop in the soil pH, but the change would not be damaging to the plants. For those that leave the needles on the ground, they will begin to break down naturally and the microbes (decomposers) in the MYTH: Ponderosa pine soil will neutralize them. So, you needles make the soil more acidic can leave them there (if you’re (low pH). not in a wildﬁre prone area). They REALITY: The notion that are a good mulching material pine needles change the soil pH that will keep the moisture in, so that nothing will grow or that suppress weeds and eventually it will damage plants has been out add nutrients back to the soil. there for years. The truth is pine You can also add them to a needles do not make the soil more compost pile; they will slowly acidic. It is true that pine needles break down over time. If you run have a pH of 3.2 to 3.8 (neutral is them through a shredder, they 7.0) when they drop from a tree. will break down faster. A general If you were to take the freshly rule of thumb is not to add more fallen needles (before the needles than 10% of pine needles to your decompose) and turn them into the soil right away, you may see a Please see GARDEN, Page 2

INDEX

This does not preclude the fact that the ordinance was targeted toward and overwhelming used for the homeless community. A drifting backpacker with nowhere to stay, is also, for all intents and purposes, homeless, even if just for a handful of evenings. The distinctions in language and in practice are incongruous. The latter example has even more disturbing implications. It actually expands the scope of the original ordinance, giving cities an example of how to use camping ordinances to squash what would otherwise be peaceful protests. It would arguably

Please see SCOTUS, Page 3

Englund Marine & Industrial Supply is celebrating 80 years Englund Marine & Industrial is celebrating its 80th year in business this year. On Monday, July 22nd, the company will host a “Thank You” event at its seven retail stores to celebrate the milestone and offer a great discount on Englund Marine gear. The entire Englund family and the crews at all the locations wish to express their gratitude for the long years of support given to them by their customers and the communities they serve. Englund Marine was founded on July 22nd, 1944, by Axel & Freda Englund in a small storefront at the foot of 15th Street in Astoria, OR. It continues today as a family-run business. Axel’s son, Jon Englund, is the current CEO. There are also 4 grandsons active in the company: Kurt Englund works at the Astoria store and is the Company’s President; Jay Englund manages the Raft Shop in Warrenton; Dean Fleck is a manager at the Newport OR store; and Mark Fleck manages the Coos Bay store. The company has grown over the years to include seven retail stores in harbor towns along the Washington, Oregon, and Northern California coasts. It also operates a life raft certiﬁcation and re-pack station in Warrenton, Oregon, and three wholesale warehouses in Oregon, Arizona, and Montana. Englund Marine prides itself on being the go-to store in its communities for boating, outdoor clothing, and industrial products. The company has products for commercial and recreational ﬁshermen, professional tradesmen, and weekend warriors. In two of the seven store locations, it also has full-service rigging shops for fabrication, splicing, custom rigging, and hydraulics.

Phone Number: 541-813-1717 • Address: 519 Chetco Avenue, Unit 7, Brookings, OR 97415 • Email: Circulation@CountryMedia.net

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