One of the most special places in the Pacific Northwest is Ashland, Oregon. Home to a famed annual Shakespeare Festival, the scenic and politically progressive small town has an extensive and charming local business district; plus a huge city park and lithium-enhanced local waters. Nearby mountains and valleys beckon, but you could spend hours simply hanging about the quaint, yet sprawling town center, and the babbling brook that runs through it. Truly an enchanted place.

As many have discovered. Perhaps too many. All is not well in Ashland: homeless bums are worrying local business owners. The Ashland Tidings reports:

Mike doesn't want his name mentioned in any news article right now. At least not yet. But, he's convinced that he, and many others like him, will have to go public soon. He is reticent, he says, because he fears bricks through the window of his store, local customers boycotting his business and other forms of public backlash.

....Mike's concern is that things have just gone way too far in good old liberal Ashland....Panhandlers in front of businesses is a...concern. So-called "musicians" playing loudly - and often badly - directly in front of storefronts is another concern.....Mike thinks the downtown is doing its own impersonation of Mount St. Helens - boiling, brewing, spewing some occasional pressure and most importantly signaling a serious eruption that lies beneath the surface.

He points to the drop in the number of tourist visits to Oregon Shakespeare Festival last year as evidence. He says the city has gotten letters from disgruntled tourists and fretting business owners, as has the festival and the Chamber of Commerce. "I bet you have too," he says. He's right. We have. Not waves mind you, but a trickle of frustrated visitors who are fed up with panhandlers, nudists and transients who make them uncomfortable as they come for a weekend of plays, gourmet meals, wine tasting and drives in the country.

....Mike says that if it isn't obvious now, it will be when talk of a homeless camp heats up again. This...issue is the flash point to Mike. The homeless camp, he says, will do nothing but invite an explosion of all the aforementioned problems, which will in turn ensure a mass exodus of the tourists.

This commentary in The Ashland Tidings makes it clear that the concerned business owner is hardly some reactionary, compassion-less right-wing geek.

Mike's an entertaining guy who regales me with stories of passing out money to homeless people late at night and heading to the forests years ago to protest what he views as excessive logging. He explains how he came to Ashland specifically to be a liberal business owner. He loves the politics, embraces the emphasis on the environment and welcomes intense scrutiny from the public.

"I'm no corporate business type," he says with arms outstretched, inviting my scrutiny. He certainly doesn't look it - clad in jeans, an earring in his ear, tattoo on his arm. His speech is punctuated with less than banker-type words. "But this whole thing could crumble and take us all with it."

Ashland has always lived near the edge of the cliff of reasonableness. The homeless camp is an open invitation for freeloaders from across the country to journey here, Mike says. The camp will hurl the entire local economy off the cliff. Whether Mike speaks for many or an anxious few remains uncertain. What Mike hopes is that very soon people will defend what they have worked for and stop the homeless camp idea.

Helping our local homeless is great, Mike says. Building a Mecca for people to come and live off the government while taxpaying businesses are threatened is an entirely different matter.

Other folks in Santa Cruz and suburban Seattle know what you're talking about, Mike. Arcata, too.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at March 10, 2005 10:44 PM

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