Our river is an open latrine with an added garnish of syringes with needles. Note that hepatitis C can remain active in a discarded syringe for over two months and there's no vaccine. (There is a treatment, but it costs nearly $100,000 and is rationed.) The thugs camping along the river and even the Amazon creek have taken over key portions of our bike paths and harass people on bikes, or foot, particularly lone females.

Our city's response to attracting all these addicts and criminal? Why to open a host of "sanctioned" camps, all in/next to the Whiteaker, of course. Meanwhile, people who live where the impact is nonexistent come here and feed them, perhaps to keep them from roaming into their own neighborhoods. The result is we now have people cutting open the community garden fence, dumping their syringes there and attacking women in our neighborhood who dare to go out in public without a male escort. 

Welcome to the Middle Ages, Eugene style.