Newberg City Council Funds Construction of Homeless Camp Next to School

This article pertains to plans by Newberg City Council, Providence Hospital and various other nonprofit groups to construct a tiny home village called “Peace Trail Village” on NE Bell Road, next to Veritas School, a private classical Christian school in Newberg, Oregon. This tiny home village is, per the grant funding request documentation, specifically for homeless people suffering from mental health and drug addiction problems. The site of the tiny home village is on land owned by North Valley Friends Church. I believe all residents of Newberg should read this article, because if this tiny home village is created it will drastically change Newberg forever and for always. It will not remain the same kind of town and community it has historically been and residents need to consider if they want Newberg to change so drastically.

This article is also about the citizen’s ballot initiative to prevent it from being constructed, Newberg Kids Not Camps, whose information is available at https://www.newbergkidsnotcamps.com/ This initiative has gained enough signatures for the initiative to be on the May 2023 election ballot, which will ask Newberg residents if they want to pass the law that will restrict Newberg City Council from funding projects like Peace Trail Village, requiring them to obtain voter approval first, and will also restrict shelters from being built in close proximity to schools.

In this article I am going to share my evidence-based opinion on what is actually going on with this project and what I believe the true objectives of this tiny home project are, as well as what the objectives of many similar kinds of projects are in other cities doing similar kinds of things.

This article is lengthy and I strongly encourage anyone who has a vested interest in Newberg to read it; if you have children in the schools, if you own property and care about whether crime rates will increase and property values decrease, or if you care about whether the will of local residents will be pushed aside in favor of special interests that benefit a minority. Please read this article in its entirety, for your own sake, so you may be informed about this topic.

Background Information

Earlier this year the City of Newberg received $5.3 million dollars from the federal government as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The purpose of the bill was to speed up the country’s recovery from the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Newberg City Council has largely spend the money into things which have nothing to do with economic recovery. For example, as previously reported in March, they have given large amounts of the grant money to small businesses such as local bars to remodel their businesses and nonprofit groups like the Chehalem Cultural Center to build a theatre and dance studio. Nearly all of the businesses and nonprofits that have received funding are ran by people who are heavily involved with the Progressive Yamhill social activist group that this paper has provided extensive reporting on over the past year.

It is my personal belief that the City Council members associated with Progressive Yamhill are using the money to reward the loyalty of other Progressive Yamhill members without making any disclosures to the public about these associations, just as how they appoint their members to vacant city council positions without those disclosures.

The full list of recipients of ARPA money is located on the City website, and highlighted in yellow are the list of businesses I can readily identify as being associated with people who are either members of Progressive Yamhill or who are known to be public defenders of their activities on social media,

A substantial amount of the ARPA funds have been donated to causes related to “homelessness”, despite there being little to no proof that anyone in Newberg is homeless as a result of covid-19.

The amounts donated for “homelessness”,

• $350,000 to Newberg Harvest House
• $350,000 to Yamhill Community Action Partnership (which operates the Newberg Harvest House)
• $400,000 to Lutheran Community Services
• $400,000 to North Valley Friends / Providence Hospital for “Peace Trail Village”

The focus of this article will be on the Peace Trail Village project, which despite having a lovely sounding name is in my opinion a rather sinister vehicle for advancing Progressive Yamhill’s agenda to transform Newberg’s political culture toward their extremist agenda.

What is Peace Trail Village?

Peace Trail Village is a tiny home village that is to be constructed in the backlot area of North Valley Friends Church, in close proximity to Veritas School’s playground. The specific intention of this tiny home village is to provide transitional housing to homeless people with significant behavioral problems such as drug addictions, mental illness and other conditions that have resulted in their homeless state. The tiny home village is a project with many different groups involved in it, but the most important is likely Providence Hospital, as the residents of the village will receive services through their Better Outcomes Through Bridges (BOB) program — a program that is specifically for substance abuse problems.

We know this because it is expressly stated in the grant request which the organizers of Peace Trail Village submitted to the City of Newberg, which you can read by clicking here.

To make it easier for people, this is the section to pay attention to,

You should also keep in mind during the grant request they claimed they were only constructing 9 tiny homes with the money; this number is drastically underreported, as they actually intend to construct far more tiny homes than just 9. It is only that they intend to use grant money from other sources to do so. This is explained in the grant request itself that they are intending to construct 40 homes from other grant funding,

So make no mistake, the people responsible for creating “Peace Trail Village” know it is for homeless people with drug addiction problems. Don’t let them mislead you about who it is for.

The intention of “Peace Trail Village” is for homeless people suffering from substance abuse and other behavioral disorders to stay at units in the village for several days, before another person with similar issues is rotated in. It is not long term housing and they will have a high turn over rate by design; consequently it will be a very chaotic environment for all of the residents there and anywhere nearby, as people who have significant problems are being intentionally placed into an environment with limited supervision that is little different than the shelters which already exist other than that they can stay in the village during the day (and consequently, do the things these people do during daylight hours in close proximity to Veritas School. More on this later in the article.).

The following is an excerpt from the Newberg Dundee News website article discussing the project,

“At a meeting last week regarding the Peace Trail Village housing project planned on North Valley Friends Church property in Newberg, it was announced that a separate and larger project to address local homelessness is planned in the vicinity of Providence Newberg Medical Center.

The meeting, which drew about 100 people to the church, was held July 19 and was for North Valley members and Veritas School parents,”

The City Council in March chose to allocate $400,000 of federal grant money toward the Peace Trail Village. Providence had on behalf of the church written the grant request, which also mentioned an additional 40-unit project. Responding to a question at last week’s meeting, the church’s pastor, Leslie Murray, said she was unaware of those additional 40 units. From the audience, Providence employee and Newberg City Councilor Elise Yarnell Hollamon then spoke to confirm that those units are planned to be built near the hospital.

In the grant request, the city government was asked to earmark an additional $500,000 toward that future project. That request was made not from Providence alone, but on behalf of “an emerging coalition of community partners,” of which Providence is a member. The project is slated for construction after 2022.

According to Hollamon, the 40-unit project would not, to her knowledge, be a tiny home village like the North Valley Church project”

While Elise Hollamon has claimed the 40 additional units are not going to be built at Peace Trail Village I have seen zero evidence for this claim to be true, and furthermore, the City of Newberg is currently planning to construct a new water pump to accommodate a large number of houses at the location for Peace Trail Village. There is no need for this water pump if they are planning just 9 tiny homes.

What is not mentioned in the article is that North Valley Friends Church is not, contrary to what its name might imply, a traditional Quaker church. According to several sources who have attended their services they are actually a non-denominational church with a traditional evangelical worship service led by a pastor. According to the sources they are considered a “woke” church whose leadership advocate for a doctrine integrated with Critical Race Theory ideologies.

This should be unsurprising; per its own staff page, the North Valley Friends Church is ran by Progressive Yamhill members, several of which are also members of its subchapter, Newberg Equity in Education (NEEd) which organized the harassment of Newberg School board directors Dave Brown, Brian Shannon, Renee Powell and Trevor DeHart in an effort to intimidate them into resigning or changing their votes on school policies, as I detailed in my previous reporting about the Newberg Schools Saga.

Here is a list of members of Progressive Yamhill involved with North Valley Friends Church,

Leslie Murray – Lead Pastor North Valley Friends Church

This is proof of her members in NEEd, which you can verify yourself from the master screenshot of every member who has an L in their name.

Erinn Hampton – Office Manager

This is proof of her members in NEEd, which you can verify yourself from the master screenshot of every member who has an E in their name.

Nate Macy – Pastor

While Nate Macy himself was not a member of the NEEd Facebook group when I infiltrated it last year, his wife Amy was, as can be seen in the list of NEEd members with an A in their name.

There are far more Progressive Yamhill affiliated members involved with North Valley Friends however, and we’ll discuss some of the more key ones to this Peace Trail Village project as we proceed with this article.

Attempts to Generate Support for the Homeless Camp Using False Narratives

A recent fluff piece about the tiny home village and the related car camping measure published in the Newberg Graphic in the Gary Allen article, “Is Car camping in Newberg a problem without a solution?” gives us the story of the anonymous “Jane” who claims to be living in her vehicle with her three kids. The story appears to be written to push the idea that car camping is necessary to “help” people like Jane because the job economy and housing market are poor in Newberg, so this justifies the city government to intervene,

I am critical of the narrative that Gary Allen has weaved and I am going to point out what I believe are the obvious faults with this narrative.

In his article Gary Allen blames the housing market for Jane’s woes, and skips over the obvious fact that “Jane” has found herself in this predicament through her own choices; primarily, poor mate selection. Her three kids did not magically appear out of nowhere. She had those kids with a man who is obviously absent in the kids’ lives, which is why they are in this predicament. Jane is trying to raise children alone as a single mother working what are apparently part time entry level positions, which is not the financial condition a person should have for raising so many children.

This may be uncomfortable for many people to hear, as single motherhood has become very commonplace in our culture. But there are consequences to a failed relationship that has resulted in children, and that is the reality of life. Humans were not intended to raise children with only a mother or a father. No human society is designed for this, because it is foreign to our species.

So, Jane’s problem is not a result of a bad economy or too high of living costs in Newberg; it is the obvious result of irresponsible decision making in mate selection and family planning. When you do not go about the traditional way of choosing mates and forming families you will obviously end up with a non-traditional outcome, which is what her situation is; a non-traditional outcome. It is not the primary reason she is presently homeless in a car with her children, but it is a main contributing factor.

Anyone who has children with someone who makes a bad parent and who does not have the financial stability to raise three kids by themselves is going to end up in this predicament if they reject all third party assistance; it is the predictable outcome of such decisions Jane has made. Jane’s situation is a consequence of poor mate selection and rejection of assistance from the shelters, and so the situation is the consequence of the bad choices she has made. It is not the fault of the local market that Jane is living in her car; it is a problem she created through poor decision making. Consequently, the problem cannot be blamed on the economy or housing market.

While one can correctly argue that Jane’s predicament is something to be sympathetic about and that without some kind of intervention it is not likely to improve, the reality is permitting car camping is not the solution to the actual problem in Jane’s life; Jane’s core problem is that people who choose mates poorly tend to also make other poor decisions in their lives which worsen it, and will continue to do so until they have some kind of epiphany, a striking realization the way they make decisions leads to a negative outcome and they adjust their beliefs to help them make better decisions.

As an example of what I mean, in the article Jane says she cannot use the shelters because they won’t permit her dog; the obvious solution is to give up the dog to an animal shelter so it can be rehomed and so that Jane can get services for herself and her children. Instead, Jane CHOOSES to live in a vehicle with her kids and an animal, which is indicative of extremely bad judgement. Jane prioritizes wants over needs. She does not need the pet, as pets are a luxury. Jane only wants the pet, even though she cannot adequately care for it, herself or her children.

Jane needs counseling to address the underlying causes of her homelessness, as these causes are self-created based on her own erroneous decision making. This car camping law that Newberg City Councilors want to pass is not going to motivate her to have an epiphany and change her behavior. It will only re-affirm her bad decision making. Enabling Jane to make bad choices is not going to solve Jane’s situation. She very obviously needs help but that help is not enablement and encouragement of bad decisions. Instead, that help should probably be coming in the form of state intervention; if she is choosing her pets over her children then those kids are likely better off in the foster care program, and Jane needs counseling for whatever malady is causing her to make such bad decisions in her life. While programs do exist that can provide temporary financial assistance to people such as Jane, these programs cannot address her obvious tendency to make poor decisions, and so these are not adequate long term solutions, either.

I will repeat myself here, just as I said in my prior article about car camping, that I do not believe the social programs popular with liberals are effective at addressing homelessness and drug addiction problems. I think they enable instead of help, and what it ends up doing is subsidizing the irresponsible lifestyles of people using the tax money of more responsible people. Instead I think all of the money granted to “homeless nonprofits” should be redirected into state ran in-patient programs ran by actual real doctors with real specialization in treating people with mental health problems, be it addiction or other kinds of behavior issues. They should not be creating new out-patient programs, as these have proven ineffective. We need in-patient programs instead, ran by people who are actual experts and not a couple of social workers with a few weeks of so-called “certification training”.

Peace Trail Village is for People with Behavior Problems

In the end, Jane’s story doesn’t really matter because “Peace Trail Village” at North Valley Friends Church is expressly for homeless people with behavioral disorders such as substance abuse problems. It is not for people who are just down on their luck, recently lost their jobs or escaping a bad relationship. It is specifically for people who have such significant behavioral problems they cannot get a job and none of their family and friends will shelter them. Consequently if Jane has none of these issues I can’t see how it would benefit her.

So, I find it to be incredibly dishonest and quite insulting to the intelligence of Newberg residents that they would think they can boldly lie about what this place is in the hopes residents will sympathize with people who self-created their own homeless situation with irresponsible behavior. And I also find it to be insidious they are intentionally building this next to a school when they know full well that most parents will pull their kids out of the school because it’s obviously dangerous to send them in such close proximity to a place that is going to have tons of people with behavioral disorders running around with little to no supervision, as the the project is only employing a couple of social workers who will only be there for a few hours of the day.

If Newberg City Council actually wanted to make Newberg a cheaper place to live because the councilors sincerely believed that high housing costs are creating a homeless crisis then they would not have approved zoning during 2020 that increases system development fee costs for constructing new housing in Newberg, and they would not continue to rezone commercial use only areas of Newberg into mixed use residential-commercial zoning so that Newberg loses land necessary to attract good wage paying employers to the city (for example, the land across from Providence Hospital was changed to mixed use from commercial only, and now it cannot be used to attract potential employers to Newberg because half a million dollar condos have been built on this land). Nor would they have voted to implement the Urban Renewal Plan which also rezoned commercial use land into mixed housing-commercial where the same scenario is almost certainly going to repeat; it appears they are intentionally trying to cram more houses into Newberg instead of reserving land to attract employers who can pay good wages, such as manufacturers and chip developers.

City Council has the power to make decisions that will reduce the costs of constructing new housing and lower the cost of living by reducing taxes. They instead are doing the opposite and then complaining about the result.

The obvious remedies to high costs of living in Newberg are not being made by City Council; an observer might conclude they are intentionally doing things that will drive up the costs while then turning around and using these high costs to justify the funding of things like an intentionally created ghetto of homeless people next to a private school. As none of them are unintelligent people, I find their statements to be more dishonest than they are incompetent. I think they know exactly what they are doing and it is intentional. Their claims about why they do what they do are not matching the deeds that they do.

I strongly believe there is a completely different reason for why Progressive Yamhill members so desperately want this tiny home village created in this specific section of Newberg and in this article I am setting out my reasons for this belief.

Peace Trail Village Is Deeply Associated with Progressive Yamhill Members

First of all, several organizations ran by Progressive Yamhill members are involved in this project. This is shown in the original grant proposal itself,

As previously reported, Community Wellness Collective is ran by Kristen Stoller and Elise Hollamon, Wayside Friends Church is controlled by PY members as well. Newberg Habitat for Humanity is ran by Mayor Rick Rogers.

Another member of Progressive Yamhill, Melanie Springer Mock, a self-identified ‘Elder’ at North Valley Friends Church, wrote an article fluff piece article about the village that was published on July 27th by the Newberg Graphic (which is always friendly to the agenda of Progressive Yamhill). In the article she actually rejects observable reality and claims concerns that Newberg will turn into Portland are unfounded because, as she claims, Portland is still a “lovely place”.

Contrary to her claims, Portland is, very obviously, not a “lovely place”, as this unfortunate woman who had her purse snatched by a resident of a similar tiny home village in Portland had the misfortune to learn — the same kind that is planned to be constructed next to Veritas School. Why anyone continues to live in Portland while this is permitted, I’ll never understand.

Just so Newberg residents know what goes on around the tiny home villages for homeless people in Portland. https://t.co/M76FNz14Np

— Yamhill Advocate (@YamhillAdvocate) July 21, 2022

I have also learned from a source that Michael Pender, another individual involved with North Valley Friends Church, has been identified as a project manager for Peace Trail Village and he has been interviewing and hiring job applicants to construct the tiny home sheds. According to the source the homes to be built off-site and then moved on trailers to the location. I believe it is worth pointing out that Michael Pender is married to Heidi Schneiter Pender creator of the “Black Student Union” in the Newberg Schools District, as I previously reported last year. It is my opinion this group violates federal law, since racial segregation is illegal in public schools. Heidi Pender is also a member of Newberg Equity in Education (NEEd).

Another vocal proponent of the tiny home village which for vagrant people with “behavioral problems” is Newberg Mayor Rick Rogers, who even produced a video to address the “controversy” and defended the construction of the village,

Bear in mind that this is the same Rick Rogers who has used the city government to push radical political movements, declaring June “Pride Month” and putting the BLM / Antifa movement associated “Trans-racial pride flag” colors on a post published to the City of Newberg Facebook Page. A Transracial pride flag is also hanging in Newberg City Hall. And as readers of the Advocate will know, the only group in the area who is pushing this radical agenda is Progressive Yamhill, a registered chapter of the national organization Indivisible.org.

(For those who doubt that the Transracial Pride Flag is a symbol of the Black Lives Matter / Antifa movement, the evidence is quite strong as the flag design was created by an Antifa and BLM activist for those in the movement. And the people who use this flag know all about this, which is why anyone using this flag also usually supports BLM, too)

As I have previously reported, Mayor Rick Rogers himself has connections to Progressive Yamhill, as do several other members of City Council; Denise Bacon, Elise Yarnell Hollamon, Jefferson Mildenberger and Stephanie Findley all have association, with Hollamon, Mildenberger and Findley being actual members of the secret Facebook groups I infilitrated last year.

The Financial Interests of Progressive Yamhill Members To These Programs

Firstly, the reality is that the ARPA money the City of Newberg gifted to the “Peace Trail Village” organizers is not mainly for the construction of tiny homes or to provide services to the future residents; as detailed in the June 2th Newberg Graphic article Newberg’s Transitional Housing Program receives $400,000 from ARPA Fund, the grant money was primarily for paying the salaries of people who run the camp.

So right from the beginning, we can plainly see there is financial incentive for the operation of this camp, because the operators get to have six figure salaries subsidized by public tax money. These are jobs that otherwise wouldn’t exist for them and was only possible through this grant money.

Grant money which, I must remind Newberg voters, was given to cities by the federal government for the specific purpose of helping city businesses recover from the financial impact of the covid-19 lockdowns. There is absolutely no evidence that anyone who is going to stay at this camp is someone who was displaced as a result of covid-19, and it most certainly is not a business that was impacted by covid-19, either. In my personal opinion giving so much money to nonprofit groups like this Peace Trail Village is a misappropriation of funds.

Newberg City Council Members Ties to the Project

As I have repeatedly shown in prior articles, Newberg City Council is majority controlled by Progressive Yamhill members but the two most important individuals in this issue are Elise Hollamon and Mayor Rick Rogers, as they have obvious vested financial interests in the project.

Elise Hollamon’s connection is easy to understand; she works for Providence Hospital as the Director of Access Strategies, which means her job is to help the hospital increase its revenue by being able to provide more services to more people. She also runs the Community Wellness Collective with Kristen Stoller, which per the grant request is involved in providing services to the village.

Mayor Rick Rogers also has a very easy to understand connection as well, and in many ways I believe he has enormous conflicts of interest in this matter; he is the Executive Director of the Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity Newberg, a group that is heavily involved in this project and which has received grant money from the City he is the present mayor of. In fact, Newberg Habitat for Humanity has built several tiny homes in the past.

While Habitat for Humanity is unique among home builders in that it specializes in constructing homes that are sold at “no profit”, the reality is that the employees of local affiliates like Newberg Habitat for Humanity don’t work for free because they are not volunteers. They have salaries, and they earn a living by running the nonprofit company. In this regard it is little different than any for profit home construction company, because the people running the show are being paid. According to third party sources such as CareerBliss, the average salary of an Executive Director of a Habitat for Humanity affiliate is $89K, but this number would not include any bonuses which affiliates are free to give their employees for whatever reason.

What does all of this information mean? Well, it means that Rick Rogers has a vested financial interest in the population of homeless to increase in Newberg, because his own income relies upon his company (Newberg Habitat for Humanity) providing services to “low income people” — which homeless people fall into the category of. As Newberg continues to attract very wealthy Californians to the city, it would organically have fewer low income people living in it UNLESS there are ways for low income people to continue living in the city — which is what I believe this Peace Trail Village is designed to artificially enable. No matter how you slice it, this benefits Rick Rogers personally, because he runs Newberg’s Habit for Humanity which needs low income people to serve in order to get funding that covers the salaries of the people that work for it — such as himself. He has no vested interest in Newberg not having a population of low income people, because then there would be no need for a Habitat for Humanity in Newberg; it would have no one to serve.

So, they can label it the “Peace Trail Village” or any other pleasant sounding name, but I think a more accurate term is “Progressive Yamhill Homeless Camp Enrichment Project”, because that is what I think it really is. Its presence is going to benefit the financial interests of many involved in the group who operate and work for nonprofits that serve homeless people.

During a recent City Council meeting on August 8th, the purpose of which was to discuss negotiating with the organizers Kids Not Camps Initiative organizers with the intent to convince the organizers to change the language of the initiative, Mayor Rick Rogers went into a long tirade against the organizers of the citizen led initiative and those who have signed the petition. You can listen to this rant in the following video clip from this portion of the meeting,

To refute Rogers’ claims, I first want to point out that in the entire history of Newberg, Oregon we have never had a homeless population of any significance until people like Rogers got control over the management of the City and started these nonprofit shelter programs.

Secondly, in regards to Rogers’ claim that only “experts” should have any input into this topic, I think it is important for people to understand that the only people Rogers’ regards as an “expert” are those who have vested financial interests to control the narrative because the issue at hand involves the funding and construction of places for their businesses; you can dress them up in whatever colorful language you like, but a nonprofit IS a business that employs people who earn significant salaries. There is financial incentive to operate these shelters and construct these tiny home village programs, and people like Rick Rogers’ careers depend upon the ability for these nonprofits to be permitted to be funded and constructed inside Newberg city limits.

Additionally, Roger’s argument is an appeal to authority fallacy; your credentials and supposed expertise do not automatically make your opinions more important than another’s. The quality of the accuracy of information in your opinion is what matters, and the reality is people like Rogers who have a financial interest in a matter have motivation to misrepresent facts to suit their own special interests.

Asking Rick Rogers, the Executive Director of Newberg’s Habit for Humanity (a company that specializes in constructing “low cost housing”) if he thinks it is a good idea to permit the unrestricted funding and construction on homeless shelters and tiny home villages for people “in need” is like asking the President of McDonalds if it’s a good idea for people to build more McDonald’s restaurants. Of course he is going to think it’s a splendid idea, because that is how he makes his money.

During his rant Rick Rogers’ claimed he has over 30 years of experience with assisting homeless people, but what is he really saying here given what we know about these programs and how they operate? To me it sounds like experience profiting from other people’s misery and pain while taking money away from real long term solutions to drug addiction problems, such as the funding on inpatient programs that would separate addicts from the drug dealers that exploit them. Instead, they are given lodging for a night and then returned to the streets for the rest of the day. Inevitably their mental health deteriorates to where they can no longer gain employment or even be civil enough to stay at a shelter, in which case they now are doomed to live on the streets until they die. This is not a compassionate program; it is exploitative.

Rick Roger clearly does not give a damn about the opinions of the rest of the 20,000+ residents of Newberg who do not have a financial interest in inviting more homeless drug addicts to Newberg. I view his emotion not because he is passionate about helping people but because he knows the initiative would harm his own financial interests.

I also don’t believe it is a coincidence they are constructing this right next to the Christian private school that many conservative parents send their kids to, although I don’t have any evidence for this. But I think the voters of Newberg need to ask themselves why Rick Rogers is so disinterested in any safety concerns for children next to a school and is instead claiming people are “demonizing” adults who have made life choices that lead them to become homeless drug addicts simply because people are rightfully concerned about them living in close proximity to kids.

During the meeting Rick Rogers claimed the language of the ballot initiative to prevent tiny home villages from being constructed next to schools would impact existing mobile home parks in Newberg, because he wishes to define them as non-permanent dwellings. This is an absurd claim because “mobile homes” are not legally defined as non-permanent dwellings; the legal term for a mobile home is a manufactured home, and once it has been brought from the manufacturing plant to a permanent location its parts are conjoined in such a way it cannot be easily moved again without radical alterations and often damage to the home. Manufactured homes can also not be easily moved; they require a tractor trailer / semi-truck to transport. This is not true for tiny home sheds built on small trailers that can be easily moved by almost any car.

I also find Rick Rogers’ claims that the ballot initiative result will get the City sued by the state or others to be nonsensical. No City has an obligation to provide homeless drug addicts who don’t want to work with a single cent. No one has a right to live in Newberg, or any city, in which they cannot afford to lease or purchase a home. Newberg does not have a housing shortage just because some people cannot afford to buy a home in it. There are homes being sold all the time, just ask any of the numerous realtors who live here and who profit greatly from the constant flux of sales of these homes.

Lastly, Rogers’ demand that the state district attorney give his stamp of approval to the ballot initiative is also ridiculous, because district attorneys do not decide what is lawful, and certainly not Ellen Rosenblum, a Democrat appointee whose politics are aligned with the agenda of groups like Indivisible. I do not regard Rogers’ recommendation as any kind of compromise, but instead a trick designed to kill a citizen initiative that goes against his own special interests.

Now that I have explained the strong ties to Progressive Yamhill that this “Peace Trail Village” has, I want to take some time to share the story of a person who tried to get help from these local programs ran by Progressive Yamhill associated people. I believe her story is reflective of what will transpire at this new “village” since it is reflective of how these programs are presently operated.

Jill’s Story and Why I Believe These Programs Are Not Effective at Helping Homeless People

It is often claimed by supporters of these programs that they “help people” but I strongly disagree. It is claimed by the advocates of these social programs that the majority of those using the programs are not drug addicts and that they help people who are just having temporary financial hardships. I strongly disagree with with this and I have written at length before in a prior article on why I believe car camping should not be permitted in Newberg. I believe these programs are not effective, but I want to share a personal anecdote from a recent experience I had with trying to help a homeless person get their life in order.

Earlier in this article I mentioned the Newberg Graphic story written by Gary Allen , “Is Car camping in Newberg a problem without a solution?” gives us the story of the anonymous “Jane” who claims to be living in her vehicle with her three kids.

I have another point of view to share, the plight of a different homeless woman in Newberg whom I personally met and tried to provide assistance to. For the purposes of this article I will refer to her as ‘Jill’.

A month ago I encountered ‘Jill’, a young woman in her early 20s who was hanging out in front of my gym here in Newberg, the first week that I opened the gym to the public. After noticing Jill had been sitting outside my gym doors for over 6 hours in the same spot, I asked her if she needed some kind of help. She related her story to me; she had fled from an abusive relationship with a man in another city over an hour away from Newberg, but had left behind her possessions, her ID, her bank cards, etc. because she was in a rush to escape from him. She was not originally from Newberg but had came to this town because she thought a friend who lived here would help her, but that friend did not have a place she could stay. Jill had been staying at the Town and Country Motel for the weekend but had ran out of the cash money she brought with her, and she had been trying to get in contact with other family from California to help her but to no avail, which is why she was hanging out in front of my gym all day. According to Jill she had a troubled childhood; her father had left her mother when Jill was a teenager after her mother developed schizophrenia (and who now lives in a care facility) and her brother had developed drug and alcohol addiction problems and he was presently living in his car in Salem, and he could not help her either. Left on her own, Jill had been surviving by living with boyfriends she met through dating apps.

After talking with her for about an hour, Jill related to me a story of psychological abuse by her most ex boyfriend and claimed she had been raped. To summarize the events, I convinced her to speak to a local police officer, who came by the gym and talked to her about the local shelter programs. Jill was hesitant to go to these places, because she had already attempted to do so before but was scared off by the other types of people who were staying at these places. However, I was able to convince her to go to one of these shelters. I explained to Jill that as long as she remains a damsel in distress she will be vulnerable to exploitation by people that want to use her desperation to convince her to do things against her own interests, and if she wants to attract a high quality man to take her as a wife then she needs to first demonstrate she is capable of creating a stable home life, as that is one of the most important things a good man is looking for in a wife. She needs to get back on her feet, be able to live independently, resolve her self-created problems and stop allowing people to easily exploit her because she is so dependent upon them she cannot say no to their unreasonable requests.

Unfortunately, although Jill agreed with what I said about what she needed to do and she did I believe make a good faith effort toward improving her life, Jill’s experience at the shelter was extremely negative, and this was something she could not control.

Within a few days, Jill was able to find some part time employment and was traveling by bus from the shelter to her new place of work, and she would spend her time before and after her shift at my gym, because she felt it was a safer place for her to hang out than at the parks in Newberg where many homeless people frequent during the day. As Jill was only permitted to stay in the shelter overnight, she had to find elsewhere to remain during the day when she was not working. Over the next two weeks she gave me daily updates about her experience of being homeless in this area, of how several men staying at the shelter frequently scared her, because they were constantly trying to get her to leave with them and became upset when she would not. When she waited for the bus at a park near the shelter, the other vagrants staying at the shelters were constantly trying to convince her to do meth with them. This was not limited to only the men, as she was also constantly offered drugs by women who stayed at these shelters, with several different women trying to befriend her and then offer her drugs. One woman staying at the shelter also befriended her and then propositioned her for sex. She was constantly pressured by other people staying at the shelter to hang out with them during the day and do drugs.

It was clear by her stories that staff at the shelters did nothing to screen the people staying at the shelter for drugs and this kind of exploitive behavior was commonplace and tolerated.

Jill did finally report one man who was very aggressive in his pursuit of her to the shelter staff, and when the staff attempted to talk to him about it, he went completely ballistic, threatening to attack the staff with a knife. From my understanding he ended up being arrested. He was however released that same day by the jail and he then came back to the shelter at night, and screamed threats at her outside her window for hours until officers came to arrest him again.

The next day after this event Jill learned that she would not be able to stay at the shelter for more than 2 weeks at a time and would need to “cycle out” with others on a waiting list, and she was encouraged go stay at other shelters. This to me seems like a system designed to maintain chaos in the lives of those using the shelters, and to prevent even those who are trying to get back on their feet from having any kind of consistent routine necessary to rebuild one’s life from scratch. I think it may also be a way for different nonprofits to funnel people around to different shelters, assisting with their numbers (the number of people a shelter helps is used to justify grant funding requests, so the more people a shelter hosts the more money they can ask for in grant requests).

Because of the constant contact she was having with drug addicts who were trying to recruit her into their addictions and the sexual harassment, Jill ended up deciding to quit her new job and return to living with her abusive boyfriend (who was constantly texting her with promises he would be different if she returned) because she decided it was easier to deal with one toxic person than to deal with a large group of them. She gave in to the despair she felt, and she lost faith that she could start a new life without her ex.

So, while it is an anecdotal story I am sharing here, Jill’s story is a very recent one about the plight of a person who does not have drug addiction issues and is trying to use the local shelter programs here in our area. Jill’s story illustrates why they do not actually help the people these programs claim to help, and how they do primarily cater to people with significant behavioral problems that have led to their homeless status.

Jill’s story is different than the Jane from the Newberg Graphic article, because Jane refused to make changes to improve her life. Jill was also reluctant to use the shelters but she made an effort, but the shelter system devised by these Progressives are just ineffective at creating stability because they are designed to cater to people who have drug addiction and other behavior problems; the “shelter first” solution simply does not work and it leads people who really could turn their life around using the programs to flee from the shelters because they are primarily occupied by people that are constantly harassing them and trying to encourage them to worsen their lives.

What these programs appear to do is gather people with significant addiction problems together and help them form communities to share information about finding “free resources” to subsidize their lifestyles, so they can focus their money on obtaining drugs. They also offer these drugs to other people who are not yet addicts but are down on their luck, using peer pressure to encourage them to become addicted to things like meth and engage in unprotected sex. The staff at these shelters do little to deter this behavior, and even when the staff do try to intervene they become threatened with violence by the people they are supposedly helping. Even when people get kicked out, they can return to the shelter to harass those who reported them because the jails won’t hold them for even a single night.

However, these programs are not actually “free”; they are subsidized using the tax money from people who don’t have these problems. And instead of that money used to benefit the majority of people who contribute to the taxes of the city and states, they are spent on the less than 1% who choose the faux bohemian lifestyle of a vagrant drug addict, to invite them into nice towns like Newberg so they can transform into ghettos like Portland.

Anyone who is not an addict who joins this community of other vagrants is gradually chased away from the shelter programs, and in Jill’s case, right back to the abusive situation they were trying to escape from in the first place.

I believe these social programs simply are not effective at helping anyone who is actually seeking help. I don’t believe they have been designed to help people, but instead to subsidize the lifestyle of people who choose to be irresponsible with their own lives. As I said before, if they were designed to help people then they would not intentionally house drug addicts with non-drug addicts and they would instead be creating in-patient drug treatment programs at the local hospitals to separate the population of people just down on their luck from those who are homeless due to addictions. I believe they make no effort to distinguish between the different populations of homeless because it is more profitable for them to serve the long term homeless drug addicts than people who just need a little help rebuilding their lives.

These programs have been, in my opinion, designed to take advantage of people for other more selfish purposes while feigning to help those in need, and so they ultimately help no one.

What is the Motivation for These Kinds of Villages?

I believe the motivation is money and power, and here is why I think so.

Shelters are Overpriced Hotels

By creating these kinds of “shelters” they encourage vagrants from other areas like Portland to move to Newberg, which lets the owners of these nonprofits now claim higher numbers of “homeless” people they need to “help” in their future grant requests. They say something to the effect of, “we need more money because we have all these homeless people who we can’t help unless we get more money” but the entire reason these homeless people have came to Newberg from other cities like Portland is because they know they can get resources here in a much nicer town that hasn’t yet been transformed into a third world country. This system creates a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you build a place for certain people then you will attract that kind of people to that place.

It’s like building a bird house or putting out a salt lick stone in your yard to attract birds and deer; if you invite something to you then that thing comes to you.

These nonprofits can then, via grant money, rate the rooms as high as $500 a night or more while providing low quality room lodging that would otherwise lease for a normal market rate of around $500 a month, but because they are offering the lodging as part of these programs with high turnover of homeless people they make their real estate more than quadruple in their profitability. The nonprofit owners can then pocket the excess money in the form of salary and bonuses, paying themselves and many of their staff six figure salaries to run what are basically hotels that only desperate drug addicts are willing to lodge at, with the nightly rates for lodging paid by grant money.

The construction of things like tiny home villages also brings construction contracts, which are handled internally in the network of people who are organizing all of these programs. They can charge as much as $50,000 a “home” to construct what are basically garden sheds with plumbing in them, and they don’t have to construct them onsite of the village because they are built on small trailers which can be easily moved.

Homeless People Represent Voting Power to Far Left Political Extremists

As for the political power that can be gained through running these programs, I believe having this vagrant population in cities like Newberg serves the agenda of the radical leftists; they know that most drug addicted vagrants who do not want to work will vote for Democrats who will fund programs like this that subsidize their drug addicted lifestyles. The vagrants don’t have to work because they are provided shelter, food, clothing and even medical care for free; they can get free clean needles they can litter all around a town. Why would they not vote to keep the Democrats in power who are funding their drug addicted lifestyles? And the Democrat politicians know this, which is why they do things like construct these shelters and tiny home villages to invite more of this population into communities like Newberg which historically haven’t had a large population of drug addicted vagrants until the Progressive Yamhill people all started creating these nonprofit groups and constructing transitional housing projects to cater to them.

I must remind people here again that Progressive Yamhill is a registered chapter of the Indivisible movement, whose specific goal is to flip rural conservative and moderate political counties to vote for far left liberal agendas. That is expressly what the Indivisible movement members are working toward, so anything these people are involved with ultimately has that as its objective.

In the state of Oregon one does not need to have a physical address in order to vote; homeless vagrants are permitted to use the addresses of shelters or even the county clerk office, and can just pickup their mailed ballot forms or have them delivered to them.

This law is convenient for inviting homeless vagrants into your community when you change ordinances to permit things like car camping and constructing transitional housing / tiny home village ghettos.

Consequently I regard these projects as yet another effort to change the voting culture of towns like Newberg; if they can bring several hundred homeless vagrants into the city then they can gain several hundred new votes for Democrats, helping them maintain control over the cities by thin margins, outvoting the people who actually pay property taxes to live in the city. And the city officials spend your tax money to invite these vagrants into the area to outvote the local conservative residents.

While several hundred homeless people coming to Newberg as car campers and transitional housing occupants might sound insignificant in a city of 20,000+ people, the reality is Newberg has experienced historically low voter turnouts for the past decade. A few hundred new votes from homeless people who fill out their ballot according to advice given by shelter staff (many of whom are associated with Progressive Yamhill) could determine the outcome of our local elections, and I believe the political strategists at Progressive Yamhill know this.

We already know that it is a goal of Progressive Yamhill to change the voting culture of Newberg using unscrupulous tactics, because Kristen Stoller admitted their goal of indoctrinating children through the public school system was to change the culture through kids who become recently graduated from the high school.

With that plan failing after Progressive Yamhill lost control over the public schools, it would not be surprising for them to now focus on another plan to change the culture by inviting large numbers of homeless vagrants from Portland to come to Newberg who will all be entitled to vote and through contact with Progressive Yamhill members involved in all of these shelters and tiny home projects; the homeless will vote for Progressive Yamhill candidates.

Furthermore, this tiny home village project falls within District 4’s property lines; the current City Councilor who represents District 4 is Jefferson Mildenberger, a Progressive Yamhill member who was appointed to City Council last March by fellow Progressive Yamhill members who never disclosed this connection to one another. I find this to be an interesting detail.

What Newberg Will Become If This Tiny Home Village Is Constructed

I reject the idea this tiny home village is being created out of “compassion”. I think it’s just another self-serving plot of a group of extremist wackos who want to control a tiny conservative town and use its resources to push for their extremist social experimentation agenda against the wishes of the people who actually work and pay taxes here, and whose families have lived here for generations.

As with Progressive Yamhill’s false claims they are “saving kids lives” by indoctrinating them into gender identity psuedo-science, Progressive Yamhill is now claiming this village is going to somehow save and help people when there is NO evidence it will do anything except invite hordes of drug addicted people to Newberg who will do the exact same thing they are doing in Portland; destroying the city and making it a dangerous place for children to live.

This is what Portland has become, and what Newberg will become if they are continued to be allowed to steer the direction of our city’s future.

The permitting of car camping and construction of these tiny home villages will lead to what has transpired in Portland to occur in Newberg.

These videos represent what Progressive Yamhill’s vision for Newberg is. What they want to do is what has already been done in Portland, and I believe many of the same people who are presently creating problems for people in Portland will move to Newberg.

I also strongly believe that the designers of this homeless camp are specifically constructing this tiny home village next to a private Christian school where many conservatives send their kids is not a coincidence. I believe intentionally erecting something like this next to a private school shows how little they care about anyone but themselves and their little political cult. While I don’t have evidence to support this belief I hold, I believe this because of the intense hatred the Progressive Yamhill group members have for conservative Christians in Newberg, as I provided evidence for in a past article. It would not surprise me if they chose this location specifically because they know it would lead to the closure of Veritas School, because most people are not going to pay to send their kids to a school next to a homeless encampment of drug addicts.

If you build a place for people with mental health issues it will attract people with mental health issues. I guarantee you, it will also attract the drug dealers whose clients will be living in these sheds next to the school, and all the related crime that happens in these places in literally every other place they are created. A social worker who is only onsite a few hours of the day is not going to stop this stuff. These are not valid solutions to the mental health epidemic, these are just real estate deals for enriching the owners of nonprofits by exploiting this population group. If they want to solve the problem then they should be building an INPATIENT program at Providence Hospital, not some church at the other side of town miles away from the hospital that not so ironically also is next to a largely conservative Christian school that is loathed by many of the “Progressives” who want this place built.

This year is an election year. I strongly urge Newberg voters to expel Progressive Yamhill members from control over the City government to stop this from happening, because it is what they are trying to create in Newberg.