This is part 3 of 3 in my series investigating the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission, a faith-based homeless shelter that is the only service provider in Grants Pass, OR—the city at the center of the recent Johnson v Grants Pass Supreme Court case, where it was adjudicated that cities like GP (and all around the country) can criminalize homelessness with fines and arrests with the full support of the Constitution.
My primary source in this series is a woman I’m referring to as Alison, who agreed to share her story and documents with me if I kept her identity secure. She provided the documents from Part I, her story for Part II, and Part III contains some of her reflections as well as my own.
SUPPORT: Alison did a really brave and vulnerable thing sharing this all with me–not simply because it presents risks of identification and retaliation, but also because this process unearthed a lot of trauma for her. Telling me her story and finding/sharing the documents was work in a number of different ways. For this physical and emotional labor, I did compensate her–but she deserves more than I could offer. If you are moved at all by Alison’s story and participation on this, to consider donating directly to her. For anonymity’s sake, I will collect those and pass them along.
You can contribute via Venmo (@ kevin-nye-3), Cash App ($Revkev), Paypal or Zelle (kevin.m.nye@gmail.com).
Disclaimer: Because of the closed-off nature of the Gospel Rescue Mission and their services, there’s no way to fully verify the authenticity of everything I will present in this series. Wherever possible, I achieved confirmation of the accuracy of the documents, and compared the stories of some others who have experience with Grants Pass GRM to Alison’s. In every way, Alison’s experiences resonated with what I heard from others, and I have no reason not to believe them. Nonetheless, I cannot present them as if they are facts, and you as the reader will ultimately have to make your own decision.
We have only just begun to see the impact of the Johnson v Grants Pass decision, but it’s looking rather bleak.
Before the ink could even dry on the majority opinion, Gavin Newsom–the Democratic governor or “liberal” California–ordered the closure of all encampments across the country’s most populated state. Cities and counties that don’t cooperate will risk losing State funding under the declaration. Santa Monica, one of the most popular (and expensive) places in Los Angeles, is considering a ban on pillows and blankets that would amplify and intensify their criminalization of people experiencing homelessness. These are some of the starkest examples of places where this kind of thing was not allowed under the previous decision–other states, especially in the South and Midwest, already had such draconian measures in place, and have only become more brazen since the ruling supported their practices.
For our country, it means quite simply that homelessness is going to get worse. With seemingly nothing on the horizon to mitigate the rising costs of housing and the stagnation of income, more people will be driven to homelessness each year, but that experience will be much more terrifying. Sweeps, ticketing, and arrests will make being unhoused increasingly dangerous, hopeless, and prolonged. People will go to jail for things outside of their control, making it harder for them to change their situation if they even could. Outreach workers and aid orgs will have more trouble finding people regularly to work together on navigating our complicated systems. Constantly losing belongings will drive people to despair, which will increase mental health symptoms and chaotic drug use, and by extension overdoses. It’ll be easier than ever to become homeless, and harder than ever to escape it.
For the unhoused, this means an amplification of one of the most insidious processes–the labeling of “service-resistant.” For all the places that exist like the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission, there are hundreds of people who will reject the services they offer for completely reasonable reasons that the public will never know about. But when they walk away, it will be said of them that “they don’t want help,” “they just want to be homeless,” or “they just want to live however they want with no accountability.” Even when we do design better services and shelters, can we blame unhoused people for being suspicious, knowing that many of them have experienced, or heard about, services that dehumanize them in exchange for “care”?
For Grants Pass, this is already the case and worsening by the day. Since the Supreme Court attention intensified, Grants Pass has been experimenting with “sanctioned encampments.” The idea here is that there would be designated spots where encampments are allowed under strict guidelines, oversight, and often internment. (I am not a fan of this growing movement, but we’ll save that for another time.) Whether you like this idea or not, the execution is key–and Grants Pass is failing even the most basic of tests. From an article less than a week ago:
“Within a 24-hour period beginning Aug. 23, police moved residents onto the property, which lacked basic services, including shade, water or any method for cooking food. By Monday, the city closed the gate to the fenced-in site. Advocates say the fence, fashioned with an array of padlocks, makes homeless residents feel kettled inside.”
The day I wrote the bulk of this piece, Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, the temperature peaked at 101 degrees F in Grants Pass. On Thursday, the day before you all received this in your inboxes, it rose to 102. With no shade and no access to water apart from what the few and under-resourced nonprofits in GP can deliver, this has been a disastrous week in Grants Pass. The author of that article has been tweeting updates, and it’s grim.
Which brings us back to the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission, whose facilities can only hold a maximum of 138 of Grants Pass’ roughly 600 homeless residents, yet who wrote a brief to the Supreme Court asking that they allow criminalization of homelessness, because the previous ruling made it so “the City can no longer enforce its ordinances prohibiting such camping, more of those individuals elect to remain on the streets and on other City property. As a result, far fewer individuals participate in the Mission’s services.” (The brief quotes data from 2020 to 2023 that shows a decrease in people accessing their services but ignores COVID and its influence on this.) The Mission has only dug in their heels more, evidenced by their YouTube channel’s playing-up of their rules and the need for them, and their “educational” videos about what homelessness really is.
While new resources are emerging to help unhoused folks in Grants Pass, the Mission will continue for a long time to be the biggest, most funded, and most influential for the foreseeable future, even while failing at every aspect of their mission. Their success rate of 30%, if we can even trust it, pales in comparison to what Housing First programs produce in peer-reviewed studies. But let’s be honest–their goal isn’t to house people as much as it is to convert them. From their website:
“At the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission, we are bound to proclaim Jesus Christ to the homeless and needy of Josephine County in a spirit of care by assisting with clothing, spiritual counseling, education, food, healthcare and shelter. We accomplish all this with an attitude of commitment.”
It deserves to be questioned though: are people even being turned to Jesus by this? While the Mission has their success stories, I have Alison’s story, and so many others who have told me about their Rescue Mission experiences across the years and how it made them suspicious at best of religion:
I have some very close loved ones in my life who love God and describe themselves as Christians. I talk openly with them about religion and our personal values, often. I don’t hate religion and have spent my share of time in churches, youth groups, christian camps etc. I have stayed curious my whole life, even if I do not identify as religious. I feel more as though religion does not accept me, so that is sort of where the rift happens. Living at the mission intensified this feeling and definitely turned me further away from any ideas of following an organized religion. It made religion feel unsafe and judgmental, in very unhealthy ways… I am still angry with the Chapel program, and have not been back to church since leaving the mission.
For the Church, we have to ask if this will be our legacy. While there are so many Christian organizations that use best practices and eschew the ways of the Mission, the fact remains that Rescue Missions dominate the Christian witness on homelessness, and continue to do so on the financial and volunteer support of churches. While not all Rescue Missions are as bad as this one, they operate from the same basic premises–and they thrive on churches donating and volunteering without ever asking hard questions about their practices or results. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement–the Church feels good about “doing something about homelessness” and the Mission carries on doing whatever it wants without the oversight and expectations that comes with other funding.
Last I checked, though, Jesus didn’t command us to abdicate our responsibilities to one another by cutting a check and turning a blind eye. Engaging with homelessness requires more attention, and for the walk to match the talk.
Because at the end of the matter, we must bring this back to our own hearts.
For us, it’s easy to criticize the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission. I’ve received a lot of messages describing how disturbing their practices are, that they should be closed down, defunded etc. And yes, absolutely! I don’t disagree. But we do ourselves a disservice if that’s our only conclusion.
Actually, scratch that. We are doing ourselves a great service–a huge favor–by placing all our blame and shame onto them. But we shouldn’t get away with it.
Because the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission isn’t an aberration. It’s not a haunted house full of villains that we can defeat by shuttering its door. It’s the natural, uninhibited manifestation of a set of beliefs that exists inside most of us, cultivated and stoked over time by preachers, parents, evening news, think-pieces, and jokes. This set of beliefs says that people experiencing homelessness are lesser–that they are in some way getting what they deserve, and until they “get right” morally, spiritually, physically, or mentally, then they deserve whatever happens to them. These beliefs are obvious in their unadulterated form: on the three page list of rules governing the Mission. But they operate in subtler ways too: they exist in the suspicion in our hearts everytime we see a panhandler and wonder if they’re faking; they thrive when we frame homelessness as an addiction crisis rather than a housing affordability; they perpetuate anytime homelessness is discussed as though it's something that its experiencers can control rather than something that we as a society allow.
The insidiousness of the Grant Pass Gospel Rescue Mission won’t end simply by shuttering its doors, and those of places like it. It’ll end because a generation of people, emboldened and charged with mercy and grace of God, root out the lies and biases within us that later organize themselves into structures and programs that further harm the already hurting.
Under the new reality allowed by Johnson v Grants Pass, this inner-work will be needed more than ever–to recognize and oppose programs, laws, and institutions that appear charitable but are guided by disdain for the poor; to transform or build up coalitions, organizations, and mutual aid that sees the inherent dignity of the unhoused beyond their need and lack; and to keep people alive and thriving while our country continues to strip away everything that makes bodies and souls stay alive and come alive.
Jesus, help us.
If you or someone you love is experiencing homelessness in Grants Pass or the surrounding areas, here is a list of the few resources that do exist for you beyond the Mission:
211
(dial from any phone)
-Serves all of Oregon and SW Washington
-Can often help direct people to available shelter in other counties/help with transport to shelter in crisis weather situations (snow/heat)
-Can help connect people in need with resources related to bills, food, camping supplies, childcare/child needs, medical support, pet care support etc
NAMI
National Institute For Mental Illness
https://namior.org/search-for-resources/
-NAMI offers connections to many mental health/addiction support resources, as well as many other needed resources when a person is struggling/homeless
-Mental Health informed personnel, also offers support groups
SART
(serves both Jackson and Josephine county)
https://www.jacksoncountysart.org/
-For domestic violence/sexual assault escape/recovery assistance, as this often leads to homelessness. Every woman I met at the GPGRM had experienced some form of DV.
DHS
(Josephine county) (541) 474-3101
(Jackson county) (541) 776-6172
-Has been known to offer emergency financial/housing support to mothers and children escaping domestic violence situations
-Can offer resources and advocacy with homelessness
-Can sign up for SNAP benefits/WIC, find food banks, sometimes very fast assistance with food/TANF
Options of Southern Oregon
Josephine county - (541) 476-2373
Jackson county - (541) 476-2373
-Offers low/no cost mental health support, therapy, psychiatry, medication support, pharmacy, support groups, addiction recovery support, behavioral training groups, medical advocacy, case management, job training(as well as clothing/support in getting a job, resume building, interview practice etc)
-Options case managers can help an individual navigate the complicated system to help them locate and access housing, help and healthcare.
Ugh I’m glad you wrote this but also I’m sad!!!!!!