Page 5 - C.A.L.L. #40 - Winter 2015
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Along with common stewardship gleaming surfaces, and manicured
comes self-government along the lawns of the common areas are a
lines of direct democracy. Though product not of coercion, but
the agreement with the city of commitment. Pets are allowed, and
Eugene means that Heben’s NGO "couples can live together," unlike in
maintains an 'oversight role' in the more disciplinary spaces of
ensuring the village plays by the charitable homeless shelters. In a
rules, day-to-day decisions are taken word, Opportunity Village is nice.
by residents. Some are delegated to It’s a long way from the stereotypes
an elected council, and others are and clichés that color so much
voted on directly by everyone. This reporting on homelessness.
includes everything from the
allocation of resources to basic Heben's idealism was inspired in part
decisions about who is admitted by the Occupy movement, where
from the community’s long waiting Heben saw homeless and non-
list, and what should happen to those homeless citizens alike working
who break the community’s rules together on a shared goal. That's
forbidding drugs, alcohol, stealing, not to say that he thinks tiny houses
and violence on site. 'We’ve lost will singlehandedly solve rampant
around 12 people who just didn’t problems of affordable housing and
make it,' he says. homelessness. As Heben says in the
first line of the profile, "I never
Adherence to the rules comes less said that this was the solution to
from external compulsion than from homelessness. It’s one experiment,
a shared interest in the community’s we need more."
wellbeing. The ordered provisions,
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