SB893 directs the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department (OHCS) to implement a “culturally responsive” policy framework “designed to provide support to specific populations” experiencing “homelessness or housing instability.”
The Senate passed SB893 on April 11, 2023, by a vote of 25 to 4. We have assigned pluses to the nays because government is instituted to secure our individual rights, not to “prevent and end homelessness” in society or be “focused on reducing disparities” of property ownership between citizens on account of race or economic status. The U.S. Constitution, which was written to “promote the general Welfare” of all Americans, already protects each person’s “unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” affording everyone with the opportunity and dignity to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their family as expected—by meeting their own needs, through their own efforts, and using their own resources. Oregon has absolutely no business discriminatorily and unjustly providing “housing services” to any of its residents, particularly those who have little or no tax liability, at the expense of other hard-working people. It is not only immoral, but unconstitutional. The Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment make it clear that “No State” shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”