Crackdowns in minority neighborhoods resulted in riots by the residents of those neighborhoods. I see a fundamental difference here, in that the loiterers in Eugene's downtown aren't residents in the same sense, since they don't occupy homes to which they return daily. They might riot, as they nearly did recently with the arrest of a drug dealer; but they have no homes to return to afterward.

I have little sympathy with those street people, too many of whom know they frighten citizens, and possibly use that fear to extort cash, or to claim territory. Let them rent their own houses, and open their houses to their fellow "travelers". It is disgusting to see a beggar class made up of able-bodied, relatively young people, who are doing nothing and going nowhere.