A place to sleep

Josh Keim says sleeping is “a basic human right.” Even if you’re homeless. And especially if you’re a homeless youth.

So after years of seeing wayward juveniles sleeping in front of his building on West Broadway in downtown Eugene, Keim has taken the opposite approach of most downtown business owners who try to shoo them away. He’s opened his doors to them. He’s got them sweeping the street and doing chores. He even started feeding them and allowing them to sleep overnight on the floor of his building at 55 W. Broadway. But his dormitory for the homeless didn’t last long.

A deputy fire marshal and building code enforcement inspectors with the city showed up a week ago and told Keim the building is zoned for commercial business, not lodging.

“He’s got what he terms a business plan and a thought,” interim Eugene Fire Marshal Doug Perry said of Keim’s attempt to start a youth sanctuary. But, Perry said, what the city saw “was the commercial cooking and sleeping aspects of a shelter.”

The 40-year-old Keim is an accomplished restaurateur. He owns Ring of Fire and Cafe Lucky Noodle in Eugene and earlier this year opened Granary Pizza in the former Jo Federigo’s spot on East Fifth Avenue. He also owns the building at 55 W. Broadway, and Club Snafu, which is in the back of the building.

Keim said he let as many as 20 homeless and runaway youths sleep on the floor in the front section of the building, which is separate from the club, for a few nights last week.

Keim’s efforts come amid increasing attention to — and public frustration about — crowds of young people downtown. The city has tried to move the groups of youth away from the area in front of the public library. And earlier this month the city painted “do not block” markings on sidewalks around the Lane Transit District downtown station to prevent crowds there from blocking pedestrians, a move that drew praise and criticism.

Homeless youth were thrilled by Keim’s free digs, but many of his business neighbors were not.

“I think that’s really awesome, so us kids have a place to stay at night,” said Billy Dennison, a 14-year-old homeless youth, one of many Keim has befriended recently and tried to include in programs, including nightly group circles called the Fight Club Soap Community — a reference to the novel “Fight Club” by Portland author Chuck Palahniuk, also made into a popular 1999 cult film.

Perry said the fire marshal’s office was notified by the Eugene Police Department after it received complaints from business owners and others on West Broadway. In addition to telling Keim to “cease and desist” having youths sleep in his building, deputy fire marshal Amy Linder found eight fire code issues, from use of extension cords for permanent wiring to a stairwell being blocked by storage, Perry said.

For Mary Leighton, executive director of the Network Charter School next door to Keim’s building, the youth he’s trying to help are a nuisance who are disrupting her school.

“Oh, my god. My life is a nightmare,” Leighton said. The homeless youth congregate on the street all day, smoke cigarettes, fight, shout obscenities at her and set a bad example for her students, many of whom have had to drop bad behaviors to achieve some success, she said.

“(Keim’s) decision was completely disrespectful of the neighbors and the community,” Leighton said.

But many youths who appeared Tuesday night at Keim’s building, as part of a meeting called the Energy Village, praised him.

“Josh opened the door and the ocean came in,” said Katina Andoniadis, a local artist and playwright. “It’s a heavy load. I really appreciate Josh doing it. It’s the most humane thing I’ve ever seen.”

Circles of faith

Keim, a slight man with an earnest gaze, calls the large space in the front of his building the Maitreya Buddha Spiritual Center and School of Sharing. A sign in the window says it is an “open space forum for progressive thinkers to share their ideas for the advancement of modern civilization.”

Keim has tried to help the homeless before, such as when he started a “money tree” — where he and friends used clothespins to stick dollar bills on a tree, for passers-by to take — outside his west Eugene home last year.

Last summer, Keim started a Web site called www.1worldcurrency.net, in which he says his goal is “the creation of a worldwide currency where everyone has an equal voice in how it is spent into the economy and ‘leaders’ are no longer needed.”

Sitting in his downtown building earlier this week, Keim said his idea involves turning all banks into housing for the homeless.

Keim allows the Energy Village to meet every Tuesday night in his building. The group forms a circle around a foot-tall stump covered with flowers and beads and other trinkets, as do all the group circles Keim leads.

Because of concerns raised about him opening his building to street youth, Keim invited Mayor Kitty Piercy and the Eugene City Council to the meeting this week. Only Councilor Betty Taylor showed, along with Leighton and Richie Weinman, the city’s urban services manager, who works just a block away at the Atrium Building.

Weinman is skeptical of Keim’s approach. Weinman said he’s an advocate for the homeless, but it is “a huge, huge international problem,” too big for any one person to deal with. “Anyone who thinks they have a solution doesn’t understand the problem,” Weinman said when Keim’s “talking stick” was handed to him. The stick is a bent piece of driftwood with agates and rocks attached. Each person speaks as it is passed to them.

Weinman has worked in the Atrium for 15 years, he said, and has seen the street youths gather across at the library daily. Many of them are not homeless, Weinman said.

“I appreciate the energy that’s going on … but Josh, I don’t think you would have put this (homeless shelter) next to your business,” Weinman said.

“Actually, I have a business in the back,” Keim replied, alluding to Club Snafu.

“A better future”

The youths that Keim has tried to help, some as young as 12 or 13, say they sleep in various spots around the city.

“Most nights I sleep at the Federal Building,” said Christina Peters, 19. On the streets since she was 12, Peters said she has been sleeping under cover at the Federal Building, at East Seventh Avenue and Pearl Street, on and off for about six years.

Since last week, when the city told Keim the youths could not sleep at his building, many of them have been sleeping outside the Federal Building as a form of protest, Keim said.

They have made cardboard signs that read, “Be Wize — don’t let kids sleep on the streets!” and “Leave us alone and let us sleep” and “Help the youth 2 find a better future.”

Peters said no one rousts them when they spend the night at the Federal Building property, as long as they are gone by early morning, before any federal workers arrive.

Keim is unapologetic about letting youth congregate at his building.

“I know I’ve created some friction, which I hope will create a flame that will not be extinguished,” Keim told those gathered at the Tuesday meeting. “My actions are a cry out to the community for help.”

Peters, a high school dropout who hopes to get her GED and attend Lane Community College to become an aircraft technician, and who was mopping the hardwood floor of Keim’s downtown building on Wednesday, likes what Keim is doing.

“If it wasn’t here, we’d be out there starving,” she said. “Most of the kids want to come off the streets. We just don’t have an opportunity to get there.”