Drifter makes Sisters his new home

He is soft-spoken and articulate. His attitude and outlook are positive. He speaks well of the community of Sisters and the treatment he's received here.

His name is Christopher. He's homeless.

Christopher Pastore has been here since March and finds Sisters to his liking.

"I like the way this town is laid out," he said. "It is very beautiful with the mountains all around. The western look is nice, too.

"It gets pretty cold at night though," he admitted.

Pastore grew up on the East Coast and still has family in New Jersey. He said that he earned a master's degree in education while living in Southeast Alaska.

While declining to comment on the circumstances which led to his present transient lifestyle, Christopher expressed his hope for a more settled future.

"I'd like to get some kind of small business going," he said.

In the meantime, the City of Sisters struggles with how to respond to folks like Pastore. There are several homeless people living in the area this summer.

At the Sisters Sheriff's substation, Corporal Wayne Morgan said he's been receiving numerous calls from Sisters residents and business owners complaining about transients on their premises.

"People just don't like these folks hanging around town," said Morgan. "I think they scare people."

The simple presence of a homeless person doesn't merit police action.

"We are limited about what we can do," Morgan explained. "People get frustrated with us, but unless the homeless folks are breaking the law, our hands our tied."

Corporal Morgan cited instances of an individual scavenging food from a local dumpsters, then reheating it in a microwave at a Sister's business.

"The person has been asked by the shop owners to leave their premises and not come back, and to the best of my knowledge, he's complied," said Morgan.

"The guys I'm aware of haven't broken any laws --they even go outside the city limits to camp at night."

Morgan wants Sisters to recognize that there's no clear-cut law enforcement solution to homelessness.

"I would like to educate people that the homeless have as much of a right to be here as we do," said Morgan, "as long as they are abiding by the law."

There's not much infrastructure in place here to deal with homelessness.

"There are basically no services in Central Oregon for the homeless," said Theresa Slavkovsky, director of Sisters FAN (Family Access Network). "About all I can do is give them food once a month. There is a Rescue Mission in Salem, but there's only temporary housing here in the winter at the Salvation Army in Bend."

No organization houses the homeless in Sisters, but Slavkovsky said that St. Vincent De Paul gives out vouchers for single night stays at motels in Bend and Redmond.

The organization Bend Aid helps with rent assistance for those in need.

"In my experience," Slavkovsky noted, "some of these people are happy being homeless, while others have sad stories of hard luck and bad circumstances."

For now, Christopher Pastore doesn't have any complaints.

"The people here are nice," he said. "I hope to be here for a while."