The City of Portland doesn’t want any question: It’s Hazelnut Grove’s landlord.
So right now, Mayor Charlie Hales’ office is in talks with the Oregon Department of Transportation to acquire state-owned land surrounding the organized tent camp that’s sprung up near the intersection of N Greeley and Interstate. Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman Don Hamilton confirms to the Mercury the city will take control of two pieces of ODOT land to the north and south of the encampment—land where non-sanctioned camping has produced problems in recent weeks
“We have started a process with the city,” Hamilton says, noting the state will give the land away.
I’ve crudely outlined the parcels in red here. The city’s existing property is in yellow.
The acquisition will be a game-changer for Hazelnut Grove— but not the sort you might think. Hales’ chief of staff, Josh Alpert, says the new city property won’t be used for an expansion of the organized camp. Rather, it will give the city more leverage for clearing problematic campers out.
“It won’t be full of people,” Alpert says.
Here’s the plan: When it gets the new land, the city will create an official permit for Hazelnut Grove, likely setting boundaries and capping its occupancy at around 40 people.
Then, Portland officials will give warning to many of the campers just south of the formal encampment—a group that’s been calling itself Forgotten Realms. City officials, neighbors, and Hazelnut Grove advocates complain that chaos and crime have sprung up as more people moved onto that parcel.
“Forgotten Realms is having a lot of trouble,” Alpert says. “They’re not abiding by any regulations, but we’ll now have trespass authority.”
The still-pending land deal marks the second time the city’s tapped unused state land with an eye toward helping homeless people recently. Earlier this year, the city bought a parcel at SE 3rd and Harrison—near the east end of the Tilikum Crossing bridge—as a potential future site of the homeless rest area Right 2 Dream Too. Details of that move are still being worked out.
Vahid Brown, a central advocate for Hazelnut Grove, says the camp’s core members approve of the arrangement—hammered out in a Monday meeting between camp representatives, social workers, and city officials (“lots of lawyers,” Alpert says).
“Everyone here can see that this is a lot of work,” Brown says. “It’s difficult to maintain social cohesion. The more people, the harder it is.”
Brown says there have been increased instances of theft and assault as more campers—many of them not formally agreeing to Hazelnut Grove’s code of conduct—have flocked to the land.
A formal permit with the city is a big mark of legitimacy for the camp, which started out earlier this year as a few campers who’d been swept from other parts of town. And it’s a sign Hales is making good on his indication he’ll explore new options for the homeless while the city works through a housing crisis.
Even with the more-formalized arrangement, though, the camp’s time is limited. Alpert says the mayor’s office will time Hazelnut Grove’s permit to end when the city’s housing “state of emergency” is scheduled to expire next year, and that the city will work to find another parcel for the campers.
“We’re creating a system here,” he says.
So any old assortment of creeps can band together for a few weeks, squat on public property and the city will just roll over and let them have it? What a joke. Rather than coming to terms with the long-term problems that building shanty-towns all over Portland will create and coming up with a real solution, he’s rolling over on this. Total cave-in without a lick of foresight… it’s Uber and AirBnB and the “demolition tax” nonsense all over again.
Who wants this solution? Not the people that live nearby and certainly not anyone with a property line butting up against “Hazelnut Grove” or any other homeless camp. Hales has made it’s clear that his legacy as a lame-duck mayor is the only thing he’s interested in bolstering at this point, and we’ll be dealing with the mess this makes for years and perhaps decades after he’s out of office, tending to his fucking sailboat or whatever while we get to hike through an unregulated landscape of trash, poop and needles. Thanks, pal! Way to stand up for the people who actually pay good money to live and work in your city.
Are they taking reservations for those campgrounds?
It is inhumane to move campers in floods and winter weather. There should be an extension so that people don’t die in this move. It used to be that no city would do a homeless sweep in the winter. But heartlessness is a disease, and to claim to be compassionate when actually destroying people’s lives is getting to be the norm.
The camp has been turning people down for quite some time. Punishment of the whole group for the actions of people not willing to follow a code of conduct is a logical fallacy. The city wants to create a system, ok great because any group of people cannot just band together and get whatever they want from the city. Forgotten Realms is experiencing a lack of resources, one of which is political capital. Great the city is allowing 40 of the estimated 2,000 to 5,000 homeless to be swept under the rug. The sweeping of other camps still goes on. When a camp gets swept the citizens are forced on, as police accountability activist Kif Davis calls “the Death March to Nowhere.” I bring up this activist specifically because he has filmed police officers sweeping camps and saying they received no change in orders since the homeless state of emergency was declared.
Collective punishment is wrong. When 2-5,000 people are experiencing problems in one of the 25 most populated cities in the United States, simple bureaucracy should be able to get any and all needs met. How many institutions in this city have more people. There’s close to 20,000 employees and students at OHSU, with wildly diverse functions. I can only assume that the poorest of our citizens only value is to teach children to be productive or look what they will become is the o
I tried to edit a typo, and could no longer scroll to the end. But basically, I’d like to see how many properties are available for groups of 40 happy campers?