The accusations flew on Wednesday, September 6, as an array of city and county officials sat before residents and business owners in Old Town Chinatown, making the case for a new homeless shelter in a neighborhood that’s long been the city’s social services center.
“This is criminal!” a man shouted from the crowd at one point during the informational meeting.
“Are we friendliest to tourists or are we friendliest to the homeless?” asked another. “That’s a big difference.”
In other words, the meeting resembled those that have occurred in every corner of the city where a shelter is contemplated—with a key difference. Again and again, the incensed Old Town business owners brought up a “no net gain” agreement sketched out in the late ’80s that they said ensured social services would not meaningfully increase in the neighborhood.
“Is no net gain a deal or not?” someone shouted. “Just answer the damn question!” another urged.
Today there are four year-round homeless shelters in Old Town, comprising some 328 beds (and more in the winter). The county’s Joint Office of Homeless Services (JOHS)—always diligent in scrambling to find new options—is proposing one more: a shelter at the corner of Northwest 3rd and Glisan that could offer as many as 200 beds.
That’s potentially a 61 percent increase in shelter beds in the neighborhood—something many in Old Town believe flouts the old agreement. Last week, those claims were brushed aside.
“It’s not a binding agreement,” said Christian Gaston, policy and research director for County Chair Deborah Kafoury.
Berk Nelson, who handles homelessness issues for Mayor Ted Wheeler, agreed. “We’re not in 1980 anymore,” he said. “We’re talking about development to address the needs that are in Old Town Chinatown.”
Those answers were misleading at best.
While you’d be hard-pressed to argue Portland couldn’t use more shelter space, the “no net gain” agreement reached 30 years ago isn’t the dusty relic officials suggested. It has tendrils that reach into the present day.
Repeatedly over the years, officials have sketched growth plans with an eye toward limiting expansion of services in Old Town. Just last week, Portland City Council began discussing the massive Central City 2035 plan, which includes language that says Portland should “limit the significant expansion of these services and… not locate additional major social services in the district.” The council approved similar language in 2015.
But while Old Town stakeholders the Mercury spoke with understand pieces of that history, neither Wheeler nor Kafoury’s staff appears to have grasped the extent of the city’s effort to honor the old deal prior to last week’s meeting.
“They were there to educate us about homelessness and the need for this shelter,” says Gloria Lee, executive director of the Giving Tree, an Old Town nonprofit. “Clearly they had not done their homework.”
Now that’s changing. Wheeler spokesperson Michael Cox says his office is currently digging into the city’s commitments in Old Town, including the policy not to “locate additional major social services” currently before council.
“That particular wording is something that we’re looking at right now,” Cox tells the Mercury. “We’re doing the same thing you are, which is to look through the history of those agreements.”
The so-called “no net gain” policy began in 1987, as a groundbreaking truce between businesses and social service providers in what was at the time called North Downtown.
The tensions that existed then were very much the ones that persist today—businesspeople were pushing for revitalization, while social services feared development would push out needy Portlanders.
The result was the “Clark-Shiels agreement,” a deal sketched out between Donald Clark, then the executive director of Central City Concern, and Roger Shiels, who represented business interests and property owners in the neighborhood.
The six-page pact [PDF] set out a conciliatory tone, in which developers would commit to retaining 252 shelter beds within the neighborhood, along with the 1,030 single-room occupancy (SRO) units at the time. In return, social service providers couldn’t expand operations.
“This program will be a part of a regional program whereby all districts and neighborhoods within the Central City and the city in general will accomodate [sic] housing and social services for resident low- and zero-income persons,” the agreement read.
It might have been little more than a handshake agreement had city council not gotten involved.
In May 1987, the council formally commended the agreement via a resolution. And when the body approved a growth plan for the central city the following year, it explicitly limited the number of shelter beds and SRO units within the district, as set forth in the agreement—including a limit of 252 shelter beds.
In 1993, the city switched things up. As part of a set of zoning amendments aimed at ensuring Portland wasn’t running afoul of the federal Fair Housing Act, officials adopted a policy that sought to “maximize housing choice” while discouraging “the concentration of low- or no-income households.” Under the policy [see page 55 of this document], the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood was one of 18 districts citywide where new low-income housing and shelter projects were ineligible to be funded with city cash.
In 1999, the “no net gain” agreement was once again cited in a development plan for Old Town.
To be clear, the concept has been overridden over the years. It was a minor hurdle for officials as the city worked to develop Bud Clark Commons, opened in 2011, and didn’t stop the establishment of the self-run homeless camp Right 2 Dream Too, which was founded under protest of city homelessness policies.
Even so, the spirit of the agreement continues to feature in city plans. As part of charting growth in the central city, council in 2015 adopted a West Quadrant Plan that said social services wouldn’t be meaningfully expanded in Old Town.
With the latest outcry from some in the neighborhood, the city and county are figuring out how to square that lengthy history with a project officials believe is vital.
The new shelter might be a long-term resource, they say, where other recent emergency shelters have had expiration dates. (For instance, a 200-bed shelter in East Portland is slated to go offline at some point in the near future.)
More than that, city and county officials say Portland’s in crisis. They point to a recent count that suggests homelessness in the county increased by 10 percent in the last two years, and to the housing state of emergency declared by Portland City Council in 2015.
And while the county is still trying to reach a deal to lease the vacant warehouse it has in mind, officials say the new shelter would have benefits for Old Town.
“There’s no doubt in my mind the shelter advances your desires to have a more safe, livable community,” JOHS Director Marc Jolin said at last week’s meeting. “So much has changed. When we look today at what the need is… this is a good option.”
What comes next is uncertain. JOHS spokesperson Denis Theriault declined to comment on the city’s commitments in Old Town, noting that it wasn’t a county decision. Officials at the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability and Prosper Portland (formerly the Portland Development Commission) deferred questions elsewhere.
Ultimately the call on how to proceed will be up to Wheeler’s office, which is weighing its options.
“We’re thinking about it,” says Cox. “We just have to do more work.”
“while social services feared development would push out needy Portlanders.”
You mean transplant homeless who come to Portland for the free services.
Portland continues to spend more on homeless, and house more people, every year, yet the number of homeless keeps increasing. At some point we have to recognize it is a national issue, not something Portland itself is going to solve, or should be obligated to solve. Everyone else has a right to live in this city too, without having to worry about their bikes being stolen, their kids picking up or stepping on discarded needles, or all of us being subject to the significant health hazards of homeless dumping trash and human waste on our city streets (that then gets washed into our river).
Wow. Run with the pack. You already recognize that you like to group many people as if their one. Its to bad that it takes such disasters and catastrophic events for being a decent person and showing humanity becomes popular. There are other options that could be explored if we open ourselves up to them. Portland is a destination for more than homeless. Wonder how many homeless are a product of the successful new residents that are driving up prices. Just maybe we as Portland residents have a chance to make a real difference in peoples lives. We may never get that chance with the way our world leaders are about to deal with over population and climate change. When the lights go out that homeless person you would like to deny a chance of warm dry bed might be your best resource.
If you build it they will come.
The reasoning behind the river disctrict plan’s blatant choice not to keep shelter infrastructure on par with other development (PERCENTAGE wise) is that “it is better to get people straight into permanent housing”
30 years later we see how that worked out. It was a flawed concept. Shelter infrastructure should have grown percentage wise with the rest. As for affordable housing the original goal was about 30% MFI. Today it is less than 7%, yet saltzmans office dares to put a green check mark next to “goal met”. Sure is easy to meet a goal if you can just change it right? What these yuppie business owners and developers don’t want to admit is that the city has already more than bent over backwards to help them completely take over what was a historically poor peoples district, to uproot any and all roots which existed there, and replace it with plastic.
…oops. I meant 30 % of that areas housing should have been for the 0-35% MFI range.
Even if you accept that a 30-year-old agreement that the city wasn’t a party to should bind the city in perpetuity –an extremely dubious claim –it’s clear that the local business community didn’t meet their responsibilities.
A central purpose of the agreement was to create “public-private cooperation in the preservation and upgrading of [single-room occupancy] housing.”
Instead, most pf Old Town’s privately-owned SRO housing was allowed to deteriorate into squalor, and in recent years almost all has been eliminated entirely in favor of redevelopment into apartments that are unaffordable to all but the highest-income residents.
This “agreement” is therefore meaningless and unenforceable. If locals are allowed to use it as a basis for blocking obviously needed housing and social services it will represent a concession to the worst form of NIMBYism.
” most pf Old Town’s privately-owned SRO housing was allowed to deteriorate into squalor”
Because it was filled with fucking poor ass people who didn’t pay enough in rent to cover basic maintenance. This is what happens with rent control and low-income housing. Unless it is perpetually subsidized, it eventually turns into trash.
Tell us, Euphonius, which part of the budget should we take money from to direct it towards more subsidized housing? Schools? They are filled with lead and are overcrowded for the number of teachers we have. Roads? Portland’s roads and sidewalks are riddled with potholes, cracks, and other things that are bad for cars, but more importantly very dangerous for bikers and pedestrians. Transit? We need more transit, not less, especially with a larger population and denser city.
And once the new amount of subsidized housing fills up, and more low-income people move to Portland because of its generous housing and social services policy, we will have spent a fuckton of money and still have the same problem of thousands of people on our streets. Homelessness is not something Portland alone can possibly solve.
@FlavioSuave You’re a fucking imbecile.
Repeatedly claiming that poor people move here because we’re so nice is, of course, demonstrably untrue, and saying it a whole lot doesn’t make it any less so. Listen to yourself and then try to tell us all about how fucking nice you are to everybody that they choose to move here just to be around you. It’s beyond laughable.
Number 2, you’re a fool. What budget are you even talking about, rube? The City of Portland isn’t the same thing as Tri-Met, which isn’t the same thing as any of the several school districts. (Can you name them? Of course you can’t. You sure YOU’RE not the newcomer?)
Number 3, READ the fucking AGREEMENT that you’re supposedly commenting on. Then come back and admit what a doofus you are, because that document requires the landowners in Old Town to maintain those apartments. You want to blame seniors and disabled people for doing what their landlords are supposed to be doing? Shut the fuck up.
And finally, what a fucking bigoted asshole you are. Poor people are the reason for every problem in your life? So much for the personal responsibility you assfucks are always ranting about.
If you didn’t have the Merc’s comment section to pollute with stupidity a dozen times a day, you might make something of yourself –and just maybe you wouldn’t be such a hate-filled dick all the time.
Wow, Euphonius, you sound sad, entitled, and really, really angry. Take a chill pill and wash it down with your own urine, buddy.
All you have to do is talk to some homeless and/or read the homeless survey stats, and you’ll realize that people come to Portland from other cities as transient homeless. It’s the same thing in Los Angeles – how could it not be the case? Both Portland and LA have better weather than the east coast or midwest if you are living on the streets, and west coast cities are across the board more generous in terms of their homeless and low-income services than all the red states. How are you going to “demonstrate” that this isn’t the case, when it quite clearly is?
How’s the view from inside your own ass, you pompous, sanctimonious wanker?
“Blah blah blah… rightwing canard… blah blah blah… tired cliche… blah blah blah… preposterous assertion based on jack shit…”
Gee, it’s another FlavioSuave comment, and it’s as insightful as all the rest. Good thing you don’t have any impact on anything or you might be dangerous.
Tell me, Euphonius. If you found yourself homeless in Chicago with winter coming, and you could scrape together enough for a one-way ticket to Los Angeles or Portland, you are telling me you’d stay in Chicago? That’s not a “right-wing canard,” that’s common sense.
I would love to see more subsidized public housing. But it’s really, incredibly expensive and inefficient to try and build subsidized public housing in the middle of a major city where, because of existing demand, the land cost is insanely high. You get a lot less bang for your buck building in a city like Portland than, say, Bakersfield, Fargo or, hell, Detroit. Even Utah’s “housing first” policy that was highly touted as a success has not turned out to work nearly as well as originally thought. Homelessness is a national issue, driven both by structural inequality as well as the decimation of mental health services circa the Reagan era.
As a liberal, you are supposed to follow actual evidence for your policies, not some ideologically driven claptrap that hasn’t worked for predictable reasons. Despite what a lot of right wingers claim, there’s a major difference between being liberal, and being stupid. You just happen to be on the wrong side of that divide, made all the worse by your self-righteous indignation.
Oh brother. Whenever some nutjob starts declaring “common sense,” you can bet you’re in for a big old pile of bullshit. Let me know when you have something to say that has anything to do with this article.