A POTENTIAL BREAKTHROUGH has emerged in the push to keep homeless rest area Right 2 Dream Too out of the Pearl District: Mayor Charlie Hales’ surprise offer of an Old Town warehouse, first reported by the Mercury. But now, city officials acknowledge, several other hurdles have since cropped up—threatening to keep a deal out of reach.
Taken together—months after Commissioner Amanda Fritz signed a legal deal offering Right 2 Dream Too (R2DToo) a parking lot beneath the Broadway Bridge—the fate of the place is hazy, at a time when most observers and officials had hoped it might finally be clear.
On Tuesday, December 10, the Portland Development Commission (PDC) confirmed its interest in buying R2DToo’s current home—two vacant lots at NW 4th and Burnside—out from under the site. The “starting point” for those negotiations, a spokesman has told the Mercury, will flow from a recent appraisal that valued the land at $1.2 million.
“That would be the point where negotiations would begin,” says PDC spokesman Shawn Uhlman. “The actual final cost could be lower.”
Separately, over the past week, PDC officials confirmed that the developers pushing hardest against Fritz’s Pearl offer—Dike Dame and Homer Williams—have offered to buy the Pearl lot initially promised to R2DToo. That shift was first reported by the Mercury.
The offer, Uhlman confirmed, surfaced in earnest well after Dame and Williams filed a preemptive state appeal over the Pearl lot and publicly persuaded Hales to let them help find an alternative site. The PDC, which owns the lot, has ordered up an appraisal.
And also on Tuesday, Mark Kramer, the attorney representing R2DToo and its current landlord, added some new legal intrigue to the negotiations.
Hales has been pushing hard for his current offer for R2DToo: 15 months’ rent, paid by the city, inside a warehouse at NW 4th and Hoyt. But R2Dtoo has pointedly refused to accept it, even after Hales went public last week, without their approval.
Kramer told the Mercury last week he’d submitted a counterproposal, but said little else. But on Tuesday, in an appearance on OPB’s Think Out Loud, he spelled out some of his terms: chief among them, a guarantee that Hales would help R2DToo find a more permanent home after the 15-month lease was up.
And if Kramer’s counterproposal doesn’t lead to a deal? He’ll sue.
“If other options don’t work,” he promised, “we’ll bring suit to implement [the Pearl lot] contract. If others want to challenge it, they’re free to do so.”
Hales’ spokesman, Dana Haynes, says the city attorney’s office will respond to Kramer’s counterproposal—although he wasn’t certain how long that might take, given a power outage that shut down city hall for two days as of press time.
And time really is of the essence, because of one other complicating factor.
The owners of the NW 4th and Hoyt property have given the city only until Monday, December 16, to sign a lease for R2DToo. Hales’ aide Josh Alpert and Haynes have previously said the city is competing against other offers for the site—which has been vacant for several years, according to city records.
After that, Haynes says, “The mayor will go back to the drawing board,” and see about finding another building. “But that hinges on whether Right 2 Dream will accept another building.”
The back-and-forth over the Hoyt site has also bled into the PDC’s property-sale talks with R2DToo’s current landlord, Michael Wright. Wright tells the Mercury he won’t answer the PDC until he finds out what happens with the Hoyt warehouse. Willamette Week first reported the sale negotiations, citing Wright.
“I’m trying not to leave R2DToo in a lurch,” he says, “if they turn down that offer.”
Once Wright knows, he says, his counter offer to the PDC “won’t be lower than the number they had. But we’re not miles apart. We’re a little ways apart.”
Wright and his willingness to poke at the city in a code dispute two years ago, by hosting what’s become a model community of homeless activists, have always been at the center of the impasse over Right 2 Dream Too. He’s had a for-sale sign up since even before the first tents went up in October 2011 and had been talking with the city for months.
It’s unclear how a sale might affect Right 2 Dream Too. Uhlman, from the PDC, would only say the relocation effort and sale talks were happening on “parallel tracks,” and that the PDC was aware it could inherit the rest area.
Hales oversees the PDC. But spokesman Haynes wouldn’t firmly commit his boss to keeping R2DToo on the land, either. Even under Wright, he says, “They could be evicted tomorrow.” Moreover, he pointed out, the offers in the Pearl and at the Hoyt warehouse were only for 12 and 15 months, respectively.
And behind everything, in the days since Hales announced the Hoyt site, record cold has captured Portland’s attention and sent its social services infrastructure into “crisis mode.” Haynes says that underscores why Hales wants to find the site a building.
Outside R2DToo, however, little seems to have changed in the cold. Tents aren’t great, said one woman working on a recent afternoon.
“But,” she said, “it’s better than the sidewalk.”
The City should just rent the fucking warehouse, even though nobody else is interested in it and that deadline is just high pressure sales bullshit.
Just make it nice and cozy.
If it’s such a good idea, then people will be happy to take advantage of the opportunity for a roof over their heads. After the lease is up, the campers will just go where ever else they want. If it’s a bad idea, then the mayor’s political rhetoric will come back to bite him in the ass.
There is no reason for the City to have to buy any high priced real estate, or make a deal with any unincorporated, unofficial spokes people, in any event.
I think we should just purchase every R2D2er their own home, and pay property taxes and utilities for them too.
Throw in a hot tub for the hell of it.
It’s not about doing something nice for the homeless, it’s about getting the homeless out of sight. The City cleans the streets and provides public trash cans, too.
Frankieb makes a fair enough point, so how about soliciting donations for the warehouse from anybody who’s in favor of it? In fact, lets take up a collection from those who care about public trash cans and street sweepers.
If the City can’t collect enough to maintain sanitation, then they fire all the City laborers, don’t sign the lease for the warehouse, and refund the donations. Civil servants are just glorified welfare recipients, anyway; including the mayor and the president of Portland State University.
The warehouse would just be a magnet for itinerant bums from out of state to move to Portland. The City already owns plenty of buildings; more specifically, high rise parking structures. Let campers sleep in those. It will clear the sidewalks and get the campers out of sight. It would be practical to have some adjacent space for storage, where the campers can keep their tents and luggage during the day. Restroom facilities or at least portable out houses need to be made available as well. Showers would be a good idea, for the campers as well as for the benefit of the general public, not to have to be around dirty bums. Finally, a pair of Happy Rangers to stand guard ought to be enough security.
Portland State University has plenty of high rise parking structures that are vacant at night, and Peter Stott Center has showers. Chicken wire storage lockers could be easily constructed, but space during the day is tight at PSU.
“And if Kramer’s counterproposal doesn’t lead to a deal? He’ll sue.”
I’ll ask again, as has been asked 100 time here, why do R2D2 or Wright have the grounds to sue for anything at all? What standing do these people have? They’ve been violating city code for years.
This is like a thief saying, if the City doesn’t provide me with a suitable substitute for all of the merchandise I stole, I’m going to sue!
Sue for what? The City has ceded a bunch of power to R2D2 and the property owner FOR NO REASON. They’ve given them legitimacy they don’t deserve just by “negotiating” with them. Just kick them out already. Come in with 150 cops and a dump truck to clear the lot.
I hope that this is a ploy from Hales to get them to turn down the warehouse, and then just say “fine, then you get nothing at all.” I pray he’s got the smarts and balls to do that, but we’ll see.
Frivolous lawsuits are often cheaper to settle than to fight. Ten grand will usual suffice. In any event, the goal is to clear the sidewalks and get the homeless blight out of sight. Ignoring them won’t make them go away.
The real problem is that there is no place for the campers to store their stuff during the day, and they don’t want to lose their spot for the night. The City could clear the tents and shopping carts and then the campers would have learn that they really don’t need all that crap anyway.
The most that anyone really needs to live comfortably on the streets, is a warm sleeping bag, a thin, cheap, tarp, one change of clean cloths, a razor, toothbrush, and nail clippers. A light weight one man hiker’s tent and small gym locker to store it all in, would be a luxurious option.
The Blanchet House, Julia West, and Saint Francis Dining Hall proved enough to eat.
As long as it’s permissible to sleep in doorways of closed businesses at night, and there are public restrooms to clean up in, that works just fine.
A warm, water repellent coat with hood and decent pair of boots makes a big difference, too. Portland ain’t exactly Honolulu.