Earlier this year, Police Chief Mike Reese began showing off a flashy PowerPoint presentation around town.
To the district attorney’s office, to city commissioners and, most publicly, to the city and county officials gathered for a meeting of the Local Public Safety Coordinating Council (LPSCC), Reese introduced “Prosper Portland,” a multi-tentacled initiative aimed at decreasing homelessness in and around the center city.
The proposal was sort of tough to get your head around.
It involved existing police efforts, but also folded in new agreements between the city and county over how camping and sidewalk-use restrictions should be enforced, and proposed use of “clean-up contractors,” who would sweep up the camps police dismantled. Reese said far more cohesion—between bureaucrats, business interests, social services organizations, cops and everyone in between—is needed to stem what he painted as a growing worry.
And then there was the involvement—already hashed out for weeks by the time Reese unveiled the proposal—of a local software firm called Thetus, which proposed taking wide swaths of city data to help Portland visualize and analyze its struggles with homelessness.
At the LPSCC meeting, as the Mercury first reported, there was widespread support for the plan. But sources within city hall say the reception there was far chillier, with some elected officials bristling that they weren’t told of the new effort and concerned about the fitness of the police bureau to lead an effort to stem homelessness.
Now, the police bureau appears to be scrapping the whole endeavor.
“As a plan, it died on the vine,” says police spokesman Sergeant Pete Simpson. “Last I heard was: There is no Prosper Portland. It was never anything more than a concept.”
That’s a swift change in fortune for an effort that sources say had been in the works as early as late 2013. And, though a call to Mayor Charlie Hales’ office hasn’t been returned, it’s likely the change in tone has to do with backlash in city hall following Reese’s announcement.
Among those voicing concerns was Commissioner Nick Fish, the city’s former housing commissioner.
“It basically came out of nowhere,” says Fish, who asked for a private meeting with Reese after reading news coverage of Prosper Portland. “I think the police got over their skis.”
Fish explained he’s in talks with a Hales aide, Jackie Dingfelder, about homelessness and sidewalk enforcement—a topic that’s been a consistently thorny for the mayor since he took office last year.
“The mayor made it very clear to me and everyone else Jackie is the leader of this effort,” Fish says. “I think she would tell you it blindsided her as well.”
But if the chief’s vision for “Prosper Portland” has exploded, it’s unclear where its component pieces will land. Simpson says the police bureau’s going to take its own steps toward better policy, stepping up foot, bike and ATV patrols and talking with the county and TriMet about uniform enforcement policies.
He didn’t think the bureau still planned to work with Thetus, the local software firm.
That was news, Tuesday afternoon, to Thetus CEO Danielle Forsyth. Forsyth’s company actually coined the name Prosper Portland. She’s been in talks with the police bureau for three or four months, she said, and the company recently hired an employee to help get the effort off the ground.
“I’m meeting with them tomorrow, and I’ll ask,” she said.
Thetus has also been in contact with the Portland Housing Bureau, overseen by Commissioner Dan Saltzman. But it’s unclear whether the firm has a place in the strategies being cooked up by Hales’ staff.
“What [Jackie Dingfelder] does with any of the component parts of Prosper Portland,” Fish says, “I don’t know.”
“That’s a swift change in fortune for an effort that sources say had been in the works as early as late 2013.”
So, four months? That’s not a long time at all in a government bureaucracy. Put a proposal together, start to shop it around, feel out support. Four months sounds about right.
My least favorite reaction in any large organization is “why didn’t I know about this!” Because not everyone is told everything the second it is conceived of. Obviously, the idea hadn’t fully formulated yet, and it wasn’t time to brief the council yet. It isn’t a conspiracy. The city is a big organization, you don’t hear about everything instantaneously. Large private organizations have this same problem. “Why don’t I know this?!” “Because I was going to tell you at the meeting tomorrow.”
These others on the Council have no meaningful solutions for homeless issues either, except to throw more money at it. We’ve invested a lot in housing over the last ten years and there are more homeless people than ever. (There seems to be some misconception that we don’t already spend a lot of affordable housing, but we do.) We will invest all of these new funds, and there will be more homeless people five years from now. In the meantime, we certainly can’t ask them to not camp out using drugs and having sex in front of City Hall. That would be intolerant!
But if we spend more money, no one will be able to question the bleeding hearts of the likes of Fish and Fritz, which is really the point.
Oregon Cop Blockers support FTP Film the Police Portlands efforts to take a stand for the rights of homeless people in the downtown area of Portland. http://www.facebook.com/oregoncopblockers
“There seems to be some misconception that we don’t already spend a lot of affordable housing, but we do.”
Yeah, we spend a sh*t-ton of money. But we don’t actually provide the services in an adequate manner. It’s a big business, to get that money. R2D2 showed us that there are alternatives to throwing money at well-connected contractors — like actually addressing the issues, and enabling people to form solutions.
We should throw a blanket party for Mike Reese for all he’s done to decrease homelessness.
I can’t figure out why is it a crime to be houseless?? If all the parties involved in this sat in a room and decided to make real decisions based on real peoples’ lives and how to improve the system to include the fact that people go houseless for thousands of reasons: medical bills; job loss; on and on and what to do about it? Give over apartments with the bills paid? Why not? OVERWHELMINGLY people are willing, able and happy to go to work and support themselves. So if a person had a job, but all the housing was paid for, including utilities, I KNOW that within one year, that person would be ready and ABLE to take over! They most likely would continue to volunteer and there is NO doubt that a volunteer who has a home to go to can be incredibly effective and in say 5 years, the problem would not be nearly so bad; I don’t mind if there are flat out lazy people I help support. Because I do not live in their head. So, if the population is required to support some flat out lazy people, those who need a little more supervision will be supervised. It simply makes no sense to argue over people who do NOT have a place to go. Offer them a room in your house. But stop arguing over this and DO something real!! Stop with it! Come visit the real world. It isn’t pretty everywhere.
“”As a plan, it died on the vine,” says police spokesman Sergeant Pete Simpson. “Last I heard was: There is no Prosper Portland. It was never anything more than a concept.””
which is Portland Police for “we changed the name of it”
“Forsyth’s company [Thetus] actually coined the name Prosper Portland.” With former US Atty Holton channeling money for ID scanners to nightclubs, through the anti-suicide group he’s slipped off to, I hope folks will continue monitoring collusion between police and business interests. Drone developers seek to cruise the windflow left by FLIR. To what degree will the Silicon Forest embrace profit seeking through surveillance technology? An invisible PPB intelligence unit, JTTF pairing, and secret watch lists for COPP, the Service Coordination Team and gang designation – coupled with a complete abdication of oversight by Police Commissioner Hales – leaves plenty of fertile ground for such to take root.