BLOGTOWN

Jordan Schnitzer DIADIPASUPIL / GETTY IMAGES

Jordan Schnitzer isn’t used to losing.

Schnitzer, the Portland real estate investor buoyed by his family’s financial success in the steel industry, is easily one of the city’s wealthiest residents. Whether it’s through massive campaign donations or pressuring powerful pals for favors, Schnitzer usually gets his way.

But it appears no amount of string-pulling or hobnobbing will get Schnitzer’s latest crusade off the ground.

To cringeworthy results, Schnitzer has spent the past year lobbying to turn the long-empty Wapato Jail—a remote North Portland detention center he purchased from Multnomah County in 2018—into a massive homeless shelter. Despite his deep pockets, Schnitzer says he needs extra funding to get the project off the ground and wants the cash-strapped public sector to pitch in.

For Schnitzer, who owns more than 20 downtown buildings, the proposal makes his campaign to remove homeless locals (or, as Schnitzer calls them, “unfortunate people”) from the streets of Portland feel a little less sinister. But Schnitzer’s plan to shuttle homeless people to an isolated compound 10 miles from the city center (where the vast majority of homeless services are located) has never gained traction.

Zero local public officials support Schnitzer’s proposal.

MEDESULDA / GETTY IMAGES

Sometimes it’s an upcoming job interview, or a work shift that can’t be missed, or rent that needs to be paid. Sometimes it’s caring for a child, or helping an elderly parent, or being home for the holidays. And sometimes, it’s every possession a person has.

Those are the kind of things that are often at stake when Amanda Trujillo and Gina Spencer help bail someone out of jail. As the co-founders of the Portland Freedom Fund, Trujillo and Spencer use community donations to pay the cash bail of Black and brown people who have been charged with crimes in Multnomah County and are in jail awaiting trial.

Trujillo recalls that one man they bailed out last year had already been in jail for about 90 days—long enough for his landlord to evict him for having missed rent payments and to get rid of all his belongings when he couldn’t show up to collect them.

“He literally lost everything by being in jail for three months,” Trujillo says.

Stories like this one aren’t uncommon, says Carl Macpherson, director of Metropolitan Public Defender (MPD), the largest public defense firm in Oregon. Macpherson is helping lead a local fight to eliminate the use of cash bail in Multnomah County’s court system. It’s a topic that has also become a central issue in the 2020 race for Multnomah County district attorney.