It’s been five months since Portland City Council, at the urging of Commissioner Nick Fish, rolled out the red carpet for a year-long “overnight sleeping” pilot program that would allow limited numbers of homeless Portlanders living in cars or campers to find nighttime refuge in the parking lots of sympathetic churches and nonprofits.
And now, after spending weeks this year refining the guidelines for the program, the city has finally found its first taker. Moreland Presbyterian Church is planning to host a single vehicle on its small lot, the Mercury has learned.
But while city officials, church leaders, and housing advocates had planned on a quiet launch over the next few weeks—maybe hoping any skeptical neighbors wouldn’t even notice the low-impact program until it was well under way, if at all—that’s not what’s happened.
According to emails and other documents obtained through a public records request, a handful of neighbors who feel blind-sided by news of the project are actively trying to pressure the church into rethinking the project, if not abandon it outright. And some of that opposition, issued in emails to the church, City Commissioner Nick Fish, and the Portland Housing Bureau, has come off uncomfortably ugly.
Instead of looking at the actual details of Moreland’s version of the program—the church will host just just one family or a single woman referred by a housing-services nonprofit—some critics are trading in wildly flagrant stereotypes about the homeless and flogging the unfounded fear that the church is really looking to host a violent, addict-filled homeless camp.
Check out what one neighbor, Brandt Boisseranc, wrote to Fish earlier this month:
My wife works very hard for a medical software company. Last year, she was walking past a home during the time that a homeless man was raping, sodomizing and robbing a woman whose home he had broken into. Last month, she came upon a car prowler who was a homeless man who could have cared less that she saw the crime he was committing. Now she is going to have to curtail her walks in her own neighborhood for her safety because of decisions that she was not allowed to participate in.
My neighbors already feel obligated to bring their children indoors when transients frequent our neighborhood on Tuesdays, which is recycling day. And now they have more reason to be concerned about their children’s safety. This does not even mention the possibility that their children will be exposed to sights and sounds that they have no business seeing at their age—in their own front yard.
The woman that I mentioned who lives across the street from the church recently bought the house from Westmoreland [sic] Presbyterian Church and has spent tens of thousands of dollars restoring the house. She has told me that she never would have bought the house had she known that a homeless camp in the church parking lot was a possibility. And she feels that she will likely be unable to sell because of the burden of disclosure regarding the homeless camping. Where is the justice in her situation?
Not all the neighbors who’ve complained are as dramatic—but what they see as a lack of notice by the church, coupled with the kind of incorrect information neighbors like Boisseranc are sharing, has inflamed passions in an otherwise collegial part of town.
“This has already divided this very cohesive several block area,” Phyllis Boyer wrote the Housing Bureau. “I’m very angry about that as I have lived here since 1988. I wonder if this is what the city had in mind when it passed this resolution so quickly.”
The debate is both overshadowing the good step forward the program represents—at the same time as it highlights precisely why it’s needed. People who don’t come downtown and follow homelessness issues need to be reminded about one of the peculiar elements of life on the streets. Sometimes people who don’t have a house don’t look like they don’t have a house. The Portland program is modeled on one in Eugene, and others up and down the West Coast.
So now, to soothe concerns and answer any questions that might be ricocheting around the neighborhood, the church is planning a meeting at 7 pm June 4. The church, as required by the city, had previously notified its immediate neighbors, and it’s also asked a congregant to run point on the issue.
Pastor Tom McKnight said he was troubled when he saw a flier being passed around that had the words “homeless camp” on it. He’s hoping the meeting will be a chance to clear the air and share the real story about what the church is proposing to do.
The reality of this is were’ talking about one car that would be occupied by a single woman or a woman and children, and whoever would be here would have worked with JOIN,” a transitional housing services provide, McKnight says, taking pains not to be judgmental about the program’s more vocal critics. “We’ve tried—publicly—to say this. I’ve been very clear about that…. It’s fair to say there’s more opposition than we would have anticipated.”
Worth mentioning is that the church’s program, with one car, is actually less involved than what the city allows, four vehicles. Here’s the specifics of Moreland’s program, from an email sent back to Boisseranc by the church’s facilitator, a congregant named Becky Mowe.
Moreland PC’s Session, the church’s governing body, met and agreed unanimously that this project be implemented. It is is clearly within the mission of the church, and it will be periodically re-evaluated for effectiveness and local impact. We are not implementing this program impulsively or without precedent. The city of Eugene has been doing a similar thing since 1995, allowing parking not only in non-profits’ lots, but also in commercial lots; there are currently 22 participating lots in Eugene. In Eugene, the city subsidizes port-a-potties; Moreland PC will pay for one itself out of church funds. There are other churches in Portland who are also developing programs; I have been in close touch with two of them—Montavilla United Methodist and Westminster Presbyterian.
This is what we plan to do—
1. We will host a single vehicle occupied by a person working with and referred by JOIN’s workers. The city permits 4, but we are limiting our program and our small lot to one vehicle.
2. The vehicle will be parked in the southwest corner of our lot, screened from view by our large van, our storage unit, and the fence on the south side.
3. The vehicle owner will display on the windshield a Guest Permit provided by the church which will show the vehicle license # and valid dates.
4. The vehicle owner, before parking in the lot, will review and sign an agreement with the church Please see attachment.
5. Guests will only occupy the parking lot between 10 PM and 7:30 AM.
6. Guests will be limited to single women or families, who are screened by JOIN, working with a caseworker, and moving toward permanent housing. Women and families are the most vulnerable on the street.
7. The vehicle will also display a list of names and contact information for 4 to 6 church members who can be called if issues arise, day or night, as well as information for reaching the JOIN caseworker. My name will be on top of the list; note that I live a block from the church, and have done face to face volunteer work with the homeless for two decades at Operation Nightwatch.
Marc Jolin of JOIN, who’d be helping Moreland find a guest, says the whole point is that the arrangement would be temporary and not entrenched.
“We don’t envision that people would be living in their vehicles for extended periods of time,” he says.
“The idea here is we have folks who are sleeping in their vehicles, but they’re not in safe locations. This gives them a place to be safe overnight and focuses their attention and energies on the work of getting into a permanent place to live.”
Update 5:30 PM: I spoke with Boisseranc, who was returning my message and hadn’t yet read this post (and was way more soft-spoken than the emails might indicate). And he wants to make one thing very clear: “There isn’t a single person in my neighborhood who doesn’t feel strongly about helping the homeless.” Because I quoted liberally from his emails, I’m going to provide ample space for context/explanation here.
First, he says he stands behind his emails, and a demand to scuttle the program as currently constructed, because he doesn’t think Moreland (and the city) did enough to get neighbors to buy in—nor have they done enough, he says, to make neighbors feel better by providing more details about who might be hosted in the parking lot and how the vetting process will work specifically.
“If I took a tone,” says Boisseranc, a registered nurse who volunteers at the Free Clinic, “it was because I was insulted by the approach not because I don’t care about the homeless… The only reason we’re having the June 4 meeting is because we’re forcing them. They’re starting to give us information. But it may be too late.”
And while he did say he feels “really good” that JOIN will be working with the church to vet guestshe also wishes “we would have had more time to talk to them.”
He’s not convinced the vetting will work or that Moreland won’t one day loosen its standards for the program—citing “trust” issues, despite what the church is saying—meaning people with more serious addiction or mental health issues might be in the area. He worried that even a single woman with kids could be an issue if, say, an angry or violent husband tracks her down.
“That scares me,” he says. “It could be more than what these churches and nonprofits can handle.”
He says churches themselves might be better than their parking lots.
“Tell me about it first,” he says, “and maybe I’ll even volunteer.”
Mr. Boisserac
The crimes that you listed are the kind of crimes that are perpetrated against homeless women daily.
But then again, the world revolves around you and your hard-working wife, doesn’t it?
Fucker.
Of course his examples are extreme, rare and over the top.
But the reality is the city expands and encourages homeless encampments in Portland.
Oregon Department of Energy Brandt Boissera(n)c?
FOR REFERENCE PURPOSES ONLY: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.s…
ALSO, YOU SPELLED THE IDIOTIC LETTER-WRITER’S NAME WRONG, IT’S ACTUALLY “Brandt Boisseranc”
Wow, when I rant at city councilors and make over-the-top accusations, false claims, etc., I never expect that my name and the things I saw will be put out there for everyone to read. I’ll try to be more careful now. Still, something is not right about that.
I meant “say”, and I didn’t believe the content until after I saw the reference, Graham. I can see why he was so P’d O.
Name’s fixed. And I’ve updated with the contents of a conversation with Mr. Boisseranc.
Dude! That lady spend several thousands of dollars restoring her home! HOW DARE A PERSON WHO HAS NONE SLEEP NEAR IT?!!? I demand justice.
When I first heard of this on TV, it wasn’t presented as just one car / family in the parking lot – which can be alot easier to swallow than imagining 50 cars and tents all over your neighborhood church parking lot.
Better idea – why don’t we just turn ‘dignity villige’ into the temporary shelter it was thought up to be – instead of permanent housing – and let many newly homeless car campers, etc, get their feet on the ground from there?
Mr. Boisseranc is a real gentleman to have responded the way he did to Mr. Fisch’s release of his emails and the Mercury’s characterization of his emails and the neighbors’ reactions.
Full disclosure, I also live right by the Moreland Presbyterian Church. And although I live right across the street from the Church, I would have had no clue about this program were it not for Mr. Boisseranc–the Church notified only a VERY small handful of people about its program and has done next to nothing to educate neighbors about the program.
This, notwithstanding the fact that neighbors–not Church members–will be dealing with the Church’s guests between the hours of 10pm-7:30am.
I have been impressed by Mr. Boisseranc’s measured approach to dealing with this issue and the Church’s initial refusal to answer even the most basic questions about this program. The Church was going to dump this project on its neighbors’ laps without conversation first to get buy-in. Good Christians? Maybe. Bad neighbors? Definitely.
Why doesnt the church carve out a small place for her to stay in the church? Especially now that it has been advertised that a woman is going to be staying in her car overnight. Sounds like she is even more vulnerable now. I would also be concerned with the long term plan if I were a neighbor.
Yeah, I have to second that: really not a good idea to alert everyone to where a woman will be sleeping alone in her car overnight. I’d say they’ve put that person at risk with that statement.
How about testing this program out in the West Hills, Dunthorpe, etc.?
Fuck homeless women, their husbands might come looking for them and disrupt our precious neighborhood
Nevermind that domestic violence shelters are hideously underfunded, I don’t want that shit where I live.
Gloworm is right. If they trust this woman enough to let her sleep in their parking lot, why not let her sleep inside the church? There’s obviously room. If the church doesn’t trust her enough to sleep inside, they probably shouldn’t trust her enough to sleep in their parking lot.
Btw, kind of weird to use a person’s letter in a story without contacting them for comment first, no? Unless of course, the whole point in using his name in the first place was to shame him, which would be ever so journalistically responsible.
I think generally (though of course with many specific counterexamples) these ‘Christians’ have been rather open about helping, sheltering and feeding the needy for going on two thousand years. If you move in next to a church you should expect the poor to show up at times otherwise it’s not really much of a church is it?
I am also a neighbor, whose name was printed, without permission in the blog. I indeed wrote to the city and the pastor and was properly dismissed by both. “The city wants this program and it will move forward.” I live two blocks from this church. Did you folks know that ANY church and ANY non-profit can open up their parking lots for those without shelter? Probably not. June 4th, 7PM at Moreland Presbyterian Church,1814 SE Bybee is where you can come and share your ideas. I personally think Denis C. Theriault is creepy.
I agree with Chuck that writing a letter to a city council member should not lead to your name being published. Are all communications with city council members or the mayor automatically public record?
@17 – You wrote a letter “to the city” – a public body – and you expected permission before your name was printed in the papers?
I think you and your neighbors have your heads stuck up your asses.
Welcome to Portland, homeless people live here. They already live in your neighborhood, the church is just trying to help one lady.
@18 – for the most part, yes. If not directly disclosed by being posted on a website, you can go through a process to get just about any information regarding a public agency disclosed.
Send an anonymous letter.
I’m just repeatedly shocked at how fucking stupid some “citizens” are about public processes in a democracy.
Make vague statements and call others “fucking stupid”…excuse me if I don’t take your word on this, ax. I’ll wait for Denis to respond.
Neighbors react in an ugly fashion? Neighbors react in a surprised fashion when something gets rammed down their throats with no public comment until after the program is going forward.
A parking lot is not set up for living. A church makes a fine shelter; it has bathrooms, heat, probably a kitchen, etc. Isn’t the church telling these people that they don’t trust then to be in their church? It’s easy to say “You can sleep in my parking lot.” when you don’t actually live next to the parking lot.
All of you homeowners, do you think the city will lower the assessed value on your property for taxes now?
I’ve lived in other cities and seen this happen before. It’s one car…to start. If the church and city are so proud of their program, why be sneaky about it? Because they have something to hide. You’ll see.
In Seattle, churches host up to 100 people in tents in on their properties. Tent cities 3 & 4 are hosted and supported by churches and move every 2 to 3 months. Amazing how small minded our progressive town is – freaking out over one woman sleeping in her car.
Clearly, the folks with the problem here have never found themselves in this vulnerable situation and lack compassion. People without housing are just like you. Some of them have college degrees, some don’t. Some have addictions, some don’t. These are human beings! Have a shred of decency – drop the fear factor and get to know the folks that your local church lot is hosting. In the future, I hope we will adopt a Seattle like model.
I’ll chime in on the public records question: If you write a letter to city hall, especially in a case like this, it’s public record. And when reporters ask for that stuff, city officials in most cases are obligated to turn it over, whether they want to or not. We should always bear that in mind.
That said, not everyone’s as familiar with the rules and the law and what’s fair game. That gives *me* something to bear in mind for next time.
Thanks for explaining that, Denis. I’m no shrinking violet, but I need to keep in mind that Lars Larson can get his hands (or whatever) on the loo haiku I send to Randy Leonard every week.
Um, Todd, why aren’t you CCing those to me?
Attorney/Client privilege?
Well, there, the cat’s out of the loo.
I love how all the neighbors keep saying that the Church is “forcing” this on them. It’s not their parking lot! It’s the friggin Church’s. How does it effect you? If she wasn’t in the parking lot, she’d still be homeless nearby! Get over yourself.
“The resolution approved Dec. 21, establishes a one-year pilot project that will let people without shelter to “sleep overnight in a vehicle, camper or trailer parked on an existing parking lot of a host.” The resolution limits hosts to one designated area per partner, with a maximum of four vehicles at a time. It does not, however, allow for tent campers.”
http://streetroots.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/city-opens-up-overnight-camping-option-for-select-sites/
I couldn’t even finish the damn article. These people are a bunch of classist shitbags. At least the churches are trying to help people.
Once again, let’s hate on poor people Portland! Great job, hypocritical asshats.
So much for liberalism.
You’re out of line, Mr. Teriault. You probably haven’t given anyone legal ground, but still these are private individuals who weren’t standing up in front of council, and had every reason to believe they were emailing someone privately. We as citizens should have the right to speak frankly with elected representatives in some measure of privacy without out names being shat upon for everyone to read. Maybe you hadn’t shat upon their names, but their words and names will be here for eternity for others to do so.
I live about a block away from the church. I think their program, as described here, sounds great. But I also think that it was pretty dumb not to explain it better ahead of time. And it is totally unfair to Boisseranc to act like his example of a transient man committing a violent rape is hysterical nonsense: that was TRUE, and was 2 blocks from the church, about a year ago. There was coverage in the Sellwood Bee; here’s an article from the Oregonian.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.s…
I sure hope someone from the church or the city told that woman and her neighbors the details of this program before they heard about it from rumors.
I agree with Julie in SE. I thought the letter was ok notification (I also live a block away), but was unaware of the rape. Still, crime happens. Everywhere. Stay vigilant but don’t force your neighbor to stop charity work because of it. I sure hope that we neighbors can show some class and decency to the unfortunate homeless person/family when they show up.