The two homeless men shot this morning in what police suggest was a random drive-by attack had been staying “on and off” at Right 2 Dream Too, organizers of the Old Town tent refuge told the Mercury this afternoon. But the men had been turned away when they tried to sleep there again last night—after trying to escape stormy, blustery conditions—because there was no more room.
“Those two guys were coming here,” says Ibrahim Mubarak, a spokesman for the group, “but we just didn’t have enough room. This is a good reason why we need more places like this.”
The men decided against sleeping in a nearby doorway, in hopes that some space would open up at some point in the middle of the night. And instead they trudged across the river and tried to sleep under the Morrison Bridge. Early this morning, someone in a black pickup truck fired shots at the two men as they lay in their sleeping bags, lightly injuring one man, but sending another to the hospital with injuries that police say were critical but aren’t expected to be fatal.
Police have yet to identify the men, and say detectives are still investigating.
Right 2 Dream Too, which the city is treating as an illegal recreational campground and fining for a pair of code violations, normally hosts about 75 to 80 people every night. Art Rios, another organizer, says the tent refuge, right at NW 4th and Burnside, filled up around 9 pm. He says at least six other people were turned away.
“It’s a lot of people we have turn away every night,” Rios said, adding that some days it’s as many as 20. “We tell them to go across the street and sleep in a doorway, and if someone leaves, we’ll come and get you.”
Rios also wouldn’t share the men’s names, but said he’s spent some time with them over the past two months, about when they started showing up among Portland’s homeless community. He says he’d sometimes walk with them up to Sisters of the Road for lunch and that they’d help clean R2D2 on the days they stayed there.
Both Rios and Mubarak say violence is a sad fact of life for anyone living on the streets—and that this attack just happened to get a lot more press than most other attacks that no one ever hears about.
“This is an awareness thing,” Mubarak says. “We provide security. We provide walls. And the city wants to charge us money to do something they should be doing.”
It is bullshit to suggest that a horrific random crime that happens is the fault of the city.
There will always be homelessness. You can build more and more shelters – but I tend to think you get people moving here in the hopes of getting free shelter.
“dignity village” hasn’t shown to be the place it was envisioned to be to help out on this either. The idea in the beginning was to have a transitional place to get back on your feet – but how many have been living there for months upon months?
Blame the asshole psychopaths that did the shooting.
Not all societies have had any such thing as homelessness, but don’t let that stop you from using the assumed inevitability of the problem to get away from the fact that the U.S. does a lot less to take care of our most vulnerable than many other countries do.
In every country I’ve ever lived in or visited there has been homeless people.
What countries don’t have homeless anyway?
Should we consider all homeless to be ‘vulnerable’?
Mentally ill and homeless, sure, but most?
frankieb: Sleeping outside in the weather, subject to the cops summarily confiscating your stuff if they decide to move you along one morning, no walls or locked doors between you and a potential beating/rape, a more obvious target for shit like this shooting….what would you call that if not vulnerable?
We are all vulnerable to crime.
Homeless or not.
So they’re not vulnerable, but we’re all vulnerable….okay, you’re a troll.
Did the post say they help clean R2D2? WTF!?
Homeless people in Portland are indeed vulnerable. From outside crime, internal crime, Police etc. I disagree that many other countries better than the US in this regard. There are a number of countries that have homelessness up to and surpassing 1/3 of the population. Nothing is done for them (well, other than occasional brutality and round ups into “Government Centers”). I would agree that for a non third world country we do not have a great track record. Something people are missing is the fact that we have the highest population of homeless people for a first world country. We do not have government subsidized housing for most. We have a much larger population, number and diversity of immigrants than anywhere else . I don’t see the problem going away sadly. Nor do I see services for the Homeless here improving much. Even as the numbers grow
Right 2 Dream Too = R2D2
Take that, George Lucas.
Oooooh. That makes sense now. They could have just said that. Not like they were hurting for space.