Beginning next week, this large crate's going to be posted up below the west end of the Steel Bridge, welcoming belongings of the city's homeless. For the next six months or so, Portland's in the day storage business.
The crate's late. In August—around a month before the city formally declared a housing emergency—Charlie Hales announced a pilot project to help people stow their stuff. We reported on it here, along with the mayor's office's pledge to have two storage sites up and running by October.
October passed. No day storage. The city encountered delays in obtaining the two crates (total cost: $36,000), and inclement weather didn't help, says Jen Clodius, spokeswoman for the city's Office of Management and Finance. On top of that, the city was wrestling with other aspects of the housing crisis—stuff like creating a new shelter in Southwest Portland, and contracting with a shuttle service to ferry people there every evening.
Now the city says it's ready to roll out its day storage experiment. At least part of it.
Come next Thursday, Clodius says, the West Side storage site will be open for business. It will include the 53-foot crate, restrooms, a dumpster, and a repository for dirty needles. The plan is to allow people to drop of their things from 6 am to 7:30 am, and pick them back up between 4:30 pm and 6 pm. Clodius says onsite staff from Central City Concern will photograph people with their belongings, and hold items for up to three days if they're not claimed. After that, itll be shipped to a separate storage site on Southwest Barbur.
The city's also planning an Eastside storage site with the same features as the Steel Bridge location. It's hoping to put that on newly acquired land just north of the Hazelnut Grove homeless camp near the intersection of North Greeley and Interstate. It's sort of an odd spot for a service designed to stow people's things. People already live at Hazelnut Grove and keep plenty of stuff there. Plus, the city says it's planning to discourage all but a few dozen campers from living on the site in coming weeks.
Josh Alpert, Hales' chief of staff, says it's all part of experimenting.
"The idea of the Hazelnut Grove site is a little bit less about the storage piece—although they want safe storage was well—and more about providing the amenities that go with it," Alpert says. "Is there a model that we should be looking at for just providing those kinds of resources with storage for particular camps?"
Hales' office is also considering asking Hazelnut Grove campers to staff the storage site in the mornings and evenings. "The more that we can involve the homeless community in having some enterprise and control over amenities the better," Alpert says.
Vahid Brown, the camp's liaison with the city, says no one's formally asked if campers are willing to run the operation. He says the storage site "would certainly have some utility in the community."