A Hazelnut Grove “Sleep Over” Is Looking Likely for Most Portland Mayoral Candidates

• Hey! More than two mayoral candidates were invited to talk over an issue!

Nearly all of Portland’s most visible mayoral candidates have agreed to spend the night at the Hazelnut Grove homeless camp in coming weeks—including, now, one of the race’s leading contenders.

At a candidate forum on homelessness held at Union Gospel Mission Friday evening, hopefuls Sarah Iannarone, David Schor, and Sean Davis all confirmed they’d accepted co-candidate Jessie Sponberg’s invite to a “slumber party” at the North Portland homeless camp. State Treasurer Ted Wheeler, who has by far the most campaign cash of any candidate, voiced reservations about accepting when pressed by Sponberg at the forum.

“I don’t want to turn it into a campaign stunt,” Wheeler told a crowd of advocates, homeless residents and interested parties. “When you send me out there, I don’t want people to say I’m taking advantage of what is a really serious issue in our community.”

Minutes later, when the forum had concluded, Wheeler told the Mercury he would, in fact, participate—provided he was invited by Hazelnut Grove residents personally, and that the date of his stay in the encampment was kept private so as to avoid media coverage.

That left Multnomah County Commissioner Jules Bailey—who said at the forum he’d be “happy to talk about it”—as the odd man out.

“Publicity stunts aren’t what’s needed,” campaign manager Stacey Dycus said today. “Jules has actually been doing things- like opening shelters.”

Wheeler and Dycus are right: The “sleep over” idea could easily turn into a stunt or circus. But the buy in from candidates also highlights just how prominent homelessness is in this year’s mayoral contest. Friday’s forum dedicated to the issue was the first chance Portlanders have had to see more than two candidates side-by-side answering questions. And the event was the better for it.

Bailey and Wheeler have been on record about their stances on homelessness since entering the race (Wheeler even went so far as to argue his candidacy is one reason why people are talking about the issue). For the most part, the men covered little new ground.

But candidates like Sponberg, a veteran of the Occupy Portland movement and sometimes homelessness activist, and Schor, an assistant attorney general with the Oregon Department of Justice, helped steer the conversation to interesting areas.

Sponberg, in particular, used his history assisting houseless people to help inform answers which consistently received the loudest applause of the night. During his opening statement, he ordered audience members to look out the window, onto a stretch of West Burnside often festooned with down-and-out Portlanders, as he asked them to envision life on the streets.

“What’s the most tired you’ve ever been in your life?” Sponberg said. “What’s the most exhausted. But somehow you just keep waking up.”

And while he was short on policy ideas, Sponberg’s familiarity helped him elbow his more prominent opponents. When Bailey brought out a prepared anecdote about a young man he’d met at a local shelter, Sponberg said: “I’m not the person who’s gonna tell you about the time I met a little homeless boy. My garage is an outreach super center. It’s full of sleeping bags, tarps and coats.”

The rhetoric was enough to get Iannarone, a business owner and assistant director of PSU’s First Stop Portland program to say that one of Portland’s biggest challenges with homelessness is that “the people with power don’t have Jessie’s values and the people with Jessie’s values don’t have power.” She sold herself as the candidate with the most “working knowledge” of city government through her work with First Stop. (Though she erred when she told the crowd the city puts 50 percent of its Tax Increment Finance money toward affordable housing. A recent policy change brought the number up to 45 percent.)

Schor also resonated with the crowd—particularly after repeatedly insisting that homelessness shouldn’t be criminalized, an argument that advocates have raised for years but which the city has fended off repeatedly.

A big reason why Friday’s forum was a big draw: The city’s changing its stance on homelessness. Last week, Mayor Charlie Hales’ office unveiled a host of proposals that, when enacted on a trial basis, would amount to the most accepting attitude toward homeless camping in the city’s recent history. Hales is also talking about allowing more organized homeless camps, and even providing them with pods where people can sleep.

Hales argues allowing short-term camps makes sense, as the city works to ramp up cheap housing and shelter space, but the organized camping component is a tough sell for many in the city—and for the two leading mayoral candidates. Bailey and Wheeler both voiced concern about sanctioned camping on Friday. Other candidates said they support organized camps. And Davis, an Army veteran and English professor, called services like Right 2 Dream Too (R2DToo) viable solutions to the problem of homelessness.

Candidates also weighed in on a proposal for moving R2DToo across the river, which city council is scheduled to take up this week. Most candidates have reservations about the proposed new site—near the east end of the Tilikum Crossing—being too far downtown’s core of social services. Only Wheeler suggested that the city hadn’t done enough to reach out to groups like the Central Eastside Industrial Council to make the case for that move.

“I’m concerned that we have not reached out to the neighbors,” he said. “It seems there has been the opposite of that in this particular case.”