WHEN POLICE EXAMINED Randy Tinnell’s body, lying behind a dumpster at SE 36th and Hawthorne, he appeared to have been there for at least a day. This was December 30, when the temperature didn’t get above 35 degrees. Tinnell’s body was “in full rigor.”
“There were many empty bottles of alcohol near the body,” reads the police report. “Tinnell had several layers of clothing on, all of which were soaked through with rain water. His hair was long and severely matted. He appeared to be a transient.”
In the midst of one of Portland’s most vibrant neighborhoods, a death. From where Tinnell froze, in the mud behind a row of arborvitae trees, he could have seen people eating ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s across the street, shopping for vintage clothes at Red Light, or buying records at Jackpot.
Though Oregon has the nation’s highest per capita rate of homelessness, hypothermia deaths are rare. Homeless outreach workers with the city and local nonprofits remember only one other death in recent years, when a man froze in Lone Fir Cemetery in December 2009.
Cold nights often find Marc Jolin wandering around Portland looking for people like Tinnell. As director of homelessness nonprofit JOIN, Jolin and a handful of volunteers and paid outreach workers spend winter nights checking up on the estimated 2,438 people who sleep in shelters, cars, or on the street every night in Portland. A 2008 survey of homeless Portlanders found that seven percent of them suffered from exposure-related hypothermia or frostbite.
“People will look for some kind of covering, like an alcove or under a bridge. If they have the right gear, people can survive a long time out there,” says Jolin. “The real danger is when you have people who, for whatever reason, their ability to assess risk is impaired.”
Tinnell was 58. At one time, he had a house, a car, and a wife and family to go home to. Divorce records from 1979 show his marriage dissolved, but granted him the right to keep his 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass and visit his two young children.
Over the next eight years, court records tell the story of a complicated life. Notices of wage garnishment for failing to pay child support are followed by handwritten letters that Tinnell sent to judges arguing for custody of his children, writing that his children went into foster care after his ex-wife told family services workers that he was deceased. A debate unfolds throughout the 1980s, with typewritten notices from adult and family services rebutted by Tinnell’s cursive, until a final court notice in 1987 states that his complaints about unfairly steep child support payments were dismissed after he failed to appear in court.
Tinnell remerges in the record with a string of arrests: forcible entry in 1994, followed by driving without a license, driving uninsured, and driving under the influence.
Tinnell could have gone to a shelter the night he died. Though there is a severe lack of affordable, permanent housing in Portland and shelters often fill to capacity, the city spends $540,000 from its general fund to run additional winter shelters. On December 29, the shelter operating closest to Tinnell was CityTeam Ministries, two miles away on SE Grand, where 47 of its 50 beds were filled.
The patch of mud beneath the arborvitae trees where Tinnell died is only a few feet across, running along a fence behind a dumpster used by a Subway, a Goodwill, and an Umpqua Bank. Even now, two weeks after he died, there is a small bed of soggy newspaper ground into the dirt, covered in trash: a broken lighter, an old banana peel.
It was a Subway employee who found Tinnell. She saw him lying there, went over, and tried to wake him. He was not responsive and was “cold to the touch and very wet.” She called 911 immediately.
Jolin, of JOIN, says he is often surprised and impressed to find regular Portlanders helping individual homeless people in need. “It’s actually amazing to see how many people just go buy tarps, buy blankets, and deliver it to people when it starts to get cold,” says Jolin.
Whatever the diverse causes and personal histories that lead people to become homeless, the fact is that six years into the city’s 10-year-plan to “end homelessness,” Portlanders continue to sleep on the streets in increasing numbers. But when the housing bureau and volunteers conduct their one-night count of homeless people in Portland on January 26, Tinnell will no longer be among them.
Anyone who needs help or services—or knows someone who does—can call Portland’s homelessness resource hotline by dialing 211.
Thanks for writing this. It’s depressing, but shines a light on the apathy we’ve seeded. We are all to blame.
Each year we spend more on highways and illegal wars, and less on schools and human support services. Should we blame the lawmakers? the lobbyists who run the country? or our neighbors for not calling their lawmakers? We can think. We know the cause, we know the result(effect) of our apathy.
This guy and his family could have had some state sponsored Divorce counseling and legal help. We saved money by not providing those. He could have been given free SRO housing; we saved by not providing that. He could have volunteered while being supported by his neighbors. Help requires money, death is cheap.
I so resent the attitude that we ‘are all to blame.’ Copout BS. Those of us that work and pay thousands of dollars a year for services that fail to solve the problems they were created to solve, and volunteer and donate to charity should have no such guilt.
‘Whatever the diverse causes and personal histories that lead people to become homeless’ are exactly that. Until the state can hold people against their will homelessness will exist and no amount of trying to shame and extort society will stop that.
Thank you for writing the article, I had no clue there was a Goodwill Retail “Boutique” located on SE Hawthorne in that mall strip.
If you can really say you’ve done enough, I guess enjoy the feeling of guiltlessness. I think “enough” is a pretty high bar, though. We’re in it together as a society; whether the homeless are there for lack of help or because they tend to be unable to accept what’s best for them, when someone dies to the elements, we failed. And we’re all responsible, if not culpable.
Nice piece, Sarah. Important to remind.
Collective responsibility absolves an individual of responsibility.
am i the only one reading that the guy could have gone to a shelter?
HE was the only one not doing enough for himself…
@frankieb: Did you miss this line? “The real danger is when you have people who, for whatever reason, their ability to assess risk is impaired.”
We don’t know Mr. Tinnell’s ability to assess his risk based on the information given in the article. But given the high percentage of homeless people that lack that ability, it’s highly likely he didn’t have the capability to determine that he should get to a shelter.
I wish I could help everybody,everywhere,all the time.I truly do.It’s just not fucking possible.We do what we can.If you do nothing ever to help anybody[self included]anywhere,ever?Well your hopelessly nada to this world but excess baggage.Glad you found your goodwill……baggage.
I agree with you D.
“Thank you for writing the article, I had no clue there was a Goodwill Retail “Boutique” located on SE Hawthorne in that mall strip.”
The place is brand new. It’s only been open for like, a week or so.
what the hell is this Tinnell fellow to you and you and YOU? a nobody. Which is what killed him. And yeah the chick with all that make-up on, (Tammy Fay?) is right- these guys smell bad. So you cant blame yourself for walking on by. But you better hope you dont end up with a bushel full of debt, no job and too much pride. Aint nobody going to help you when you look like crap, smell worse and are a loser.
On the upside nike seems to be outfitting many of the homeless i see with aftermarket neon OREGON FOOTBALL t-shirts.
I agree with “D” poster above, good points. And I really hate to resent, it so resonates with me for too long…….
Under phase IV, this sort of “tragedy” won’t be that uncommon…when energy rationing begins-
But this other news we got today is absolutely outrageous!
Giving my beloved Oregon a ‘D’ regarding fighting ‘sex trafficking’? I can assure you that most of that sort of stuff isn’t going on here in the Portland area – the Valley of Sickness, but it may go on about 158.3 miles west of here, well off into international waters. Although, if asked, “I don’t recall.”Those GPS devices we have are pretty damn accurate you know, and when it says ’69’, it means exactly ’69 miles’-
We’ve got Alpha Broadcasting and a lot of our people taking care of this situation; putting on the right spin on things. So who is this Linda Smith Lady anyway- From where?
http://www.sharedhope.org –
Okay, this is okay. It just caught me a little by surprise today. Just be careful where you start snooping around, or maybe we’ll have to send johnny little bit strong over to straighten you out too! that is, if Henry’s done with him…
We got no problem with increasing penalties on these nasty men, I mean nasty predators. There are over 700,000 men who are registered sex offenders in America and only about 100 women. Yes, of course, I have all of their addresses and phone numbers, but they’re not exactly the most desirable women. If they were, they wouldn’t be on the list….
Back to getting rid of the nasty men. Maybe we can get the local Sheriffs and DAs to step up the torture of a few more of the local “cripples” or “brown people”, unless of course we need to stomp their useless heads into the ground, like that James Chasse guy. And tell me it wasn’t hilarious to see 800 local soldiers, I mean officers, marching through the streets of Portland wearing t-shirts with the name of the “hero” who “took out” that useless “cripple”! I agree with Brian Jennings, in the long run we saved the tax payers money. Do the math…
Besides, given how much ‘por’ little Bradly’s been whimpering the last few nights, we ought to be able to get a few extra confessions/plea bargains this month from some of this local scum. The fact is, torture almost always works eventually, especially if there’s a history of being abused. And what normal kid wouldn’t knock around one of these little four-eyed freaks. It’s the American way! Get tough or die! Sure gonna miss Kyron…
And, keep up the good work ladies. Men are animals and should be caged up and sterilized. Okay, you can keep a few for pets, but if there found out there wandering around without a good “master” then we’ll find a place for them in one of our fine kennels. but remember ladies, we did promise are boys in blue a certain number of “game”-
And lastly, just for the record. To all you spelling freaks on the left, I don’t capitalize the word “phase” because it’s not the word we use to describe that particular part of the process. Just as phase I has been given an alternative numeric title by ‘our media’, we too have alternative titles for the eight phases, but for the moment, we don’t want to upset the ‘Jesus People’ to much-
——————————————————————————
Attention all feminists and members of the LGBT community: This is political satire, although it does accurately reflect the views of many progressive men, who are not members of the relevant class. In your quest to seek equality, you have allowed the ruthless and unregulated powers of the State, and the opportunistic men and women who carry its sword, to destroy the lives of millions of your fellow Americans, who are mostly poor, disabled, or racial minorities. While they are profit ting from our mutual misery, they are funding our demise through despicable people, such as Mannix, Harcleroad and the rest of Hermann’s Monsters. Our struggle for social justice is your struggle, and we are not your true enemies. J. Edger and his friends are!
http://www.jedger.blogspot.com
OK, wtf is with whistle blaster ??
hey whistle, planet earth calling…..
Thanks Sarah…we can and should do more. This kind of journalism is too rare and I am glad I can find it here.
OK, the 211 info is helpful, yes…. good job there.
But, if my life came to this ignoble end I sure as hell wouldn’t want all the sordid details of my life made public. I’d want to have some degree of privacy. At least in death….
For all we know he may have come to the street out of a desire to escape from everything, and just maybe the final insult of his perhaps miserable life was to have his dirty laundry put into a local rag for us all to ponder over with a bleeding heart.
SARAH,
Couldn’t you have written the same article illuminating the plight of the homeless with just the guys picture and name / age — without going into his past transgressions to his children and the law?