THE BLUEPRINT for how to keep a city-sanctioned homeless camp out of your neighborhood was drawn up early last year.
That’s when Pearl District developers pleaded and cajoled and, eventually, paid almost $900,000 to convince city leaders not to plop the well-respected, self-managed homeless rest area Right 2 Dream Too under the Broadway Bridge.
The plan takes dedication and resources, but it’s a cinch for most organized neighborhoods to pull off. Just take outspoken and respected business types, mix in the anxious misgivings of neighbors, and haggle over the meaning of Portland’s restrictive zoning policies.
All the while—and this is important—insist you support Right 2 Dream Too and its honorable work “110 percent.” You’re just concerned a place in your neighborhood isn’t the best fit. Offer to help find a place in another, more suitable part of the city.
Wait for city hall to reconsider its options.
Breathe easy when it does.
The strategy’s got plenty of potential, but its true efficacy is about to be put to the test.
Ever since Mayor Charlie Hales and City Commissioner Amanda Fritz announced in late April they’d found a new home for R2DToo at SE 3rd and Harrison (just east of Tilikum Crossing), the Central Eastside’s been quietly positioning itself to replicate the Pearl’s tactics.
First, the business interests: The influential Central Eastside Industrial Council (CEIC) has said it was given too little notice about the proposed move, and has voiced concern that outdoor camping is already too prevalent in the neighborhood. The CEIC also has a detailed argument that allowing a homeless encampment in an industrial zone is a “contrived” and perverse use of city code.
Next, the neighbors: On July 6, a powerful coalition of Southeast and Northeast Portland neighborhood associations formally voted to ask the city to pump the brakes on the proposed move. That coalition, Southeast Uplift, says it’s not R2DToo that has it worried; it’s just that the time-honored neighborhood process that Portland’s built on has been circumvented.
What’s more, group chair Robert McCullough tells me the proposed site might be too polluted for human habitation. “Our agenda turns out not to be very NIMBY-like, interestingly enough,” McCullough says.
Now, the test. On Wednesday, July 15, Portland City Council will consider whether to spend $254,044 to buy the proposed encampment site from the Oregon Department of Transportation.
It’s a necessary and meaningful step toward a move that needs to happen by October 2016, but Hales’ tone has slackened a bit since April, when he told me he’d like to set up R2DToo-like sites around the city once the encampment moves across the river.
“The 3rd and Harrison site could be a good home for Right 2 Dream, which has proven to be a part of the solution for Portland’s homeless population,” Hales said in a statement last week. “But even if the site doesn’t work for that purpose, it may still be a good site for the city to own.”
For what other purpose? The mayor’s office has no clue. But Hales is creating plenty of rhetorical space to change his position, should the blueprint drawn up by Pearl District developers last year prove architecturally sound.
let me guess dirk, you don’t live near the proposed new site… The Central Eastside is already a shitshow due to homeless, look for example at the new business that nearly had its opening delayed until late August due to the high level of arrests in the area, even though those arrests have nothing to do with businesses and everything to do with the homeless and soup kitchens etc. Concentrating a whole bunch of people who are either mentally ill, or drug addicts, or both in one spot is not awesome, and also is obviously not something most people want next door to them.
Where the fuck are they supposed to go? All the NIMBY douchebags come out of the woodworks yet again. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, show some fucking empathy.
The idea of creating ghettos is stupid to begin with. Just let people camp in the parks at night and clear out during the day so that others have a turn at using the park. Put a time limit on how long a tent can be up in the park. For instance, say any tent erected after 10pm must be removed by 5am. Any tent set up after 1pm must be removed by 8pm, even if it wasn’t there until 7:30pm.
To make this option viable, storage must be made available free of charge, so that the impoverished campers have a place to stow their gear during the day. The cost would be relatively nominal and the poor won’t appear to be homeless is they don’t have to drag around all that luggage everywhere they go. Furthermore, be sure to unlock the public restrooms in the park, twenty four hours per day.
Du-UH!
Three dislikes and no likes in less than one hour? Okay, then reopen Damasch State Hospital, only provide decent care and don’t incarcerate the guests. Send the bill to the neighborhood associations of Portland. For the life of me I don’t know why all the homeless need to be corralled together into one big negative vortex.
Those dunces should have never taken the money. The City was literally paid off by the pearl to kick this can down the road and into someone else’s neighborhood. This sets the precedent that if you have deep enough pockets and mix in enough feigned concern, you can make this problem go away. At least for your neighborhood. As an inner SE’er myself, I have actually considered trying to crowd source $900,000 as that appears to be the going rate. If enough neighborhoods do it, R2D2 might end up back in the pearl. In the penthouse.
It ultimately amounts to where to corral the ne’er do wells, right? “Anywhere but here” only has so much square mileage and money to burn.
Pshaw! Half measures avail us naught! T’would be much better to bring back debtors prisons and work farms; maybe even reward upstanding armchair riches-of-the-city liberals with $50 on Apple Pay (or Google Wallet) for tips that lead to the conviction of some tatterdemalion’s possession of stolen property (pushing shopping carts or digging through recyclables), and send those Steinbeck rejects out to the fields where they belong!