Plans to build a center for the homeless on the so-called
Dirty Duck block in Old Town are on hold this Christmas until City
Commissioner Erik Sten can meet with its future neighbors to explain
why they’ve been left out of the planning process.
Last month, Sten decided to build the center—which is part of
the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness—on the Dirty Duck
block (AKA “Block 25”), nicknamed for a bar between NW 3rd and 4th and
NW Flanders and Glisan. Negotiations to buy a different parking lot at
NW 4th and Glisan from landowner Greg Goodman had broken down in
November.
At a meeting of the Old Town/Chinatown Visions Committee last
Wednesday, December 12, neighbors voiced their concerns about the new
center, which could include up to 200 units of affordable housing as
well as a center for homeless people to access services.
“I think it’s time for the city to realize that the Chinese
community is a presence, and that we’re ready to fight back,” says
Stephen Ying, president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent
Association (CCBA), who spoke up at the meeting. He says he first heard
about the new center in late November.
Ying is in a buoyant mood, with the CCBA having spearheaded two
successful community campaigns in the last 12 months—most
recently against the renaming of 4th Avenue after César
Chávez in November. The CCBA also fought for the removal of a
controversial dragon sculpture in the neighborhood late last year
[“Chasing the Dragon,” News, Dec 14, 2006].
To Ying, and others, the city has some explaining to do when it
comes to where Sten has chosen to build the new homeless center. Sten,
after all, signed off on an Old Town development plan in 1999, which
aimed to avoid the further concentration of social services in the
neighborhood.
“The neighborhood has historically been a dumping ground for social
services,” Ying told the Mercury. “And once again the city has
decided to do what it wants, without consulting the community.”
Diverse interests, including businesses and social service agencies,
formed the Visions Committee in Old Town in 1995, and the group wrote a
development plan for the area, which the city council adopted in 1999.
The plan aimed, specifically, at no net gain or loss in the
neighborhood’s then roughly 70-30 balance of low-income housing to
median family income housing.
After last week’s meeting, Visions Committee Co-Chair (and 2008 city
commissioner candidate) Howard Weiner wrote to the four agencies
responsible for planning the center under Sten—the Portland
Development Commission, the Housing Authority of Portland, the Bureau
of Housing and Community Development, and Transition Projects,
Inc.—asking for development of the Dirty Duck block to be put on
hold until the city performs another count of low-income housing in the
area.
Weiner also wanted to know how the public is going to be involved in
plans for the homeless center from now on, and how plans for the Dirty
Duck block fit in with the Visions Committee’s original goal of having
no net gain or loss in its balance of housing. He’s also anxious to
know how plans for the new permanent access center fit with the city’s
recent acquisition of the sketchy Grove Hotel on Burnside [“The
Flophouse Blues,” News, Oct 4].
“I’m a believer in process,” says Weiner. “But in this case it seems
that the process got broken.”
“I think when entities, public or private, with the ability to fund
or honor some of the commitments of our development plan don’t take the
vision document seriously, then it’s a rupture in this neighborhood
that needs to be addressed,” says Sisters of the Road co-founder Genny
Nelson, who co-chaired the Visions Committee back in 1995 and was also
at last week’s meeting.
The four development agencies bowed late last week to neighborhood
pressure, agreeing to hold off on further development of the homeless
center until Sten can address the next Visions Committee meeting on
January 9.
“There is room to make an agreement,” says Sten.
The commissioner adds, however, that he is thinking about the
neighborhood’s “overall strategy, rather than whether the balance of
housing fluctuates by 100 units in either direction in a given
year.”
“There’s going to be an access center on Block 25,” he continues.
“And you’d have to be nuts not to put affordable housing on top of
it.”