In the Shadows

City Commissioner Nick Fish is standing among 150 mattresses and
almost as many people in the gym of the Foursquare Church on SE Ankeny.
He asks Red Cross Volunteer Supervisor Mohammad Ali about the
challenges of operating an emergency warming center like this one.

“The personalities are the most challenging,” says Ali. “These
people live on the streets. Last night we had one fistfight and one
inappropriate activity.”

As Ali talks, another TriMet busload of homeless people pours
through the doors. On Thursday, December 18, the center—which is
open only when the weather is cold enough to make sleeping outside
life-threatening—is on its fifth consecutive night. Regarding the
“inappropriate activity” (what does that mean exactly?), Fish
tells Ali he’s already met with Police Chief Rosie Sizer to talk about
stationing an officer in the center—but Sizer raised concerns
about scaring off homeless people with outstanding warrants.

“Even if it were someone walking through once an hour, that
uniformed presence would really help us,” says Ali, and Fish says he’ll
see what he can do.

This emergency Red Cross center is in addition to two other
winter-round warming centers Fish recently got funded by city council,
in partnership with Multnomah County, to the tune of $300,000. Earlier
in the evening, he toured the new family warming center, which has just
opened in a former bridge club at NE 81st and Clackamas.

“We just scratched the playing card symbols off the windows last
week,” said the center’s coordinator, Jean DeMaster, from the nonprofit
Human Solutions.

The family center has 40 beds, and has thus far been catering to
between 12 and 20 people a night. DeMaster anticipates an influx of
clients in 2009, when homeless families tend to wear out their welcomes
with relatives over Christmas. There are currently 2,500 homeless
children in Multnomah County, but many homeless families sleep in their
cars because of the stigma of this particular kind of homelessness,
DeMaster says. There’s also plenty more space in the building,
including a former boxing ring in the basement, and Fish is abuzz with
possibilities for it.

This reporter has had a few differences of opinion with Fish since
he joined Portland City Council in June. For example, Fish is yet to
formally take a position on the controversial sit-lie ordinance, and he
ducked the Mercury‘s questions about oversight for rent-a-cops
during our spring endorsement interviews. Despite past disagreements,
Fish agreed to let this reporter join him on the warming center tour,
if he promised be on his “best behavior.”

Best behavior or not, it’s time to give Nick Fish his due. His work
to get the warming centers funded has been tireless, and shows an
ability to cut through red tape to help those who need it most. Indeed,
Fish seems at his best when faced with a human-scale problem, and the
opportunity to solve it by drawing on his relationships in the homeless
advocacy community. Like when Barry Lewis, a student at Portland
Community College who is sleeping at the Clark Center men’s shelter
under the Hawthorne Bridge, lamented his inability to get into
permanent supported housing because of his academic studies.

“Is that a federal rule?” Fish wondered. “Give me your details. I’ll
look into it, and get back to you.”

That’s the kind of commissioner Portland’s homeless really need.