- Dirk VanderHart
- A woman writes on Hazelnut Grove’s “opportunities board”
By the time the state executed its long-promised sweep of a homeless encampment on N Greeley and Interstate this morning, it hardly mattered.
As Multnomah County inmates cleaned up a couple tents pitched on state-owned land toward the south end of the property, the cluster of tents known informally as “Hazelnut Grove” had become the second-most organized encampment in the city (after Right 2 Dream Too)—and there’s no indication that’ll stop any time soon.
In the last week alone, the dozen-plus campers crowding onto City of Portland property have formed a general assembly that plans to meet once a week. There is a code of conduct (shown below), and a mess area complete with dishwashing buckets, camp stove, and a hard-to-track number of French presses for coffee. There’s a white board—known as the “opportunities board”— that includes a camp wish list, the numbers of advocates, and general announcements.
So while the prisoners hustled off a couple tents nearby, people who’ve flocked to Hazelnut Grove lounged in comparative peace this morning. Some played Magic the Gathering around a patio table. Others read, or brought breakfast. Someone had rolled a joint.
“We’ve waited for years for lightning to strike,” said Jose Serrica, a pastor and homeless activist who sometimes sleeps outside of Portland City Hall in political protest. “It just so happens it happened here.”
The increased organization at Hazelnut Grove in the last week appears partly due to the arrival of Serrica and others who’ve shared in his cause near city hall. They were drawn to the camp in part through the efforts of Vahid Brown, an advocate who’s been ceaselessly lobbying the city on behalf of the Greeley camp.
“When it became clear the city wouldn’t sweep,” Brown said this morning, “this camp was gonna be a magnet. I wanted people who were down for organizing to come in.” To that end, here’s the code of conduct (which, yes, this morning’s joint might have flown in the face of).
As long as things remain clean and peaceful, there appears to be no end in sight for the camp at Hazelnut Grove. Last night the Overlook Neighborhood Association, which wrote a sharp letter [pdf] to the city opposing the camp, took up the matter at its monthly meeting. As mayoral staffer Chad Stover explained Mayor Charlie Hales’ recent announcements around homelessness (a “state of emergency” he’ll use to subvert zoning code, new outreach efforts, and homeless storage spots to name a few) neighborhood residents had sharp questions.
“It’s always the east side” that takes on new societal burdens, one man suggested. “It’s always North Portland that you guys turn to. The city has to be more accountable.”
Another woman wanted to know if the city’s toniest neighborhoods—West Hills, Irvington, Eastmoreland—would also be asked to accommodate the city’s homeless.
Stover couldn’t say, but he danced around what other members of the mayor’s staff have said in recent weeks: that the Hazelnut Grove site won’t be swept as long as its not causing problems.
“We’re looking for responsible management from the folks who are there right now,” Stover said.
Overall, it must be said, the neighborhood association was relatively calm last night when it came to the camp. That was likely due in part to Raven Justice, one of the first campers to pitch a tent on the Greeley plot, who laid out for attendees how he’d come to stay there, and the fact that he was out of options.
“I’m doing my damnedest to make Greeley a really nice spot,” Justice said. “I can’t get into shelter. If your emergency thing can fix that, I’ll be the first to jump on it. It not, I’m gonna stay where I am.”
In fact, the city’s emergency announcement, if anything, may make it more likely that Hazelnut Grove can stay put. Hales has said he’d like to use the city’s emergency status to make it easier to site homeless shelters. That could extend to organized encampments.
And it’s clear the emergency has helped along organization at Greeley. Joseph Bennie, a homeless activist who came over with Serrica, told me this morning: “When they declared the emergency, we felt it was time to test them. We have been lied to by the city so many times.”
There’s still uncertainty about the state’s role in all this. The land on which Hazelnut Grove sits is a hodgepodge owned by the state, county, and several private entities. It looks like this. While ODOT cleared up a portion of its land today, it still owns two plots that appear to be holding campers. Department spokesman Don Hamilton says sweeping those lots “could be in the cards in the days ahead.”
For now, Hazelnut Grove has one main aspiration: It’s pressing the city for portable toilets, which Hales’ office has said repeatedly it hopes to provide.
It’s almost as if when the City announces that it doesn’t intend to ask campers to move, that they become a permanent organized tent city. Who could have seen that coming?
With a wipey board, joints to smoke, and great helpings of “caring” from Dirk, I’m sure everything is about to turn around for these folks.
Blabby – you sir, are a colossal dick.
Yes, I suppose so on some issues. Despite my comments, I actually do care about most of the homeless, particularly the mentally ill and older homeless, homeless families of course. I don’t care much about the road warrior types.
Our city turning into a shanty town is a problem, and the solution will not be for the city government to simply rubber stamp and legitimize all the shanties. That actually amounts to ignoring the pathologies instead of trying to solve them. It amounts to giving the homeless white boards and codes of conduct instead of actually addressing homelessness.
As someone who pays $$ in local taxes every year, I do not feel bad asking that the City pursues some level of social order, law enforcement, and cleanliness. I also support the recent investments in affordable housing and mental health.
But those will never be sufficient to solve homelessness. Homelessness is a bottomless pit that we will never fill. So in the meantime, while we invest what resources we can, we can’t just allow camping. Because everyone in the West and beyond will hear that you are allowed to camp wherever you can find an open cranny in Portland, Oregon.
We have to help how we can, and ALSO enforce the camping ban and crack down on actual petty crimes that SOME of this population commits.
I can agree with a lot of that, thanks for providing a bit more nuanced argument. this is definitely a much bigger issue than tents or poop. enforcing a camping ban without the resources to help those needing or desiring help is simply sweeping it under another rug.
we need a serious multi-faceted approach to the issues of housing and homelessness that are country-wide, not just at the city or county level. we need to start seeing the homeless as humans and not, at best, annoyances. the Utah experiment is great, but it’s not going to solve everything. tent camps won’t either but they may provide an interim solution that evolves into something more permanent-ish. which leads to…
but that would mean that we are “giving” something to someone and the conservative half of ‘merica will never allow that to happen. rinse. repeat.
Blabby, when you accuse homelessness of being “a bottomless pit that we will never fill,” you’re simply wrong on the facts. Homelessness is not an ineluctable feature of a modern, advanced economy. The scale of modern homelessness in the United States dates only back to the 1970’s, is not replicated in other advanced economies, and can be linked to specific economic and political choices that we’ve made. Just as we collectively made decisions that got us into this problem, we can make different decisions to find our way out of it.
Instead of submitting to the slough of despond, I invite you to envision the recent increase in the scale of the problem of homelessness as a challenge to Portland’s longstanding civic spirit and its remarkably deep bench of entrepreneurial creativity. If we can use technology to make it easy to rent your apartment to a stranger, we can certainly devise a legal, physical, and social blueprint for a 21st Century tent (or tiny house) community that is organized, clean, safe, and attractive. Given the likelihood of increased economic uncertainty, as a community we should be planning for all kinds of new ways of providing shelter. After all, the life of someone you love may one day depend on it.
The taxpaying community of Overlook neighborhood has a “code of conduct” too…keep our families and children safe, our community clean and clear of drugs, illegal camping, public intoxication, theft, etc. We make great, unified strides to do so as we take pride in our residents and neighborhood. We only see selfish, entitlement discourse from the Greely and Overlook Park campers who are seemingly only responsible for their well-being.
Over the last few months, there has been a noticeable increase in illegal incidents, as documented by heightened police reports and activity. We do not necessarily feel safe in our neighborhood and we need to make a change. My family is not here to solve this local homeless issue (as we volunteer and donate separately to this cause)…but we’re here to keep our family, children and community safe…which are increasingly at risk.
I am not having the fuel and fire against the homeless some of you have. Let these people have a chance, and how would you feel if it was your loved one in one of these camps? I think many of these homeless just fell on hard times. Some are creeps and addicts just like some of your neighbors who live in your neighborhood in the pretty house next door.
It is a temporary fix, make sure there is police protection and enforcement,as I said once before. Yes cops are the answer to keeping the order. It might work out just fine, and maybe something good will come of it all. Hey City Hall,it’s not rocket science. You don’t want to see them, so hide them in the bushes. I want them to stay warm,have food and basic needs. I will volunteer a day a month,so can most of you. The poor didn’t just pick Portland to come visit and stay too long. Some of you are real Dicks, some of you are really trying to help.
Blabby, as I said in the embedded video, the US Department of Justice views camping bans in a city lacking sufficient shelter space to be unconstitutional. Portland’s camping ban would not hold up in court in light the following statement from the DOJ, and the City knows it: http://www.justice.gov/opa/file/643766/download
I’ve lived in Overlook Neighborhood almost 5 years now. My husband and I attended a neighborhood association annual meeting when we first moved in, and felt the judgment of homeowners here just because we RENT our home, and mentioned we had been hit hard by the Great Recession. There was plenty of talk about helping those less fortunate – (residents of Patton Park Apts were brought up.) -yet a sort of have/have not attitude was pervasive. We felt very much like outsiders and not necessarily welcome in our financial circumstance. I am not surprised at the attitude toward these homeless people, who are doing their best to stay warm, fed and dry. Anyone can become homeless, whether they think so or not. I do not share the sentiments of the neighborhood organization. I hope the city uses compassion and courage to help these people in the colder months ahead, and in the long term.