Though Commissioner Amanda Fritz threw up some minor caution as news emerged late Friday that a solid deal to move Right 2 Dream Too had been reached, officials with the site, this weekend, have drafted a statement “declaring victory” and shedding some more light on the terms.
And one detail has changed since Friday’s post. The press conference is now expected to go off at 1 pm Monday, not 12:30 as I’d reported.
The agreement—to move the rest area beneath the Broadway Bridge, drop a lawsuit, and waive thousands in code fines—puts to rest weeks of negotiations among Fritz, Right 2 Dream Too, current 4th and Burnside landlord Michael Wright, and Mark Kramer, the attorney representing both R2DToo and Wright. Late disagreements surfaced over the fate of Wright’s land and the fundamental legal issue presented in Kramer’s suit challenging the city’s code fines: whether the city had correctly labeled the site a “recreational” campground.
The statement doesn’t make clear what will happen to Wright’s land. He had proposed three options to the city: 1) Keeping open, technically, his right to host another homeless camp. 2) Putting food carts on the land despite rules forbidding it. 3) Or having the city buy the land.
But it does spell out that dropping the lawsuit shouldn’t be seen as an admission, by Kramer or his clients, that the city was legally correct in fining the current site.
“There were a number of complicated hurdles to overcome in order to get this very positive result,” Kramer said in the statement, obtained by the Mercury. “Although the lawsuit was dismissed, all parties acknowledged that the issue is still open as to whether houseless people, with the permission of the owner, have the right to sleep safely on private property without interference by the city.”
Moving beneath a bridge ramp—the Lovejoy ramp off the Broadway—also was a tough sell for the site and its members. The 23-month-old site is part rest area—providing refuge and safe sleep for dozens of people a day—and part protest. It’s NW 4th and Burnside location has kept the group and the issues it’s trying to address, homelessness and poverty, thrust squarely into the city’s face.
But the group’s statement makes the best of what was clearly a difficult tradeoff.
“The site under the Lovejoy on-ramp to the Broadway Bridge has many positive aspects,” board member Trillium Shannon said in the statement. “Services and buses are within walking distance and the overpass will provide excellent protection from the elements. This is an historical first in Portland. Previously, the City demanded that Dignity Village locate their site in East Portland far from services and convenient public transportation.”
Fritz had some help from Hales in getting a deal in place. She’s supported the site tacitly since it opened, even with colleagues like Nick Fish, the city’s former housing commissioner, and Dan Saltzman, the current one, expressing misgivings about how and whether the rest area fits among the city’s other housing priorities.
Saltzman, when I sat down with him to talk about housing issues last month, told me he was skeptical of efforts. He’d come out as a big back of adding shelter capacity and permanent housing—softening that, in the face of criticism, to also embrace short-term rent assistance. R2DToo says it’s goal is helping people who aren’t well enough to join or otherwise don’t fit with the social services system. (It also provides a refuge for people who find themselves unsheltered because of waiting lists and limited capacity.)
“It’s still a camp and that’s not where we want to be spending our money,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to see short-term rent assistance money being diverted to Right 2 Dream Too.”
At the time, it wasn’t clear whether any city money would be spent on relocation. Fritz has since told the Mercury that some costs will probably be incurred—from things like setting up the new site with electrical and water service. Any deal would have to come to council for approval, too, Fritz has said.
“That’s why I’m trying to keep a wall of separation between the housing bureau” and the site, Saltzman said. “It may just happen. My colleagues may say this is how it’s going to be and I’ll just live with it.””
Ibrahim Mubarak, spokesman for the site, said the tentative agreement shows that some people in the city, at least, have begun to see the light on Right 2 Dream Too’s work.
“Since October 2011 Right 2 Dream Too has provided shelter and other services for an average of 60 people per night who otherwise would have been forced to sleep on the streets,” he said. “This self-organized grassroots model is both legal and effective. But even with our success, a recent study revealed that close to 1,900 children, women and men in Portland are without a safe place to sleep every night. This agreement shows that the City is acknowledging the problem and starting to work with us instead of against us.”
With all due respect to Commissioner Saltzman’s priorities, at most this relocation is going to cost the city pocket change and it will be a one-time expense, for things like power washing the lot, which is currently crusty with pigeon droppings. R2DToo will continue to pay its own water and electric bills just as it does now. R2DToo will continue to pay all its own expenses, including liability insurance, maintenance and upkeep, laundry, etc., with money it fundraises and at present there is no plan to get any kind of regular financial support from the city, nor has the R2DToo board even discussed asking the city for money.
It is frustrating to hear city officials say things like “we don’t want spend money on camps” or “we need to stay focused on getting people into housing” when the subject of R2DToo comes up. Commissioners Saltzman and Fish, at least, have used these fall-back soundbites to avoid dealing directly with the problem at hand: Portland, like hundreds of other cities, has thousands of people sleeping on its streets year-round, a number that has only been increasing, and all levels of government have failed to address this problem. R2DToo is a response to that failure. The goal has always been to show that the unhoused are capable of self-organizing and building a sustainable level of community support for keeping people safe, helping them manage their health, keeping them out of parks and doorways, and providing a measure of stability they need to address their situations. It is not a substitute for housing that isn’t available anyway, it isn’t a substitute for traditional indoor shelter space that is in short supply anyway, it is a supplement — a stop-gap measure to deal with a crisis of the government’s making. If Saltzman or any other government officials wants places like R2DToo to go away, then the solution is simple: create and maintain housing policies that actually work for people by insuring an adequate supply of affordable housing instead of policies that work only for Wall Street banks and wealthy property developers.
There is always going to be homelessness, no matter how many places you open up for them and regardless of the economy.
I live a block from the new site. I still think this is a bad idea, but if they’re good neighbors (no noise, trash, camping in local parks, etc.), I will be too.
Maybe they’ll help on local problems like the 9th Ave. convenience store that sells drug paraphernalia and weapons.
The site is zoned EXd. Look it up. Any camping is a prohibited use within the zone. Even if it were an allowed use, the site is still subject to the City’s design review process. The very same issues that came up at 4th and Burnside are present at the Lovejoy Ramp. If the City is interested in due process, as they seemed to be at the other site, they will go through the correct process at this site, file a land use application, and then deny it since there is no grounds under the City’s own code to ALLOW this use at this site.
What legal authority does Fritz have to move a camp onto city owned land that is zoned EX. Like pdxMB, I too have read the Portland development code and a campground is definitely not listed as a permitted or conditional use for this zoning. If any private citizen who owned a property zoned EX wanted to put a campground on their property they would have to go through a comprehensive plan map amendment and zone change process which would require notice being given to surrounding property owners, a waiting period for comments by the affected property owners, a public hearing, and then a vote by city council. Why does Fritz think it is OK for her to ignore the city’s zoning code. She seems to think she’s a queen not an elected official who is supposed to uphold the law. On Thursday she had a private meeting with residents of Station Place, an elderly housing building next to the site, but she wouldn’t allow any reporters to attend the meeting and wouldn’t take their questions after the meeting. Why didn’t she invite the residents of the 8-9 other residential buildings that are within two blocks of the site? My suspicion is that she thought she could control or intimidate a small group of 55+residents but knew that a younger crowd would not put up with her B.S.
Not really legal and the city caved, but good for them. They seem to care and want to improve their lot.
In turn, can the city get harsh on the travelers without a Theriault jihad?
I’d like to see some reporting about whether it is in fact legal to allow camping in a lot zoned EX. Denis specifically points out that it’s illegal to have food carts on the current R2D2 lot, but no mention of the seemingly illegality of moving the camp (I don’t know how a permanent camp qualifies as a “rest area,” but whatever) to a lot zoned EX.
Guys. Check out page 7 of this document.
http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/index.cf…
Mass shelters, short-term housing, households, group homes, and outdoor commercial recreational sites are all allowed in EX-zoned parcels, either outright or on a limited/conditional basis.
The site would be treated as a transitional housing campground, under state law, which allows each city to have up to two. This one would join Dignity Village at Sunderland Yard.
http://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/446.265
The design review piece is still a question that needs discussion. Could be why Fritz has said the council needs to do some work approving this deal beyond just blessing the settlement.
And those zoning codes define each Use Category and in turn, the definitions of each Use Category use words that are also defined elsewhere in the zoning code (or have their ordinary dictionary meaning). For instance, Group Living is characterized by the residential occupancy of a structure. Structure, in turn, is defined as any object constructed in or on the ground (with a list of examples). Constructed isn’t defined specifically, so it gets a standard dictionary definition.
Its a huge stretch to say that tents fall within the definition of structure.
Thanks Denis. Does that mean the new “rest area” is going to be an actual structure? As R2D2 currently exists, I don’t know how it would qualify as “mass shelters, short-term housing, households, group homes, and outdoor commercial recreational sites”. Only “outdoor commercial recreational sites” comes close to what R2D2 really is, and even that is a real stretch.
Denis, ask the Commissioner for letters from land use attorneys who have contacted her office, rather than pretending you know something about this. R2DToo is not a “Mass shelter, short-term housing, household, group home, or outdoor commercial recreational site.” Each of these uses comes with specific definitions in code, all of which pertain to permanent structures.
I’m not opposed to a conversation about a camp in this location, but the City using the code in one hand to move it off a site in downtown and then ignoring the same code for the alternate site is sloppy and disingenuous. Coming from the office of a former Planning Commissioner who was a stickler for making sure that the rules apply to everyone equally, I find this flippancy really irritating.
Funny you should mention letters sent from land use attorneys, pdxMB. It’s a good point. Shut up and report. So, while I was making my rounds today, I came across one and linked it in today’s post on the settlement.
http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/Blogto…