Somewhere to Go, Something to Believe In

A center to “end” homelessness in Portland has been a
long time coming.

“We first tried this when my daughter was born,” says Margaret Bax,
the housing policy manager in City Commissioner Erik Sten’s office.
“And she’s about to graduate college.”

Sten told the Mercury on October 1 he expected to settle on a
site for a new center to shelter homeless people and help them move
into housing “in the next two weeks” [“No Room at the Inn,” News, Oct
4]. And with up to $30 million worth of possible investment, everyone
is curious about what to expect when the center eventually opens
in—fingers crossed—2009. However, Sten’s deadline has
already passed, and negotiations are still in the works.

Andy Wilch, housing director for the Portland Development Commission
(PDC), now says the agency is likely to choose a site for the center by
“the first week of December.” The two contending locations are the
“Dirty Duck block,” nicknamed after the bar on its corner at NW 3rd and
Glisan, and the triangular historic fire station block, or A&N
block, kitty corner from it, next to the onramp for the Steel Bridge in
Old Town.

Regardless of which site is chosen, and how long the decision
actually takes, how did the city get here, historically? Does anybody
really believe the center can “end” homelessness in Portland, and if
so, what’s different about the efforts to do it this time, as opposed
to when a similar project was attempted in the 1980s? What makes
everyone so sure this new center is going to be a success?

LEARNING FROM PORTLAND’S MISTAKES

Housing Policy Manager Bax is coordinating the city’s effort to site
and build the homeless resource center with the county and a trio of
organizations with acronyms for names—the PDC, the Housing
Authority of Portland (HAP), and the Bureau of Housing and Community
Development (BHCD).

Around the time Bax’s daughter was born, Bax was taking part in an
effort under Mayor Bud Clark in the ’80s to remodel what was then
called the Beaver Hotel, into what now serves as the city’s current
homeless center—part of Clark’s “12-point plan to end
homelessness.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because Bax’s “new” effort to
build a “new” center is part of a “new” “10-year plan to end
homelessness” launched by Sten three years ago—it borrowed
elements of Clark’s plan, but emphasized a speedier transition between
homelessness and permanent housing, with fewer intermediate steps.

Today the old Beaver Hotel, behind the Greyhound bus station on the
corner of NW 5th and Glisan is, to quote Bax, “worn out.” It’s been
through a number of changes, hosting homeless men’s and women’s
shelters over the years, and currently plays host to Transition
Projects, Inc. (TPI), a homeless men’s shelter, and the Medford House,
a treatment center for high-risk offenders with addiction problems.

To an uninitiated visitor, TPI’s men’s shelter makes an
unforgettable first impression—men cram themselves into bunk beds
spaced so closely together that the shelter had to get special
permission from the fire bureau just to stay open. It’s not a place
that inspires optimism.

When dinner is brought in each evening, there’s nowhere for the men
to eat it, other than sitting on the edge of their beds. It’s more like
a scene from Down and Out in Paris and London—George
Orwell’s 1933 account of living as a “tramp” in those cities—than
what one expects from a supposedly ultra-liberal city in the richest
nation on Earth in 2007.

The mood hardly lightens when you walk around the corner into TPI’s
“service access center”—more than 20 people crowd into about 100
square feet of floor space, take a number, and wait their turn to speak
to one of three desk clerks behind a tiny, battered counter. The center
gets busiest when it first opens—there’s usually a line waiting
outside—but there’s always frustration in the air.

“There’s not enough space for people to sit in a dignified manner,”
says Fern Elledge, the shelter’s human resource director, who is
gearing up to manage the new homeless center when it opens. “So our
clients get frustrated, and about twice a week yelling erupts. It’s
very stressful for everyone.”

Someone has pinned quotes from Aldous Huxley’s dystopic novel
Brave New World on a wall in TPI’s mailroom, where another
Xerox’d quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky hangs: “Originality and a feeling of
dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.”

Struggle, indeed. In the basement, there’s a bizarre, 300-ton mound
of 100-year-old earth left behind by the people who built the original
building in 1907. It could be taken symbolically as the center’s very
own Sisyphean mountain—named for the Greek mythological character
whose only task was to endlessly roll a rock up said mountain, doomed
to repeat the effort again and again.

Aside from being “worn out,” the building just isn’t working: TPI
has an extremely long waiting list, and has had ongoing problems with
people camping outside. Those camps attract drug dealers, who conceal
themselves in the crowd, and the cops are fed up with making arrests on
the center’s sidewalk—it’s a vicious cycle.

“The problem, is, we’re telling people who are camping elsewhere to
go to [TPI] for services,” says Central Precinct Commander Mike Reese.
“But when they get there, there’s a 10-week wait.” The wait for women
at a shelter around the corner is worse: 12 weeks, currently.

“Meanwhile, the Medford [House] and TPI are seeing their clients
dropping like flies because when they come out of the building they
have to wade through this sea of humanity,” Reese continues, “with
people outside shooting up, smoking crack, and drinking—the very
problems they’re trying to kick.”

MY, WHAT SERVICE!

Thankfully, things have changed since Bax first oversaw the
conversion of the old Beaver Hotel, and practices have changed when it
comes to building centers for the homeless.

“How we provide shelter and services is different now,” she says.
“We’re not just trying to get people off the streets. We know people
need to get stabilized in housing to stay off the streets.”

That means a whole host of services need to be incorporated in the
new center that weren’t in the old one: The maximum zoned height for
both properties being considered is 350 feet, and it’s “likely” all of
that may be required, according to Leah Greenwood at PDC. TPI has the
contract with the city to run the new access center when it’s built,
and has drafted a series of recommendations on what to offer.

Basic service ideas include a day-access center for 70 people aimed
at getting them out of the elements during the day, an outside smoking
area for 20 people, shelter beds for 90 men at night (in 45 bunk beds),
lockers for people to store their belongings, 10 showers with dressing
areas, laundry facilities, restrooms, a dining area (no more eating in
bed), a commercial kitchen, internet and computer kiosks, and a mail
service.

Ideas for resources to help move people into housing include meeting
rooms for staff to connect people to assistance programs, meeting
spaces to run a variety of rental and employment classes, private
meeting rooms for mental health services, medical exam rooms, and a
medication storage area.

On top of that, HAP, which is the lead developer on the project,
hopes to add permanent supported housing on the center’s upper
floors.

“Fifty units of supportive housing is a good planning number,” says
Mike Andrews, director of development and community revitalization at
HAP. “It’s not too many, and not too few.”

ASK A HOMELESS PERSON

“It’s awesome we’re going to have a day-access center, and that it’s
something in the works and actually going to happen, it seems,” says
Patrick Nolen, community organizer at Sisters of the Road, who was
himself homeless in Portland for eight years. “But I hope there’s
community involvement in the width and depth of the program.”

For Nolen, that means everything—from the hours the center is
open, to rules for use of the center’s computers, its kitchen space,
even what kind of mental health counseling is offered—needs to be
first run past the homeless community the center is geared to serving.
As a result, Sisters of the Road is advocating for focus groups
involving the homeless community to be held before the center’s plans
are drawn up.

“We should do that,” says BHCD’S Heather Lyons, who helped write
Sten’s 10-year plan. “It’s absolutely critical to have the voice of the
people who’ll eventually be using the systems involved in the planning
process.”

GETTING BUSINESS ON BOARD

Perhaps the most important part of delivering the new center will be
the support of downtown’s businesses. Historically, that community has
been against accommodating homeless shelters.

Twenty years ago, Mayor Bud Clark blocked an attempt by the
now-defunct homeless shelter Baloney Joe’s to move from its location on
the Eastside into what is now the Pearl District (next to what
eventually became the Park Kitchen restaurant). When Clark learned
Baloney Joe’s had bought a space on NW 8th and Flanders, he called an
emergency press conference the next day to speak out against the
attempt, citing business concerns. Baloney Joe’s ultimately closed,
eight years later.

Things are different today. The Portland Business Alliance, which
represents 1,300 businesses in and around Portland, has found itself in
the (perhaps unexpected) position of being an advocate for better
social services downtown. This was sparked by the Alliance’s
involvement in Mayor Tom Potter’s Street Access for Everyone (SAFE)
committee last year.

The SAFE committee has established a temporary day-access center,
the Julia West House, downtown at SW 13th and Alder, in exchange for
council passing a controversial law banning people from sitting or
lying on the sidewalk—a political bargaining process covered
extensively in this newspaper. But the temporary center only provides
very basic services for between 40 and 60 of downtown’s homeless, and
already it’s overflowing.

“We’ve been an advocate for the new day-access center from day one
because it will make downtown better for everyone, including the
homeless population,” says Mike Kuykendall, vice president of downtown
services for the Alliance.

Times for Portland’s business community appear to have changed. And
for Clark, too—he’s now on the board of TPI.

HOLDING POLITICIANS ACCOUNTABLE

Having the political will to build a $30 million center from scratch
to help people out of homelessness is a massive opportunity for
Portland. What remains to be seen is if Commissioner Erik Sten and his
team can pull it off. The center has been a generation in coming, but
what’s to stop the ball from being dropped for another 10 years?

As council’s chief homeless representative, Sten is the archetypal
good guy, and is arguably given an easier ride by certain journalists
than his fellow commissioners and other lobbying groups because of it.
Indeed, so far, much of the community’s ample frustration over the slow
progress of the access center has been misdirected at the mayor’s
office rather than Sten, ever since Potter chose to get involved in
Portland’s homeless scene by convening the SAFE committee.

For example, on September 11, TPI Executive Director Doreen Binder
vented her spleen on Kyle Chisek, a mayoral staffer, at a meeting of
the downtown public safety action committee.

“The 10-year plan talks about having an access center,” she said.
“For God’s sakes, get it done. Kyle: Get the goddamn building done
already.”

Ultimately, of course, Sten is the man responsible for getting the
goddamn building done already. Let’s just hope he can pull it off
within the decade.

“I think Erik himself would be very disappointed if this process
weren’t resolved before he leaves office,” Binder says—about as
close to putting him on the hook for the center as she’s willing to
go.

There’s also the small problem, for Sten, of coming up with the
money. Sten wants to divert urban renewal funds for the center from
what PDC currently calls the “river district,” or the Pearl
District—now that it’s been “renewed,” he wants to spread some of
the cash around. But that’s by no means a done deal, and could easily
spawn more delays and a swarm of controversial press coverage.

Nevertheless, Sten is talking like a confident man.

“We’re going to do it,” he told us on October 1.

No pressure, Erik, but you’d better.