ONE HOMELESS MAN is known to have died of exposure in
Portland’s unprecedented December snow, but thanks to a largely
successful collaboration between the city, homeless service providers,
and the Portland Office of Emergency Management (POEM), hundreds of
others were assisted.
The unnamed man, who died in Lone Fir Cemetery on SE Morrison, was
reportedly contacted by outreach workers, but rebuffed their repeated
pleas to get inside. He was buried on Tuesday, January 6, the same day
City Commissioner Nick Fish called a “hotwash” debriefing meeting at
city hall to discuss emergency coordination efforts.
In addition to the city’s regular homeless shelters, the Red Cross
kept two emergency warming shelters open for 14 days from December 14,
with Fish seeking assistance from POEM on December 17, after realizing
that the Bureau of Housing and Community Development (BHCD) was facing
coordination issues as hundreds of homeless rushed to get inside.
Nevertheless, conditions at the centers were hairy at times.
“It felt like a shift from saving lives to, ‘Hey, this is a cool
place to hang out, and let’s go outside, get drunk, and come back in,’
and we had an increase in altercations,” said Eric Corliss, director of
Emergency Services for the Oregon Trail Chapter of the American Red
Cross.
Center volunteer Mohammad Ali, who worked at the Red Cross center at
the Foursquare Church on SE Ankeny, said there had been a lot of drug
activity around the centers, not to mention teenage drinking.
“In fact, police officers brought two boys to me saying, ‘Nobody
else will take them, can you?’ and I said ‘yes,'” Ali told the
Mercury.
“But that’s what we’re about,” added Ali’s fellow volunteer, Sarah
Morrigan. “Saving lives, and taking the people nobody else will
take.”
In light of the single death, Fish, a former civil rights attorney,
said at the meeting that he might consider revisiting the laws for
involuntarily pulling a homeless person into a warming shelter in
extreme weather. He also expressed concern about the city’s legal
liability for volunteers in emergency shelters, given “the number of
registered sex offenders and people with warrants” that he met in the
emergency centers.
“But there was a clear shift from a less coordinated response to a
more coordinated response as we hit our stride,” said Ryan Deibert of
BHCD. “And the challenge now is, how can we replicate that level of
coordination in a more sustainable way?”
The warming shelters were great. Now Gresham needs to get on board. There was only one little-known warming center open at the beginning of the teen-temperatures. Later a couple others opened up, but people were on the verge of dying out there.
Good to see the Tribune starting to cover these issues a little more sensibly:
http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.…
Actually, the Multnomah County East building in Gresham was used as a warming center. Also there is a family-with-kids warming center near the 82nd Avenue MAX station (behind the Elmer’s).
I heard somewhere that a high school gym in Gresham opened, not sure if that was true.
In the winters the east county becomes a lot more severe than in Portland.
The important thing here:
1. Most shelters do not allow drunks or druggies while being under influence. The EWC specifically allows them; no one is excluded and left out in the cold to die. They are usually among the first to get hypothermia and die, and we accommodate them so that they won’t be found dead.
2. It has been the key policies of the EWC to eliminate any barrier to admission. So there is no TB card required, no identification requirements, etc. We also allow dogs, cats, and even a bunny (we had a tiny kennel for a bunny or a ferret!). Sure, a few volunteers got sick, and so probably did many clients (one of many reasons why many people stay away from shelters: people do get sick from homeless shelters!), but that risk was minimal with our encouraging everyone to use hand sanitizers, wash hands, etc., and certainly a lesser risk than freezing death or injury.
3. I understand where Eric is coming from. ARC is a disaster-relief organization, not a social service agency. But I do not think people just came because EWC was a “cool place to hang out.” If he felt that way, it is probably because people were trying to keep their spirits up. There is no requirement for the clients to look and act miserable. No one even suggested that. I’d rather like to see happy people getting along than angry and unhappy people fighting. In any case, the great super-majority of people who stayed there were simply very grateful that we were there for them, despite the overcrowded and occasionally unpleasant conditions.
4. Yes, I have said many times that there ought to be a peripheral security. Also perhaps there should be at least one person on site with a DPSST security guard certification (in other words hiring someone from Wackenhut or some other companies). The Portland Police Bureau “promised” to send an officer to check on the place every once in a while but that wasn’t quite adequately done. As for the “driving away the homeless” concern, I suppose there must be a way to balance the two conflicting needs. The problem was that outside the building was unmonitored, so there were fights outside, we found a lot of mess (which I do not go into details here) in the bush and the parking lot.
Hm, the guy who was found dead in the cemetery: Couldn’t the Portland Police Bureau arrest him for trespassing on the government property? Perhaps that could have been the easiest route to get him inside.
Somehow I had an impression that the city declared the state of emergency, and thus failing to report to the EWC or another shelter would have constituted a crime in itself. But I was apparently wrong. This year I was told that we were not supposed to take people into the shelter against their will. Sure, this can become a big question of civil liberties… and I’m among the first to be alarmed by someone insinuating that an Officer Friendly could arrest a homeless person, saying “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you.” Perhaps in Sweden, yes; not in the U.S. of A.! Perhaps ACLU and the Oregon Law Center can offer valuable insights on this matter…
By the way, thank you Commissioner Nick Fish and his family, Mayor (then Commissioner–it was still December 2008!) Sam Adams, and the nice and brave folks from the Portland Fire Bureau, especially Fire Marshall Jim Morelli (He stopped by, like, every three hours, every night! Did he ever get any sleep?)! The flexibility, innovative thinking, and the willingness to go extra miles to help people during the most adverse weather of the recent decades, were simply astounding. This is the City that Works, indeed! Keep the good work!