THE RESIDENTS of Phoenix Rising had collapsed their tents, busted up a food shed, and begun stacking the wood pallets they thought would be the bones of a refuge filled with gardens, fellowship, and, mostly, hope.
It was Saturday afternoon, September 11. Two days before, police had told the campers it was time to clear out, and that if they didn’t they could be arrested—a ritual that plays out all over Portland, and the nation, whenever large groups gather in defiance of strict anti-camping laws.
This particular site sits on city land in the Rose Quarter’s industrial rump, a brush-filled hillside off NE Wheeler that was slated to become a street decades ago.
And now the few remaining campers were preparing to part ways, facing an uncertain future that looked all too much like the past they hoped to escape.
“The cops can bust you wherever you are, whenever they want,” Michael, an older man, was telling the others. “If you don’t know it, when you don’t have a home, you’re fucked.”
But Phoenix Rising wasn’t supposed to be like all those other camps. In a time when shelters are full, waiting lists are long, and jobs are scarce, it was meant to be an answer—a helping hand back to employment and permanent housing, a place where community and security could flourish.
On their hillside, more than a dozen campers spent the past month clearing brambles and building a safe place to settle. Modeling themselves after Dignity Village, they agreed to a curfew and a code of conduct—no weapons or drugs. They elected officers. They sought legal aid and help from advocates like Sisters of the Road.
“We aren’t disruptive junkies,” says one resident, Lisa, who was elected president of the camp. “We are peaceful people who want to make gardens.”
Not that it matters much. Police spokeswoman Kelli Sheffer said there had been a couple of calls about the site. And no matter how feral it is, it still shows up on city maps as a street.
“Right now, whatever it looks like, it’s a public right of way,” she says—stressing that officers, in this case, were trying to avoid a sweep.
Monday, with the site still vacant, neither Commissioner Nick Fish, head of the housing bureau, nor Mayor Sam Adams, in charge of the police bureau, were willing to rescue the campers.
While officials quietly turn a blind eye to smaller sites kept clean and quiet, they are less forgiving when the sites are large. Some of those sprawling sites, under bridges and in vacant lots, have been prone to violence and drugs, they say.
“We’ve looked at and rejected these large-scale encampments,” Fish told the Mercury this week. “But if people have no choice, it’s my preference that they find smaller, dispersed places to camp.”
Phoenix Rising’s campers remain committed. Although the setback has aggravated internal tensions about the camp’s direction, its founders are filled with talk about keeping in touch.
They are mindful of the anguish it took before Dignity Village—the city-sanctioned camp in Northeast Portland—was finally given a home. They hope that struggle points the way for Phoenix Rising.
“We’re going to do this regardless,” says one of the founders, a burly young man who goes by the moniker Tank. “The bullshit isn’t important. The goal is.”
One camper, Josh, felt so strongly about the place he’d called home for the past few weeks that he came down for Saturday’s vigil even though he’s recuperating from surgery to remove 11 kidney stones. Josh is also a recovering addict, and he said the camp had been an oasis from the substance abuse that pervades other clusters of homelessness.
“I want to have a life, and not just an existence,” says Josh. “This didn’t mean shit to the city. They didn’t care about it until some people showed up who needed some place to live.”
“Ownership” society, particularly one which worships land ownership, is a master/slave society. Land ownership is unethical, especially when capitalists use property rights as an excuse to force people to live like unwanted dogs. “Homelessness” doesn’t exists, but
societies like America do have souls that are not at home.
Look areound you at all the empty land – land “owned” by either the government or by some absentee capitalist – and ask yourself why somebody might feel forced to sleep in a gutter or wherever.
The American paradigm is a degenerate lie. Everybody deserves the basics of survival.
If you don’t blelieve that, what do you believe in?
If you are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol and depend on the kindness of strangers and social service agencies to survive, it doesn’t surprise me that you’re anti-capitalist or an anarchist. Grownups have jobs (no matter how menial), conform with some societal norms (i.e. no sleeve/neck tats if you want to serve the public), and don’t expect others to meet their basic needs.
Ownership of land promotes responsibility: if you own something, you tend to take better care of it than if you don’t give a shit what happens to it. Trying to stake a claim to land ownership is a noble objective, but you can’t take what doesn’t belong to you. Persuade a landowner or a public entity how you can improve/protect their land while living there, and you might be surprised how many are willing to consider that possibility. If you have nothing to offer, expect little in return.
Sounds like a capitolist douche to me.
Is that my bike in one of the pictures? I have a reciept.
Portland’s homeless problem is pretty out of control. As of last week I have a bum within eyeshot of my front yard near Alberta for the first time ever. Lived there for eight years, never a problem.
It’s never easy to be homeless, but it must somehow be easier here than in other places, or these people would move on. By giving them money, land to live on, food, etc. we’re not actually helping most of them in the grand scheme of things.
People, including the city, don’t want you squatting on their land. That doesn’t strike me as particularly unfair response.
Yikes!
This has been a battle between the needy and the needless since at least the Great Depression. Portland, and all other major US cities, treats the poor as criminals.
PDX, Get a Clue!
Damon: Capitol is a building in D.C. “Capitolism” is either A) an ironic reference to an economy in which market forces are subsumed to political interests in Washington, or B) indicates that you don’t know the difference.
Capital is anything that can enhance a person’s power to perform or produce an economic benefit (or the city in which state capitols are located). “Capitalism” is an economic system that depends on the private ownership of capital to innovate, produce, distribute, and seek efficiencies which are not typically found in command economies.
And yes, I am a Capitalist. Not a douche.
Economic pressure in our competative economic system is designed to have winners and losers. Some systems have safety nets so the less fortunate are not forced out into the streets. The United States has a system that has created incredible wealth for very few. The vast majorty struggle paycheck to paycheck. The tattered economic safety net allows far more homeless than millionaires.
When you see a homeless person think trickle down economics. Homelessness is a natural result of our economic system.
Regardless of whether someone is trying to bilk the system or legitimately looking to get back on their feet, they’re still people. My god, we have shelters for dogs and cats and lizards and iguanas, but if you’re a person on the street you can rot in your own feces. Is that right??
It seems like these people weren’t ever even bothering anyone. They had set up a self-suficiant community with gardens, guide lines, a fellowship, etc. It wasn’t just some shanty slum full of dangerous people. They were just minding their own damned business.
And all of a sudden, the Gestapo pigs come in run them out.
Phoenix Rising unfortunately didn’t fit the established “All homeless people are homeless by choice, drug addicts, drunks and trouble-makers” narrative, it HAD to be shut down.
Something that most people will not and can not understand is there’s no getting up once you’re down unless you catch an incredible break. Of course a lot of us end up anti-capitalist or anarchist, we’re some of the very few who become really familiar with the system out of necessity. It’s set up to keep you running in circles. You don’t have this so you have to go over here on Tuesday between 1 and 3 and wait in a line but really you have to be in line at 4 in the morning and MAYBE you’ll be near the front enough to get what you need because they’re only giving three away and the whole time you’re missing other things like food and then you have to walk the 50 blocks back with 90 pounds on your back, so on and so forth. I mean, try applying for a job when you walk in smelling like ass and carrying a raggedy four-foot tall pack on your back. It’s the minute logistics that keep you down. And guess what? If you’re NOT an addict, not dying, not a family with children, not insane, not disabled, not a veteran, there’s no help. You can get on a shelter waiting list but it’s going to be MONTHS until you even qualify. For the record, the majority of the junkies, tweakers and crackheads I met on the street weren’t addicts until they were homeless. When you have to deal with what we deal with every day, any source of comfort becomes appealing over a long enough stretch.
When we started Phoenix Rising we wanted to defy all definitions of “homeless.” Despite all of our skills in carpentry, gardening, conflict resolution, public relations, etc., no one would hire us because we were already homeless, so we did everything the city claims it wants from a homeless person in order to at least be dry and safe until we can appear well-off enough to be hired somewhere.
Nick Fish says, “”But if people have no choice, it’s my preference that they find smaller, dispersed places to camp.” Well, I’d like Nick Fish to enforce that personally, I’d like him to do ride-alongs with police and tell them that personally, because there is NO place, and I mean NO PLACE, where someone can sleep without eventually being rousted by ODOT, or Clean and Safe, or security, or transit police, or police on seqways, on horses, in cars, on bikes. Fuck Nick Fish and fuck Mayor Adams. I mean, we’re talking about sleep here. The most basic human need there is besides water.
People will talk day and night about things that have no understanding of. If it’s so easy to deal with and to get out of, I invite anyone to go ahead and give it a try then.
And to Bruce, who says, “Persuade a landowner or a public entity how you can improve/protect their land while living there, and you might be surprised how many are willing to consider that possibility.” Do you seriously think that hasn’t been tried? Do you really think every option hasn’t been exercised? You are dealing with people at their wit’s end and it is that way for a reason. This is what I mean when I say there’s almost no way out except for a lucky break. Everything you or most anyone else could POSSIBLY think of, we’ve already tried.
Is there any more free land any where ?Any where???
Prejudice and hatred comes from fear. Not innate fear, but one that has been carefully instilled by society. These are our fellow humans, brought low, but struggling to rise. How dare you condemn a part of society (yes it is a part of us) that you don’t know anything about? Educate yourselves on the real causes of homelessness, addiction, crime. Gain compassion and understanding. And yes, if I did have a yard, I would let someone camp on it.
Bruce:
Maybe if your family and support ssytem were lost and you lost your job you’d be singing another tune. Don’t fucking tell me you haven’t had a handout from a loved one in the past while struggling. I have. We all have. If those people were dead, then WE’D be ont he street. Like some of then. Some people DONT have that you entitled, naive, cold motherfucker. Your day will come. Or not. But if it does I’ll like you to come to my house and offer to slave for me to sleep under my stoop. So I could spit on you….or merely shrug at you and say, “fuck off.”
Right on Lone man..Drug addicts,drunks and trouble makers?Hell theres a lot of those folks in the workforce too.
Why is there no coalition of homeowners offering free camping to homeless in their backyards? Why do self-styled liberal homeowners and renters bitch and gripe about what the city (i.e. somebody else) should do for homeless folks, but never offer their own humble plots for camping? Why does the only poster here offering up their hypothetical plot not actually own one?
I think you know the answer to that question. It’s the same reason projects get trashed, it’s the same reason that shelters are hornets nests of thieving and assault. You have to take ownership in something to respect it. It’s why socialism will always result in the same end–cannibalism.
In response to “I am a Capitalist.”
I don’t know of course, but I suppose that you are a worker. Possibly you are in management or are a small business owner. Being in favor of or supporting the system of capitalism does not make one a capitalist. It takes more than that. It takes Capital. I think it a distinction worth making.
http://www.brainyquote.com/words/ca/capita…
This homeless problem started when all the vampires went sparklely or moved to Austin. Randy Leonard should not have ran them out by shutting down the vampire bars.
Why don’t we tell them about the ‘take our jobs’ campaign? Migrant workers are people who move around to different farms to pick or plant food…some employers even provide housing and food in addition to minimum wage. Right now, this program is guaranteeing any unemployed American a job. Stephen Colbert did it for a day…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kurt-friese/…
It’s not easy, but if americans start doing it, then the farms who employ migrant workers will be forced to give them decent working conditions because americans have the ability to sue them if they deny breaks/don’t supply water/don’t have sanitary bathrooms/etc. Right now, they rely on illegals because illegals can’t hold the companies accountable.
Of course, this doesn’t take care of the homeless who are homeless because of mental problems, but our mental health system is a whole other story…..
Dear Bruce
Being a sleeved and neck tattooed individual who works hard, pays rent, lives in society and works two jobs. f&)k you. Grow up. Only in the past 70 years have people tried so hard to look as plain and normal as possible. Point number two, most homeless people are not drunks and junkies automatically. And last I checked the words PUBLIC means for use from all. There should be shelter to take them in, or spots to camp. Only in your current over development has it become a bigger issue. and Blabby I am glad that you can enhance gentrification and be blind to see that an area that use to be gangland biker, lower class, and gang territory has had your first ever problems with homelessness. Your kind of ignorant and dumb to what is around you.
Sincerely
Brian Budack