The sentiments above are from one person experiencing homelessness, but they resonate with anyone who has spent a night on the streets. In a report by Sisters Of The Road, part of its extensive interview program, hundreds of people on the streets spoke about the need for a day access center. Unsurprisingly, the common themes among those interviewed are safety, peace, flexible hours and access to the tools that will help them get a job, health care and a home of their own.
Portland’s 10-year plan to end homelessness requires such a place, and the Street Access for Everyone workgroup echoed the need as a pillar in its recommendations to improve the quality of living in downtown Portland. And on a quiet little stretch of 13th Avenue in southwest Portland, a small hospitality center known as Daywatch is stepping up to the plate.
“This is the kind of model for what they want to do. A model in miniature,” says Marvin Mitchell, speaking about the city’s long-term plans to create a permanent day access center. Mitchell works Daywatch through its host, the First Presbyterian Church.
The ink hasn’t yet dried — or even landed — on the contract as of press time, but the city and Daywatch, a morning hospitality service, expect to create a day access center in the coming weeks — a $32,000 deal to hire two part-time staffers and open daily as drop-in center. Currently, Daywatch has only one part-time staff member, Tom Wilson, who will go full-time as part of the arrangement. The rest of the assistance comes from dozens of volunteers.
“A lot of it still will be just helping people who may not ever get off the street, but I feel like they still need a place where they can be treated like people and not like cattle,” says Wilson.
Daywatch doesn’t have the capacity to cook meals, but its utility kitchen provides beverages, coffee, danishes and sandwiches when available. Inside, there are tables and chairs for guests, two restrooms, and access to an adjoining courtyard off of the sidewalk that is covered with a canopy during the rainy season. “I really don’t think there’s another place like it in the city,” Mitchell said.
The capacity of Daywatch at any one time is about 50, but Mitchell says they expect to be able to serve 200 to 300 people a day, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on most weekdays and Saturdays, with the exception of 8-11 a.m. on Thursdays. The center will not be open on Sundays. Mitchell believes that with the courtyard, the come-and-go flow of people, and the relationship they’ve built with the community around them, the additional traffic will not be a problem in the neighborhood.
People on the street have advocated for a day center for years, calling for a place where people can store their belongings and escape from the pressures of drug dealers and predators on the streets. A work hub where people can prepare for and look for employment.
“Right now I don’t have a place to go. Nowhere,” says one man who is trying to find work while experiencing homelessness. He often solicits day labor, which is a hit-or-miss proposition. “I’ll get work for four weeks or two days and then you have to figure out where to spend the rest of your day. You need somewhere, you know?”
Daywatch’s philosophy is one of no barriers. It is strictly a drop-in center – there are no intake requirements like those associated with other government-contract services. Daywatch doesn’t require identification, TB cards, or collect demographics, which are often a deterrent to many people on the street seeking shelter. Because of this, Mitchell said the city is relaxing its typical intake requirements for the center.
“This is a different kind of contract than they’ve done before,” says Mitchell “We won’t do it if it doesn’t. We’re not going to compromise our program. We’ve got a certain street cred. We don’t do those things.”
Through June, the end of the fiscal year, the city has budgeted $250,000 for restrooms and benches and $45,000 for the day access center. The $45,000 was matched by the Portland Business Alliance, bringing the total through June to $90,000. For the upcoming fiscal year, July 2007 through June 2008, the mayor’s office is requesting $300,000 for restrooms and benches to cover maintenance and attendants for the restrooms and to purchase and install more benches. Kyle Chisek with Mayor Tom Potter’s office says the restroom program is still a pilot project at this point, and the SAFE oversight committee may determine more recommendations are necessary to meet the need.
The city’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development has also requested an additional $90,000 for continued funding for the access centers, with the expectation that matching funds will also be available, Chisek says.
“The reason the day access centers are funded year-to-year is that the 10-year plan to end homelessness recommends that there be a permanent day access center,” Chisek says. “By funding the temporary spaces on this basis, it keeps everyone’s feet to the fire on developing the permanent center.”
While Daywatch itself is a drop-in center, it also serves as an access point for the Julia West House, a facility operated by the First Presbyterian Church that provides employment training, computers, GED classes, showers and a host of other services to help people transition off the streets or simply enrich their lives. Most of the people who enroll in workshops through Julia West are a result of the relationships built on the first floor, at Daywatch, Mitchell says. It is the counterbalance to people who argue that a day access center is simply enabling people to stay homeless.
“The fact is we’re not just enabling. Because of the other opportunities and encouragement we supply, some of those people are taking control and confronting their barriers, and rising above them,” Mitchell says. “If we do nothing, we’re going to have the same number of people [on the streets]. With workshops, several will return to the mainstream. The difficulties in finding a job are so overwhelming. We’re trying to attack the problems, one problem at a time. We’re breaking it down so you’re not overwhelmed by the total mountain you have to climb.”
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“Portland needs a day shelter where if you’re working you can lock your stuff up in a cubbyhole and it’s safe. You know, if you work nights you can go and sleep during the day. Or if you’re physically impaired, like I am, a place where you can just get out of the rain, out of the weather, and get help that you need, you know, access to a phone, access to mail, just the common things.”
— Sisters Of The Road homeless surveys
Daywatch is only one site under consideration as a day access center. While the 10-year plan to end homelessness advocates for a centralized location, the city’s immediate steps are to disperse the load on several sites.
“It just made sense to consider multiple locations for a temporary space since none of the existing programs could provide enough space quickly enough,” says Monica Goracke, an attorney with the Oregon Law Center and the co-chair of the SAFE Oversight committee.
Goracke said the SAFE workgroup liked the urban rest-stop model used in Seattle because it could leverage existing resources such as churches and volunteer groups, and it could serve people in various neighborhoods.
“It's going to be a matter of financial resources and political will as to whether there can be both one larger downtown-area access center plus a network of urban rest stops throughout the city. Knowing the severe needs homeless people face, I think it would be excellent, but I also know from talking to people that there is a misperception that Portland already helps homeless people too much. We have to show the community that day access centers are a good use of resources and really will help people.”
In addition to Daywatch, Our Peaceful Place, a hospitality center for street-level services, is also in vying to become part of the city’s initiative. Formerly located in Old Town/Chinatown, and then temporarily sited in northeast Portland, Our Peaceful Place is now operating its hospitality and outreach services without an office, directly on the streets through the work of its director, Barb Lescher. Lescher is working to locate a permanent site in northeast Portland near 7th Avenue and Davis St. that could accommodate up to 160 people at a time. The facility would be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. five days a week and specifically on weekends when other facilities are closed.
“Most of the people are really trying to take care of business,” Lescher says. “And there’s not a lot of business they can take care of [outdoors].”
Ultimately, Lescher would like to provide an access center seven days a week and with hours extending later into the evening, along with employment services, storage facilities and advocates on site.
“Everyone is tentatively excited and looking ahead to it,” Lescher says of the people she knows on the streets. “They think that maybe it will be a good thing, but there’s a wait-and-see attitude. I think people are hopeful. There are so many newly homeless that I meet everyday. They’re not skeptical, they’re just hopeful because here’s such a shortage of services and they’re hopeful it will help them.”
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“I know we need more comfortable places where people could rest and read, regroup … we all have… wisdom and the ability to heal, and [to be] back on track, it’s just…we need...to recharge our batteries, you know? Like hamsters running on a wheel, it is not going to happen. Give people places where they can have their dignity.”
— Sisters Of The Road homeless surveys
The day access center is only one part of the equation the city is grappling with to accommodate the SAFE workgroup’s recommendations. In the initial stages of implementation, the city plans on siting seven new benches in downtown Portland, with the plan to add more in the coming fiscal year. All of them are to be placed in the high pedestrian traffic areas targeted by the SAFE work group. But installing a bench isn’t as easy as it may appear. After a walk around the downtown area in search of the best bench locations, the bench subcommittee for the SAFE workgroup found their intentions complicated by wheelchair requirements, loading zones and lifts, and simply space.
“When we actually walked around and looked at possible locations, there definitely seemed to be a lack of public seating around some of the service providers in Old Town,” said Monica Goracke, “Fifth and Sixth avenues are wide enough and could probably use more benches, but those streets are going to be torn up for months and months and it makes no sense to waste the few new benches on construction sites. There is also not much public seating on the busiest downtown streets like Broadway, Third and Fourth, and the cross-streets like Alder and Taylor. Some of the businesses have small tables and chairs right outside, but there isn't much space between businesses and they are responsible for their parts of the sidewalk, I believe. When we were trying to figure out where you could actually put a bench or even more of the table-and-chair style seating, it was really difficult because the sidewalks are fairly narrow, there are a lot of other fixtures, there are a lot of loading zones, and there is a lot of foot traffic.”
Another subcommittee of the SAFE workgroup is working on siting and maintaining public restrooms in downtown Portland, addressing a public hygiene issue that plagues homeless and housed people alike.
Come June, all of these efforts to find places for people to go will be counterbalanced by new ordinance prohibiting sitting or lying down in the city’s high-pedestrian traffic areas between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Members of the homeless advocacy community have gotten behind creating a day access center, restrooms and benches, but have, in general, not supported the new sit-lie ordinance linked to their existence by the SAFE workgroup. Complaints by the Oregon ACLU prompted the City Council to delay enactment of the ordinance until the facilities were in place. The ordinance is now expected to be enacted in June.
“There are thousands of homeless on the street,” said one person experiencing homelessness who did not want her name used. “What the city wants to do is trade that concession for a very small number of people to gain our acceptance for a sit law ordinance, which is not going to happen. The homeless are not going to accept a sit-lie ordinance.”
“I'm still cautiously optimistic,” says Goracke. “With a set of recommendations this broad and potentially costly, it hasn't surprised me that implementation hasn't been an instant process. Also, I had a feeling when we finalized the report that as difficult as it was to get a very diverse group of stakeholders to agree on language for a set of recommendations, it would turn out to be even more difficult to ensure that the recommendations would be implemented in a timely way that honored the workgroup's intention. And that makes it sound like the group had only one intention when in reality, I think each member of the group had his or her own reasons for agreeing to certain recommendations and sometimes even different visions of how each recommendation would be implemented.”
Ultimately, it is up to the City Council, the police, Clean & Safe and various city agencies to make the new facilities happen, Goracke says, with the help of the SAFE oversight committee she co-chairs.
“The oversight committee will be an extra set of eyes and ears to make sure the recommendations don't sit on a shelf or become window dressing. SAFE's report showed the need for substantive change in the way the City deals with a diverse urban population. I don't have any reason to believe at this point that substantive change will not happen, but I also plan to continue watching closely.”
