Difficulty in creating a day access center for the homeless has led business leaders and the mayor to throw more money into the effort, while those coordinating the project are considering a modified version of services with a new version of the law.
This winter, the City Council approved the recommendations by the mayor’s appointed Street Access for Everyone, or SAFE workgroup, which included creating a day access center, adding benches downtown and providing public restrooms. Contingent on those services being in place is an ordinance that would prohibit sitting or lying on public sidewalks in downtown Portland and the Lloyd District during the day. Both the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon and advocates with Sisters Of The Road have come out against the ordinance, known as sit-lie.
Now, in a balancing act between direct services and the creation of the ordinance, the SAFE oversight committee, charged with implementing the workgroup’s recommendations, is requesting that the city push forward with some of the services that would be part of a day access center, without a complete 150-space facility. With that, the committee is also requesting that the city enact the sit-lie ordinance, which the City Council withdrew in February because those services were not yet in place.
“Given the reality of how hard it is to find a day access site, it makes more sense to put the resources more quickly into the services we actually need,” said Monica Goracke, co-chair of the SAFE oversight committee, and an attorney with the Oregon Law Center.
A temporary day access center has opened with expanded hours at the Julia West House on 14th Avenue in southwest Portland. But it can only accommodate about one-third of the 150 spaces the SAFE workgroup had requested. The day access center proposal is a component of the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness, and Transition Projects Inc., a homeless and low-income housing provider in Portland, is online to provide that service in the future. However, TPI Executive Director Doreen Binder said TPI doesn’t have the capacity to run a temporary access center for 150 people. at this time. And that the funding provided was not enough to provide all the supportive services outlined in the SAFE recommendations.
“We didn’t want it to just be a holding tank,” Binder said.
Without a full day access center in place, the committee is proposing the city move forward with creating locker space, shower access, added outreach and housing placement services and the assignment of a staff person to work on establishing a center. The city originally committed $90,000 toward the SAFE recommendations, but to push this effort forward, the mayor has committed $350,000 in new money from the city through 2008, and the Portland Business Alliance, which originally pledged $45,000 toward the day center, has upped its ante to $150,000 through 2009.
The committee has reached a tentative agreement to place between 75 and 100 lockers at 15th and Lovejoy streets, under the I-405 overpass. The additional funds will also be used to increase shower capacity at the Julia West House. The committee continues to look for more shower space to serve the homeless.
“What this would be is basically a change to the original consensus in that we’re not meeting the 150 capacity for day space,” Goracke said. “Instead we’re getting the lockers, the showers and we’re continue to look for the temporary space. But I think that’s going to come on line soon enough. The business community is pushing to get the sit-lie ordinance enacted. We’re saying we don’t want it to be enforced until the pieces are in place. We’re carving out a really slim place in the middle.”
It now comes down to timing. The ordinance is expected to pass City Council, and once that happens it will be enacted 45 days after passage, about the time that the city’s additional funding for services comes on line.
“We can’t get any of the city money until July 1, and we can’t get this stuff until we get the [Portland Business] Alliance money, and they won’t free that up until they get the ordinance,” says Goracke.
Officers enforcing the sit-lie ordinance will be required to give both verbal warnings and then written warnings before actually issuing a citation. Police will be required to keep a written record of the warnings they issue, and Clean and Safe officers, employed by the Portland Business Alliance to patrol the downtown area, will be required to document every time they approach someone about it, Goracke said, with oversight provided by the committee.
“The mayor has committed that if we identify any problems, we can suggest or ask for changes to the ordinance,” Goracke said.
But the ordinance is still a contentious issue, even among some people on the SAFE Workgroup that cleared its way.
In response to the oversight committee’s requests, Andrea Meyer with the ACLU, and one of the members of the SAFE workgroup, said the ACLU cannot support the proposal.
“Since this appears to be asking for approval to the SAFE report with modifications and ACLU can no longer support the SAFE report [since we do not believe the actual ordinance is consistent with the terms set forth in the report], ACLU is a dissenting vote,” Meyer wrote in response to the committee’s request. “If I had been provided the text of the ordinance prior to our vote on the original report, I would have prepared a dissenting, or minority, report. Although I do not think that is a viable option now, I will not re-endorse this package.”
Sisters Of The Road co-founder and homeless advocate, Genny Nelson, a member of the SAFE Workgroup and the oversight committee, has come out against the ordinance. Nelson said she made a mistake in agreeing to a sit-lie ordinance as a member of the SAFE workgroup, but she supports moving ahead with putting the services in place, even before bringing a 150-space access center online.
“When we talk to our constituents, they’re not saying don’t give us those spaces. Give them to us as soon as you can, but don’t wait for months and months and not do anything around the needs we have today,” Nelson said.
Key to the SAFE committee’s requests is the appointment of a staff person to work on finding a day access center location. Finding a building that is the right size, with the right facilities, at the right price, has proven problematic.
At one point, discussion on sites for the center targeted a building at 7th and Davis streets, on the southeast side of the river. But the Central Eastside Industrial Council came out in opposition of that plan, both in terms of location and logistics.
“It didn’t seem right that the ordinance would be downtown and Lloyd district, and make the people walk all the way to central eastside where there is no free public transportation,” said CEIC President Tim Holmes. “That was the primary thing that we found distasteful. Clean up downtown and push them over to the central eastside. We didn’t think that was right for the people they were trying to help out.”
