What a week on the homeless front. A partnership between some of the most powerful interests in the city and a group of homeless activist, a snowstorm and the Portland police chief announcing a plan to address homelessness downtown. Wow.
I haven’t even mentioned that there’s a plan in the works to potentially move a prominent downtown shelter to the Eastside, but honestly, that’s a story for another time.
First things first, a big kudos should go out to all of the men and women who have been working around the clock to serve people on the streets.
Individuals on the streets endure much, and none more than during the current snowstorm. There’s nothing logical or remotely civilized about watching people struggling without a home during the dead of winter.
I go on the Internet and see reporters and pundits making fun of the conditions in Sochi during the Russian Olympics and then walk out the door at Street Roots in Old Town to see a 64-year-old man freezing in the doorway. You tell me.
There’s been an army of social workers, do-gooders, police officers, the fire bureau, and many others working around the clock during these cold nights. They have one simple goal — to not let anyone freeze to death. They do it with compassion and heart. They should be saluted.
If you’re interested in volunteering or donating goods during cold spells, or anytime for that matter, holler. 2-1-1. It’s one of the most important numbers you can have in your phone.
Pretty sweet that Right 2 Dream Too continues to navigate, with grace no doubt, in some very complex political waters. I’m very happy they’ve been able to negotiate the next steps of their journey with the city.
Here we have a group of 70 individuals experiencing homelessness, many from the Old Town neighborhood, who have managed to collectively pull themselves up by the bootstraps and achieve some amazing feats.
How about giving hundreds of people on the streets a safe place to rest for pennies on the dollar. I mean, we’re not even talking breadcrumbs here. More so, the group has held its head high, while being ridiculed and undercut, sideswiped and pushed down by some of the most powerful downtown interests in this city. That’s what I call some big-time resilience.
So what about Police Chief Mike Reese dropping a pretty big surprise on Portland this week? When the mayor was out of town. Not many people saw that coming.
In case you missed it, Chief Reese, unveiled a plan to tackle downtown homelessness using a range of services — for the most part supported by the community, but led by law enforcement.
Before I even start. I have a lot of respect for Chief Reese. I’ve watched the man deescalate some pretty serious mental health crises with my own two eyes. I’ve also been involved in different processes with him to deliver real outcomes in the community for people on the streets. The man has heart.
That’s why I was a little taken back when he laid out “Portland Prosper,” a complex strategy to curtail homelessness downtown. A lot of what was presented has been worked and reworked for years. What made this proposal different is that it comes at a time when there have been a range of different processes taking place to try to come up with those same solutions.
Let’s step back for a minute.
First, it’s my assumption that the Portland Business Alliance and some folks downtown are mad as hell. They may not say it publically, but let’ be honest. They haven’t been able to move sidewalk legislation forward in two years. They have to deal with a homeless camp called Right 2 Dream Too, and insiders who believe homelessness is actually driving business away from downtown Portland.
Their whole message, packaged in various ways, has amounted to the notion that downtown Portland’s livability is at risk unless we act now. Right now. We’ve heard it time and again, year after year. The British are coming. Damn the torpedoes. Rush the gates. The Road Warriors and homeless people are coming to town and will have a stranglehold on our city.
One of the constant messages to leverage a more robust sidewalk and other quality of life laws has been a skateboard attack at the Outdoor Store downtown this summer. A elderly employee was injured badly by a young man who was presumed to be homeless. It’s a very tragic story, and at this point, I would like to find the kid and throw him in jail for all the trouble he’s caused. But let’ be real, it was one incident.
That’s not to say something bad won’t happen again. It will. We live in a city with more than half a million people. Of course, we should constantly be working to detour violence downtown. What we shouldn’t be doing is making homeless people public enemy number one.
Now, if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. Downtown Portland is thriving. Tourism is at an all-time high, thriving neighborhoods have risen in the Pearl and South Waterfront, and crime is down — way down. We are a city on a hill.
When Chief Reese dropped his proposal about Portland Prosper, my first thought was, that man is going to run for mayor. My second thought was, did Mayor Charlie Hales, his direct supervisor, know about this? My third thought was, does he actually have enough gas in the tank to pull it off?
The plan itself has some interesting aspects that Street Roots has advocated for, like more police officers walking the streets and coordinated approaches to housing. It also has elements that felt like it was drafted by the same interest groups wanting stricter so-called “quality of life” laws.
I decided to do an afternoon’s worth of research and talk to sources around the city. Many of the people I talked with thought that the mayor probably didn’t know about Portland Prosper. What difference would it make if he did or he didn’t, the thinking was. It might just be the right amount of leverage to pursue a more aggressive public safety agenda downtown. Something Hales has highlighted in pubic speeches.
Then there was the Thetus Corp., a downtown tech firm that has volunteered to work with the police bureau to do a free analytics for services and strategies on downtown homelessness.
It didn’t seem like that big of a deal until Street Roots ran across a 2008 article in the Portland Business Journal on the tech company that reported that Thetus Corp., received funding from In-Q-Tel, a venture fund set up by the Central Intelligence Agency. That’s interesting. I wonder who its other clients are?
Reese recently had a meeting on his schedule with the Thetus Corp., along with police officer Jeff Myers, a controversial figure among the homeless and their advocates.
Myers is known on the homeless front for being a renegade of sorts. His philosophies include targeting people experiencing homelessness through the criminal justice system. He worked closely with former City Commissioner Randy Leonard on a range of projects. His approach to public safety and housing has been a criticized by some and lauded by others.
So here we have a police chief, unveiling a program to target downtown homelessness, out of the blue, at a time when many believe there’s a leadership gap at City Hall on the homeless front. How would the mayor and the rest of City Hall respond? Is it smart politics?
Will someone emerge from City Hall to champion the plan? Where will the money come from? Will other bureaus and non-profits be asked to take part? Will Jeff Myers be overseeing the plan? How will the Thetus Corp. actually play a role? Does it mean passing stricter ordinances affecting the homeless?
There are more questions about Portland Prosper at this point than there are answers.
Stay tuned. We’ll find out soon.
