The city has only identified two of six sites, hasn’t broken ground on a single camp or released information on contracted service providers
Commissioner Dan Ryan’s goal to build six city-sanctioned outdoor homeless encampments by the end of the year appears in flux, and critics are skeptical even if the city can meet the goal.
For most of 2021, Ryan led the charge to use money from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) — the federal COVID-19 relief act passed earlier this year — to address homelessness in the city by building government-sanctioned outdoor shelter villages.
In April, Portland City Council approved the Shelter to Housing Continuum Code Package — a code change allowing for alternative shelter models in zones across the city — and approved the Safe Rest Villages (SRV) as one of the projects funded by ARPA funding.
In the months that followed, Ryan’s “Streets to Stability: Safe Rest Villages” team slowly announced details of the project, which appeared to come together further after Portland City Council passed the Paving the Pathway from Streets to Stability ordinance in June. This ordinance said Portland “faces a houselessness crisis that in many ways is worse than anything we have previously experienced,” and provided the regulation required so the City Council could build six Safe Rest Villages before the end of 2021.
Floodplains and promises
According to the information available on the website outlining the details of the SRV plan, this project will consist of six outdoor shelter sites across the city that can hold about 300 people in pods, equipped with hygiene services and wraparound support for mental health and addiction treatment. However, beyond disclosing the locations of two shelters, much of the details are still up in the air.
We keep rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic,” Boden said. Without housing, shelters are never going to address homelessness.
Ryan announced plans for all six villages to be up and running by the end of 2021, using a budget of about $16 million out of the almost $25 million allocated from the American Rescue Plan dollars to address homelessness. The goal for all six to open by the end of the year is unlikely at the project’s current pace, but officials have not announced a new timeline. The team is still working to figure out locations for the majority of the planned shelters, and information about which organizations the city will contract to manage the intake process and wraparound services is currently unavailable.
Earlier this month, project managers announced three locations for the SRV sites: an underused “park and ride” lot at East Burnside Street and Southeast 122nd Avenue, a vacant lot on Southwest Naito Parkway and an area near the Springwater Corridor at Southeast 46th Place and Harney Drive. But already, the plan has run into some roadblocks, with managers scrapping the planned site near the Springwater Corridor shortly after announcing it due to flooding concerns.
One location falling through has only added to doubts the city will be able to meet the original timeline, and it raises concerns about the level of research conducted before announcing the planned sites.
After the city announced the sites, Portland Audubon, an environmental nonprofit, issued a statement saying the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services acquired the land as part of a floodplain restoration project.
This statement said Portland Audubon supports SRVs and said members of the group understand “some villages are likely to be located in close proximity or adjacent to natural areas.” Despite their support, the location created a safety risk for both SRV residents and the environment. Shortly after Portland Audubon pointed out these concerns, the city canceled plans for the site.
Bandage or solution?
This project carries some extra controversy beyond the location difficulties. Some homeless advocates fear government-sanctioned encampments like the SRVs serve as more of a distraction than a solution for homelessness.
Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), an organization advocating for homeless people across the West Coast, said projects like these could take attention away from the more significant issues causing homelessness, including wealth inequality and a lack of affordable housing.
“We keep rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic,” Boden said. “Without housing, shelters are never going to address homelessness.”
Bryan Aptekar, communications liaison for the Safe Rest Villages project, said these shelter sites are one of many initiatives addressing homelessness in Portland. Aptekar said Ryan’s office is working with organizations like the Portland Housing Bureau to ensure housing development is underway at the necessary rate.
“This is one of the menu options of many, and our program is not meant to be permanent housing,” Aptekar said. “This is meant to be short-term with the support to get to what’s next. The intention is to help people find permanent supportive housing, rehab programs or return them to family.”
To Darlene Garrett, co-chair of the Portland Downtown Neighborhood Association’s homeless action team, Safe Rest Villages can work alongside efforts for affordable housing reform and play an important role in the city’s homelessness response program. She wants to see Portland’s homeless residents achieve a higher standard of living, pointing out the unsanitary conditions many unhoused people face without regular access to bathrooms, showers and trash pickup.
“The priority is still to get people into affordable housing, but more tents keep coming,” Garrett said. “This is a step forward. It’s absolutely essential we have more places like this to take care of the humanitarian crisis that’s happening on our streets.”
A better way?
In Boden’s view, this “humanitarian crisis” could be solved without government-sanctioned shelters if local governments would provide unhoused residents with the facilities they need and allow people to have control over their environments instead of micromanaging.
“You could support people creating a cleaner or safer or healthier place to live in an encampment setting, but that would require that the people living there control the environment they’re living in,” Boden said. “Governments are co-opting the community model to meet their needs.”
Right now, there are several self-managed outdoor shelter sites in Portland. One example is the Right 2 Dream Too (R2D2) shelter in Northeast Portland, consisting of shelter structures that resemble “tiny homes” allotted for people who help run the shelter.
“I feel safer here than on the streets. It’s democratically run and a low-barrier shelter; there aren’t a lot of rules here or hurdles to get in,” said a resident and employee at the R2D2 shelter who asked to remain anonymous.
To this R2D2 resident, having a stake in the function of one’s shelter is an integral part of a well-run encampment program. As an employee helping to manage the site, this resident helps check people in for overnight stays, works to keep the area clean and helps distribute resources to short-term residents, and they said this work has been fulfilling.
“If there’s someone living on the streets who wants food and shelter and clothing, give them some incentive to do a little bit of work for it so they can feel that sense of accomplishment and purpose,” they said.
The city-run Safe Rest Village sites won’t be self-managed, the website for the project says they “will be managed by contracted (nonprofit) partners who provide wraparound services.” The role, if any, residents will play in determining intake and managing their shelter isn’t yet clear.
Questioning motives
Critics of the current SRV plan question the motives behind government-sanctioned shelters. Some advocates are concerned unsanctioned homelessness will only become more criminalized when sanctioned shelters like SRVs go up.
The Safe Rest Villages ordinance the Portland City Council passed in June made sure to clarify that people won’t be required to live at one of these shelters if a referral is made on their behalf.
However, organizations like People for Portland, a new nonprofit political group with anonymous funding, are campaigning to force people into shelters. Democratic political consultant Kevin Looper and lobbyist and former Republican consultant Dan Lavey co-founded the group.
An opinion piece by Looper and Lavey published in The Oregonian in August says a vast majority of Portland voters “support the idea of creating safe, managed villages across the city and requiring people to move off the streets,” according to their polling research. This statement may sound uncontroversial in theory, but in practice, activists say that requiring people to move off the streets and into shelters they had no say in building can be harmful.
“After a city government opens a shelter, they can tell homeless people to get out of sight,” Boden said. “They’ll attach all this bureaucracy with intakes so people [in unsanctioned encampments] are told to go to a sanctioned encampment, then told to come back a week after the intake.”
Garrett said she acknowledges the risk of further criminalizing unauthorized encampments. Unhoused Portlanders currently live in self-managed encampments at the shelter site planned on Southwest Naito Parkway. Garrett said she wants to make sure as many of the current occupants can move into the authorized shelter as possible.
But Garrett is concerned people will set up ancillary camps on the outskirts of the lot because of capacity limitations and intake requirements a sanctioned shelter like the SRV will have. This particular site is located next to the International School of Portland. Garrett said she is sure there is a way for the school community and the sanctioned shelter to coexist as long as the shelter is well-managed.
“If Safe Rest Villages are developed appropriately, any neighborhood would welcome them,” Garrett said.
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