I’ll hand it to Sam Adams. Putting aside the alarming nature of his idea to warehouse 3,000 people in militarized spaces, he was thinking big — but not big enough.
It’s the same thing with the People 4 Portland campaign: they rightfully emphasize urgency toward the suffering on the streets. But just like Sam Adam’s plan, they seem to be leveling ideas that are … not big enough.
And by big I mean big-hearted. I mean big spirited. I mean brought forth with big energy and big love for the people who are suffering.
I’m afraid too much policy is currently stoked by the rage or stoking the rage that’s burning throughout the city, late in the pandemic as society deals with its many upheavals.
There is a lot of rage. I certainly feel it doing this work, and I’m not suffering on the streets treated as an object of that rage. As of print-time, the Oregonian reported that the alleged gunman in the Normandale Park mass shooting of protestors expressed such rage toward people experiencing homelessness, once pulling a gun on people sifting through the garbage.
There is a lot of rage, and clearly, it’s dangerous to allow it to govern actions.
Our city needs leadership that, as I write often, calls on our better angels.
There’s murmuring all over the city of people who are concerned. People watch as affordable housing takes years to build, much of it is still too expensive for the poorest people on the streets, knowing our community needs this housing, and yet the disconnect is enormous.
People hear plans for shelters and villages and then, again, wait for months as neighbors decry the siting of spaces where poor people will dwell. Taylor Griggs reports in this issue on such obstacles to the Safe Rest Villages proposed by Commissioner Dan Ryan’s office.
Some such just seem to disappear from public imagination, or by the time they get sited, the net gain of safer places to sleep seems negligible as more and more people slip into homelessness.
Let’s harness the big thinking, the urgent thinking, and go bigger. Sam Adams introduced the idea of sheltering 3000 people.
How about we open up good livable spaces for 3000 people, and do it without criminalizing them?
How about we as a community take up the challenge of finding livable spaces for 3000 people more quickly than — but alongside — the slow build of affordable housing?
The 3,000 Challenge
How would we do it? Project Turnkey on a statewide level turned 19 motels into livable spaces — shelters, transition housing, apartments — within about six months thanks to the able-steering of the Oregon Community Foundation. Could we have a Portland Turnkey?
How can we speed up the motel purchases and leases the City Council and Multnomah County allotted surplus budget funds toward in the fall? How do we keep using the motels used for COVID isolation should we reach the point where we don’t need them for COVID?
How can the government support more master leases to sustainably provide housing? Rather than divert that Metro Housing Services toward even more shelters, it can be used as intended, to provide long-term rent assistance to keep people in apartments, including buildings added through these master lease programs. It can be used to provide stabilizing support services.
Leaders need to stop suggesting schemes that “require” people to go in, as if poverty and health struggles sentence people to being rounded up. Can’t we, as a society, imagine living conditions that don’t involve imprisonment?
What has happened to any will for legal spaces for people to park their RVs and cars? And projects faith communities have planned?
What projects to provide good livable spaces — villages and more — are stalled because of funding, red tape, neighborhood opposition, need for administrative support (nonprofit status), etc.? What do we need to do to get these over the finish line? WeShinePDX needs funds. Hazelnut Grove needs help becoming a nonprofit. The list goes on, and I suspect, readers, you may know of more projects.
How can our communities better support Safe Rest Villages so they can really happen and they don’t come with sweep conditions?
Leaders need to stop suggesting schemes that “require” people to go in, as if poverty and health struggles sentence people to being rounded up. Can’t we, as a society, imagine living conditions that don’t involve imprisonment? When plans are about outlawing survival in public space, it’s like they are leapfrogging over the fact we’ve never had enough spaces and health services people can afford — and landing right in the punitive solution.
Actions on behalf of unhoused people should be focused on making their lives better, not worse. Our coverage in this issue digs deeper into these actions, including talking to people who are impacted by the policies. Henry Brannan went out and talked to people who camped near the busy streets Mayor Ted Wheeler ordered to be cleared of campers, and one woman described what we frequently hear: she chose to be there because she’s in eyeshot of passersby, and thus feels safer.
But that’s a standard we should be able to agree on: we should focus on collectively meeting the challenge of opening up and creating 3,000 livable spaces that make people’s lives better, not worse.
Let’s channel all this societal emotion into a bellicose love, a focused will, a fierce compassion. Let’s rise to this challenge.
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