An oft-sued nonprofit is poised to play a major role in Portland’s controversial mass homeless camps.
Mayor Ted Wheeler announced the city selected Urban Alchemy to run at least one mass homeless camp March 9 — a pivotal first step in the city’s effort to install up to six mass camps. Much like the mass camp plan itself, the announcement was met with immediate opposition from homeless advocates highlighting the controversial nonprofit’s ongoing legal troubles stemming from other camps and shelters it operates.
Wheeler said the city’s new plan to address homelessness was in the implementation stage, announcing the new partnership with Urban Alchemy and the location for the inaugural campsite — 1490 SE Gideon St.
“I’m grateful that Urban Alchemy is partnering with us on this vital project,” Wheeler said during the press conference. “I’m confident that this is the right team for the city of Portland.”
The announcement came after months of speculation in local press about the nonprofit, which was ultimately one of two bidders on the project and also part of the inspiration for the city’s outdoor camps designed to host up to 250 unhoused residents while connecting them with services.
Among the organization's distinct approaches to running its sites, Urban Alchemy hires formerly incarcerated people, reasoning that lived experience with homelessness and incarceration provide needed insight to support residents and help them stabilize their lives.
“We’re able to do this because we share a special bond with society’s most vulnerable — and because we see ourselves in their struggle,” Urban Alchemy’s website states. “We know what it means to be dismissed and disrespected. We recognize the humanity in those who are struggling, and we treat them how we once wished others had treated us.”
Founded in 2018, the organization runs outdoor homeless encampments in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“After conducting a comprehensive search and completing a competitive bidding process, we’ve selected a qualified service provider with experience managing outdoor service shelters,” Wheeler said.
Despite the city’s vote of confidence, a series of lawsuits against Urban Alchemy raises questions about the organization’s operations. The organization has faced at least five lawsuits with allegations from improper training to harassment by employees to the organization failing to pay its employees.
No fuckery?
The organization markets itself as one uniquely qualified to work with unhoused populations because of its connection to that community.
Urban Alchemy marketing is emblazoned with a moniker reading “No Fuckery,” part of an ethos that is both spiritual and no-nonsense in presentation.
Urban Alchemy defines “No Fuckery” this way:
“It’s applicable to people and situations. It’s shorthand for anti-bullshit. It’s a rejection of self-deception. It’s calling out the lies. It’s a stance against injustice. It’s holding ourselves and others to account. It’s being a better human being. On the streets, we call this No Fuckery.”
In an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting in January — Urban Alchemy’s notable first introduction to the Portland community — Kirkpatrick Tyler, Urban Alchemy’s chief of governmental and community affairs, denied the allegations in the slew of lawsuits plaguing the organization.
“So all of those are being settled,” Tyler said in the interview. “There are some that just aren’t true. The most egregious and most troubling of all, if you do any further research, you’ll see that they’ve been disproven.”
Serious allegations have dogged the organization. An article in the Pacific Sun from June 2022 details at least 10 residents saying employees were using drugs on-site, among other allegations.
At least two of the lawsuits filed against Urban Alchemy were on behalf of individuals suing the organization for civil rights violations.
One of these is a 2019 lawsuit filed on behalf of Shawn Sunshine Strickland, a transgender activist and local celebrity known as “The Supergirl of San Francisco,” which alleges Urban Alchemy employees harassed Strickland while she was “praying silently” in United Nations Plaza, an outdoor public park in San Francisco.
The lawsuit alleges employees demanded Strickland leave the park and contacted the San Francisco Police Department when she refused. According to Strickland, Urban Alchemy employees consistently misgendered her throughout the interaction.
Beyond the interaction with Strickland, the lawsuit contends Urban Alchemy “has deployed hundreds of inadequately-trained, reformed long-term felons in public spaces to assume certain government functions traditionally performed by professionally-trained law enforcement personnel.”
To prove this point, the complaint also describes two other instances of harassment, one against a journalist and another against a homeless person.
Stickland’s case was settled in December 2022. The city of San Francisco agreed to pay Strickland $10,000. The settlement also requires the city to “provide training to its employees on their interaction with members of the public exercising constitutional rights of freedom of speech, assembly, and the practice of religion, and/or the right to peacefully remain, as applicable, in public forums.”
According to Donald Wagda, Stickland’s lawyer, the settlement terms between Strickland and Urban Alchemy and its fiscal sponsor are confidential.
Another class action lawsuit filed in 2020 by a former employee alleges a number of labor violations. According to the lawsuit, Urban Alchemy consistently failed to pay overtime, give employees proper breaks or provide employees with proper pay stubs itemizing hours and wages.
According to the lawsuit, Urban Alchemy “maintained a uniform wage practice of paying (employees) … without regard to the correct amount of overtime worked and correct applicable overtime rate for the amount of overtime they work,” resulting in the organization’s employees, many of them formerly incarcerated, being systematically underpaid.
Street Roots reached out to an attorney for the employees in this case, who said they could not make a public comment because the settlement agreement, which still awaits court approval, contains a provision barring public comment.
Cody Bowman, Wheeler’s communications lead, declined to comment on Urban Alchemy’s legal problems, instead deferring questions to Urban Alchemy.
In the press conference announcing Urban Alchemy, Wheeler praised the organization, noting he, members of his staff and commissioners Carmen Rubio and Dan Ryan had favorable reviews of the nonprofit after visiting Urban Alchemy sites in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,” Wheeler said of these visits. “That was my own experience as well. Urban Alchemy will likely run more than one shelter site here in the city of Portland, and their headquarters will be based at the Southeast Gideon Street location.”
Urban Alchemy declined to comment on any of the lawsuits.
Rapid growth
Urban Alchemy gained nonprofit status in 2019 and went on to secure contracts to run outdoor homeless encampments in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which it has operated since 2020.
In 2019, the year Urban Alchemy became a nonprofit, it garnered $35,983 in revenue, according to tax filings. After securing contracts with San Francisco and Los Angeles, its revenue ballooned to $10.1 million.
Notably, funds these first two years were directed toward operational costs — all seven of its key employees listed no compensation in 2019. The following year, only two reported compensation — Lena Miller, now executive director, earned $30,519 for her then-role as chief executive officer, and Baryon Wilson earned $13,926 for his role as chief operating officer.
According to the proposal submitted to the city of Portland, Urban Alchemy has a budget of nearly $65 million (the bulk of which comes from reimbursement contracts) and nearly $6 million in net assets.
The camp is underway
Urban Alchemy will run the first camp to be unveiled by the city, located at 1490 SE Gideon St.
The details of how Urban Alchemy will run its operations will make or break the success of the camps.
In the March 9 press conference, Tyler said staff will search residents when they enter the camp and enforce bans on weapons, fires, and alcohol and drug use in public spaces.
The organization touts an approach to security diverging from law enforcement and criminalization, a stance in alignment with many homeless advocacy groups.
“We believe that calling the police shouldn’t be the default answer to poverty and desperation,” its website reads. “Our society can’t address trauma, addiction and mental illness with the same approach we use to tackle crime.”
Street Roots asked Urban Alchemy for details on its program, including how employees are vetted and how they are trained for their positions. Urban Alchemy did not provide specifics.
"Urban Alchemy practitioners, including those who will manage this site, are remarkable men and women,” Tyler said in a statement. “More than 90% of them are either formerly incarcerated or have lived experience with homelessness. They do their work with relentless compassion and empathy every day because they’ve been in the tragic circumstances that unhoused residents are experiencing right now.
"That makes our practitioners better prepared than anyone to create meaningful connections that build trust and result in change and healing. They have developed the skills to overcome those immense challenges. And we help them turn these life skills they’ve developed into a superpower — and career opportunities with Urban Alchemy that enable them to provide for their families and support their communities."
According to the proposal Urban Alchemy submitted to the city, all staff attend “UA Academy,” which consists of “approximately 40 hours of classroom instruction in the areas of emotional intelligence, trauma informed care, motivational interviewing, effective communication, de-escalation, advanced deescalation, harm reduction, self-care and wellness, safety, CPR, first aid, and use of naloxone.”
This training is supplemented with Urban Alchemy policy and procedure training that includes “an understanding of how to connect people to social services.” Employees, or “practitioners” in Urban Alchemy lingo, “also receive approximately 40 hours of on-the-job training over a 30-day period, where they are monitored, guided, and given feedback in real time.”
The organization’s proposal to the city details plans for overall management and addressing conflict.
It also provides the following service statistics for the past 12 months:
- Sheltering over 800 people each night in low-barrier, client-centered facilities.
- Connecting thousands of people to services that met their immediate and long-term needs.
- Reducing unsheltered homelessness by 15% in San Francisco and 50% in Hollywood and Venice.
- Engaging in over 6,000 de-escalations that kept the community safe without police involvement.
- Saving the lives of over 600 people through overdose reversals and other interventions.
- Providing over 600,000 toilet flushes and 14,000 showers for people in need
- Removing nearly 300 tons of trash from communities that are often neglected
- Employing over 1,000 formerly incarcerated individuals in good-paying jobs with a career path.
Notably, these statistics don’t include the number of residents transitioning into long-term housing. Street Roots requested these numbers from Urban Alchemy and did not receive them prior to publication.
Costly
Street Roots obtained a copy of Urban Alchemy’s proposal that details a proposed budget for a 150-person, 100-tent site, including staffing, program and overhead costs. Though not a final contract, the proposal provides details about the possible costs of the project.
According to Urban Alchemy’s proposed budget, the annual cost for operating one 150-person site would be just over $5.1 million, a figure that doesn’t include other costs to the city, such as site rental and liability insurance.
The budget for 2023 includes approximately $400,000 allotted for one-time start-up costs.
Urban Alchemy budgets the cost of monthly services for the 150-person camp at $427,901, or $94 per person each night. At that rate, the annual cost per person would total $34,232.
The bulk of this cost — $4.3 million — goes to staff salaries.
The pay rate for staff ranges from $21 to $48.08 an hour, and they receive health care and benefits, according to Urban Alchemy.
The proposal also included a $2.8 million budget for operating a 75-person tiny home site, though Wheeler did not mention plans to pursue tiny house communities during the press conference.
The city has not confirmed if Urban Alchemy signed a final contract.
A back-of-envelope estimate finds a $5.1 million annual rate per site would cost the city approximately $30 million per year to execute its plan for six camps — excluding other costs such as insurance and site rentals. The city did not provide details on the cost of renting the Southeast Gideon Street site, but previous reporting from Street Roots showed the city offered $25,000 per month for a site the city was looking at last year, though the landowner pulled out of the negotiation.
Too good to be true?
Wheeler called on the county to pony up more funds at last week's press conference, noting the current $27 million allotted by City Council wouldn’t be enough to get the mass camp project across the finish line.
Part of the city’s latest attempt to move homelessness from the streets, Urban Alchemy offers a more palatable approach, promising effective management and revitalized streets without relying on criminalization or police involvement.
“Alchemy is the mysterious ancient practice of transforming lead into gold,” Urban Alchemy’s website reads. “What we do creates a tangible social value — but is no less miraculous. Instead of lead, we seek to transmute human suffering. Instead of gold, we create peace.”
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