Opinion | The May 16 fire at the May Apartments displaced Street Roots vendor James Hammond and many others
When the fire alarm went off, James Hammond was preparing to head out for the day to sell Street Roots. He looked out of his second-floor apartment window.
“I saw a firefighter climbing up the fire escape,” James told me. “Uh-oh. This must mean trouble.”
He beelined out of his May Apartments unit on Southwest 14th Avenue — leaving behind his good reading glasses, his watch, his books and his Street Roots newspapers. He did remember his hearing aid.
Now he ticks through those items like a ritual, concerned about getting them back. But what he’s most concerned about is housing.
He’s been sleeping on a mat provided by the Red Cross at the University of Portland, along with some of the other people who evacuated about 60 units in the May 16 fire.
The building burned the morning of Election Day, and in his rush, he also left behind his filled-out Multnomah County ballot. That concerns him. For someone who cares as much about politics as James does, missing his chance to vote was another loss.
He moved to Portland when Jimmy Carter was president, James explained. Among the books he left behind in his apartment were biographies of other recent Democratic presidents — Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. A voracious reader, James struggled not having anything to read immediately after he evacuated except a motor vehicle pamphlet, which he read multiple times.
James was concerned that other evacuees only had coloring books and nothing to read when he stopped by Street Roots on May 19, so he picked up newspapers for his fellow evacuees, as well as Rose City Resource guides so they could learn about services available to them. After all, the maybe 100 people who lived in the now charred and toxic May Apartments were three days into homelessness.
There are moments in our community when we bear witness to people moving from housing to homelessness, and this is one of them. I’ve seen people on the streets with all their possessions mounded around them — their first hours after an eviction. More than 18,000 evictions were filed statewide last year, akin to smoldering fires of displacement.
In fact, James lost his last apartment due to a no-cause eviction a little over four years ago. He’s been in the May Apartments ever since.
For the time being, what people have is the Red Cross shelter. Chris Voss, Multnomah County director of emergency management, said they will soon know much more about the situation. The Joint Office of Homeless Services and the county Department of Human Services will assess whether the landlord has other apartments to relocate people to or if people have case managers to work with.
But it’s a risk that all these people could enter homelessness. It’s common to hear people speak of fires that precede their homelessness, as well as family deaths, medical bills and untenable domestic situations like violence.
Many of these fire evacuees were low-income, some of whom recently exited homelessness, according to Nicole Hayden’s reporting in The Oregonian.
There is, too often, a limited timespan of sympathy for people’s plight. In their study “Media Portrayals of Wildfire Displacement and Homelessness,” Portland State University professors Maude Hines and Janet Cowal examined media accounts of the 2020 forest fires. They found people displaced by fires are referred to as “evacuees” unless they were displaced from conditions of homelessness. Then they were always described as homeless, despite the fact that they, too, evacuated fires.
The point when someone is no longer described as an “evacuee” but rather as “homeless,” societal perceptions toward them harden, Hines and Cowal found.
It’s essential this does not happen, and the county does everything in its power to make sure people are safely housed. While it’s always important for landlords to step up and enter into partnerships with the Joint Office of Homeless Services to open up more apartments to people experiencing homelessness, now is a great reminder to do just that. The Metro Housing Services money should be used to get people into housing.
The county and city governments need to communicate so everyone is provided housing and not abandoned into homelessness. Let’s stay on top of this as a community.
That’s the ultimate goal, but in the meantime, each person needs support. James hopes to return to selling Street Roots, maybe outside Timbers games, only blocks from the ruins of his home. But right now, he is consumed with holding everything together while trying to locate housing.
Regardless of whether you locate him to buy a newspaper, you can support James via @streetroots on Venmo by adding his name and badge number (#270) in the transaction notes.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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