When Mayor Ted Wheeler's then-senior advisor, Sam Adams, sent a memo to state, county and metro offices in January 2022, he acknowledged his ideas could give pause to his colleagues and the public.
"I understand my suggestions are big ideas," Adams wrote. "I imagine it will startle some."
The memo outlined a proposal to create one to three sanctioned encampments for 3,000 homeless Portlanders to help bolster city efforts to ban unsanctioned public sleeping in city limits.
Despite swift backlash from the public, Adams' memo was a harbinger of a new approach to Portland's homelessness crisis — one that homeless Portlanders and advocates say is already failing to deliver on its promises. The city maintains the fledgling structure it created since contracting with an embattled out-of-state nonprofit represents a new solution to the city’s homelessness crisis.
The proposal and the city’s subsequent actions test the boundaries of a state law governing anti-homeless ordinances and Martin v. Boise, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision barring jurisdictions from imposing civil and criminal penalties for public sleeping when a city does not have sufficient shelter capacity. Multnomah County and the city have nearly 2,700 shelter units available — enough for just 39% of the 6,300 homeless Multnomah County residents counted in the 2023 Point-in-Time Count, which the county and service providers believe is a substantial undercount.
Wheeler and Commissioner Dan Ryan picked up where Adams left off, planning to funnel homeless Portlanders into outdoor, temporary sites. City Council passed a package of city ordinances banning public sleeping and fast-tracking sanctioned mass encampments Nov. 3, 2022. At the time, Margaux Weeke, Ryan's then-senior policy advisor, resigned over the approach the night before Wheeler and Ryan announced the controversial plan.
"I am deeply concerned that the involvement of law enforcement in relocating unhoused people to sanctioned camps will result in violence and the further criminalization of houselessness," Weeke said in a resignation letter.
Through various iterations aligned with the city and business community's shared vision to move homeless Portlanders away from public spaces, the city awarded a $50 million contract to San Francisco-based nonprofit Urban Alchemy to manage up to five total encampments through Feb. 29, 2028.
Complaints in other cities plagued the nonprofit since its founding in 2018, including at least five lawsuits alleging abuse, sexual harassment and poor employee training.
Advocates and homeless Portlanders say the unfamiliar organization deserves scrutiny, as the city's approach falls short of materially addressing the homelessness crisis.
"This is not fixing anything," one homeless Portlander told Street Roots on condition of anonymity. "This is a temporary Band-Aid."
With no history in the city and few relationships with local service providers, can Urban Alchemy help resolve homelessness in Portland? How do the city and public hold the nonprofit accountable for upholding its end of the bargain?
"We didn't move into something better," the homeless Portlander said. "We moved into something that's way worse."
Urban Alchemy
In the 18 months between Adams' memo and the city opening Wheeler's first Temporary Alternative Shelter Site, or TASS, the concept morphed from one mass tent camp into multiple lower occupancy sites, partly due to federal and state funding restrictions making mass tent camps infeasible.
The city opened its first TASS in the Clinton Triangle of southeast Portland on July 25. Once the city and DEQ complete efforts to remediate contaminated soil at a polluted property in North Portland, the city will open its second TASS for recreational vehicles, tents and pods in 2024. Urban Alchemy also runs the Peninsula Crossing and Reedway Safe Rest Villages, or SRVs.
Urban Alchemy started working in Portland in March, and the complexity surrounding its reputation and work is becoming more evident as it attempts to forge relationships, according to local service providers. For homeless Portlanders and local advocates, questions remain about how the referral process works, what the organization provides to camp residents and the daily experiences of people living at Urban Alchemy-run sites.
At a joint city-county press conference announcing a framework to extend the Joint Office of Homeless Services, or JOHS, through June 2027, Wheeler said there is broad recognition between the city and the county that the county should ultimately be responsible for the TASS and SRV sites.
Referral system
Street Roots spoke with several homeless Portlanders currently or formerly living at Urban Alchemy-run sites to hear their experiences with the referral process and living at the sites. They each asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.
The local shelter and referral system is a patchwork of outreach workers and staff from public and private organizations across the city and county.
The first homeless Portlander who spoke to Street Roots said they felt hopeful when they received a call from a Portland Fire and Rescue, or PF&R, employee saying their name came up for a space at the Clinton Triangle site this fall. Hope quickly became overshadowed by stress.
Officials performing Community Safety Division and Street Services Coordination Center tasks sometimes wear PF&R uniforms despite not representing PF&R, according to Rick Graves, PF&R public information officer.
The homeless Portlander who received the call initially told the PF&R employee they needed an hour to pack up, but 20 minutes later, two people in PF&R uniforms showed up to escort them to the site. Rapid Response Bio Clean and Portland Police Bureau, or PPB — the two groups most often responsible for sweeping homeless encampments — also showed up, adding tension as they tried to pack their belongings.
"I needed this hour to put things together, okay, not to be like, having visits from all of you at the same time," they said. "It is counterproductive, and I'm at my wit's end here. What do you want me to do?"
Other current and former TASS residents told Street Roots they had similar experiences with police involvement as they moved out of their spaces and into the temporary sites.
PPB confirmed it assists Rapid Response Bio Clean at campsites in a security role.
“Our officers ensure that the process is a safe one,” Mike Benner, PPB public information officer, said. “PPB does not transport houseless individuals to TASS sites. The only transporting PPB does is to jail if it’s required in the specific situation.”
It is not city policy for police and Rapid Response Bio Clean to be involved in the process, and they do not participate every time, according to Cody Bowman, Wheeler’s communications director.
For some, contact with police during a move into a shelter can cause further trauma, and the practice of moving people from the streets under watch by law enforcement lacks a trauma-informed lens.
One outreach worker, whose job requires them to remain anonymous, corroborated homeless Portlanders’ experiences. The outreach worker recounted a story from a homeless Portlander they consistently worked with to get into the Clinton Triangle site. The homeless Portlander told them when it was finally time to go, a van arrived at their unsanctioned tent alongside a police escort, lights flashing. A PF&R employee told them the van, which would not open from the inside, would take them to the site.
The homeless Portlander told the outreach worker the presence of police was disturbing, and they were worried the encounter would hurt their "street cred." After a brief stay, they decided the TASS was not a good fit for them — they wanted to return to their community.
Waitlists
The homeless Portlanders, taken aback by the police presence, only arrived at that point after, in some cases, months of waiting and hoping.
Only some people who want to get into a temporary shelter can do so. Multnomah County has a complex prioritization system for people seeking shelter of all types, including waitlist spots for TASS and SRV sites.
"We're in a really disgusting space that I call the poverty Olympics,” Marisa Zapata, PSU Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative, or HRAC, director said. “Who is worse off, why and how? The reality is, anybody who is living experiencing homelessness is really terribly off."
If a homeless Portlander does make it onto a waitlist, it’s difficult to track when they can expect to move in. The city does not have a master waitlist to reference to update people on their status, according to Bryan Aptekar, communications liaison for the city's Streets to Stability team.
Outreach workers attempt to navigate people to existing shelters that are immediately available, and availability is constantly changing, according to Aptekar. When space becomes available, a shelter informs the navigation team so the referral partner can make the match.
The city's navigation teams visit specific sites based on risk assessment scores provided by the Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program. While the sites the navigation teams visit may be eligible for sweeps, they can refer people to various shelter options regardless of their status.
The sweep-centric referral process causes issues for homeless Portlanders, as it becomes difficult for the referral partner to locate a homeless Portlander who has moved from their original location, according to the outreach worker who spoke to Street Roots.
Even when someone can get on the waitlist, the lack of clarity, communication and confirmation on the city’s part creates other issues, according to prospective residents and outreach workers who’ve engaged with the process. Another homeless Portlander told Street Roots they were put on a list to move into the Clinton Triangle site and waited seven months before learning they were not, in fact, on the list.
The lack of a centralized waitlist and point of contact has made the process and the ability for homeless Portlanders to ascertain their status almost entirely inaccessible.
Pod of gold
The stated mission of Urban Alchemy is "to operate workforce programs in areas of civic engagement, urban street cleaning services, and reentry services," according to tax records.
While several local service providers could do the job, the city awarded the contract to Urban Alchemy in part because few local organizations applied to run the sites. A city committee determined Urban Alchemy’s qualifications best fit the Request for Proposal. The process was open to all service providers and is managed through city procurement, according to Bowman.
"I'm grateful that Urban Alchemy is partnering with us on this vital project," Wheeler said during a press conference announcing the partnership March 9. "I'm confident that this is the right team for the city of Portland.”
Bowman said the city and county initially held an information session about the TASS project and met with service providers in Oregon and across the West Coast to learn more about their development. Ultimately, Urban Alchemy and just one other service provider applied — a nonprofit based in Vancouver, Washington, called Simply Human Project, according to public records.
Kat Mahoney, Sisters of the Road executive director, said she did not sense the city was looking for existing local nonprofits to run the sites before contracting with Urban Alchemy.
“I didn't get a sense that they were wanting any city nonprofit that's already here to do that, but it wouldn't have shocked me if they were trying," she said. "But clearly, nobody did (apply)."
Sisters of the Road has provided food, community and other resources to homeless Portlanders since 1979.
Kirkpatrick Tyler, Urban Alchemy's chief of government and community affairs, said there has been some local resistance to Urban Alchemy, partly because it is the “new kid on the block” and partly due to philosophical differences between service providers and the mayor’s office about the TASS sites. While Urban Alchemy has made some inroads, a number of providers said they won’t work with Urban Alchemy.
Much of that hesitation comes from the difference between Urban Alchemy’s public-facing mission and reports suggesting it falls short of its ideals in practice. Last October, Mahoney met with Tyler and Lena Miller, Urban Alchemy founder, and pressed them on how the organization trains staff and helps break a culture of trauma inflicted on people coming out of the prison system.
“They got kind of defensive,” Mahoney said. “They couldn’t answer.”
Tyler said it is the organization’s unique approach that causes confusion.
"There's so many kind of speculations about what we are, and I think part of that is rooted in that what we are is so different," Tyler said.
Tyler said Urban Alchemy aims to provide career pathways for formerly incarcerated people. It is also a street cleanup, public safety and interim housing and outreach organization, according to its website.
Shelter options
By the end of this year, Multnomah County will have just under 2,200 daily beds supported by JOHS, according to Julia Comnes, JOHS communications coordinator. The JOHS shelter numbers do not include TASS or SRV sites, as the city contracts with Urban Alchemy directly. Those sites together total 487 shelter beds. Even when combining the county shelters, TASS and SRV sites, the number of homeless Multnomah County residents — at least 6,297 — vastly outstrips the number of available shelter beds.
Even if there were enough beds for everyone, the availability itself isn’t enough to address the problem, according to Zapata, who extensively researches homelessness through HRAC.
Zapata said available congregate, motel and alternative shelters do not meet the current needs of the region’s homeless population. She stressed negative shelter experiences might cause anxiety for people about reentering temporary shelter or permanent housing opportunities.
People often burn out after negative experiences and may become unable to live around others, according to Zapata. Traumatic experiences inside shelters will keep them from reentering a shelter system and may even create anxieties about reentering housing altogether.
“Even the trauma of losing housing in and of itself can make people more hesitant to want to go back into housing,” Zapata said. “There's a lot of trust that has to happen.”
Before landing in Portland, Urban Alchemy defended itself against reports of abuse, sexual harassment, and poor employee training in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Portlanders voiced concerns about the city's contract with Urban Alchemy, unsure of the accountability process for an unfamiliar service provider with a complicated reputation.
Concerns about an accountability process, or lack thereof, now permeate Urban Alchemy-run camps.
A third homeless Portlander told Street Roots despite Urban Alchemy's messaging about commitments to de-escalation, the reality at the site is far more contentious. They described an instance involving a dispute between the homeless Portlander and their partner, saying Urban Alchemy staff escalated the situation and ultimately called the police before permanently removing them from the site.
"I feel like it was God's plan to keep me out of there," they said.
Funding and accountability
After the city voted to create multiple alternative shelter sites, county and state leaders raised the bar for what constitutes a humane shelter — unwilling to fund massive shelters offering substandard conditions. The Nov. 3, 2022, council vote required the city council to approve any population increase to more than 200 total people in a single site, and thus far, Clinton Triangle and the slated North Portland TASS are below that threshold.
After issuing an executive order declaring a homelessness state of emergency on her first day in office, Kotek proposed House Bill 5019, an $85.2 million statewide funding package for homeless services. The state allocated $18.2 million in April 2023 to rehouse 275 households and create 138 shelter beds in Multnomah County. The bill also marked a minimum standard for any shelter supported with state money, saying shelters must have heat, electricity, locked doors, showers and restrooms.
"Shelters must be structurally sound," Kotek's order said, following federal shelter and housing standards. "Tents and other structures without hardened surfaces that do not meet these minimum standards are unallowable."
Tyler credits Kotek's investment for upgrading Clinton Triangle from a large tent encampment to a smaller capacity village with pods, air conditioning and heat.
"We actually recommended that they not do large sites like that because it would not … we wouldn't be able to provide adequate services to people," Tyler said. "Nobody would. No organization could go into a 500-person site."
Jessica Vega Pederson, Multnomah County chair, issued an executive order Oct. 12, speeding up a homeless services package passed by the county board on Sept. 28 to send $16 million to the city of Portland. The package earmarked money for operations, expanding the second and third TASS locations and adding 200 beds to the city's shelter continuum.
Metro allocated the most significant total shelter investment to Multnomah County through tax funds collected by Measure 26-210, which voters passed in 2020. Metro sent $174.7 million in Supportive Housing Services, or SHS, funds to the county between July 2022 and October 2023. Of that total, $20.7 million went to pay for the city’s TASS sites, including the $16 million the county sent for future TASS operations and an additional $4.7 million to purchase 140 pods and develop the new recreational vehicle TASS, according to Comnes.
Local funding may ultimately converge under a new agreement between the city and county. Since Multnomah County receives SHS funds, and most services are county-based, Wheeler said it is best positioned to run the sites long-term. (When that might happen remains unclear.)
Despite funding and structural improvements, multiple homeless Portlanders who spoke to Street Roots said they felt anxious at Clinton Triangle, saying the staff repeatedly violated basic privacy standards. The first homeless Portlander who spoke to Street Roots said staff unlocked a shower door as they were showering. Another reported staff frequently peered into their pod through a window and said they became uncomfortable when staff consistently gave them unwanted attention.
For some homeless Portlanders navigating life on the streets, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow feels more like an illusion than a promise.
"Honestly, I'm really disappointed in the whole thing," one homeless Portlander said.
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