On Jan. 25, when Multnomah County commissioners approved a shelter for 100 to 120 homeless people in Southeast Portland, neighbors’ mixed reactions were emblematic of the conflicts between neighborhood associations and efforts to shelter the city’s homeless population.
Dozens of residents from the Foster-Powell and Mt. Scott-Arleta neighborhoods attended the Board of Commissioners meeting to testify for or against the shelter.
When the commission voted in favor of leasing the building – a former grocery store that sits abandoned at Southeast 61st Avenue and Southeast Foster Road – some booed, others hissed and a couple of people threw up their hands or shook their heads. There was also some applause.
The shelter, which is slated to open sometime this fall, has become a lightning rod of controversy among neighbors, making Foster-Powell and Mt. Scott-Arleta the latest neighborhoods to become embroiled in how, and whether, homeless services will be added within their neighborhood.
The rancor is reflected in a poll conducted by DHM Research and released in late January to KGW. The poll was about the homeless crisis, and it showed that the vast majority of Portlanders are dissatisfied with the way it is being addressed.
According to the poll, most Portlanders see homeless people five times a week; of those respondents, 75 percent indicated they felt compassion toward homeless people. Sixty-four percent of respondents do not talk to homeless people, and 67 percent oppose homeless camps in their neighborhood.
Far fewer Portlanders have taken any action. Less than 15 percent of respondents contacted elected officials in regards to homelessness.
“There’s a lot of opportunity for people to be engaged in their own lives to help address homelessness that don’t require action from city leaders,” John Horvick, vice president and political director of DHM Research, told KGW. “The data suggests most people aren’t doing something.”
A steering committee, which will include residents of the Foster-Powell and Mt. Scott-Arleta neighborhoods, has formed to flesh out how the shelter will function.
How neighborhoods can be involved in a process to create a homeless shelter or other service is uncharted territory in Portland; that is largely left in the purview of government and social services. But as homeless shelters and other services become more common in every part of the city, residents are demanding involvement, government transparency and solutions.
Portland’s 95 neighborhood associations can be forces to reckon with. Forming in the 1960s as political activist organizations, they most famously banded together to fight the proposed Mount Hood Freeway, an eight-lane super highway that would have run along Southeast Powell Boulevard and connected downtown Portland to Interstate 205. Nearly 1 percent of Portland’s stock – about 1,750 homes – would have been demolished.
The proposal to build the freeway died in 1974. And instead, the transportation dollars went toward building Portland’s first MAX light rail, which neighborhood associations also had a hand in advocating for.
No single issue has brought Portland’s neighborhoods together in the same way that the Mount Hood Freeway did. For the most part, neighborhood associations are involved in land-use, zoning and transportation issues, as well as sponsoring neighborhood-wide events, such as Easter egg hunts or cleanup days.
But the city’s neighborhood associations remain the squeakiest of wheels when the occasion rises.
When it comes to homelessness, Portland’s neighborhoods have typically resisted programs proposed in their areas. In 2010, outcry from residents of the Westmoreland neighborhood quickly dispatched a proposal spearheaded by Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish to start a car-camping program, modeled after a longtime program in Eugene, that would allow homeless people to sleep in their cars in church parking lots overnight.
Actions from within neighborhood associations have also generated controversy and rancor. Last summer, the Montavilla Neighborhood Association passed a resolution asking the city to stop sweeping homeless camps in the neighborhood, a move that created some chaos on the neighborhood association’s board. Many members either resigned as a result of the outcry or were voted off the board.
Around the same time, the wealthy Laurelhurst neighborhood, in response to increased public urination, defecation and theft near Laurelhurst Park, asked the city to create “safe zones” where camping would be prohibited within 1,000 feet of schools and parks.
The Portland city officials refused to consider the ordinance.
The city also quashed the Overlook Neighborhood Association board’s attempt to change the definition of membership in the neighborhood to exclude people experiencing homelessness, including the residents of Hazelnut Grove, a nearby homeless village.
The move would have discriminated against homeless people on the basis of income, Portland’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement informed the association in an Aug. 11 letter. The city threatened to no longer recognize the neighborhood association if it passed the rule.
During a meeting Aug. 15, Chris Trejbal, the Overlook association’s chair, did not mince words, describing the city’s response as “heavy-handed” and calling Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who oversees the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, “a bully.”
One reason Portland neighborhoods are becoming more involved in homeless issues is simply that homelessness is more pervasive in each neighborhood.
Up until a few years ago, homelessness was noticeable mostly in downtown Portland, where the bulk of social service agencies are located, and inner Southeast Portland. That is no longer the case; homelessness affects every part of the city, with people camping in parks, along sidewalks and in the doorways of businesses.
“We’re fully aware that there is a crisis going on with homelessness,” said Brian Balla, chair of the Foster-Powell Neighborhood Association. The number of people parking their RVs and sleeping in parks has become “more visible than before.”
Other neighborhoods have had similar conversations.
The St. Johns Neighborhood Association is considering creating a small homeless village similar to the Kenton Women’s Village, which provides housing for 14 women in “sleeping pods,” tiny houses that are about 100 square feet.
The Montavilla and Mt. Scott-Arleta associations were both involved in opening warming shelters last winter, as were other neighborhoods.
And members of the Parkrose neighborhood worked with homeless people and the business district to supply trash bags and trash pickup to homeless camps, which helped the entire neighborhood become cleaner.
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Balla said his neighborhood association had been considering hosting a forum on homelessness so that Foster-Powell residents could start discussing what, if anything, the neighborhood could do.
But before the Foster-Powell neighborhood could hold the forum, the city of Portland, Multnomah County and the Joint Office of Homeless Services began moving forward with opening the shelter at Southeast 61st Avenue and Southeast Foster Road.
On Dec. 8, Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler sent a letter addressed to residents living near the shelter, announcing the intention to open the shelter at the location. They invited residents to a Dec. 18 community forum.
Balla said he and other neighborhood association board members found out about the meeting via the association’s Twitter feed.
“I was a little surprised,” he said.
Four days before the meeting, the Joint Office of Homeless Services published a two-page “frequently asked questions,” which included information on how homeless people would get into the shelter and the kind of amenities that would be available to them. The hope was that the information would allay residents’ concerns.
But the Dec. 18 meeting was tense. Close to 150 people packed inside the SEIU’s main meeting hall. Hundreds more lined up outside Laurelwood Park but were stopped from attending because the room had reached capacity.
One resident asked how likely it was that the shelter would open. Kafoury responded that it was inevitable that a shelter would open at the site.
As Kafoury spoke, her voice was drowned out by booing, but she wasn’t necessarily surprised, she told Street Roots.
“I think they’re afraid of the unknown,” she said. “They don’t trust government. They see all these social ills occurring, and they don’t see that government is working hard enough to change it.”
She said she also recognizes that Foster-Powell is one of the outer Southeast Portland neighborhoods that “has been promised things over and over from the city and it hasn’t materialized.”
In early January, the Joint Office published another fact sheet about the shelter, this time including information about how the location was chosen, how nearby businesses and residents could be affected and how that would be dealt with, what the timeline was and whether there was opportunity for engagement.
Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson believes that if more of that information had been available in early December, a lot of tension and acrimony regarding the Foster shelter likely could have been avoided.
“That was a learning lesson for us,” said Vega Pederson, who served on her own neighborhood’s board, the Hazelwood Neighborhood Association, before becoming a county commissioner.
Kafoury said some residents think that every facet of the shelter has already been decided, which she emphasized is not the case.
“We don’t have all the answers,” she said. “We don’t want to have all the answers. We want to leave the ability for … stakeholders to shape the program.”
Marc Jolin, director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services, said efforts to work with neighborhood associations and organizations have only just begun.
“We’re all learning in this process how best to do the engagement work,” he said.
Balla said he doubts his board will take a formal position in support of or opposition to the shelter. Instead, he thinks the neighborhood association will act to “elevate neighbors’ voices to the city and the county.”
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Details and membership of the steering committee that’s forming to further plan the Foster shelter committee are still being determined, but it will begin meeting within the month.
Commissioner Vega Pederson announced during the Jan. 25 vote that she will chair it. The committee’s purpose will be to “talk through areas of concern that the community has” and “get to a place where the community is supportive of us opening a shelter in the fall of 2018,” she said.
“I do hope that we can build some trust with neighbors through this steering committee,” Kafoury said.
The committee and process could end up being similar to the process that led to the creation of Kenton Women’s Village in North Portland.
When the village was proposed to the neighborhood association in December 2016, the association and attendees had serious concerns, which were listed in a letter the neighborhood association sent to then-Mayor Charlie Hales.
That letter sparked the creation of a committee, which included residents from the Kenton neighborhood, staff from the Joint Office of Homeless Services and the Village Coalition, a nonprofit group that advocates for the creation of homeless villages in Portland.
In addition to hashing out details about lighting, safety and security, the committee also hosted two open houses for Kenton residents to learn about the proposed village and ask questions of those who advocated for it.
There was even a vote to approve the village, an unprecedented step taken to garner support. The vote was held in early March, and neighbors overwhelmingly voted in favor of the village, 178 to 75.
Throughout the process, numerous Kenton residents who were originally opposed to the village changed their minds, often after having their questions and concerns answered and after learning more details about how the village would operate and about homelessness in Portland.
“When there’s a lack of information and knowing and data, I think people end up reacting with fear,” Balla said. “That’s human nature.”
The Kenton process, as well as the committee now working on the Foster shelter, could become a blueprint for addressing neighborhood and resident concerns, so often referred to as NIMBYism, or “not in my backyard.”
Eric Norberg, the secretary of the Sellwood-Moreland Improvement League (SMILE) and the editor of the Sellwood Bee, said he doesn’t understand why there is such a “tide of fear in Foster.”
“It’s nuts,” he said, given how similar the Foster shelter is in design to the Willamette Center, a homeless shelter also operated by Transition Projects. It’s located across the street from Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge on Southeast Milwaukie Blvd., four blocks from where Norberg lives.
“The shelter has posed no problem,” Norberg said. “The neighborhood has accepted it. I have not heard any negative comments from anybody.”
Like the Foster neighborhood, the SMILE community first found out about the shelter during a community meeting in which the Joint Office and other parties told the community that a shelter would be opening. Norberg said it was a bit like a bomb going off and that there was apprehension and many questions from neighbors.
Joint Office staff, Transition Projects and other stakeholders came to the neighborhood association for a second meeting and answered questions from residents. Beyond that, the SMILE association had no involvement with the shelter’s creation.
Norberg said a bit more collaboration with neighborhood associations and other groups would have been nice, but “it became pretty clear that if they followed what they said they were going to do, the shelter would be fine.”
But it might take work to relieve concerns of some neighborhoods, such as Overlook.
Last August, during the same meeting where the Overlook Neighborhood Association chair referred to Eudaly as a “bully,” the association and the 100 residents in attendance discussed a resolution that would have required the removal of Hazelnut Grove from the Northeast Portland neighborhood by the end of 2017.
Homeless people and housed Overlook residents argued for and against the resolution for an hour in a discussion accompanied by booing, cheering and shaking heads.
In the end, Overlook residents defeated the resolution, holding up pink and orange slips to cast their vote.
An elderly woman, who identified herself as Caroline, garnered the loudest applause that evening.
“We need to acknowledge that they are our neighbors,” she said. “I do not want people to be disenfranchised. We’ve got too much of that happening in our country right now.”