DIRECTOR’S DESK | To whom it may concern ...
Rich taped a valentine to the brick wall in the vendor office. He made it during a recent vendor office valentine-making party and addressed it this way: “To Whom it May Concern.” He was grinning when he showed me, and I laughed.
That valentine stays affixed next to the vendor coffee station. I look at it each time I wait to fill my cup, coffee slowly dripping through the filter. The valentine matches the humor of the office, and it reminds me of something larger. What does it mean to make that gesture toward strangers – to anyone who is concerned? Who is concerned that Rich is out there, day-in, day-out?
Portland City Council extended the Housing Emergency Thursdays– first initiated on Oct. 7, 2015, and twice extended – for two more years.
The Housing Emergency has allowed the city to speed up the permitting processes for shelters and day storage units, as well as design review processes for affordable housing. In 2018, the most affordable units in Portland history were made available for occupancy – 800. During the same period of years as the Housing Emergency, there has been progress in increasing affordable housing, from inclusionary zoning to the Portland Housing Bond to the Metro Bond to city and county commitments to produce supportive housing, which means linking additional services to housing. The Housing Emergency makes it easier and faster to add this affordable housing, and it’s important make this ease permanent, something that bureaus are directed to do in this latest extension.
Under the emergency status, two temporary, day storage units were set up – places where people on the streets can store possessions during the day, but not overnight. One is operated by Central City Concern and is located at the western base of the Steel Bridge. The other is at Hazelnut Grove. The new extension directs multiple bureaus to help change city code so that these day storage units can be permanent. People need more places to store their possessions, and to do so overnight.
So yes, extend the Housing Emergency. Not only do we have a lot of people who are homeless, but also, precariously housed, on the brink of ending up on the streets. We need to continue to make permitting and other processes quicker and easier when it comes to shelters, housing and storage. The last thing we need to do is make it more difficult to respond to the crisis.
And these actions are directed at people who make valentines and so much more — not human cargo, not statistics, not simple emergencies to be solved. As we rise again and again to this challenge as a city, let us acknowledge that people are living through hell, and that they are beautifully human.
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This is a housing emergency where one man who – without regular access to showers and laundry and stable housing – claws at his skin where scabies gnaw. And even in the midst of his suffering, as we walked to a clinic for medicine, he looks over at a camp and worries about the people struggling there.
This is a housing emergency where a woman suffers the flu, sweating, exhausted, but with nowhere to rest. Her sleeping bag is soaked from the rain. She’s anxious in shelters. Yet she often looks out for other people on the streets, making sure they have cardboard to buffer the cold pavement, gloves for their hands.
This is a housing emergency where a woman, sleeping in a doorway each morning tells me about the nighttime revelers. Last night she reminded them, “Silence is golden.” We both laugh. I admire her neatness, how her boots are always lined up by her sleeping bag. She needs her sleep.
It is a housing emergency for thousands of our neighbors. Rich, I look at your valentine and I respond: to whom it may concern? It concerns us all.
Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand.
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