A compassionate approach to first response is popular, and we need that compassion to spill over to more areas
The Portland Street Response pilot is a reality. This is a big opportunity, Portland. Now, let us take this will toward compassion, and extend it again and again, centering unhoused people in policy.
City Council voted unanimously to launch Portland Street Response, sleighted to become a third branch of the city’s first responder system alongside police and fire. As Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty has pointed out, we haven’t revised the first responder system for more than 100 years. It’s time.
STATUS QUO: If not 911, this is who responds to Portland street homelessness
The two-person team – a medic and a crisis worker – will be dispatched through the 911 system 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday in the Lents neighborhood. Portland Street Response will operate within the infrastructure of Portland Fire and Rescue, and the role of the medic will be filled by emergency medical services specialist Tremaine Clayton. Clayton has been deeply involved in this model, having extended the fire department’s Community Health Assessment Team to better serve unhoused people and volunteering with the White Bird Clinic that runs CAHOOTS in Eugene. (CAHOOTS was an inspiration for Portland Street Response). The crisis worker will be hired this winter, and the team will start going out in spring. The pilot will run for a year, adapting as need be, potentially including a peer support specialist.
PORTLAND STREET RESPONSE: Portland Fire & Rescue’s CHAT program a starting point for developing a new model
That’s the plan. It’s important to let it develop. Starting out with one van, in one neighborhood, the impact will be small. This is a pilot to figure out how this response can be done well.
Because when the city can implement this full scale, 24 hours per day, we’ll need to push for this program to be big and nimble. And it will take all of us to demand this be done. It needs to be big enough to meet all the need. Nimble enough to adapt to the individual circumstances of people. When Street Roots vendors helped survey 184 unhoused people this summer, they heard that people wanted first responders who “believe our stories and listen” and who are “the city’s compassion.” That report is included in the City Council recommendations.
REPORT: Believe Our Stories and Listen
Since we published a plan for Portland Street Response on March 15, and since City Council budgeted for a pilot soon after, support has grown. Look at the endorsement page on portlandstreetresponse.org to see how much. The mayor and many other elected officials, grassroots organizations, faith communities, businesses, nonprofits, residents — they all signed on. There is, indeed, a groundswell of interest in a compassionate and constructive approach.
We need that groundswell to spill over to more areas.
Again and again, homelessness tops people’s list of concerns in surveys and polls. But that can’t just be when it’s convenient. Two examples tested our community this week.
On Tuesday, Willamette Week released emails between the Portland Business Alliance, some businesses adjacent to Director Park, and staff for Portland Parks and Recreation as well as staff for Commissioner Nick Fish, who heads the parks. These emails discuss “dealing with the feeds” at Director Park.
Free Hot Soup is the all-volunteer effort to share food with unhoused people. Their model? People want to pitch in? They can pitch in.
Among other restrictions, permits would require Free Hot Soup to whittle down meals from five meals per week in Directors Park to one meal per park through the city.
And then Wednesday, OPB reported that during the two months prior to TriMet announcing increased fare enforcement this month – an increase TriMet credited to riders upset about fare jumpers – there were only eight documented complaints from riders asking for more fare checks – out of about 16 million trips.
Here’s the clincher: These complaints were mostly about other riders perceived as homeless, with the idea that fare checks would weed them out. The complaints, it seems, were couched in a desire to remove unhoused people from transit.
SR EDITORIAL: Time to explore fare-free public transit in Portland
Too often we make life harder for people who are homeless, adding barriers rather than aid.
Quite honestly, I’m astounded by how much unhoused people manage – navigating shelter lists, managing appointments, tracking services, dragging their bags with them. And the more complicated and cumbersome the system, the more obstacles we create.
LIFE ON THE STREETS: The parts of homelessness most people don’t talk about
Why be upset that someone is riding the train for hours to catch some sleep? Be upset that we live in a society in which a person’s best option for sleep is the train. Why be upset that people are sharing food in the park? Pitch in and join them. Embrace the moment as core to Portland, and help it succeed wildly.
When I talked with Street Roots’ Mark Rodriguez about his own struggles with an overly punitive TriMet fare system in last week’s column, he emphasized that we need more grace, and less stringent, “letter of the law” enforcement.
Now, as Portland Street Response launches as a pilot, I feel great hope that we are, indeed, embracing more grace.
Let that grace spread like a current, overflowing, a defining characteristic of our city – in our parks, on our buses – everywhere.
Director's Desk is written by Kaia Sand, the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand.
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