Around the Street Roots office, we referred to it as the “calendar incident,” and it caused us to pause. Last week, The Oregonian reported that a firefighter had made a calendar of homeless campsites. On the surface, it looked like the first responder was taking a jaded jab at people living in desperate conditions.
FEB. 18 UPDATE: Oregonian publishes leaked copy of calendar
While we don’t know much more about it — which firefighter, how many people were involved, what the intentions were — it’s something to take seriously because the lives of people on the streets must be respected by the people tasked with saving them. This is, in fact, a sentiment that Portland Fire & Rescue Chief Sara Boone promotes, declaring last fall at the Street Roots Family Breakfast, “How we are doing as a community depends on how we treat our most vulnerable population. The vibrancy of our city is not measured by those among us who are thriving; it is measured by those who are dying.”
There’s a lot at stake. This spring, the Portland Street Response pilot will launch in the Lents neighborhood. While it will be the third branch of the city’s first responder system, alongside police and fire, Portland Fire & Rescue will be administering it. The Community Healthcare Assessment Team, the portion of Portland Fire & Rescue that will staff the pilot, was originally piloted by Lisa Reslock to work with people who are calling 911 frequently to determine how their needs might be met. It has evolved under Tremaine Clayton’s leadership to support people experiencing homelessness because, in fact, the lack of a home is their emergency. Now Clayton will coordinate the Portland Street Response during the pilot, serving as the emergency medical specialist alongside a to-be-determined crisis worker. Clayton brings additional expertise: He also volunteers with White Bird in Eugene, which administers CAHOOTS, the program that has inspired the local pilot. Because Portland Fire & Rescue is so invested in this program at the leadership level, I am confident that it is not simply something imposed by City Council, but that it emerged whole-heartedly from bureau leadership.
PORTLAND STREET RESPONSE: Read Street Roots' special report
But the calendar incident shook loose some questions. How widespread is the culture of disdain? Can the Portland Street Response be separate enough from the rest of Portland Fire & Rescue, or at least, can its model serve as a vanguard?
I spoke with Chief Sara Boone and Tremaine Clayton last Friday, and we decided to open up these conversations. Let’s turn a moment into a thoughtful dialogue.
We moved fast. By Monday, we gathered three Street Roots vendors who are currently experiencing homelessness — DJ, Mike D. and Gary Barker — along with Mark Rodriguez, who was homeless until last month, to talk with three firefighters invested in Portland Street Response — Clayton and Reslock, who will be overseeing the Portland Street Response program, as well as Brett Zimmerman, a firefighter from Station No. 19.
A number of others were on hand, including vendor and board member Sandra Hahn, vendor program manager DeVon Pouncey, and staff writer Helen Hill, who does our Life on the Streets column. Other vendors leaned forward on chairs elsewhere in the office, catching the conversation.
We started off addressing the calendar and ended focused on Portland Street Response. What follows is edited for brevity.
Rodriguez: No. 1: Where are the photographs? Is it OK in your organization that these photographs were taken? No. 2: I’m still not clear what happened, I didn’t understand the (Oregonian) article, and No. 3: I’ve worked in organizations where it is predominantly male, and men are really rough with each other. They talk really crappy, and people say, “How can you talk that way?” But if you are beside me, I need to be sure you can handle me and protect me if I’m in a precarious situation. And I think that has to come to the forefront a little bit. So people understand what it’s like to be a hero and do things that common people don’t take risks to do. I think it needs to be a balance here. But I’m still not clear what the pictures are representing and why they’re bad.
Clayton: I’m going to have to tread a little lightly because I don’t want to say anything definitive while they are doing an investigation. That being said, my understanding is most of the photos taken are of public property, so anybody would have been able to take those pictures.
I understand the frustration that — “We’re here to provide a service but we don’t have the resources,” because (the resources) just don’t exist in our system. It’s a bigger systemic issue. So I can see where they might be looking at that as “let’s make light of this situation to ease our tension.” That’s not an excuse at all. There’s a lot of people that encounter these high stress situations and find other ways to cope with them.
DJ: What if a firefighter — or anybody — had a pin-up calendar, like a Playboy calendar? If you did that at home, OK … But in my opinion, you don’t bring that into the workplace. I withhold judgment until I know as much as I can.
I have a college degree. I’ve fallen on hard times. I’m making it, getting by, even though, I admit, I’m an addict. I make an effort not to cause problems to anyone. If I had the response out there, would they treat me like garbage? I hope not. I respect firefighters. You guys risk your lives on a daily basis.
Barker: When you are homeless and you are staying in a tent, you’ve really got a lack of feeling of value of what you need to be in society because society frowns on that. There has to be some kind of open communication between those who are not homeless and those who are homeless. That we have the same issues, same problems, and the same bills to pay. Just because we are homeless doesn’t mean we don’t pay our bills or that we have bills to pay.
Reslock: I’ll speak to the makeup of our organization. When we get hired, Portland Fire & Rescue tries to bring in a mix of people, a sign of who’s in our community, right? One of the things we want everyone to know first off is that our organization is made up of people similar to the community, and so when stuff like this happens, it hurts us as an organization when we have 750 people that really love our jobs, we love being in the community.
My particular story is I’m actually a past drug addict. I had a very serious drug problem, and it has kind of shaped who I am. It’s given me the perspective I have, as well as a lot of people in our organization.
DJ: You understand so much better than anybody. I’ve just never had anybody who’s been through that. You can sympathize with us.
Reslock: And with that said, our organization is made up of people who you’d never imagine looking at us that we struggle. But we struggle. And so, when we respond to people on the streets or in houses or wherever, we take that with us. We take our past experience with us. So, in terms of your question, as with the rest of our lives, when we do our job, we try to maintain ourselves in a way that we can do a good job, but also meet the demands of what our job entails.
Sometimes we don’t get it right. Part of what we are looking forward to with Street Response, is that we can do this as team. We don’t have to be perfect, but with conversations like this we can make each other better. And it’s the same with our organization. We’re not always going to be heroes. We’re going to struggle and we’re going to overcome.
Zimmerman: I think that we are used to having solutions to problems and we’re trained in really specific ways to have really specific solutions to really specific problems. And I think when we show up and we don’t have a fix for something and we show up at camps and you can see folks that are struggling right in front of your eyes and you can see folks in hard spaces, and there’s no easy fix in that moment that we’ve been trained to give.
That can be heavy and that can be frustrating because we want to help and we want to solve things. And I think that frustration can make you feel pretty helpless, and there’s positive ways to deal with that, and there’s less positive ways. Humor can be both.
It’s overwhelming at times. Unfortunately this event came out in a way that’s more harmful than constructive.
Mike D.: I think some organizations need to reach out to certain police officers and security guards on the other side of the spectrum about a little more compassion. The other day I witnessed a lot of crap. And I was also involved in it. The three bike officers who showed up to the scene were not real friendly and started pulling down my tent while I was still inside with my dog. I was trying to explain to them, look, I’m disabled, trying to get out of my tent, let me put on my pants, let me put on my shoes, get my dog ready, I’ll come out and talk to you. Instead they start pulling down my tent on me. And when I come out they talk to me like I’m just a piece of crap on my shoes. And just down the block, they had a guy get out of his tent while he’s still naked, wrapped him up in a blanket, and he had to run all the way to a shelter to go get clothes.
There’s no compassion there. Is there any way that you guys can speak to City Council about some compassion?
EDITORIAL: Fears about homelessness get in the way of opportunities
Reslock: That’s one of the beautiful things about (Portland Street Response) is that we’re going to have the opportunity to take people’s voices from the street and we can change the culture, create a different perspective. And it’s something we are going to need to do as a team and create the kind of response that we can take that into account. And I do believe there’s going to be a transition.
Kaia Sand: That’s another layer we are dealing with — that Portland Fire & Rescue oversees Portland Street Response at this point. Could you break down how Portland Fire & Rescue is a part of Portland Street Response and what is separate or brand new?
Clayton: One of the first things (was): “We don’t want the police coming to these calls.” So then the question: why fire? Well, on this side is our fire patch, but on this side is our medical patch. We have that health care skillset and we have an infrastructure in terms of our radios, our communications, the lay of the land, the partnerships. So it started to make sense if you are trying to reorganize the dispatch system, instead of fixing it over here and hoping it works, let’s fix it from the inside out.
So you have a need and we come (as Portland Street Response) and take care of you right here, right now, so you don’t have to go to the hospital, so you don’t have to go to jail, so you have a little bit of dignity to stand on your feet and make it through the rest of today. Hopefully, that’s going to be enough to help you get through tomorrow and then the next day and the next day so you personally can have that growth.
Reslock: The other benefit alongside that is the cost that’s saved. Not only addressing the needs in the pre-hospital setting but the cost that’s saved from not going to the hospital, not going to jail, that money is going to potentially be added on the backside. If we are able to save by not transporting to the hospital — some people don’t know that it’s almost mandatory when EMS responds to be transported to the hospital. There’s no where else. We have to do something.
This model is saying, we’re going to take a first response agency, we’re going to transform the way that it does care, and we’re going to not transport to jail or the hospital, and the potential savings of that has ramifications that could provide housing across the city.
Sand: And that’s a barrier to getting into housing when you get pulled into the legal system.
People are concerned about seeing what needs to be improved about culture in Portland Fire & Rescue. What is different about the training for Portland Street Response? What are the separations? Is it just that Portland Fire & Rescue is going to export its training to Portland Street Response and the same people are doing the same work? Or what’s new about it?
Clayton: The biggest thing is the outside partnerships and outside agencies that we will be consulting to help us with that training — to include voices in this room. People with lived experience to help guide, so that the voice of the people we will be serving will be part of the fabric of the program.
Some of the enhanced crisis intervention training that we’ll see is going to be a big difference in how we approach people. Trauma-informed, harm reduction models — models that exist but haven’t been a part of our normal network.
The other part of this is job creation. And that’s something coming from the commissioner level and the chief level in terms of wanting to expand that work force, like Lisa was saying, to make it look like the community that we serve. Trying to get more people with lived experience.
It’ll be: If you are here for the fire department, turn left, if you are here for Street Response, turn right. Your training will be specific to those crises you need to address versus the emergency responses and hazard mitigation that the fire bureau already does.
Zimmerman (addressing the vendors): If we are responding on a 911, if there are any courtesy pieces that we could address, for me as a firefighter that would be nice to know.
Barker: I think you show a lot of concern, a lot of courtesy when you do make a call. Sometimes you might be in a real stressful situation, and you have to be a little rough. I think you are doing a pretty good job. It’s a people job. You have to read people. And if you read the people right, you do the right thing.
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.