East Portland needs more emergency shelter space and volunteers staff, said Pastor Steve Kimes, who helps organize an emergency warming shelter at Anawim Christian Community, located at 196th and Glisan.

Kimes is offering a two-hour training for volunteers to staff warming shelters on Thursday 1/26 (FB event) at East County Church of Christ. He organized the training after the City of Portland offered to open community centers as warming shelters during the recent cold weather snap if neighborhoods could staff them.

Due to the sub-freezing temperatures and foot of snow Portland was hit with earlier this month, five people have died on Portland’s streets this winter— and there are many months until the potential for dangerously cold weather passes.

The city opens warming shelters when the temperature drops below freezing, but you’ll notice on the map below that most are located in downtown, closer-in Portland or in far East County and Gresham. (Taken from 211 data, the interactive map where the image below was sourced is regularly updated during severe weather.)

Jennie Shaver, who heads Montavilla Neighborhood Association‘s committee on Housing and Homelessness, said the City expected a lot from neighbors on short notice. Along with providing volunteers, neighbors had to have a security guard and a manager with paid experience working with the homeless. Shaver said she has lots of experience working with the homeless, but none of it paid.

When she realized the community center wasn’t an option, Shaver reached out to Saints Peter and Paul Episcopal Church, where she volunteers with Rahab Sisters, a women’s support organization. The church deacon made an emergency decision to host the shelter.

Only Mt. Scott Community Center met the City’s criteria and opened as a warming shelter, she said, and American Legion Post 134 on Alberta Street hosted a shelter as well.

Peter and Paul’s has been wanting to offer more services to the community, but Mak Kastelic, director of music ministry and church building curator, said they just didn’t have the resources. “But to have the neighborhood come in with its own energy, organization, and people, it was perfect,” he said. “At least we have the building.”

The entire shelter was organized in 36 hours, Shaver said. When the call for help was put out, 60 volunteers stepped up at the end of the first day, the schedule organized with a Google doc. At the end of the fourth night of having the shelter open, 80 blankets had been donated, along with supplies and every bite of food to feed about 40 guests a night.

Organizers tried to have three volunteers on site throughout the night, and each started their shift with a ten minute orientation. Homeless folks were dropped off by the police and fire department, and the shelter was listed on 211. Generally, everything ran pretty smooth, Shaver said, crediting community volunteers.

Shaver sounded disappointed with the City of Portland’s efforts. She said they didn’t help with community outreach, they just made demands. And when the volunteers asked for bus tickets to help their guests the next day, they were denied.

In the four years he’s been living in the neighborhood, Kastelic said he’s been impressed with what the Montavilla neighborhood can accomplish, and he points to the organizing of the warming shelter is another example of that.

The church plans on being available as a warming shelter regularly, and is also considering hosting a cooling shelter in the summer. Kastelic credits neighborhood leaders Ben Kerensa and Shaver for doing the heavy lifting to make the shelter happen, and says the church needs do more planning to be prepared for next time.

Kastelic also said it blows his mind that there isn’t more shelter capacity in Montavilla. Now that their shelter is closed, people have to go all the way across town to  find a bed.

Back before the call to staff warming shelters went out from the City and there was still a foot of snow on the ground, I called the churches hosting warming shelters, hoping to learn what they did to be approved to host one. I didn’t get reach anyone immediately at Anawin or Imago Dei Community, but when I called American Legion Post 134 the phone was answered on the second ring.

I asked Seth Grant, who served as a medic when he was enlisted and volunteers at the post, if there were any issues with insurance or government permits that they had to work through before opening their doors.

“Nah, we just did it,” Grant said casually.

They opened the shelter Wednesday, 1/4 with volunteers from the neighborhood as well as veterans. He said there were some problems expected when you put people with drugs and psycho-social issues in a cramped space, but he said the military mindset worked in their favor.

“You have to address it directly. You’re in our house,” Grant said about stopping an argument between two guests. He told them: “You can tame your shit or hit the bricks.”

A few city and fire department officials came by to inspect their building, and Grant said the fire marshal installed the required smoke alarms herself. A mental health care provider gave the shelter’s volunteers, who were mostly veterans, a crash course on how to identify and manage people with mental illnesses. He said they hadn’t reached out to learn how the shelter impacts their insurance, but would at some point.

Along with the warming shelter, Grant said they’ve pushed out several pickup trucks full of clothes for residents of Bud Clark Commons. With movies playing and a bar, the environment is unlike most shelters, he said.

The service work has been therapeutic for the veterans as well as the guests. After combat, it’s hard for veterans to recreate their tribe and purpose that was once so clear in a war zone. Service work gives them that, Grant said.

“We took a vow to serve country. Just because the [military] unit is gone, it doesn’t take the desire to serve,” Grant said. “Why aren’t others [legion halls] doing this, and churches, whose base tenant take care of fellow man, why aren’t they doing this? We are one of few non-city resources doing this… it’s unacceptable.”

Somewhere between inspiring and shaming, Grant said we can get more groups stepping up to serve the community.

Post 134’s mission statement, and home to this amazing image:

If you’re tuned in enough to find this story, you’ve probably already heard: an activist is planning on moving homeless people living on the Springwater Corridor to Eastmoreland— the neighborhood where the mayor of Portland and the Multnomah County Chair live— rather than have them moved along without sufficient shelter or facilities.

But what you may have not heard is that several Lents neighborhood activists support the move. They say it’s not fair that lower-income East Portland bears a disproportionate amount of burden accommodating the homeless— and affluent neighborhoods like Eastmoreland should take their share. Requests for help in East Portland have been ignored, they say, and they haven’t been included in decisions on placing homelessness services.

On July 16, the day after Mayor Charlie Hales announced the Springwater Corridor would be cleared of campers, activist Jesse Sponberg posted a Facebook event called Exodus. He wrote that it is being organized to minimize injuries and arrests during the sweep and pressure the City into real solutions:

Robert Schultz, Lents neighbor and co-founder of Lents Active Watch, was one of the first to comment, offering his support and inquiring about logistics. It’s an uneasy alliance, acknowledged by Sponberg when he responded that while he and Schultz don’t agree on everything he’s happy the 20-year Lents resident is willing to work for the greater good. Since the plan was announced, Shultz has continued to defend the plan— upsetting Eastmoreland neighbors.

Jennifer Young, also a Lents resident associated with LAW, added that people / activists have bought into the idea that Lent’s residents are just NIMBYs (not in my back yard), but the “real enemy” is the government officials whose inaction has fueled conflict between neighbors and campers.

Her comment on the move:

People are stepping up to support the move: offering rides to the location, and a kitchen for the new camp. The five-year anniversary of Occupy Portland is Oct. 11th, and this movement is already its spiritual successor, no matter what happens. Sponberg commented that it’s going to take the entire city to pull this off.

Sponberg said shelters are nasty places, and he advocates for more places like Hazelnut Grove, where homeless folk can have space to build tiny houses and organize themselves.

The Exodus isn’t the only response to the sweeps, which have already happened in some places. Springwater Corridor campers are leaving on their own, and neighborhood activists say they are relocating other places in the Lents area. Officials are stepping up outreach, and some homeless activists are advising campers to “stand their ground“, and they’re pledging to stand with them. It’s a tense situation, and there has been more violence than usual lately. Another group called Boots on the Ground PDX is establishing another camp on public land. The location won’t be announced until July 31st, setting up another conflict with nearby neighbors who aren’t bought in on the plan.

I first heard about LAW through OPB’s Think Out Loud. A reporter accompanied the groups’ founders on one of their regular trails walks. The program (which is definitely worth a listen) didn’t offer any easy answers, but it showed that Schultz and the other co-founder were listening.

LAW isn’t an official group, Schultz emphasized that the group has taken no official position on the Exodus. Some support it, some do not. LAW includes “radicals on both sides and the more even tempered that want to see solutions”, he wrote me.  Schultz said LAW has helped people into housing, done clean ups, and provided food for the campers he said he sees as neighbors.

Schultz said when the group started they were called vigilantes, but they haven’t received a single complaint. The criticism goes both ways, however. Both Schultz and Young don’t appreciate the what some activists are bringing to the conflict in Lents.

“Advocates drive into Lents and tell everyone this and that then go home and hiking on the weekends while we live with the impact of that division…” Schultz wrote. “Very frustrating to face division from outside our community.”

I spent two-and-a-half hours on the phone with Jennifer Young Friday afternoon, and not a minute of that felt wasted. I was shocked by her stories of inaction by the police and local government in Lents, as they work to clean up crime, drug dealing, and prostitution. This site was started for neighborhood-level journalism, and I’m starting with Montavilla, but this issue shows that all of East Portland doesn’t get its fair share of services or voice in the media.

Young said she heard late last year that there’s a plan to push the homeless to East Portland, and she’s seeing the results now. The lack of police and government response reminds her of when she worked in North Portland’s Albina neighborhood in the ’90s— before the neighborhood entirely transformed by gentrification.

Young isn’t new to this issue. She has worked in mental health for 20 years, specializing in the chronically mentally ill and homelessness. She works full-time in mental health and regularly volunteers her time in the neighborhood. When asked point-blank, she said she does believe services are available for families, veterans, and the mentally ill. Human Solutions Family Center (160th & Stark, 503-256-2280), is a family-only shelter that doesn’t turn anyone away.

She’s also critical of what she calls the “poverty pimps” who have a vested interest— some as a career, some as an identity— in homelessness, and the local media who doesn’t dig deep enough. Homeless people have to want help, and she said it bothers her that vulnerable people are enabled in an unhealthy lifestyle.

Several Lents neighbors say that when they call the police, they often simply don’t come. Young said the lack of response is even worse when you mention the problem involves homeless people. We also discussed the fact that the City of Portland stopped crime information online and CrimeReports.com, the site that used to publish 9-1-1 calls, no longer does. This makes it difficult for people to track what’s happening, keeping all the day-to-day crime and problems blacked out.

It’s a complicated, emotional issue, and as a writer, antagonism is so easy to set up with this issue. But what struck me about this alliance is that it crosses some entrenched battle lines, while spotlighting a point that Schultz and Young consistently make: Lents residents deserve equal application of the law and an equal distribution of homeless resources.

The parkway on SE Reed College Place where the new homeless camp is planned.

The It’s hard to tell from the image below, but SE Reed College Place is a parkway between SE Woodstock Blvd. and Crystal Springs Blvd.

Many neighbors aren’t happy about a 200-person homeless shelter planned for the Hansen Building at 122nd and Glisan, and tempers flared at a meeting Thursday (7/7) night.

It was good to see that both KOIN 6 and FOX 12 covered the meeting. Their stories focused on neighbors’ concerns about potential threats from homeless folks staying at the shelter and the fact that the neighbors weren’t involved in the decision.

In a tense exchange captured by FOX 12, Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury didn’t answer a question about why neighbors weren’t consulted, responding that they are placing shelters everywhere around the county.

There isn’t a lot of detail in those stories, but you definitely got a sense that many neighbors are worried and angry. One neighbor who supported the shelter made the point that homeless are already in the neighborhood.

Many neighbors, including myself, were turned away from the meeting because the room was full. A person who worked at the building running crowd control said there were about 350 people packed into a room meant to hold 150. It looked like about 50 people were turned away. 

I received a mass email from Kafoury just after 5 pm. She apologized that there wasn’t enough room for everyone in the auditorium, and made assurances that neighbors and residents would be kept safe once the shelter opens, and the neighborhood would not be disrupted.

Slated to be open before the end of the month, the Hansen shelter is to be temporary, open for only about 12 to 18 months. “The shelter will cost an estimated $1.3 million annually with a staff of roughly a dozen people providing services, including access to housing, health and income resources, as well as referrals,” according to a release from Multnomah County.

The plan was announced officially Wednesday (7/6), but from what I could find it was first floated in a 6/28 Portland Tribune article. The story had no mention of the environmental problems with the building, but in a later Tribune/KOIN story included those concerns from Multnomah County board members Loretta Smith and Diane McKeel:

There isn’t a working kitchen in the building. Will the residents have to travel 45 minutes to downtown for meals? According to the story, the building doesn’t have central air conditioning or heat, and the water runs brown and has a high bacteria count if you don’t let it run before drinking. Black mold, sewer flies, and asbestos are problems that have been remediated, officials said.

Smith and McKeel want to see the unused Wapato Jail re-worked to house the homeless. The Hansen shelter is supposedly temporary; as was downtown’s Peace shelter that opened January and is closing soon. A women’s shelter in Multnomah Village opened fall of 2015 and closed in May, based on a promise from Mayor Charlie Hales. A May KOIN news story said one women’s shelter will be opening up in the summer and another in the fall, but we don’t know how many or what category of the 267 (about 80 to 100 of those being men) displaced from the Peace shelter will be housed at Hansen.

Another big concern from neighbors: we don’t know anything about the people staying at the shelter. Peace’s rules don’t require identification, though they do forbid drugs and drug paraphernalia.  I’ve heard it will be the same set of rules for the new Hansen shelter, but I haven’t confirmed that yet.

I regret the way this has been handled by Kafoury— and I’m glad she’s acknowleged her mistake. I’m waiting on a few questions from Multnomah County officials, including how people can get on the email list for updates on this project.

Are there any assurances that would make you comfortable with this shelter, or is it simply a hard no? So far it doesn’t look like much had changed since the meeting, but if you have any questions please let me know. I’ll do my best to keep up with this issue.