Residents of one of Portland’s toniest areas are fighting plans to move a tent city to their neighborhood, but say social concern rather than financial motive is behind their objection.
Mayor Charlie Hales and city commissioners plan to decide Oct. 16 whether to relocate the camp to the Pearl District from its current home near Portland’s Chinatown. If approved, a coalition of property owners promises to sue to block the relocation of the 100-person camp.
But while those with a financial stake in the neighborhood have privately voiced concerns about diminishing property values and a potential spike in crime, Pearl District residents are choosing their words more carefully during the well-attended town hall hearings on the topic.
In a public debate that has engulfed Portland – a hotbed for social activism – criticisms of the city’s expedited process and concerns about the welfare of those willing to live in a parking lot under a bridge are eclipsing more self-interested grievances.
Tiffany Sweitzer, the president of Hoyt Street Properties, a realty and development firm has helped transform the Pearl District from a dying industrial area into a thriving residential neighborhood, said “throwing a bunch of people under a bridge” should not be the city’s solution to helping the estimated 2,000 residents who sleep outside each night.
“It’s embarrassing, because that is not how you would treat anybody,” she said.
The camp, known as Right 2 Dream Too, was established in October 2011 amidst the
Occupy Portland movement in the lot of a former adult bookstore that had been empty for three years until the aggrieved owner allowed the homeless to lease the property – for $1 a year.
Every night since then, about 100 people have slept on prime downtown real estate – in tents shielded from passers-by with a barrier of colorful, old doors fashioned into an artsy makeshift wall.
Over that period of time, however, landowner Michael Wright racked up more than $20,000 in fines for operating a campsite without a permit. When he responded with a lawsuit, city Commissioner Amanda Fritz brokered a deal in which the fines would be waived, the lawsuit dropped and the homeless campers sent to the Pearl District. It all happened in a matter of weeks, angering homeowners and developers who say the city was so desperate to settle Wright’s lawsuit that it bypassed zoning laws.
Fritz, a former psychiatric nurse, acknowledged that the camp is not the ideal answer to homelessness. But she said there is not enough money to provide housing to all, and Right 2 Dream Too has provided a much safer alternative than the street.
“It’s been an option that’s been better than nothing,” she said.
Scores of people spoke for and against the proposal at a five-hour hearing on Thursday. Though a handful said their safety would be jeopardized, most Pearl District residents completely ignored quality-of-life and financial issues and repeatedly griped about the city conducting the deal in secret and delegitimized the zoning code.
Not everyone in the Pearl District is rich, they added, and the fight has been unfairly cast as the greedy against the homeless, or “us against them.”
“It’s a sad, confrontational, divisive atmosphere because communication was intentionally closed,” said Julie Young, a retired social worker who lives in the Pearl.
Besides condominiums and the low-income apartments for older residents, there are businesses nearby, including a Marriott that is scheduled to open next year. Those who have spoken to the potential financial impact of Right 2 Dream Too suggest hotel guests won’t want to stay near the camp and that it would impact on property prices.
Homeless camp residents, meanwhile, ask their prospective neighbors to give them a chance. Right 2 Dream Too has a stellar safety record, and supporters say the camp – they call it a rest area – has helped people get back on their feet and into permanent housing.
“We’re not there to bring property values down,” said Ibrahim Mubarak, the Right 2 Dream Too leader. “We’re there to get people from sleeping on your sidewalk. We’re there to stop people from sleeping in the doorways. We’re there to stop the drug dealing; we’re there to stop the drug use by our friends.”
Wire services
Class Warfare, Compassion Emerge at R2DToo Hearing; Move Hangs in Balance
Photo by Paul
CLASSLESS AND CLASSIST
Story by Pete Shaw
Since Right 2 Dream Too (R2DToo) and the City of Portland came to an agreement in July to move the rest area for people without housing to a spot in the Pearl District, those opposed to the move have been trying to walk a tightrope. On the one hand the opposition is worried about falling rents, diminished property values, and safety and on the other they want to avoid the NIMBY label and being perceived as soulless creatures who do not care about the plight of those not so fortunate as themselves. But in case anyone thought the breast beating of the business community and the leaders of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association (PDNA) had some measure of authenticity to it, that misguided notion should have been put to rest at City Hall around 7:15 pm, on October 3rd.
The 91st person to give testimony before the City Council regarding R2DToo’s move asked for a moment of silence in memory of people without housing who have recently died. Most people in the chamber rose and bowed their heads in respect. Approximately 12 people who had already testified against the move remained in their seats against the back wall. In that moment–when even a shred of common decency would have gone a long way–their farce was exposed.
On this October 3rd, during the course of over four hours of testimony, about 100 people spoke in favor of or in opposition to the move. The difference in the language between the two sides was striking. The business and Pearl people spoke the language of fear, as well as the callously indifferent language of bottom lines and lost profit opportunities. They were cold and bloodless, expressing compassion only for themselves.
The first six speakers were from Station Place Tower, which stands near where R2DToo will move, and they all sounded the safety alarm, warning of the Mongrel Hordes at the gates. “How long before someone sneaks into a warm building or steals a purse?” “Now walking to the Amtrak or the Greyhound will be more daunting.” “Those of us on limited income cannot afford to keep moving just so we can find a safe place to live.”
A few opponents tried out the human angle. One woman trotted out information about “pigeon guano” and its dangers, inclusive of CDC handouts for the commissioners regarding how to properly clean it. The fungi within the guano would be dangerous to the people of R2DToo, she said, as it accumulates under the bridge. In what seemed an attempt to embarrass Commissioner Amanda Fritz and cast aspersions on her competence, the woman asked–since she was formerly a nurse–if Friz could properly pronounce the name of the fungi. The commissioner gracefully replied, “I was a psychiatric nurse.”
Some other people tried the health card, but the pigeon guano was about the last appeal opponents made on grounds that had a slight veneer of humanity. It was fascinating to witness people expressing so much interest in making sure bird crap is treated properly, but have no problem treating their fellow humans like shit. That point was hammered home by Tequilam, who has not had housing for almost two years, when he chastised opponents of R2DToo’s move. “For people to say they are worried about health concerns,” he said, “when you were walking over me, did you care then? You should be goddamned ashamed of yourselves.”
Shame was hard to find, although it was on occasion placed upon the houseless and their supporters. One member of the business community said, “Their argument is one of class warfare, and I find it offensive.” He also said that calling R2DToo a “community service”–a term of importance to the city code, and one sanctioned by Paul Scarlett, director of BDS–is “intellectually dishonest at best and a bald faced lie at worst.”
Greg Close, president of a real estate firm representing Ziba Design, shared his pain as well. “You have created class warfare…you are making me feel great apprehension in speaking on behalf of my friends economically.” Close later told a story about a chiropractor friend who was going to lose her business if R2DToo moves in nearby. A person in the crowd noted it was no small irony that Close and the other opponents were actually creating business for chiropractors by trying to put their boots on the necks of the houseless, or as Close referred to them, “These people.”
Process and code were constantly called into question. Patricia Gardner, President of the Pearl Neighborhood Associaiton noted that the purpose of the city code is to “create certainty and safety for everyone,” although she failed to elaborate on the certainty and safety in the lives of people who lack housing. At one point developer Homer Williams looked like he was about to burst into tears because he might be unable to use money and its attendant influence to get his way. It may have been the only genuine moment of emotion by anyone opposed to R2DToo’s move.
Finally, there were the outright rude, even cruel. Nothing says hate like telling people their lives are not as valuable as parking spaces, a judgment offered up in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Despite all evidene to the contrary, R2DToo was also called “a failure” and it was implied that all the Dreamers are “ex-convicts and sex offenders”. One speaker compared R2DToo to a nuclear dump and then wandered down some dystopian alley in the Pearl where children, who “pick stuff off the sidewalks,” fall prey to an outbreak of hepatitis.
Photo by Pete
For the most part, Dreamers and their supporters stuck with more nurturing tones. They spoke of support and friendship, and not just among themselves. They also expressed a desire and willingness to share this with the very people who were trashing them. Melissa, who has recently found housing, showed off her six week old child, James; both are success stories. One woman who was assaulted twice while living on the street, expressed her gratitude for R2DToo. Many said the rest area saved their lives or preventing them from being raped. These and other similar testimonies were greeted with stone faces from opponents.
One Dreamer, who goes by the street name Dikweed, was not as charitable in his words, saying he was disturbed by the bigoted language that had associated him with toxic waste. “I deserve to have a place to sleep,” he said. “I don’t deserve to have rich white people tell me where to sleep.” Addressing the soft pedal bigotry of falling property values, he talked about how people in the Pearl District had a choice. They could keep treating people without housing as sub-human, or they could treat them as they would other neighbors. “It’s your hatred that drops values,” he told them. “If you hate then your property value goes down. And that’s called justice.”
The zoning confirmation required by City Council to seal the R2DToo move was postponed until October 16, in order–according to Mayor Hales–to seek an outcome that’s not a “zero sum game”. During his testimony, Homer Williams, who has made untold sums capitalizing on development in the Pearl, asked that he be given time to provide a solution. In his summation the Mayor expressed interest in finding out more about what Williams has in mind. Commissioner Fritz said that any discussions must include R2DToo, since they had the greatest understanding of their own needs.
During the evening a few R2DToo supporters looked forward to a day when this would not be a fight between “us and them.” That is a worthwhile sentiment, but it requires “them” to see “us” as people. If yesterday’s testimony in opposition to R2DToo’s move represents the feeling of the entire Pearl District and the business community, then that day is still far away.
– See more at: http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2013/10/05/class-warfare-compassion-emerge-at-r2dtoo-hearing-move-hangs-in-balance/#sthash.XOmluLjC.dpuf
Right 2 Dream Too
http://streetroots.org/node/21
Statement:
What happens when a group of 50 homeless people get together and create a safe place to call home? The verdict is still out.
In a time when Street Roots can’t buy a positive story about homeless and housing policy, and local and national leaders continue to communicate bad news on the budget front, Right 2 Dream Too is breaking the mold by providing a refuge for people on the streets.
We could talk about the state and federal governments’ lack of support for housing and human services. We could concentrate on the hypocricies of the city and other groups who stand on the sidelines, shoulders shrugged. We could call out any number of neighborhood and business groups who patronize Right 2 Dream Too as well intentioned, but fall back on the argument that it’s not the solution, and request that the group be removed from the neighborhood. But none of this gets us anywhere, and has all been said before.
The reality is, Right 2 Dream Too is doing the right thing.
By refusing to make a simple and appropriate gesture — waiving the fines in this case — the city is passively, but with calculated intention, closing down
Right 2 Dream Too. Neither code violations nor a bitter history between the city and the property owners should stand in the way of people seeking a safe and warm place to sleep.
Right 2 Dream Too isn’t going anywhere. People who have lost everything have nothing to lose. Imposing fines is short-sighted, and sweeping the camp and jailing people isn’t an option. So what’s the play, City Hall? We’re all waiting to see.
It’s possible that Right 2 Dream Too, local government and social service providers can work together to help place people into housing. When Occupy Portland was swept, Mayor Adams and Commissioner Fish called on a number of social-service agencies to do targeted outreach. The city should offer the same kind of support for Right 2 Dream Too and be working actively to help the group satisfy code requirements or find another location.
Dignity Village still houses about 60 people on any given night. It is low-barrier and low-cost, and it has found a way, for better or worse, to succeed on its own. Right 2 Dream Too is building momentum. Many Portlanders support the groups efforts, just like they support Street Roots efforts to help foster an environment where homeless people can do for themselves.
There are many grassroots organizations and groups in this town that go under the radar day-in and day-out on a shoestring budget that help people experiencing poverty. Those groups are not recognized like many of the larger groups, or celebrated with ceremonies, but they serve a life-saving role in our city nonetheless.
Change is seldom easy. When Street Roots began, many businesses disapproved, some people in the city were disinterested or against it altogether. Others saw a good idea. Thirteen years later, we are still grassroots and have a positive effect of the City of Portland every day. There’s no reason to believe that Right 2 Dream Too can’t do the same.
In today’s economic landscape, solutions won’t always look like they used to, and they will challenge our community to think differently and work together. Solutions always do.
You can also “
Making a dream a reality,” written by Street Roots in January.
Find out ways to support Right 2 Dream Too by going
here.
Class Warfare, Compassion Emerge at R2DToo Hearing; Move Hangs in Balance
Photo by Paul
CLASSLESS AND CLASSIST
Story by Pete Shaw
Since Right 2 Dream Too (R2DToo) and the City of Portland came to an agreement in July to move the rest area for people without housing to a spot in the Pearl District, those opposed to the move have been trying to walk a tightrope. On the one hand the opposition is worried about falling rents, diminished property values, and safety and on the other they want to avoid the NIMBY label and being perceived as soulless creatures who do not care about the plight of those not so fortunate as themselves. But in case anyone thought the breast beating of the business community and the leaders of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association (PDNA) had some measure of authenticity to it, that misguided notion should have been put to rest at City Hall around 7:15 pm, on October 3rd.
The 91st person to give testimony before the City Council regarding R2DToo’s move asked for a moment of silence in memory of people without housing who have recently died. Most people in the chamber rose and bowed their heads in respect. Approximately 12 people who had already testified against the move remained in their seats against the back wall. In that moment–when even a shred of common decency would have gone a long way–their farce was exposed.
On this October 3rd, during the course of over four hours of testimony, about 100 people spoke in favor of or in opposition to the move. The difference in the language between the two sides was striking. The business and Pearl people spoke the language of fear, as well as the callously indifferent language of bottom lines and lost profit opportunities. They were cold and bloodless, expressing compassion only for themselves.
The first six speakers were from Station Place Tower, which stands near where R2DToo will move, and they all sounded the safety alarm, warning of the Mongrel Hordes at the gates. “How long before someone sneaks into a warm building or steals a purse?” “Now walking to the Amtrak or the Greyhound will be more daunting.” “Those of us on limited income cannot afford to keep moving just so we can find a safe place to live.”
A few opponents tried out the human angle. One woman trotted out information about “pigeon guano” and its dangers, inclusive of CDC handouts for the commissioners regarding how to properly clean it. The fungi within the guano would be dangerous to the people of R2DToo, she said, as it accumulates under the bridge. In what seemed an attempt to embarrass Commissioner Amanda Fritz and cast aspersions on her competence, the woman asked–since she was formerly a nurse–if Friz could properly pronounce the name of the fungi. The commissioner gracefully replied, “I was a psychiatric nurse.”
Some other people tried the health card, but the pigeon guano was about the last appeal opponents made on grounds that had a slight veneer of humanity. It was fascinating to witness people expressing so much interest in making sure bird crap is treated properly, but have no problem treating their fellow humans like shit. That point was hammered home by Tequilam, who has not had housing for almost two years, when he chastised opponents of R2DToo’s move. “For people to say they are worried about health concerns,” he said, “when you were walking over me, did you care then? You should be goddamned ashamed of yourselves.”
Shame was hard to find, although it was on occasion placed upon the houseless and their supporters. One member of the business community said, “Their argument is one of class warfare, and I find it offensive.” He also said that calling R2DToo a “community service”–a term of importance to the city code, and one sanctioned by Paul Scarlett, director of BDS–is “intellectually dishonest at best and a bald faced lie at worst.”
Greg Close, president of a real estate firm representing Ziba Design, shared his pain as well. “You have created class warfare…you are making me feel great apprehension in speaking on behalf of my friends economically.” Close later told a story about a chiropractor friend who was going to lose her business if R2DToo moves in nearby. A person in the crowd noted it was no small irony that Close and the other opponents were actually creating business for chiropractors by trying to put their boots on the necks of the houseless, or as Close referred to them, “These people.”
Process and code were constantly called into question. Patricia Gardner, President of the Pearl Neighborhood Associaiton noted that the purpose of the city code is to “create certainty and safety for everyone,” although she failed to elaborate on the certainty and safety in the lives of people who lack housing. At one point developer Homer Williams looked like he was about to burst into tears because he might be unable to use money and its attendant influence to get his way. It may have been the only genuine moment of emotion by anyone opposed to R2DToo’s move.
Finally, there were the outright rude, even cruel. Nothing says hate like telling people their lives are not as valuable as parking spaces, a judgment offered up in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Despite all evidene to the contrary, R2DToo was also called “a failure” and it was implied that all the Dreamers are “ex-convicts and sex offenders”. One speaker compared R2DToo to a nuclear dump and then wandered down some dystopian alley in the Pearl where children, who “pick stuff off the sidewalks,” fall prey to an outbreak of hepatitis.
Photo by Pete
For the most part, Dreamers and their supporters stuck with more nurturing tones. They spoke of support and friendship, and not just among themselves. They also expressed a desire and willingness to share this with the very people who were trashing them. Melissa, who has recently found housing, showed off her six week old child, James; both are success stories. One woman who was assaulted twice while living on the street, expressed her gratitude for R2DToo. Many said the rest area saved their lives or preventing them from being raped. These and other similar testimonies were greeted with stone faces from opponents.
One Dreamer, who goes by the street name Dikweed, was not as charitable in his words, saying he was disturbed by the bigoted language that had associated him with toxic waste. “I deserve to have a place to sleep,” he said. “I don’t deserve to have rich white people tell me where to sleep.” Addressing the soft pedal bigotry of falling property values, he talked about how people in the Pearl District had a choice. They could keep treating people without housing as sub-human, or they could treat them as they would other neighbors. “It’s your hatred that drops values,” he told them. “If you hate then your property value goes down. And that’s called justice.”
The zoning confirmation required by City Council to seal the R2DToo move was postponed until October 16, in order–according to Mayor Hales–to seek an outcome that’s not a “zero sum game”. During his testimony, Homer Williams, who has made untold sums capitalizing on development in the Pearl, asked that he be given time to provide a solution. In his summation the Mayor expressed interest in finding out more about what Williams has in mind. Commissioner Fritz said that any discussions must include R2DToo, since they had the greatest understanding of their own needs.
During the evening a few R2DToo supporters looked forward to a day when this would not be a fight between “us and them.” That is a worthwhile sentiment, but it requires “them” to see “us” as people. If yesterday’s testimony in opposition to R2DToo’s move represents the feeling of the entire Pearl District and the business community, then that day is still far away.
– See more at: http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2013/10/05/class-warfare-compassion-emerge-at-r2dtoo-hearing-move-hangs-in-balance/#sthash.XOmluLjC.dpuf
Making a dream reality: Right 2 Dream Too’s success flies in the face of skeptics
Making a dream reality: Right 2 Dream Too’s success flies in the face of skeptics
“A rendering of Right 2 Dream Too created by a local architecture firm”
by Joanne Zuhl, staff writer (Photos by Israel Bayer)
It was supposed to be about the city’s new plan to allow limited car camping for people experiencing homelessness. But testimony at Wednesday’s City Council meeting became an extended appeal for another camping option, one that’s been, almost unanimously, highly successful for nearly three months.
During more than an hour of testimony, a series of people — many homeless — testified in defense of Right 2 Dream Too, a structured camp at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Burnside that is home to about 70 people experiencing homelessness.
The group has a year lease for the property, tacit support from leaders in the neighborhood and no problems with law enforcement. It has a board of directors, regular meetings and is pursuing its own nonprofit status. It has received financial support from the community and has its own portable toilet.
“People who stay at the camp work the security and hospitality shift”]
It is also under the city’s screws for code violations.
On Dec. 20, Right 2 Dream Too filed a request with the city to waive penalties against its camp while it works to address code violations issued by the Bureau of Development Services (BDS).
The group was cited in November for establishing an unpermitted recreational park-campground and for having a fence greater than six feet in height, also without a permit.
The document is as much a statement on the condition of homelessness in Portland today as it is an argument against the pending penalties, which could amount to nearly $600 a month.
“We’re trying to cooperate to the extent that we can,” says Michael Moore, one of the site’s organizers. “The director of planning has the ability to (waive penalties) in special circumstances and we’re making the case that these circumstances warrant these considerations.”
In its appeal, the group says it believes the code being applied is overbroad, and that their site isn’t a “recreational” camp at all, but a facility for sheltering people who are homeless. The group says it is willing to work with the city to begin the permitting process on bringing the fence under code or finding a variance.
Unlike other tent cities of years past, Right 2 Dream Too has signed a one-year lease with the owners of the property. In addition to donations, it received support from it’s parent group, Right 2 Survive, which recently received a $6,000 grant for general operations from McKenzie River Gathering.
“The extent and severity of the economic crisis that has led to a severe shortage of affordable housing and shelter space warrants consideration for a hardship waiver while we undertake this process,” the group wrote in its appeal to the city. “We have achieved more than many of us expected in terms of the impact we are having on the lives of Portland’s most disadvantaged and disenfranchised residents, those whom BDS’s mission to ‘maintain safe and livable neighborhoods’ is failing. We ask that the bureau work with us to help extend this mission to all of Portland’s residents.”
Ross Caron, public information officer with the Bureau of Development Services, said the group missed the deadline to file its request for the waiver, and the property owners will be fined $614 as of Jan. 1 for noncompliance. After three months, that figure doubles. Caron said he could not speculate on what the department’s response will be to the organization’s appeal, which can then follow with another series in the appeal process.
Beyond the bureaucracy, however, the camp has gotten good reviews as an orderly and safe operation, even if some people would like to see it moved from its high-profile site downtown.
“A man reads an overnight camp log kept by the group”
“Tent tags are hung in an orderly fashion. When campers leave or return, they flip their assisgned tent number to indicate whether they are home.”
“I’ve heard far more positive feedback than negative feedback,” said Michael Boyer, crime prevention program coordinator for the Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood. “I think from a humanity standpoint, people want to see something more stable and livable than tents on the streets.”
From the beginning, the camp has set strict rules prohibiting drugs, alcohol and violence.
At City Council Wednesday, Trilliam Shannon with Right 2 Survive, testified that a camp like this should be replicated, not destroyed. “You have the ability to work with BDS to suspend code violations,” she said. “We need to stop criminalizing people who are exercising their right to survive.”
“A man who stays at Right 2 Dream Too walks away defeated in a suit after learning he did not get the job he had interviewed for.”
“A poem”
Read SR editorial on Right 2 Dream Too.
