An Open Letter to Portland/Multnomah County Officials

As a housed resident and taxpayer of Multnomah County, I would like to stand up and be counted as one who supports the homeless. It is not enough to eventually provide enough housing. It is not enough to make plans to get enough shelter. Right now, the citizens who happen to be without four walls and a roof are being abused by officials from various agencies.

I would like Multnomah County to be the first county in the United States to declare that we will not be party to the abuse of our homeless citizens. We will not tell them to move unless we give them a place to go. We will not verbally abuse our homeless, and openly reprimand our officials that do. We will not take the possessions of the homeless, unless we have given a 72 hour notice, like we require of renters who lapse in their payment.

We must not assume that our homeless are criminals, transients, lazy or the cause of the major ills of our society unless we have evidence that an individual does display such characters. We must not move our citizens around as if they were piles of garbage that no one wants around.

Let's treat our homeless as human beings. People who need help. Not just some walls to hide them, but caring people. Let's be a city that cares as much about our poor citizens as our wealthy ones.

Let's make this happen for those on the street right now.  Let's not wait.

An Open Letter to Multnomah County

Commissioner:Kafoury:

In your October newsletter you reported about the commission about ending homelessness.

Some of the questions this group is wrestling with include, how do we meet new federal mandates to reduce shelter stays? In a time of limited resources, how do we prioritize who we can help? Do we prioritize by population, for example, should we prioritize families over individuals? Do we prioritize by vulnerability, focusing services on who is less likely to survive outside? Are some groups of people not able to access housing or shelter services and if so, how do we change that? How do we raise attention to this issue and get more people involved in the solution?

As a long time supporter of the homeless in Portland and especially Gresham for 18 years, I have a few things to note:

The only ethical way to reduce shelter stays is to transition people into permanent housing or into a safe context to stay where they will not be harassed.

One of the problems of "ending homelessness" is that we now have a population of the chronic homeless who are not ready or able to move into apartments over the long term.  We have folks who have been in chronic stress for years, who have lived outside, under a different moral/survival code than is found in apartments.  We have a number of people who are frankly claustrophobic or paranoid or both.  Apartments are not the answer for everyone.

My recommendation is to have a variety of options for housing.  To have trailer parks with community centers for laundry and showers and electrical plug-ins might be an option.  To have areas where people could build their own structures, similar to dignity village is another option.  These are less expensive options than building apartment buildings, and more likely to house the chronic homeless (some of the most problematic population).

Also, we need options in the outlying areas of the county.  Churches in East County are trying their best to meet the need of the chronic homeless and Human Solutions (with the county's support) is doing a great job to help homeless families.  But, as you know, it is only a scratch on the surface.  We need assistance providing more support and in finding more funding to provide for needs.  Right now, in St. Johns, there is almost nothing being done for that homeless population.  The 2010 Street Count shows that homelessness is not centralized in the county, but is widespread.  The homeless tend to remain near their home neighborhood.  The majority of the homeless are not transitory, but are home grown and so are our community's responsibility.  We need to provide local compassionate solutions within each neighborhood.  This is not costly, but it does require organization and flexibility in city policy.

Not all the homeless is able to access shelter simply because there isn't enough shelter to be had.  Even with the low numbers of homeless population, there isn't even close to enough shelters for all the homeless.  And many homeless do not want to stay in shelters.  They are crowded, people's items are stolen, and it is difficult for the homeless to sleep in such contexts.  It would be difficult for anyone to sleep on a cot surrounded by a bunch of strangers they didn't trust.  I would suggest that more but smaller shelters be established throughout the county, including more permanent ones.  Having homeless people parked in vehicles at churches is a possibility, if the churches could be convinced that their property would be safe.  But only a small population of the homeless have vehicles.  The rest need to have places that they can camp or public areas they can sleep, in groups of 10.  Again, this requires organization, but not necessarily a lot of finances.

I know that you and your office have done a lot to try to get churches involved.  And yet I can start an outreach to the homeless in St. Johns and I am speaking to a dozen churches, all looking for an opportunity to help the homeless population around them, but they were just waiting for someone to take initiative, to know what the possibilities were and how to contact the homeless.  Suddenly, in a few months, we have a group that are ready to take action now, providing shelter both during the day and on the coldest nights, providing food and giving resources.  If a reasonable plan is provided to churches with...yes, that word again.. some clear, simple organization, then there is an untapped population of volunteers that are ready to work

God bless you in your work.

Steve Kimes

Pastor of Anawim Christian Community

Dying on the Street

In Portland, the Multnomah County Medical Examiner's office released recently a report on deaths that occurred among people who have no known address.

This report admits that the numbers they have are limited and that the report is far from inclusive about deaths of the homeless.  For instance, it does not include those who lived on the street, but died in a hospital or a shelter.  With these limited figures, the Medical Examiner determined that there were 47 deaths on the street last year.  The median age of those dead was 49.  Seven were women. There were more deaths in the cold months than in the warm, although hypothermia was an indirect cause in only three deaths.  Of these 47 deaths, 29 were caused by drugs or alcohol (only three died from alcohol).  The greatest drug killer was heroin, who killed almost a third of those who died on the street.

This is a crisis.  People dying young, dying on the street, and such a large percentage of the street population.  This is, for the most part, preventable.

The recommendations of the report to the county is to obtain housing for people, to build up a health infrastructure, to inform people of services and to get people help to reduce alcohol and drug abuse.

Of course, the other issue is community.  The report mentions that many of these deaths were caused by isolation as much as anything else.  Housing is very helpful, but if one is isolated in a house, there is still many of the same issues.  If we can build communities among the homeless, give them purpose, give them hope, then changes can be made.

That's one of Anawim's main goals: to build community and purpose among the homeless.  

Permitted To Be Nowhere

The cities of Multnomah County are like a lot of other cities throughout the United States.  They like to look like they are helping the homeless when they are actually oppressing them.

According to The Oregonian,  the owner of some private property has decided that he would temporarily allow the homeless to camp on his unused property in downtown Portland until he sells it.  "I'm willing to let them out of doorways," says Michael Wright, pointing out the benefit to the community.


The city of Portland, however has a problem.  There is no permit for it, they say.  And no one is allowed to camp, not even on private property.  Of course, that is the city ordinance.  That camping outdoors without a permit is illegal in Portland.  Remember that when your kids decide to camp in your backyard.

Or, perhaps, the activists of Occupy Portland should be informed as well.  They have been camping in public areas, not just private.  I want to make it clear, I am not opposed to protest.  I am opposed to the city's hypocrisy.

Or let's take Gresham.  There is at least two police officers, on city time, that have been going to homeless camps and ripping up their tents, sleeping bags and tarps.  They are vandalizing private property.  This is nothing new to the homeless in Gresham.  Those that lived on the Springwater Corridor would have their personal possessions ripped up and thrown in a dumpster by a county paid official.  Or there is the camp under a bridge in Gresham that came back to find their possessions thrown into a pit and burned up.

Many of the homeless are given tickets by a variety of Gresham police.  These tickets are sentences to leave Gresham and not come back.  Yes, they aren't binding by a court, but some homeless just follow it so as not to cause more trouble for themselves.  Many homeless claim Gresham as "home" and have no where else to go.

Okay, okay.  The homeless get the idea.  They aren't wanted here.  Somehow they are considered criminals just for living outside and trying to survive.  Look, if you can arrest them for drug use or for violent activity, no one is really complaining.  But the fact is, the homeless are being targeted as criminals because of what they don't have, not what they do.  They don't have four walls and a roof and that makes them criminals.

Oh, sorry, the camp in downtown Portland on Mr. Wright's property DOES have walls.  Made out of doors.  The City of Portland says that it is not according to code and must be torn down.

Look, here's the point.  You don't want the homeless to be hanging around on the streets?  THEN GIVE THEM A PLACE TO GO!  It is not enough to deny someone a place.  A body takes up room and space.  The cities of Multnomah County have basically denied the homeless the right to exist.  Can this really be legal?

The city of Portland just built a facility that houses 130 homeless and shelters no more than a hundred more. Where are the thousands of other homeless supposed to go?

Let's be completely frank.  The majority of homeless in Multnomah County have lived in the county since before they were homeless.  They became homeless here.  This means that these homeless are our responsibility.  We cannot deny them the right to exist.  The right to sleep.  The right to live.

We must work on a plan to live with the homeless because they aren't going anywhere.

Vital Statistics: A Summary of Portland's 2011 Street Count

Some facts from the “2011 Point In Time Count of Homelessness in Portland/ Multnomah County, Oregon”

All statistics reflect the state of homelessness on January 26, 2011.  This doesn’t give an accurate overall picture of homelessness in Multnomah County for many reasons, but the three primary reasons are:

-January is one of the lowest counts of homelessness of the year

-It is very difficult to find all the homeless.

-Many homeless ask not to be counted

Even so, this count is important because it gives a general idea of homelessness in the county, it is helpful in comparison to other cities and it helps us see the trends of homelessness.

To read the full report, please go to this link and download the free file

The Statistics:

2,727—People counted who are sleeping on the street or in vehicles or in shelters on the night of January 26.

1,928—People in temporary transitional housing on that night.

35—The percentage of increase of families who became homeless since 2009

751—Homeless children

9—The percentage of increase of homelessness since 2009

12—The percentage of veterans who are homeless

More than half of those living on the street were living on the street two years ago.

The count in East Multnomah County (East of 182^nd) increased to 92 from a single individual in 2009. (A personal note: this is because of the participation of the day shelter programs in East County)

11- Percentage of homeless in all of East County (East of 82^nd), where services for the homeless are scarce.

46—Percentage of homeless that have been homeless for more than 2 years

69—Percent of homeless that have been homeless for more than 1 year

52—Percentage of the homeless who have lived in Multnomah County for more than 10 years.  However, the majority of the general population of Oregon do not originate from Oregon.

101—Increase of beds in shelters from 2009

53—Percentage of the homeless in shelters who are a part of a homeless family

37—Percentage of homeless women

35—Percent of homeless woman affected by domestic abuse

46—Percent of communities of color (non-white) on the street.  In the general population, 29 percent are communities of color.  African Americans and Native Americans are more represented on the street than other groups.