Boulders proposed to cut homeless camping along I-405

Neighbor says things are fine just as they are

“Boulders are a lazy, expensive, ugly intervention and punish the surrounding community members who live here,” Northwest Portland resident Laura Curry says.

Before charter reform unfolded, Portland Solutions was created to cut red tape and siloing to solve high-priority livability problems. The program continues, but the inevitable tradeoff between fast action and effective fixes remains a thorn.

A dispute over taming a small triangle of land along the Interstate 405 at Northwest 16th and Couch streets is an example.

Boulders have become a common approach to deterring camping in the public domain. It’s hard to pitch a tent on jagged rocks, after all. But nearby neighbors say the same nuisances—drug activity, garbage and human waste—thrive between the boulders, where they are harder to remove.

Laura Curry knows what it’s like to live near a boulder garden, and it is no solution, in her eyes.

Curry lives in the Empress Condominiums at Northwest 16th and Burnside, directly south of a triangle known as Couch Plaza, which was created by the closure of a section of Northwest 15th Avenue three years ago.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation installed boulders along the edge of that triangle closest to the freeway. On the eastern side of the freeway is a larger, older boulder field.

“Boulders are a lazy, expensive, ugly intervention and punish the surrounding community members who live here,” she said. “Boulders will create a dump site for human feces, discarded drug paraphernalia, garbage and graffiti. I see it in other areas that have boulders.”

Curry has for the moment fought off the city’s plan to extend the boulder treatment to the rest of Couch Plaza, which has remained mostly free of camping and garbage, thanks in part to Curry and her neighbors.

“I see Couch Plaza out my kitchen window,” Curry wrote to a city official who had intended to cover the entire plaza with boulders. “I see people walking their dogs, passing through the plaza, even playing Frisbee. This area has been consistently cleaned by myself and other neighbors. We have policed the area.”

The full boulder treatment was ordered by Anne Hill, the director of the Public Environment Management Office and head of Portland Solutions, before she hit the pause button after getting pushback.

“I demand that any boulder placement is paused until all neighbors, PEMO and representatives from District 4 City Council come together to discuss this and all possible strategies through a normal community engagement process,” Curry wrote Hill.

Last month, Hill told the NW Examiner, “Based on the feedback from the residents, we reduced the scope of the project to the state property and are monitoring activity.”

“If the students at Cathedral School continue to be impacted, we will reassess further stabilization,” she had written in March.

Most citizens might have called that a victory and moved on. But Curry is an internationally published writer who teaches a course on the ethics of community engagement, and she expected more from the city.

“I and selected neighbors were emailed a notice from PEMO's Anne Hill stating when and where boulders would be installed two days in advance of said installation. And, to maintain an aura of suspense, Ms. Hill will decide if bouldering the entire plaza is required based on one group's decision—and hers. There has been absolutely no discussion with the community at large. This is not simply a Cathedral School situation.

“This is not a dictatorship, Anne,” Curry wrote to Hill. “I expect to have a conversation with the community at large. What I do not expect is to be told how and what this public space will be without public engagement.”