Canceled speaker had a warning

Neighbor of North Portland shelter weary from reporting continual 'chaos'

The Moore Street Shelter in North Portland is an emergency overnight shelter for men and women. It opened in January.

When Mayor Keith Wilson addressed 580 people at the Armory on his plans for homeless shelters last month, two other city officials were on stage to affirm his message.

A fourth panelist had been invited to speak, but Wilson insisted that she not participate. Moderator Bruce Studer, president of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, had invited Carrie Henderson, a neighbor of the first overnight shelter in the mayor’s citywide plan to share her observations of the Moore Street Shelter in North Portland.

Henderson had begun complaining about mismanagement and “chaos” at the shelter soon after it opened in January, as the mayor’s staff was aware.

Carrie Henderson lives across the street from the Moore Street Shelter entrance.

Wilson claimed that crime went down around the Moore Street Shelter after it opened, thanks to enhanced patrols and services in the 1,000-foot “engagement zone” around the property.

Henderson would have challenged that claim.

“Crime is not down,” Henderson commented on NW Examiner coverage of the event. “We are fatigued reporting everything we see because the city depends on us to report every single issue. Once you're on hold with non-emergency for 15 minutes when someone is smoking fentanyl outside your house, do you want to spend another 15-30 minutes continuing the report? Or call 911, to which police don't show up?”

A city mailing to neighbors promised that “city services around Moore Street are prioritized in response to community reports. The Street Services Coordination Center and Portland Police will regularly engage with neighbors and shelter services about issues as they arise.”

Instead, she said her calls about nuisance and threatening behavior were minimized.

She was told “it’s not illegal to sleep on the sidewalk,” by one city employee.

Laudie Porter, community engagement coordinator for the shelter program, responded to one of Henderson’s complaints about unresponsiveness of outreach workers.

“To be frank, there are only six of them currently, so they move around quickly, which is why you probably haven’t noticed them the same way you would the Portland Love teams.

“They are currently working to expand their team to 10 workers so they have more capacity to both get people into services, and have more capacity to be available citywide and, hopefully, on weekends,” Porter wrote in an email to Henderson.

On Sunday afternoon, a woman slept in a thick blanket at the shelter entrance.

“We could really use an outreach worker in this instance to help connect her with resources so she's not sleeping on the street on a 96-degree day without me having to call non-response Every. Single. Time. Especially within an enhanced enforcement zone,” Henderson wrote Porter.

The next day, Porter replied.

“We are working on expanding outreach worker hours as their team expands, so we’re hoping more teams can be available on weekends for assistance.

“Additionally, I did want to let you know that we have reached the threshold for cooling shelters to open,” she wrote. “The locations have not be announced as of yet, but I am happy to share that information with you once it becomes available.”

A woman slept by the Moore Street Shelter door in a blanket on a 96-degree Sunday afternoon. No outreach workers were available.