Councilors invited to talks on shelters
Northwest District Association will consider its policy response
Amid immediate concerns of overnight homeless shelters coming to and near the Northwest District, the Northwest District Association has invited the three District 4 Councilors to attend its monthly meeting tonight, Monday, June 16, at 6 p.m. via zoom. Zoom Meeting Link
Of the three, Olivia Clark indicated she would “try to attend.”
Blanchet House intends to open a 75-bed women’s shelter at Northwest 17th and Lovejoy streets, and the city intends to open a 200-bed shelter just east of Interstate 405 at Northwest 15th and Northrup streets.
“I think we should set some sort of NWDA policy toward the new shelter projects,” wrote NWDA President Todd Zarnitz. "The neighborhood has legitimate concerns about the new shelter projects, and is working to better understand how they will fit into the fabric of our community."
Public comment will be welcome at the beginning of the meeting, “so we can get a better understanding of how our members feel,” Zarnitz said.
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this issue for the last few weeks. It’s an extremely complicated problem and solutions suffer from our human reaction to fear, guilt, compassion, resentment and much more. I take a stab at writing this as I think I have uncovered some basic truths that dictate how we react to this problem. And it is not unfair or unfounded. I began by asking fundamentally what we neighbors are afraid of. I found reliable data to explain some of this.
https://www.koin.com/news/oregon-ranks-high-for-states-with-worst-drug-problems-report/
This April 2025 article states that in terms of drug addictions and usage, Oregon ranked third worst in the country and ranked eighth worst for drug health issues, treatment and rehab.
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/05/homelessness-continues-to-rise-in-portland-area-even-as-increased-services-help-thousands.html
This May 20, 2025 article states that homeless people in Multnomah County is higher than ever with surveyors identifying 12,034 homeless people in the tri-county region in January 2025, with 87% of them residing in Multnomah County, according to the preliminary data. More than half of those counted – 7,038 people – were unsheltered.
Putting our unsubstantiated fears aside, it is clear that not all homeless are drug addicts, but clearly we have a large and disproportionate mix of this compared to other cities and states. And while not all are addicts, some homeless are truly scofflaws that frequently and intentionally violate laws protecting private and personal property – as well as assault citizenry. The logical truth is this:
Increased homelessness creates increased vagrancy, unpermitted trespass on private and public land, increased litter and pollution - harming neighborhood aesthetic (values) and health/safety.
Increased homelessness creates increasing chance of drug-related activities from sales and use by those homeless with substance abuse problems. And increased homelessness as well as drug sales and drug users create increasing chance of theft, burglary, property damage and personal assault crimes.
Because of this, lawful property owners and rent tenants that make up the permanent residents of a neighborhood have ample reason to dislike and fear the negative impact homelessness brings to their area.
Temporary housing may bring some reduction to all forms of crime, but there is no complete eradication of homeless crime due to sheltering. The motivations to feed abuse habits, steal to convert goods to cash, to show anger, frustration and resentment in destructive acts do not disappear when housing is gifted. And when more than half do not have shelter, they are more apt to act in self-preserving, self-important ways that violate municipal law.
With shelters, not all will vagrantly camp on public and private property without permission or in violation of law, or trespass without right or permission, or cause damage to public and private properties, steal public or private utilities for personal use, defecate or urinate publicly, publicly litter and abandon junk, solicit or sell drugs, publicly cook, shoot or ingest street drugs, steal private property from homes and cars and food and sundry goods from local businesses, and convert those stolen goods into cash to sustain a semi-nomadic (between streets) or drug-fueled lifestyle. But, each does cause increased public spending on police, sanitation, health and welfare services at an increased tax cost to taxpayers.
For all these reasons, those taxpayers who work and live in a lawful manner within a neighborhood have good reason to resent how the homeless continue to cause harm to the livability, economic vitality and safe enjoyment of their community as well as the burden the homeless put upon them in cost, in depreciation of aesthetic and economic values of the neighborhood they, themselves invest in.
With this, I reluctantly conclude it is not unreasonable for owners and paying residents to reject homeless shelter housing in their neighborhood. It can too easily increase problems there. And there is evidence that it does - though perhaps not so in proportion to its greater compassionate value as a whole. Simply put, the local residents are required to make these sacrifices for the good of the greater community.
And that leads to my asking the next reasonable question - is this a fair and equitable distribution of sacrifice in the greater metro area? Isn't that really a core issue here?
Should Pearl and NW Portland take on these sacrifices disproportionate to say: Multnomah Village or Burlingame or Sylvan or Johns Landing or King's Heights? Where are the proposed shelters for Forest Heights or Council Crest or Raleigh Hills or the Bridlemile neighborhoods?
This is more than simple NIMBYism. This issue of where to site shelters has to do with equitable distribution of the burden these shelters create among all local citizens. Where is that fairness? Comically, a business savvy head of RE developer TMT should not use government funds for shelter development in the core area until she places a shelter in her own neighborhood. There probably ought to be laws that require that no shelter a bureaucrat assigns to a neighborhood is approved until the bureaucrat approves one in their own neighborhood.
Looking at any homeless shelter list or map for the City, you will find a heavy concentration of them in the downtown core area, and a healthy proliferation of them in N, NE and SE Portland. There appear to be just two in the whole of suburban SW Portland and none anywhere resembling the east or west hillsides of west Portland. Uncertain a correlation exists or not, it’s odd that N, NE and SE neighborhoods with the highest crime stats have their share of shelters – but SW Portland and the West hills with the lowest crime rates, have little to no shelters. And let’s not use zoning as a core issue. Shelters can easily fit zoning adjacent high traffic corridors in the west hills - whether the Sylvan exit, Miller Road or the east end of Canyon Road. Why not convert the soon to be empty Albertsons and Rite Aid stores at SW Shattuck into shelters?
Understanding all of this, it is fair to find these shelters cause a variety of undesirable affects to a neighborhood. I have come the inevitable understanding that distribution of these shelters should be shared as an equal burden with all neighborhoods and not just a select few. You leaders and neighbors looking at two new shelters within a few blocks of one another really need to press for equity in this matter. Before anymore shelters come to downtown, the tenth highest crime area of the city, shelters need to be more fairly and equitably placed among the South, Southwest and Westside neighborhoods that fail to have any. It’s time to share the burden these shelters place upon a neighborhood and share in the sacrifice as well.