Harm reduction or havoc creation?
High church, anarchists take tolerance to extremes
The southern end of Northwest 19th Avenue is paved with good intentions.
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral serves meals to 150-200 hungry souls every Wednesday and hands out food boxes daily at 19th and Everett streets. The indigent find safe rest on the church grounds, where the detritus of their lifestyle proliferates.
A scruffy congregation gathers two blocks south near McDonald’s every Friday night to receive free syringes and pipes—no questions asked—from volunteers who believe drug users are entitled to dignity and a helping hand.
The Portland People’s Outreach Project and the church have little in common, but they share a mission to serve suffering people without imparting judgment or expecting behavioral change. Whether they are doing the Lord’s work or spreading anarchy, the consequences can be indistinguishable.
It’s not a pretty sight. Trinity chief priest Nathan LeRud spoke of a drug crisis “unfolding every single day on our front steps, in our courtyard, in Kempton Hall, in our bathrooms and, sometimes, here in the chapel. Members of my staff have been attacked. A woman shouted a gay slur at me the other day when I asked her politely not to shoot up on the steps.”
“It seems like purgatory,” said Megan Murphy, a member of Trinity Episcopal and co-owner of an apartment building on 19th Avenue. “The problem is bad all around. It’s like a war.”
Still, LeRud proclaimed in a June sermon that serving the destitute and distraught is “the reason we’re here.”
“We attempt to curate this little sandbox where all the unsavory folks of the world, the mentally ill and the drug pushers and the hemorrhaging women and the ones who choose to live outside— all the ones who don’t belong in polite society—shunted through broken foster care and health care and governmental systems, all the ones whom nobody can even see except church people. It is our job. It’s more than that, it’s the reason we’re here. It’s how we touch Jesus.”
Neighbors say that is not their reason for living here. Nor did they invite the drug paraphernalia handouts by the loosely structured organization most had never heard of. How much should they tolerate in the name of someone else’s social experiment?
“Every morning around 8 a.m., I go out and chase the drug dealers and users off multiple Trinity staircases,” said Pete Colt, a longtime resident of Northwest 18th Avenue who is on his own kind of mission.
“I go out again around 5 p.m., then 8 p.m., which are other times drug dealers and sometimes more than a dozen people will gather, sell and buy and do drugs and then continue to do drugs as they walk through the neighborhood, leaving syringes and foil where little girls and boys are at risk of finger sticks or fentanyl poisoning.”
The drug paraphernalia is distributed under a theory called harm reduction; addressing addiction as a health, and not a criminal, matter that can be made less destructive with clean needles and supplies.
Hannah McDevitt, a former addict who has volunteered for Portland People’s Outreach Project for four years, says addicts will only seek recovery when they are ready. Meanwhile, a ready supply of clean syringes and pipes reduces the chances of introducing disease and hardship.
The Friday night handouts are just one of seven weekly stops scheduled by PPOP, which receives free drug paraphernalia, hygiene supplies and tents from Multnomah County. McDevitt would not say where its financial support comes from, and Multnomah County spokesperson Denis Theriault said no county departments have provided drug paraphernalia or funds to PPOP.
Community meets
Frustrations simmered at a public gathering Aug. 1 hosted by Andreas Loeffler, director of pastoral services at St. Mary’s Cathedral on Northwest 18th Avenue.
About 40 people attended, including LeRud and other representatives of Trinity Episcopal. Two Portland Police officers spoke. Two television stations came with cameras.
“In the past two weeks especially, we’ve seen a big spike in the number of deals going down and vandalism and tagging and you name it, going on,” Loeffler said. “This past week’s been a little crazy.”
Colt, who organized the meeting and invited the news media, issued a call to action.
“I love you. I love this neighborhood,” he said, “but in two years I’m leaving Portland, and you guys have to pick up the baton.”
His successor may not be evident, but the throng of neighbors who think he’s on the right track is growing. Lately, they’ve been gathering at the PPOP Friday night handouts, and last Sunday they marched around their corner of the district to assert their claim to a safe and livable community.
The message has gotten a foothold at Trinity, which has beefed up its private security patrols to four hours every day of the week.
“Trinity engages with private companies to perform security sweeps of the campus every day,” LeRud said in his June 30 sermon. “We’ve increased our security budget by almost $50,000 to accommodate these ever-increasing layers of enforcement and policing. And still, we find ourselves unable to adequately respond to the acute humanitarian crisis—the drug crisis.”
Murphy believes it will take more than guards to turn things around.
“Our community cannot handle free meals now,” she said at the Aug. 1 gathering. “It is hurting our neighborhood, and it is not helping.”
She was in good company.
Homeowner Chris Kleronomos said he worries for his wife’s safety when she has had to tell strangers to get off their porch.
“I’m not suggesting that we not help them,” said Kleronomos, noting that most are nice, nonthreatening and in need of services. “That’s not the point. At what point does this end? Why should this burden be on me?”
He said law enforcement has not been up to the task.
“We all know where drug deals happen,” he said. “We all have videos. It doesn’t take a ton of surveillance.”
“Everyone knows that stuff is happening,” said Officer Eli Arnold, noting that he has been attending special meetings addressing this and other hot spots for a year. Catching perpetrators in the act in order to make an arrest, however, is labor intensive.
Michelle Milla and her husband moved into their house near McDonald’s about a year ago. Only recently did they link the PPOP handouts with the problems they were seeing Friday nights.
“They come into our neighborhood every Friday,” said Milla’s husband, David Gray. “It’s like pouring gas all over and lighting a fire. And then they leave. The drug dealers swoop in later that night.”
The partying goes on all weekend, Gray said.
He said he has tried to talk to the PPOP volunteers about the consequences of their work but has been brushed off. Coarse exchanges between neighbors and drug users have become a Friday night staple. The Portland Police have been called to referee but haven’t known what to do. In a city where possession of illegal drugs gets a pass, dispensing drug paraphernalia hardly registers.
Richard Perkins, a downtown resident who overcame drug addiction and imprisonment for drug offenses to become an advisor to policymakers on mental health and addiction issues, offered a critique of PPOP.
“Come Sept. 1, there is going to be more public attention on the things we are doing to get people into treatment. Needle exchange is about public safety. Needle handouts are about victim [drug user] safety, and can be at the expense of public safety,” Perkins said.
“That's where we cross the line, in my opinion. The goal is too narrow.”
“My other question is: How has Multnomah County figured out how to get supplies … to them without this group being on their distribution list? Are we using public funds for this, and are we being transparent about it?”