Robert Fulghum wrote that “all I really need to know, I learned in kindergarten.”
That may be a stretch. Although I grew up in a remote part of the Lower 48 and never attended kindergarten, I learned some weird things in preschool about 20 years later that I can’t get out of my mind.
I was a teacher’s aide in a Head Start classroom in Fort Wayne, Ind., and I remember the approved corrective when one of our 3-year-old charges got out of line: “You’re in the wrong place.”
No scolding or negative characterizations of these tender souls was allowed, so the only permitted guidance was to suggest that whatever deviant behavior might have drawn them in was merely a matter of location. Instead of marking on the wall, you should have been sitting in your chair, for instance.
I haven’t thought much about the concept of being in the wrong place, except in jovial reflections of my brief career in teaching. But it may be time to resurrect this simple truth regarding the problem now tying our city in knots: What to do about homelessness?
We have been wedded to the theory that shelters and services for homeless and/or addicted people should be in the central city, the area where these populations tend to congregate. The mantra that facilities “must be near services” has been taken as an absolute, certainly by Multnomah County and our major social service agencies.
But what if that’s a mistake? Services—meaning housing, food, medical care, detoxification and recovery programs, mental health counseling, benefit counseling, job training, family reunification, etc.—can be provided most efficiently at a single site, wherever that may be.
If being “near services” is shorthand for being near drug dealers, communities of addicts, stores vulnerable to shoplifting and passersby to be panhandled, the central city may be the very worst location of all.
But we persist in piling more and more services and shelters in Old Town, downtown and adjacent districts. Mayor Keith Wilson is staking his mayoralty on a plan to create 1,500 shelter beds in neighborhoods where they will bring the most social and economic harm and where the locals are most determined to keep them out.
Old Town has been defined for decades by social service agencies for the indigent, and as a result, it has become too unsafe and unsavory for most Portlanders to venture near. Despite enormous public and private investment in the Pearl District next door—including enormous social capital in the form of thousands of successful people who have flocked there and then volunteered to build a thriving community for all—its vacant storefronts, broken windows, graffiti and campsites increasingly resemble Old Town.
A few years ago, anarchists took over the streets, breaking windows and vandalizing anything in sight in the name of social justice. No one should be shielded from the social burdens suffered by others, they said. Instead of spreading the wealth, this dictum involves sharing the pain.
No one in a position of authority condoned this madness. But this time, people in positions of authority may be causing even more destruction in pursuit of the same twisted notion of social justice. They treat successful sections of the city not as resources and positive examples but as targets to label as selfish resisters to compassion for those in need. A heap of self-righteousness leads nowhere we want to go.
A Russian proverb I may have repeated too often best illustrates the principle:
A divine messenger appeared to a peasant farmer. “The almighty has decided to bless you. Whatever you wish for will be granted. There is only one condition: Whatever you receive, your neighbor will be granted twofold.”
The farmer’s smile disappeared.
“So if I ask for a ton of gold, my neighbor will get two?”
“That is correct.”
The farmer thought for a while. Then his face brightened.
“I’ve got it. Put out my left eye.”
This is SO SPOT-ON, Alan Classen! Consolidating services in a single location would eliminate the damage to livability in the rest of Portland -- areas with working families, children, the elderly, schools and struggling businesses. Centralization of homeless resources would also be vastly more efficient in terms of resources and cost-effectiveness -- a wiser use of the increasingly limited taxpayer funds. Instead of spreading scores of outreach workers and specialized homeless services sparsely all over the city, they could be consolidated in one place, along with EVERY WRAP-AROUND SERVICE IMAGINABLE, for the convenience of doing real-time, effective and thoughtful triage that would help the homeless overcome their individual issues, whether it's a missing Social Security card, missing teeth, missing meds, missing a connection to low-cost housing, trauma/PTSD, or entrenched opioid or alcohol addiction.
Here's the catch: The mayor thinks that he MUST spread out the services so as to be convenient to the homeless, "meeting them where they are." However, other cities ditched that thinking and found much more success by purposefully consolidating services in outlying areas - Las Vegas, San Diego, Fresno, Amsterdam, Calgary, Alberta, and Vienna are a few examples. Public policy experts like Vadim Mozyrsky have said that placing shelters in areas with the least impact to the economy and residents "not only benefits those city residents who are working and raising families but also helps homeless individuals by placing them in environments conducive to recovery and away from negative influences such as drug dealing.”
Why does the mayor pursue this path that sacrifices the economy and livability of whole swathes of the city to the needs of a small number of persons, the majority of whom have entrenched opioid abuse and mental illness problems? (Portland's current homeless population is estimated to be made of 75% of mentally ill, opioid addition, or both.) Could the mayor be listening to failed policy advisors who have zero track record of actually making substantial inroads in the homelessness emergency, despite huge cash infusions over many years? Could the mayor be ignoring, perhaps, the wise counsel of public policy experts like Vadim Mozyrsky and Betsy Johnson? Could he be ignoring homeless sector experts like Alan Evans, who has an outstanding, data-backed, proven success rate in helping the homeless turn their lives around -- and who offered to the mayor to add adjunct low-barrier facilities on available land near Bybee Lakes)? Could the mayor be listening only to the entrenched homeless industrial complex, who are so heavily invested in their million-dollar properties in downtown, that they refuse to consider relocating to a centralized facility, but who prefer instead to simply churn ever bigger, year-after-year contracts with the city and county?
When will the insanity end? When can Portland neighborhoods reclaim their prosperity, their livability, their FUTURE? When will this mayor abandon his failed and very costly harm reduction policies, and instead embrace the law-and-order "tough love" approaches that have successfully reduced camping in San Francisco by 85%? Centralized homeless services, combined with enforcement of camping bans, would dramatically improve the homeless emergency practically overnight. It would save lives that would be lost to opioid overdose and it would pull Portland out of its disastrous death spiral.
Despite the widespread praise for Mayor Wilson’s supposedly genuine and well-meaning intentions, it is the height of political arrogance for him to have persisted in his incredibly amateurish and tone-deaf proposal for the new sparsely equipped homeless shelter in the Pearl District. The hopes and dreams of thousands of residents and hundreds of business owners who have made substantial personal investments in their residences and establishments, on top of the municipal governments and developers who have invested billions in planning and constructing the neighborhood since the 1990s, are being ignored by a single headstrong politician with no experience whatsoever in much the same way that our nation’s President gives the middle finger to millions of Americans who know better than their designated leader. So who will compensate Pearl residents and others with a stakehold in that area when their livelihood and safety will be further eroded by this feckless Mayor? We already know the answer.