Warehousing people overnight, kicking them out at 6:00 am.. and with no wraparound services has a high likelihood of failure. If I took a similar proposal to Keith Wilson as a business person, he'd send me back to the drawing board, and rightly so.
The shelter is not only low barrier, but co-ed - a scenario that homeless women do not tend to frequent or trust. The definition of a “low-barrier” homeless shelter states that it is attractive because it provides easy and immediate access to emergency shelter by reducing or eliminating obstacles that “prevent people from accessing services,” such as sobriety, income verification, criminal background checks, or identification requirements. So someone can conceivably arrive drunk or high and sleep it off before being evicted at 6 am the next morning with a questionable amount of time to consider counseling, addiction services, or any other service on offer. The NS streetcar runs just outside the door and the Pearl Safeway is 2 blocks away, opening - coincidentally - at 6 am when the overnight shelter ushers people out. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict where people will go when they head out in the morning with their snack, where they may choose to ride aimlessly around and where they might land at 10 am (the new NW Branch Library between Overton and Pettygrove and 20th & 21st, a block from the streetcar line’s 21st & Northrup stop, when it opens in a few months' time - by which time there will likely be more than 40 visitors per night at the shelter plus whoever chooses to congregate outside its walls.
When it opens, the Salvation Army-operated shelter will be the fifth in a series of about 12 to 15 new overnight-only shelters promised by Portland Mayor Keith Wilson. It is the first to have generated intense neighborhood pushback. A majority of the shelters, thus far, have been located in NW and SW Portland. 5 out of 7 of the planned shelters listed as operating or to be operating within the next few months are located in Inner NW and SW Portland, as opposed to one shelter in North and one in outer Southeast Portland.
On August 6th, the Oregonian reported that, “The first new day center will be set up in an empty lot in Old Town, bordered by Northwest 6th Avenue, Glisan Street, Broadway and Hoyt Street. The lot is owned by Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development arm, and served as a village shelter during the pandemic.” Subsequent articles have not mentioned this site; apparently it didn’t pan out, likely because it is located near the old Post Office acreage, an expensive property coveted by developers. But it was yet another location in Inner NW. Originally talk of overnight and 24-hour shelters spoke of locating them equitably in the four quadrants of the city. That does not appear to be happening. Why?
Portland overnight-only shelters (per The Oregonian / Oregon Live)
PUBLICLY RUN
North Portland
Moore Street
5325 North Williams Avenue (between Emerson and Killingsworth)
Capacity: 100 beds
Clientele: Co-ed
Operated by: Salvation Army (city funding)
Planned opening: OPEN as of January 2025
-----------------
Outer Southeast Portland
Church of the Nazarene
9715 Southeast Powell Boulevard (at the junction of I-205 and Route 26)
Capacity: 100 beds
Clientele: Co-ed
Operated by: Agape Village (city funding)
Planned opening: OPEN as of August 2025
--------------------
Inner Southwest Portland
Operation Nightwatch at St. Stephen’s
1432 Southwest 13th Avenue (between Columbia and Clay)
Why would anyone expect that they will act on feedback now, when the mayor and district reps have ignored all of us from the very beginning? They pushed this forward with zero neighborhood input and have dodged every resident question or request for clarity about actual mitigation measures. And the reason they keep dodging is obvious—there was no real planning done. No study of neighborhood impact. No enhanced security strategy. No defined response times for inevitable issues. None of it exists, because they simply don’t care what happens to the Pearl or to the businesses and residents who actually invest in living here.
I hope people remember this the next time they vote, because the entire process has been egregious—and it will ultimately collapse under its own weight. Ill-conceived plans with no strategy always do. Unfortunately, Portland has grown accustomed to accepting this same brand of failure, over and over again, from its elected “leaders”.
Warehousing people overnight, kicking them out at 6:00 am.. and with no wraparound services has a high likelihood of failure. If I took a similar proposal to Keith Wilson as a business person, he'd send me back to the drawing board, and rightly so.
The shelter is not only low barrier, but co-ed - a scenario that homeless women do not tend to frequent or trust. The definition of a “low-barrier” homeless shelter states that it is attractive because it provides easy and immediate access to emergency shelter by reducing or eliminating obstacles that “prevent people from accessing services,” such as sobriety, income verification, criminal background checks, or identification requirements. So someone can conceivably arrive drunk or high and sleep it off before being evicted at 6 am the next morning with a questionable amount of time to consider counseling, addiction services, or any other service on offer. The NS streetcar runs just outside the door and the Pearl Safeway is 2 blocks away, opening - coincidentally - at 6 am when the overnight shelter ushers people out. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict where people will go when they head out in the morning with their snack, where they may choose to ride aimlessly around and where they might land at 10 am (the new NW Branch Library between Overton and Pettygrove and 20th & 21st, a block from the streetcar line’s 21st & Northrup stop, when it opens in a few months' time - by which time there will likely be more than 40 visitors per night at the shelter plus whoever chooses to congregate outside its walls.
When it opens, the Salvation Army-operated shelter will be the fifth in a series of about 12 to 15 new overnight-only shelters promised by Portland Mayor Keith Wilson. It is the first to have generated intense neighborhood pushback. A majority of the shelters, thus far, have been located in NW and SW Portland. 5 out of 7 of the planned shelters listed as operating or to be operating within the next few months are located in Inner NW and SW Portland, as opposed to one shelter in North and one in outer Southeast Portland.
On August 6th, the Oregonian reported that, “The first new day center will be set up in an empty lot in Old Town, bordered by Northwest 6th Avenue, Glisan Street, Broadway and Hoyt Street. The lot is owned by Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development arm, and served as a village shelter during the pandemic.” Subsequent articles have not mentioned this site; apparently it didn’t pan out, likely because it is located near the old Post Office acreage, an expensive property coveted by developers. But it was yet another location in Inner NW. Originally talk of overnight and 24-hour shelters spoke of locating them equitably in the four quadrants of the city. That does not appear to be happening. Why?
Portland overnight-only shelters (per The Oregonian / Oregon Live)
PUBLICLY RUN
North Portland
Moore Street
5325 North Williams Avenue (between Emerson and Killingsworth)
Capacity: 100 beds
Clientele: Co-ed
Operated by: Salvation Army (city funding)
Planned opening: OPEN as of January 2025
-----------------
Outer Southeast Portland
Church of the Nazarene
9715 Southeast Powell Boulevard (at the junction of I-205 and Route 26)
Capacity: 100 beds
Clientele: Co-ed
Operated by: Agape Village (city funding)
Planned opening: OPEN as of August 2025
--------------------
Inner Southwest Portland
Operation Nightwatch at St. Stephen’s
1432 Southwest 13th Avenue (between Columbia and Clay)
Capacity: 80 beds
Clientele: Co-ed
Operated by: Agape Village (city funding)
Planned opening: OPEN as of August 2025
SAFES
30 Southwest 2nd Avenue (between Ankeny and Burnside) Capacity: 100 beds
Clientele: Women only
Operated by: Salvation Army (city funding)
Planned opening: OPEN as of January 2025
-----------------------
Inner Northwest Portland
Northrup Shelter
1435 Northwest Northrup Street (between 14th and 15th)
Capacity: 200 beds
Clientele: Co-ed
Operated by: Salvation Army (city funding)
Planned opening: Sept. 2, 2025
-----------------------
PRIVATELY RUN
Inner Northwest
Bethanie’s Room
1015 Northwest 17th Avenue (between Lovejoy and Marshall)
Capacity: 75 beds
Clientele: Women only
Operated by: Blanchet House (private funding)
Planned opening: Summer 2025
CityTeam
219 Northwest 4th Avenue (between Everett and Davis)
Capacity: 30 overnight beds; 80 longer term beds for people in recovery
Clientele: Men only
Operated by: CityTeam (private funding)
Planned opening: Fall 2025
We may as well just rename the Pearl the “Shelter District” at this point. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
I think we need to give it a chance, and make sure there is transparent feedback on whether changes need to be made.
Why would anyone expect that they will act on feedback now, when the mayor and district reps have ignored all of us from the very beginning? They pushed this forward with zero neighborhood input and have dodged every resident question or request for clarity about actual mitigation measures. And the reason they keep dodging is obvious—there was no real planning done. No study of neighborhood impact. No enhanced security strategy. No defined response times for inevitable issues. None of it exists, because they simply don’t care what happens to the Pearl or to the businesses and residents who actually invest in living here.
I hope people remember this the next time they vote, because the entire process has been egregious—and it will ultimately collapse under its own weight. Ill-conceived plans with no strategy always do. Unfortunately, Portland has grown accustomed to accepting this same brand of failure, over and over again, from its elected “leaders”.