Oasis day center coming to Old Town
Site raises similar objections as overnight shelters
The city will open its first day shelter for homeless people in Old Town, but the initial public reaction is not much better than toward the overnight shelters announced earlier this summer.
Members of the Old Town Community Association raised concerns about the impact on adjacent businesses and public safety in the vicinity. The same site, a block bordered by Northwest Broadway, Sixth Avenue, Glisan Street and Hoyt Street, was used as a camp during the COVID era, but it closed after incidents of gun play, violence and a murder.
Skyler Brocker-Knapp, director of Portland Solutions, said the facility will be open 16 hours a day and have showers, WiFi and charging stations, services not available at overnight shelters.
Like the overnight shelter coming to 1435 NW Northrup St., it will have capacity for 200 people.
The day center will be called Oasis, a poor choice in the eyes of Old Town activists who created a program of the same name to serve homeless people.
Brocker-Knapp said no drugs or weapons will be allowed in the center, which is considered a low-barrier facility. It will be staffed by three people. Assurances that crime, trash and other livability impacts within a 1,000-foot radius will receive priority response from the city were met with skepticism by the 50-plus people attending yesterday’s OTCA meeting.
“Why did you pick Old Town?” asked OTCA board member Kevin Guinn, noting that the center “was dumped on us without discussion.”
NW Portland has been struggling heavily with the homeless/associated violence and crime now for honestly a good 6 years (even pre-Covid, etc.). In a total void of city services that any taxpayer could reasonably expect, these neighborhoods have largely had to fend for themselves and build strong networks to step in where the city has utterly failed. Now, instead of (for once) attempting to finally give this area some relief, the city (the mayor driving, the district reps sitting, totally useless to us, on the sidelines letting this occur) has decided to basically make all of NW a shelter district - overnight and day shelters for an inordinate amount of people on opposite ends of the district, I guess to ensure all day homeless foot traffic and loitering through as much of the area as humanly possible. It’s quite literally like the thousands of people who ACTUALLY live and have businesses in the area are just there to host and pay for the ongoing destruction of our safety, property values, and just overall livability by people who have migrated here from other places and do nothing but take from the community they are actively destroying. Now they do it with the city government’s blessing.
Everyone remember these names: Keith Wilson, Olivia Clark, Mitch Green, Eric Zimmerman, Jessica Vega Peterson, and Megan Moyer. They never again deserve your vote.
The staffing level seems wholly inadequate for the number of people they are admitting. I'll assume 3 at any time (or is it 3 to cover 16 hour days, 7 days a week?!) to oversee 200 people, keep this facility clean, settle disputes, answer questions, provide links to potential drug rehab or long term housing solutions. I don't pretend to have other solutions, but it does seem like the mayor and council have decided to concentrate a large portion of services for Portland's homeless in the NW neighborhood.
But perhaps this is their answer to our question - what will the homeless sleeping at the Northrup shelter do during the day? They have a 15 minute walk (through the Pearl) over to this shelter.