Pearl neighbors are keeping score
Residents document livability impacts they were promised would be corrected
Linda Witt, who chairs the Pearl District Neighborhood Association’s Shelter Oversight Committee, has a big job.
Witt documents impacts on livability in the Pearl District related to the new Northrup Street Shelter, which Mayor Keith Wilson suggested would reduce camping, crime and trash in the vicinity, as he claimed was the case around other overnight city shelters.
Witt and other neighborhood activists doubted that claim from the start, but they realized the only path to protect their community was to carefully document each violation and report them to the city.
This is how Witt spent Sunday, Sept. 21:
“I spent two hours documenting issues and cleaning up the Northrup shelter engagement zone trash, where I got around 40 gallons of trash. I don’t understand how that can be happening if the city is doing the new seven-days-a-week Pearl cleaning via Clean Start (which I’ve never seen in the Pearl).
“In addition to the two hours cleaning on foot, I also drove through the engagement zone 6 p.m.-7 p.m. All of the issues described below thus were observed in less than a total of 3 hours on Sunday, in the small section of the engagement zone in the closest proximity to the shelter. Every single item in the list below is either a violation of the promised operational guidelines for the shelter or demonstrates a complete contradiction to the mayor’s promise at the town hall to “mitigate the effects of the shelter and substantially improve community livability.”
“I’m particularly worried about … the nearly 70 families who live at Oro Apartments next to the shelter and for the patrons of LA Fitness across the street. When the shelter capacity grows, so will these congregations.
“Note that the congregations that I saw last night around the shelter are relatively harmless (since there is currently not a lot of visible, active drug use by the current shelter participants). I know many of the shelter participants by name and feel for their situations.
“The heavy concentration of homeless near the shelter and in adjacent blocks are a blight on livability in this community. This we know from the Moore and River District shelters, a sadly inescapable, inevitable and enduring challenge—one that we look to the mayor to solve as promised in front of 580 residents at the July 28 town hall.”
Witt listed some of the other scenes she observed:
1. A homeless woman spending several hours directly on the sidewalk surrounding the Northrup shelter, littering, ranging and ranting. No staff responded.
2. A homeless man camping and unresponsive under a tarp along Northwest 13th Avenue between Northrup and Marshall—less than 15 yards from the shelter’s perimeter. No shelter or other staff dealt with it.
3. Between 6 and 7 p.m., at least 11 homeless shelter participants waiting on Northwest 15th between Northrup and Marshall and next to LA Fitness.
4. Two homeless men with mental health issues on Northwest 15th between Lovejoy and Kearney. A sleeper on Northwest Kearney between 15th and 16th. No resources present or available for outreach.
5. Two aggressive trespassers on Northwest Kearney between 12th and NW 13th. I was threatened. No resources present or available for outreach.
6. At Jamison Park, every bench was occupied by homeless people, some sleeping. No other people were in the park despite beautiful weather.
7. Northrup shelter users spending the day in Jamison Park despite city promises that shelter participants would be directed to Oasis day spa and not be allowed to disperse in the District.
8. A broken and boarded up window on Northwest Johnson at 14th, and glass from a car break-in on 15th between Johnson and Kearney.
9. An unresponsive person and a sleeper in Asa’s alcove and a partially exposed man on Lovejoy.
Other neighbors supplied revealing photos.
Read the descriptions of the people on the streets, look at the pictures or better yet, look for yourself. These are people dealing with severe mental health issues, drug addiction or both. They are not people ready to move into housing, they are not people who can be employed. Low cost housing may be a big issue, but it’s not going to help those people crashed out on the streets of Portland. Portland has a HUGE drug problem and that drug problem leads to crime and until that’s dealt with its not going to get better
Also… bravo Linda. Keep up the good work! 👏🏻