The Pearl District Neighborhood Association is right on the mark in opposing/pausing construction of the 219 unit housing project. It seems that the City's track record for these projects is not good and the neighborhood will likely suffer as a result.
The neighborhood's concerns are NOT NIMBY. Residents are genuine worried about the adverse conditions that will exacerbate an already suffering area. It seems this project amounts to a "taking", i.e., the City knowingly reducing the value of existing residential properties by siting, building and operating this facility.
I’m sick of legitimate concerns about public safety, neighborhood blight, and government accountability being dismissed with the lazy label “NIMBY.” Portland “progressives” have weaponized name-calling to the point that these terms have lost all meaning. It’s a tactic to silence dissent rather than address real problems, and it’s not working out well, so let’s stop giving it credence.
As someone who has lived in the Pearl for years, I fully support this pause and the pushback demanding accountability from government agencies that have failed residents for far too long. Our neighborhood deserves better than the hand we have been dealt for really the last decade. I hope the association stands their ground. It’s time for accountability and a halt on bad ideas and bad management.
Sean Sweat's perspective is troubling because he seemingly ignores one of the PDNA's chief concerns: Home Forward's demonstrated competence. Sweat is betraying his district's needs and safety.
Is he an " elitist" who "knows" what is best? Perhaps an undisclosed DSA member.
If the City that Shirks could successfully demonstrate their competence in maintaining and managing public housing, it would be one thing. I'm frequently near the Hollywood East Public Housing Complex and it is a magnet for unlicensed vehicles, loiterers, litter and general neighborhood disorder. With the exception of elder housing, I seriously regard public housing as a detriment to any neighborhood, because local government has been shown time and time again to be untrustworthy to responsibly manage the impacts.
If you can't afford to maintain it properly, you can't afford to build it.
Proper law enforcement and a criminal justice system that backs it up with punishment at times, is the solution to livable neighborhoods that include the poor. From what I have read, Home Forward is a dysfunctional organization, probably made so by city policies that are unrealistic about housing people with severe mental and addiction problems. Poor mental health policy and law are driving broader problems with neighborhood livability.
I have mentioned this before, but still feel that it remains unexplored. One of the certain reasons why a community like the Pearl reacts to slow or stop further low-income development is simply because it has been repeatedly been called upon to house these homeless (and near homeless) housing experiments. (For what are low income tenants but would-be homeless without municipal assistance?) It would appear that the Pearl has been forced to deal with permanent low-income and temporary housing multiple times.
And, yes, the predictable bad experiences occurred as expected and the community suffered from it. And yes, the false promise of city protections never materialized, causing added harm. The fantasy is a lie that low-income and homeless housing does not result in a degradation of community life. But, it does. And the hard reality is that a persistent minority of participants of these facilities damage property and populate the neighborhood during un-housed hours of day or night, creating litter, promoting vagrancy, some modest substance abuse, reducing quality of livability and property values, while increasing concern for neighborhood safety and social and business vibrancy. Knowing these things, how on earth can any municipal body then proceed to place this extraordinary burden on one community over and over while virtually ignoring scores of others in the City?
Where is the low-income and homeless housing in Raleigh Hills or Burlingame or Hillsdale, by example? Why are so many other neighborhoods exempt from this while the Pearl keeps getting more? It's a complete lie to claim that available land is the key. There sits at the NW corner of SW Shattuck Rd and Beaverton-Hillsdale highway long empty Rite Aid and Albertson stores, adjacent acres of parking. Why not build a multi-story low-income property there? Why doesn't that community share in this city-wide burden? The discussion of this problem does not end in arguments to stop it from occurring again in the Pearl, it continues in arguing why the burden of such neighborhood degradation is not spread evenly about the city so that one lone community need not bear the damaging cost alone.
When Portland citizens ask why downtown (NW and SW Portland east of 405) suffers so much vacancy and loss of property values, it is clear that the extremely disproportionate amount of homeless and low-income housing in those areas have helped denigrate the livability and work-ability of these communities. Why would offices operate in a core area where the sidewalks are filled with the homeless, the mentally ill and the substance abusers? What's the value of siting your business beside a city low income property where some tenants daily roam the adjacent streets. Go ahead. Spend a few hours at the food cart pod at SW Park and Ankeny, watch the local low-income residents roam and still tell me that's building property and livability value. The park is a littered mess, the garbage cans ravaged or overflowing, the mental ill are screaming or talking to themselves, private security officers visit the area regularly.
We citizens do a very good job of avoiding those areas to avoid these problems or the unpleasantness that accumulates there. Just like we ignore how neighborhoods and property owners like the Pearl have had to hire private security services to protect their property and personal safety from theft, vandalism and harm. A 33% downtown vacancy rate, towers selling for pennies on the dollar and severe shortages in property tax and city fee revenue can find direct links to the homeless and low-income populace disproportionately placed in the core area. The Pearl, once built to be a residential oasis in the heart of downtown, now suffers the greatest indignation. But, why? Why not at least share that blight around the whole of the city?
And lest anyone assumes I am not sympathetic enough to the plight of the homeless (or those on fixed, municipal assistance) understand that both can exist - sympathy and honest appraisal. Sympathy and care coexists with revulsion and rebuke. They are not conflicting, dissimilar things, but exist simultaneously. I surely could not blame that populace for how the Pearl was disproportionately saddled with them. The sympathetic argument here is not if we build to support those unable to support themselves, but where these residences get built - time and time again.
Being poor is not a crime. Having a mental illness is not a crime, nor is having a disability. All may correlate with poverty. There is no doubt safe shelter is needed by those unable to afford it. But the effects of drug use and active psychosis may be criminal and are certainly detrimental to those suffering from these and those living around them. They affect the safety and livability of neighbors and require "careful handling"by service providers and treatment. The associated actions of drug dealing, hoarding and property damage can adversely impact those providing services and treatment and outreach.
It is our policies in helping these people that are the problem. We assume that a active Fentanyl addict, a meth addict who hasn't slept for a week or a person is active psychosis has the "free will" to decide when to seek detox or treatment. The latest research suggests otherwise. An addict can , with proper behavioral modification over time, regain free will but it is rare in someone active in their addiction. I think Tom could agree with that.
Jail time can give an addict a chance to detox, if they have committed the crime of possession or some property crime, but it will also give the addict a criminal record, which will make any re-integration into society, if and when they recover, far more challenging. And they need a whole lot more than just detox and a safe bed to recover the free will and Recover from their addiction.
While Home Forward has clearly demonstrated both incompetence and neglect of duty, they, along with other housing services providers, have been dealt a poor hand by Multnomah County homeless policy. The County has used a variety of tactics to get addicts into housing before they are ready and without services and security and support needed. This has resulted in physical damage to affordable housing, its lack of appear to people who want to avoid the unsafe behavior prevalent on the streets and lots of vacancies. Private landlords were given the opportunity from housing services to house people only to experience the same negative consequences. The newly completed Joyce and Fairfield SRO apartments at the north end of Downtown are a good case in point, although the Joyce has been improving since the arrest of a significant dealer residing there.
Now, we are in an housing environment in the Central City where the vacancies in market rate housing has forced rents down to those required by affordable guidelines and where market rents for proposed new construction would have to be so high to pencil out due to inflation costs that nobody will build them. So our answer is to construct a new high rise affordable housing project in an inflationary construction environment on one of the Central City's largest vacant parcels in an attempt to revitalize downtown? Instead of buying and existing apartment building who is experiencing sub par NOI? This does not sound very strategic to me.
We don't have a lack of housing. We have a lack of people who can afford the housing we have. Multnomah County and Portland are bleeding jobs. Businesses are leaving, not coming and so are the younger workers. I have lived in downtown for 20 years. Before that, I worked at Big Pink for US Bank. This is through occupy wall street and the Pandemic and the protests and the roll out of Measure 110 and the spike in homelessness and the rise of Fentanyl. I witnessed to rollout of Max and the Streetcar and watched while they became moble shelters for homeless folk. If the City workers were interested in bringing safety and livability back to the City they were hired to serve, they would quit fighting for Work From Home and start fighting for Back to Work and Volunteer programs to help bring the city back. Public Service as a concept is dead.
Tom is advocating for a Civil Commitment for the mentally ill. I have been advocating for a 30 detox civil commitment for Fentanyl and Meth addicts. Politicians in Oregon won't touch civil commitment with a ten foot pole even if limited and restricted because it is a violation of an individuals free will. Yet, we can throw someone with psychosis or addiction in jail, of that illness causes them to commit a crime. But we can't treat them? This is what Any Mellencamp of Central City Concern and Lance Orton of Team Portland call Compassionate Neglect.
We have 250 "jail" beds in 5 separate dorms at the Inverness Jail in an area around the airport that would be suitable for temporary use for detox beds, but the County refuses to fund them opening. They are built, but unstaffed. The County funds multiple non-profits who supply outreach workers to addicts living on the street and has spent $25 Million on a "deflection center" which has been operating without ever being able to produce a single example of a recovered addict in stabilized housing. Why can't we re-deploy these existing resources and get addicts into detox, use the SRO Home Forward housing like the Joyce and Fairfield for shorter term sober supportive housing, with proper security and start addicts on a path to recovery. If they fail, repeat. As a former addict, I am well aware of the need for repetition but I have been recovered for 50 years.
What do you think would happen in Portland and Multnomah County if we changed the goal for addicts and people with psychosis from "hard reduction" and "compassionate neglect" to recovery-if it because unacceptable for a person with a behavioral health illness to live on the street? What would happen to the safety of those people and to those around them? Would new people with those illnesses be coming to Portland? If they did, would we be able to reunite them with family and get medical conditions stabilized? Would visitors and businesses feel safer in the Central City? Would people start riding Max again?
Ask yourself what is preventing us from implementing these civil commitment laws? I have asked Rob Nosse, who chairs the House Health and Behavioral Health Committee ("too hard") and Mitch Green ("jail bad"), Meghan Moyer ("free will") and Nathan Vasquez ("politically toxic"). That, my friends, is what "compassionate neglect" is-people could make a difference sticking with the status quo.
It seems like we are not very good at thinking outside the box and trying to accomplish multiple goals at the same time.
Assuming free will with severe mental illness has the beneficial effect of holding them as we hold others accountable to laws. If we want people to behavior in a more conforming manner, it makes sense for us to see them as responsible agents. That doesn’t mean excessive punishment, but it does allow for forgiveness and compassion. It dignifies those who have the capability to change. And it might motivate them to choose a path that has less adverse consequences for them. For those who need containment for a period, which will be viewed as a type of punishment by many with severe mental illness, we should be sure to ground it in the public good. They may have good outcomes, but it is wrong to presume that we are doing them a favor for sending to a psych ward. I am hoping that moderating the civil commitments to six weeks, might be an olive branch to those who are advocating for the civil rights of the severely mentally ill. If a severely mentally ill friend, brother, mother, stole some apples from a grocery store while in a manic episode I would want them to spend a night in jail as punishment and then shipped off to a psych ward for a maximum of six weeks to get some modern psychiatric care. I think forced psychiatric care is far more stigmatizing than jail, and far harder for people to explain to others. I have seen people who spent four years in a state mental hospital for a manic episode that involved a very minor crime. I would like to see us close down the long-term institutions as much as is possible. Leads to more violence and apathy in my opinion.
And today, Monday, Home Forward announced a $35 million deficit,with planned layoffs and increased rent for subsidized renters. Mayor Wilson reported Home Forward on the brink of financial collapse. How can this housing project move forward now?
The Pearl District Neighborhood Association is right on the mark in opposing/pausing construction of the 219 unit housing project. It seems that the City's track record for these projects is not good and the neighborhood will likely suffer as a result.
The neighborhood's concerns are NOT NIMBY. Residents are genuine worried about the adverse conditions that will exacerbate an already suffering area. It seems this project amounts to a "taking", i.e., the City knowingly reducing the value of existing residential properties by siting, building and operating this facility.
I’m sick of legitimate concerns about public safety, neighborhood blight, and government accountability being dismissed with the lazy label “NIMBY.” Portland “progressives” have weaponized name-calling to the point that these terms have lost all meaning. It’s a tactic to silence dissent rather than address real problems, and it’s not working out well, so let’s stop giving it credence.
As someone who has lived in the Pearl for years, I fully support this pause and the pushback demanding accountability from government agencies that have failed residents for far too long. Our neighborhood deserves better than the hand we have been dealt for really the last decade. I hope the association stands their ground. It’s time for accountability and a halt on bad ideas and bad management.
Sean Sweat's perspective is troubling because he seemingly ignores one of the PDNA's chief concerns: Home Forward's demonstrated competence. Sweat is betraying his district's needs and safety.
Is he an " elitist" who "knows" what is best? Perhaps an undisclosed DSA member.
The concern is Home Forward's amply demonstrated incompetence, no?
INDEED, I meant to write INCOMPETENCE demonstrated by Home Forward.
Thank you for your comment!
If the City that Shirks could successfully demonstrate their competence in maintaining and managing public housing, it would be one thing. I'm frequently near the Hollywood East Public Housing Complex and it is a magnet for unlicensed vehicles, loiterers, litter and general neighborhood disorder. With the exception of elder housing, I seriously regard public housing as a detriment to any neighborhood, because local government has been shown time and time again to be untrustworthy to responsibly manage the impacts.
If you can't afford to maintain it properly, you can't afford to build it.
Proper law enforcement and a criminal justice system that backs it up with punishment at times, is the solution to livable neighborhoods that include the poor. From what I have read, Home Forward is a dysfunctional organization, probably made so by city policies that are unrealistic about housing people with severe mental and addiction problems. Poor mental health policy and law are driving broader problems with neighborhood livability.
I have mentioned this before, but still feel that it remains unexplored. One of the certain reasons why a community like the Pearl reacts to slow or stop further low-income development is simply because it has been repeatedly been called upon to house these homeless (and near homeless) housing experiments. (For what are low income tenants but would-be homeless without municipal assistance?) It would appear that the Pearl has been forced to deal with permanent low-income and temporary housing multiple times.
And, yes, the predictable bad experiences occurred as expected and the community suffered from it. And yes, the false promise of city protections never materialized, causing added harm. The fantasy is a lie that low-income and homeless housing does not result in a degradation of community life. But, it does. And the hard reality is that a persistent minority of participants of these facilities damage property and populate the neighborhood during un-housed hours of day or night, creating litter, promoting vagrancy, some modest substance abuse, reducing quality of livability and property values, while increasing concern for neighborhood safety and social and business vibrancy. Knowing these things, how on earth can any municipal body then proceed to place this extraordinary burden on one community over and over while virtually ignoring scores of others in the City?
Where is the low-income and homeless housing in Raleigh Hills or Burlingame or Hillsdale, by example? Why are so many other neighborhoods exempt from this while the Pearl keeps getting more? It's a complete lie to claim that available land is the key. There sits at the NW corner of SW Shattuck Rd and Beaverton-Hillsdale highway long empty Rite Aid and Albertson stores, adjacent acres of parking. Why not build a multi-story low-income property there? Why doesn't that community share in this city-wide burden? The discussion of this problem does not end in arguments to stop it from occurring again in the Pearl, it continues in arguing why the burden of such neighborhood degradation is not spread evenly about the city so that one lone community need not bear the damaging cost alone.
When Portland citizens ask why downtown (NW and SW Portland east of 405) suffers so much vacancy and loss of property values, it is clear that the extremely disproportionate amount of homeless and low-income housing in those areas have helped denigrate the livability and work-ability of these communities. Why would offices operate in a core area where the sidewalks are filled with the homeless, the mentally ill and the substance abusers? What's the value of siting your business beside a city low income property where some tenants daily roam the adjacent streets. Go ahead. Spend a few hours at the food cart pod at SW Park and Ankeny, watch the local low-income residents roam and still tell me that's building property and livability value. The park is a littered mess, the garbage cans ravaged or overflowing, the mental ill are screaming or talking to themselves, private security officers visit the area regularly.
We citizens do a very good job of avoiding those areas to avoid these problems or the unpleasantness that accumulates there. Just like we ignore how neighborhoods and property owners like the Pearl have had to hire private security services to protect their property and personal safety from theft, vandalism and harm. A 33% downtown vacancy rate, towers selling for pennies on the dollar and severe shortages in property tax and city fee revenue can find direct links to the homeless and low-income populace disproportionately placed in the core area. The Pearl, once built to be a residential oasis in the heart of downtown, now suffers the greatest indignation. But, why? Why not at least share that blight around the whole of the city?
And lest anyone assumes I am not sympathetic enough to the plight of the homeless (or those on fixed, municipal assistance) understand that both can exist - sympathy and honest appraisal. Sympathy and care coexists with revulsion and rebuke. They are not conflicting, dissimilar things, but exist simultaneously. I surely could not blame that populace for how the Pearl was disproportionately saddled with them. The sympathetic argument here is not if we build to support those unable to support themselves, but where these residences get built - time and time again.
Being poor is not a crime. Having a mental illness is not a crime, nor is having a disability. All may correlate with poverty. There is no doubt safe shelter is needed by those unable to afford it. But the effects of drug use and active psychosis may be criminal and are certainly detrimental to those suffering from these and those living around them. They affect the safety and livability of neighbors and require "careful handling"by service providers and treatment. The associated actions of drug dealing, hoarding and property damage can adversely impact those providing services and treatment and outreach.
It is our policies in helping these people that are the problem. We assume that a active Fentanyl addict, a meth addict who hasn't slept for a week or a person is active psychosis has the "free will" to decide when to seek detox or treatment. The latest research suggests otherwise. An addict can , with proper behavioral modification over time, regain free will but it is rare in someone active in their addiction. I think Tom could agree with that.
Jail time can give an addict a chance to detox, if they have committed the crime of possession or some property crime, but it will also give the addict a criminal record, which will make any re-integration into society, if and when they recover, far more challenging. And they need a whole lot more than just detox and a safe bed to recover the free will and Recover from their addiction.
While Home Forward has clearly demonstrated both incompetence and neglect of duty, they, along with other housing services providers, have been dealt a poor hand by Multnomah County homeless policy. The County has used a variety of tactics to get addicts into housing before they are ready and without services and security and support needed. This has resulted in physical damage to affordable housing, its lack of appear to people who want to avoid the unsafe behavior prevalent on the streets and lots of vacancies. Private landlords were given the opportunity from housing services to house people only to experience the same negative consequences. The newly completed Joyce and Fairfield SRO apartments at the north end of Downtown are a good case in point, although the Joyce has been improving since the arrest of a significant dealer residing there.
Now, we are in an housing environment in the Central City where the vacancies in market rate housing has forced rents down to those required by affordable guidelines and where market rents for proposed new construction would have to be so high to pencil out due to inflation costs that nobody will build them. So our answer is to construct a new high rise affordable housing project in an inflationary construction environment on one of the Central City's largest vacant parcels in an attempt to revitalize downtown? Instead of buying and existing apartment building who is experiencing sub par NOI? This does not sound very strategic to me.
We don't have a lack of housing. We have a lack of people who can afford the housing we have. Multnomah County and Portland are bleeding jobs. Businesses are leaving, not coming and so are the younger workers. I have lived in downtown for 20 years. Before that, I worked at Big Pink for US Bank. This is through occupy wall street and the Pandemic and the protests and the roll out of Measure 110 and the spike in homelessness and the rise of Fentanyl. I witnessed to rollout of Max and the Streetcar and watched while they became moble shelters for homeless folk. If the City workers were interested in bringing safety and livability back to the City they were hired to serve, they would quit fighting for Work From Home and start fighting for Back to Work and Volunteer programs to help bring the city back. Public Service as a concept is dead.
Tom is advocating for a Civil Commitment for the mentally ill. I have been advocating for a 30 detox civil commitment for Fentanyl and Meth addicts. Politicians in Oregon won't touch civil commitment with a ten foot pole even if limited and restricted because it is a violation of an individuals free will. Yet, we can throw someone with psychosis or addiction in jail, of that illness causes them to commit a crime. But we can't treat them? This is what Any Mellencamp of Central City Concern and Lance Orton of Team Portland call Compassionate Neglect.
We have 250 "jail" beds in 5 separate dorms at the Inverness Jail in an area around the airport that would be suitable for temporary use for detox beds, but the County refuses to fund them opening. They are built, but unstaffed. The County funds multiple non-profits who supply outreach workers to addicts living on the street and has spent $25 Million on a "deflection center" which has been operating without ever being able to produce a single example of a recovered addict in stabilized housing. Why can't we re-deploy these existing resources and get addicts into detox, use the SRO Home Forward housing like the Joyce and Fairfield for shorter term sober supportive housing, with proper security and start addicts on a path to recovery. If they fail, repeat. As a former addict, I am well aware of the need for repetition but I have been recovered for 50 years.
What do you think would happen in Portland and Multnomah County if we changed the goal for addicts and people with psychosis from "hard reduction" and "compassionate neglect" to recovery-if it because unacceptable for a person with a behavioral health illness to live on the street? What would happen to the safety of those people and to those around them? Would new people with those illnesses be coming to Portland? If they did, would we be able to reunite them with family and get medical conditions stabilized? Would visitors and businesses feel safer in the Central City? Would people start riding Max again?
Ask yourself what is preventing us from implementing these civil commitment laws? I have asked Rob Nosse, who chairs the House Health and Behavioral Health Committee ("too hard") and Mitch Green ("jail bad"), Meghan Moyer ("free will") and Nathan Vasquez ("politically toxic"). That, my friends, is what "compassionate neglect" is-people could make a difference sticking with the status quo.
It seems like we are not very good at thinking outside the box and trying to accomplish multiple goals at the same time.
Assuming free will with severe mental illness has the beneficial effect of holding them as we hold others accountable to laws. If we want people to behavior in a more conforming manner, it makes sense for us to see them as responsible agents. That doesn’t mean excessive punishment, but it does allow for forgiveness and compassion. It dignifies those who have the capability to change. And it might motivate them to choose a path that has less adverse consequences for them. For those who need containment for a period, which will be viewed as a type of punishment by many with severe mental illness, we should be sure to ground it in the public good. They may have good outcomes, but it is wrong to presume that we are doing them a favor for sending to a psych ward. I am hoping that moderating the civil commitments to six weeks, might be an olive branch to those who are advocating for the civil rights of the severely mentally ill. If a severely mentally ill friend, brother, mother, stole some apples from a grocery store while in a manic episode I would want them to spend a night in jail as punishment and then shipped off to a psych ward for a maximum of six weeks to get some modern psychiatric care. I think forced psychiatric care is far more stigmatizing than jail, and far harder for people to explain to others. I have seen people who spent four years in a state mental hospital for a manic episode that involved a very minor crime. I would like to see us close down the long-term institutions as much as is possible. Leads to more violence and apathy in my opinion.
And today, Monday, Home Forward announced a $35 million deficit,with planned layoffs and increased rent for subsidized renters. Mayor Wilson reported Home Forward on the brink of financial collapse. How can this housing project move forward now?