City Councilor Eric Zimmerman has long had his eye on Interstate 405, particularly the dangerous, dirty and dire conditions under the ramps separating the Pearl and Northwest districts.
“I walked my dog under it every morning,” Zimmerman told the NW Examiner, recalling his routines when he lived in the Pearl from 2010-15.
Few of his constituents dare repeat that route.
“It’s become no-man’s land for the last couple of years,” he said, noting that residents have changed their routes to avoid walking under the viaduct. “I heard it all the time.”
With the opening of the Northrup Street Shelter across the street from the freeway at Northwest 15th Avenue, Zimmerman made his support for the controversial facility contingent on the city maintaining control along the freeway.
Mayor Keith Wilson declared a 1,000-foot radius around the shelter an “engagement zone” in which extraordinary measures would be taken to not only curtail crime but maintain cleanliness and civil conditions. City crews have expanded their cleanup efforts and given extra attention to citizen complaints associated with the shelter. It has been an uphill effort, based on the volume of photos and incident reports sent by Pearl residents daily.
Zimmerman said those efforts will not be enough if the freeway land remains wild. That’s why he has championed the most tangible wall of defense to date: metal fencing surrounding Oregon Department of Transportation land north of West Burnside. Temporary fencing went up in September and permanent fencing of the kind already seen along I-405 south of Burnside is coming.
If residents call the I-405 underpass no-man’s land, the city and state have perpetually called it the other side’s responsibility. When an intergovernmental agreement between the parties expired in June, along with state payments to the city for camp removals from ODOT land, the system that had been maintaining a modicum of order fractured.
When residents attempt to file complaints on the city’s website, they are advised that “as of July 1, the city of Portland does not have the authority to address camping or related impacts” and they should contact ODOT.
However the blame is parsed, problems festered even before the shelter opened Sept. 2.
Pearl resident Monte Pitt noticed “many more tents under 405 close to the shelter in the last number of weeks,” a situation partially attributable to reduced ODOT efforts to remove them, plus giving campers 10-day notice rather than three days to move.
“Is this where the clients are going when they leave the shelter?” Pitt said. “It seems crazy that the city would spend all this money and effort to put this new shelter in place only to have the camping problem next door explode.”
Pitt said the matter must be corrected before the shelter expands from 40 beds to 200 in December.
“Frankly, once the shelter is fully functional, there should be no camping allowed under 405,” he wrote.
An emergency transportation funding package pending in the state Legislature could restore funding for a new agreement on camp removals as well as how far the fencing will extend.
Zimmerman said this is no time to wait for the money to arrive.
“We cannot backslide here,” said Zimmerman, who asked “the mayor to continue with the cleanup under 405 regardless and billing back ODOT retroactively.”
Pet project
Before the shelter was proposed, the councilor was working to tame the freeway. In April, the Examiner reported on his plans to use his council office budget to fund a pilot program hiring formerly homeless people through Central City Concern to clean up along I-405. Recently, City Councilor Olivia Clark contributed another $100,000 from her budget. That project is approved, and crews should be on the ground soon.
Fencing was the next step in Zimmerman’s freeway-taming mission. Working with Portland Solutions, a program in the mayor’s office, attractive metal fencing was installed along both sides of I-405 south of Burnside, with the help of $900,000 in special funding from ODOT. ODOT has since contributed a similar amount to enclose sections north of Burnside. Depending on action by the Legislature in the last days of September, that fencing could surround the notorious land under the freeway along Northwest Thurman Street between 19th and 20th avenues, the scene of sprawling encampments and several fires fueled by exploding propane tanks believed to be used to cook drugs.
Linda Witt, who chairs the Pearl District Neighborhood Association Shelter Oversight Committee, has found in Zimmerman a committed ally who has exerted influence behind the scenes.
Witt is grateful he cares about the freeway that divides and sometimes plagues the neighborhood.
“Clearly, it’s a pet project of his,” she said.
Kudos to Eric Zimmerman for addressing this issue. I hope one of his next targets is to have the state address both sides of the Vaughn on-ramp onto 405, which has been as much of a mess lately as ever. Though It’s unclear if the right side of the closed section of Vaughn St) is state or city property.
Since the shelter opening I have noticed increased camping (again) on NW Johnson between 17th and 22nd. It's basically whack a mole. I dread what will happen by December.