Uh-oh...folks is getting pissed--out with the programs..in with the fire-hoses:
On a recent Monday, Jessie Burke stepped out of the lobby of the Society Hotel and into an unusual scene: quiet. The sprawling tent encampments that once lined the sidewalks of Portland’s Old Town were mostly gone.
“This is what should be normal,” said Burke, who bought and renovated the 132-year-old Mariners Building in 2013 and transformed it into the chic hotel on 3rd Avenue.
Burke owes this fleeting peace to a palpable and controversial shift in liberal Portland, a city that had long opted for a mostly hands-off policy to the camps that had come to dominate the hotel’s surrounding blocks. Now, at the urging of residents like Burke, the city is clearing camps, sometimes daily, and planning to encourage unhoused people to relocate to centralized communities.
Advocates for unhoused people say they strongly disagree. This new “normal” in Old Town represents a distinct turning point in one of the country’s most progressive cities.
Unhoused Portlanders are feeling the increased pressure. Aistheta Gleason built themself a home of pallets when they first arrived in Portland from Colorado last summer. “I had a living room, a bedroom. It was all planned out,” they said. “I had a queen-sized bed and a water filter.”
The shift in city tactics is a product of changing political winds. Last fall, the Portland city commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty – who had for some residents come to represent a misguided and overly permissive approach to a homelessness epidemic – failed in her re-election attempt. Hardesty oversaw the Portland bureau of transportation, which is tasked with enforcing sidewalk ordinances that might prevent people from camping wherever they want. Hardesty ardently opposed enforcing those ordinances, as her constituency of unhoused people gained political power and legal clout.
Hardesty’s loss came at the hands of a more “law-and-order” Democrat in Rene Gonzalez. His central argument, according to his campaign website: “Taking a hands-off approach to homelessness is not compassionate or progressive; it’s dangerous and inhumane.”
Gonzalez promised not only to work for increased shelter capacity and access to mental health and addiction services, but also to relocate illegally parked RVs and “clean up” parks and neighborhoods.
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On a recent Monday, Jessie Burke stepped out of the lobby of the Society Hotel and into an unusual scene: quiet. The sprawling tent encampments that once lined the sidewalks of Portland’s Old Town were mostly gone.
“This is what should be normal,” said Burke, who bought and renovated the 132-year-old Mariners Building in 2013 and transformed it into the chic hotel on 3rd Avenue.
Burke owes this fleeting peace to a palpable and controversial shift in liberal Portland, a city that had long opted for a mostly hands-off policy to the camps that had come to dominate the hotel’s surrounding blocks. Now, at the urging of residents like Burke, the city is clearing camps, sometimes daily, and planning to encourage unhoused people to relocate to centralized communities.
Advocates for unhoused people say they strongly disagree. This new “normal” in Old Town represents a distinct turning point in one of the country’s most progressive cities.
Unhoused Portlanders are feeling the increased pressure. Aistheta Gleason built themself a home of pallets when they first arrived in Portland from Colorado last summer. “I had a living room, a bedroom. It was all planned out,” they said. “I had a queen-sized bed and a water filter.”
The shift in city tactics is a product of changing political winds. Last fall, the Portland city commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty – who had for some residents come to represent a misguided and overly permissive approach to a homelessness epidemic – failed in her re-election attempt. Hardesty oversaw the Portland bureau of transportation, which is tasked with enforcing sidewalk ordinances that might prevent people from camping wherever they want. Hardesty ardently opposed enforcing those ordinances, as her constituency of unhoused people gained political power and legal clout.
Hardesty’s loss came at the hands of a more “law-and-order” Democrat in Rene Gonzalez. His central argument, according to his campaign website: “Taking a hands-off approach to homelessness is not compassionate or progressive; it’s dangerous and inhumane.”
Gonzalez promised not only to work for increased shelter capacity and access to mental health and addiction services, but also to relocate illegally parked RVs and “clean up” parks and neighborhoods.
