Clock winds down on remaining West Hotel residents

The West Hotel on Northwest 6th Avenue.

by Amanda Waldroupe, Staff Writer

With one day until they could be legally evicted from the West Hotel, 15 of the West Hotel’s 27 tenants have found housing and already moved.

Pat Janik, the executive director of the Macdonald Center, the social-service agency which owns the West Hotel, says that the other 12 tenants are far along enough in securing housing that the Macdonald Center will allow those tenants to stay past December 1 until their move-in date.

“It’s just a matter of getting their paperwork done,” Janik says. “I think we are down to four people left who have not already secured housing or with applications. It’s really come along just wonderfully.”

“We’re really hopeful by the end of December that everything is totally fine,”Janik continues.

The Macdonald Center will be rebuilding on the site a seven-story, low-income apartment center for 42 residents and expanded outreach and support services.

John, 68, one of the West’s tenants, is more optimistic about finding new housing than he was two weeks ago. “I got a couple things in the fire,” he says. “We’ll see what happens.”

He also says that tenants are beginning to find housing and are “trickling out” of the West.

“The ones that are looking for places to move are finding them,” John says.

Every time we say goodbye, or what I’ve learned about relocation

A lodger caught in the closure of the Royal Hotel

by Martha Gies, Contributing Writer

The Portland streets are not where you’d want to be living in December. Not with six inches of rainfall and the city wet two days out of every three.

According to Amanda Waldroupe’s report, “Time’s up at the West” (Street Roots, November 12), tenants at the West Hotel have been handed a 60-day eviction notice and a list of apartment buildings. When they say they fear ending up homeless, they have a pretty specific picture in mind. The hotel they are leaving at 127 NW 6th is a 100-year-old “walk-up” where 26 single-room occupancy (SRO) rooms share a community kitchen and baths in the hall. It may not be the Benson, but it’s warm and it’s dry.

To add to the misery, residents hear the term “relocation” bandied about by journalists, social workers and housing advocates. Whatever it is, they fear it may not apply to them.

For the past 14 years I’ve been up to my neck in relocation. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Editorial: Lessons in housing relocation demand change

In “Times up at the West,” (Street Roots, Nov. 12) we highlighted both the challenges and successes of the Macdonald Center to create 42 units of affordable housing in downtown Portland. They’re doing so by demolishing a 27-unit, run-down 100-year-old building now housing extremely poor and vulnerable people. The project is billed at $10 million.

The move means more than two-dozen people have, or will have to relocate to other housing in the city. Unfortunately, with only 60 days notice given in early October, some of the most vulnerable of Portland’s housed population is at risk of becoming homeless on Dec. 1. In this edition, relocation expert Martha Gies puts into perspective the complexities of these moves, and the myriad obstacles involved.

During our investigation we found a series of missteps that have led to the unfortunate circumstances. The Oregon Housing and Community Services seemed to be asleep at the wheel after Street Roots discovered that an agreement between the state agency and the Macdonald Center called for giving people 180-day notices, not just 60-day notices. (The Macdonald Center did send a letter nearly 2 years ago giving tenants information about the upcoming relocations, but no specific timeline or date was given as to the point of eviction.)

Sources also tell SR that the Macdonald Center, uninitiated in the relocation process, did not hire a professional relocation specialist until we began our investigation into the matter in mid-November.

The City of Portland for the most part has remained on the sidelines, while already cash-strapped non-profits work frantically to get people from the West into housing with very little resources.

We call for a time-out.

Maybe it’s possible that everyone at the West will find housing. With the recent hire of a relocation specialist and the partnerships created with local non-profits, we would like to think that all the residents of the West will have a warm place to celebrate the holidays: that despite the lack of oversight by the state and bureaucratic missteps, everything will be all right in the end. But when affordable housing’s best and brightest bring people so perilously close to the streets, we’ve got problems.

We believe in the Macdonald Center. The organization delivers top-notch, award-winning services to the elderly and low-income people of the region. The project will create safe and clean housing units for people currently living on the streets, a much-needed addition to the neighborhood.

The state and the city should work with any Macdonald Center residents unable to find adequate housing by the Dec. 1 eviction date, so that they will be allowed to continue living there until such housing is obtained.

Likewise, the state and the city need to close the loopholes that contribute to these circumstances by requiring that any affordable housing project mirror federal law to require the full relocations of people currently living in low-income housing. Now that we know the system’s faults and consequences, we have to fix it. There are lives hanging in the balance.

Extra! Extra!

Shake off that turkey stupor Friday morning with a brisk walk to your local neighborhood Street Roots vendor and pick up a copy of the city’s best independent newspaper. Here’s what’s on the press right now:

Case unclosed: Amanda Waldroupe reports on the quest by one Portland Police Bureau detective to track down the killer of a homeless man who was stabbed to death nearly three years ago.

In their shoes: A look inside the weekly service and ceremony of foot care at the Downtown Chapel. Cassandra Koslen reports.

Every time we say goodbye, or “What I learned about Relocation”: Low-income housing relocation expert Martha Gies writes about the complexities and complications that arise when housing projects undergo renovation or destruction, with a historical perspective on how much we have lost.

The quality of whose life?: The first in a four-part series on the country’s modern anti-poor movement, this edition covers the rise in so-called quality-of-life initiatives that often discriminate against the poor.

Street Blues: Robert Pickett writes about the limbo police and mental health workers have to operate within when working with people experiencing homelessness.

And much, much more! So grab a buck or two and pick up your copy first thing Friday. It may just be the most important thing you read this weekend. And from our vendors, staff and volunteers – thank you and happy holidays!

 

Bus tour highlights city’s history of housing discrimination

Shinto Gate

By Devan Schwartz, Contributing Columnist

On Thursday, Nov. 4 the Fair Housing Council of Oregon led a bus tour through Portland’s neighborhoods, narrating a checkered past. The non-profit organization’s tour reinforced how far this city has come and how far it still has to go on the path toward equitable housing that is universally affordable and accessible.

Chasse’s champion

Attorney Tom Steenson talks about the landmark wrongful death case and how little may actually change on the police force as a result

By Joanne Zuhl
Staff Writer

Tom Steenson doesn’t count too many police officers among his close friends. In fact, he has to think back to his late grandfather, who was one of two deputies for Clackamas County back in the 1930s and 1940s, to even get close. But his relationship with the Portland Police Bureau spans more than three decades, dating back to his days as a newly minted law school grad when he filed his first suit against the bureau. Since then, he has established himself as the state’s premier litigator in police misconduct cases. By some estimates he averaged about five lawsuits against the city per year. In some years, it could spike to a dozen or more, he says.

But that all changed when he took on the case of James Chasse Jr. That case, more than all that came before, was a personal and professional watershed for Steenson, who represented the Chasse family and helped secure a record $1.6 million settlement from the city for the wrongful death of their son. On Sept. 17, 2006, Chasse was chased, tackled, Tasered and beaten by police under suspicion that he was urinating in public. He was denied medical care on the scene and taken to the jail, which refused to accept him in his condition. He died en route to the hospital, the cause of death being “blunt force trauma,” according to the medical examiner.

The real cause, according to Steenson and fellow Chasse attorney Tom Schneiger, was the cover-up that began moments after Chasse was tackled. Outraged at the lack of discipline to come from the case, Steenson and Schneiger, on Oct. 18, released more documents about the case — a condition made as part of the settlement. According to the attorneys, the documents indicate the officers went to work immediately to cover their actions by withholding critical information, making false statements to witnesses and even crafting a scenario that painted Chasse as a drug user, a repeat offender and a transient, none of which was true.

With the Chasse settlement concluded, Steenson has taken on a new case, representing the family of Aaron Campbell. Campbell was shot by police in January after a family member made a distress call saying he was armed and suicidal. Campbell was reportedly distraught over the death of his brother earlier that day. He was shot in the back by police. He was unarmed. It is a case eerily similar to the death of Raymond Gwerder, whose family Steenson represented in 2007, securing at the time a record $500,000 settlement from the city for the wrongful death of their son.

In October, Steenson was awarded the Arthur H. Bryant Public Justice Award by the Oregon State Bar, recognizing his three decades in civil rights advocacy.

The unmitigated gall of cartoonist Ted Rall

In editorial cartoons and columns, he lambastes liberals and conservatives alike. His latest move? Calling for revolution. Now.

by: Rosette Royale, Street News Service

The funnies. Who doesn’t like the funnies? Probably the individuals who get skewered in them, the windbag-prone characters who suffer deflation at the hands of a talented cartoonist or illustrator. Chances are, many of the folks who find themselves in a Ted Rall cartoon wish they’d never gotten caught in his crosshairs.

An editorial cartoonist fond of characters with pointy noses and beady eyes, Rall knows how to lampoon society’s blowhards. Be they Democrat or Republican, progressive or conservative, CEOs or military commanders: In his hands, he highlights their foibles with a lacerating wit. Even Obama doesn’t get a break. And speaking of Obama…

Last year, Rall called for him to resign. Not in a cartoon, but in an editorial column. He’s also written cartoon blogs for the LA Times on the ongoing occupation in Afghanistan. All of which means he’s busy. But not busy enough that he didn’t find time to write a book: “The Anti-American Manifesto” (Seven Stories Press, $15.95) an unabashed call for another American revolution. The book is so tough, it might make a devout Buddhist give up meditation for confrontation.

But the thing is, when you meet Rall, he’s unexpectedly nice. On tour for his new book, we met at Elliott Bay Book Co. in Seattle before his reading We sat in the café where, in the span of roughly 25 minutes, Rall, a Pulitzer finalist for his cartoons, smiled as he let it fly: the Dems, the Republicans, the Tea Party, AIG, the Afghan National Police. He covered them all and then some, in the guise of saying: America, time to wake up!

Rosette Royale: You’re the author, most recently, of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” That’s a title.

Not a drill: Severe weather prompts call for blanket and tarp donations

Street outreach workers at JOIN: Connecting the Street to a Home are calling on the community to donate blankets and tarps to distribute to homeless people during this extended severe weather.

Blankets and tarps can be donated between 11 am and 7 pm today at 1435 NE 81^st Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97213 (on the corner of NE 81^st and Halsey).  Thereafter, donations can be made between 10 am and 3 pm Monday through Friday each weekday at the same location.

“JOIN’s street outreach team has been out on the street during these first nights of cold and wet weather distributing our existing stock of blankets and tarps to homeless people that did not make their way into shelter.  Although JOIN’s outreach workers strive to get as many people as possible into shelter, inevitably not everyone will make it.  With snow down to the valley floor forecasted for today and frigid temperatures all week, we have a critical and urgent need for tarps and blankets to help those folks remaining outside stay safe.” said Marc Jolin, JOIN’s Executive Director. “We are asking Portlanders to help us secure blankets and tarps for our outreach team to pass out on the street this week as well as help build the inventory of hundreds of blankets we will need to help people experiencing homelessness in Portland make it through the severe weather to come.”

In 2009, the City of Portland estimated that over 1500 people were homeless on the streets of Portland every night, even when the shelters are full.   During this severe weather, JOIN’s outreach team will strive to help people access the additional warming centers that will be open to help address this need, some people will not make it.  It is critical that they can access blankets and tarps to stay warm and dry. Mike O’Malley, who has been a street outreach worker for over 11 years said, “There is nothing as dangerous to those struggling to survive a night on the street as being wet and cold.  A tarp and dry blanket are essential lifelines to get them through.”

JOIN’s outreach workers are available to explain the urgency of the need and opportunities to talk to homeless individuals about the importance of these basic items can be arranged by calling Marc Jolin, 503-789-1953, mjolin@joinpdx or Will Harris, 503-459-7409, willh@joinpdx.com.

You can also donate winter blankets downtown at Transition Project Inc., 435 NW Glisan Street at the shelter 24 hours a day.
Portland, Oregon 97209

Women’s Warming Center opens at TPI

On the one of the worst nights of the year to date, the Women’s Warming Center will be opening tonight with a capacity of 70 women.

Women can reserve a space at the warming center by contacting Transition Projects. Women can stop by 475 NW Glisan Mon – Fri, 8:30 -7:30 PM. They can also call 503-823-4930 24 hours a day (after hours, press 5 to reach the shelter staff).

Street Roots calls for city, state to change relocation policy to mirror federal law

The story about the West Hotel sheds light on a small but significant loophole in Oregon’s housing system that can have a major impact on the lives of people experiencing poverty.

The MacDonald Center is creating 42 units of affordable housing in downtown Portland by demolishing a 27-unit, run-down 100-year-old building currently housing extremely poor and vulnerable people. It is to be commended for its effort to actually improve the city’s affordable housing stock for our downtown neighbors.

The problem is, according to local and state laws, the organization is not mandated to move the current tenants out of the West and into safe, comparably affordable housing, leaving relocation efforts up for grabs.

When housing developers receive federal funding, they are legally required by the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Act, passed by Congress in 1970, to help the tenants find housing and pay for their relocation.
The Macdonald Center did not receive federal money for the $10 million dollar project, so they are not obligated to find housing for the tenants currently living at the West. According to the MacDonald Center, they are working hard to make sure all of the tenants are supported and have been working with a number of services and housing providers to secure housing for the current tenants.

Unfortunately, it may not be enough. Time will tell.

The MacDonald Center has a remarkable record of working with some of Portland’s most vulnerable populations and does an amazing job at engaging and providing services for people living in poverty, specifically the elderly population. Unfortunately, due to the lack of oversight by the state, they have been set up to potentially fail in relocating a small number of people who may become homeless.

We don’t blame the MacDonald Center for working to do the right thing. The affordable housing business is a complex system that even Portland’s finest find difficult to navigate. Programs to help the poor and hard-to-house are at capacity, and the private market in Downtown Portland is simply not vested in accepting low-income renters, particularly those with criminal records or other complications. With each passing year, the downtown core loses ground on the number of affordable housing units available to low-income families and individuals, increasing the challenges to private developers and nonprofits who ultimately want to do the right thing.

The City of Portland and the State of Oregon should create an avenue to mirror federal policy to require relocation services to individuals experiencing poverty. The cost of prevention is far more economical than the price of getting people back into housing once they’ve been reduced to the streets. It’s also more humane.

Locally, it’s the Portland Housing Bureau’s responsibility to ensure that any affordable housing projects, private or public, work with people experiencing poverty to prevent them from becoming  homeless. If we are going to end homelessness, we cannot simultaneously accept a process that creates it.

Street Roots editorial from the Nov. 12 edition.

Times up at the West with less than a month left to find housing

West Hotel on NW 6th between Davis and Couch

By Amanda Waldroupe, Staff Writer

All is quiet in the West Hotel.

The two-dozen residents of the Old Town single resident occupancy (SRO) hotel are, for the first time in 27 years, no longer kept awake until one in the morning by the cacophonic punk rock sounds that would drift upwards from the iconic rock nightclub Satyricon two floors below.

The building is quiet to the point of eeriness. Entering the West through a black painted door on Northwest 6th Avenue, walking across the small lobby crowded by two recycling bins stored along one wall and up the steep stairs to a heavy wooden door opening to the first floor, a tenant hears nothing but the sounds of his own footsteps.

But there is something else now keeping the West’s residents awake at night: the possibility that they will become homeless if they don’t find new housing and move to it by Dec. 1.

The Macdonald Center, a Catholic-inspired assisted living facility and social-service agency, gave 60-day eviction-without-cause notices to the tenants on Oct. 1.
The MacDonald Center is nationally recognized for its innovative assisted-living facility, the Maybelle Clark Macdonald Residence, which provides assisted living and nursing care for 54 low-income or homeless people with chronic medical illnesses, physical impairments or disabilities.

The Macdonald Center has owned the West Hotel since October 2008. Executive director Pat Janik says the plan was originally to renovate the West. Built in 1905 and in need of extensive repairs, the West is, to use the words of Northwest Pilot Project’s housing consultant Bobby Weinstock, an “old, tired hotel that has outlived its usefulness.”

Talking faith-based community and homelessness

By Israel Bayer, Staff Writer

Paul Schroeder is the author of “On Social Justice: St. Basil the Great,” and the creator of Building the New City, a curriculum on homelessness for faith communities in use by congregations throughout Portland.

Schroeder currently serves as Faith-Based Resource Coordinator for JOIN, a Portland-area non-profit supporting people in their efforts to end their own homelessness.

He is also an organizer around the Day of Homelessness Awareness with social-service agencies and churches throughout the community, including Street Roots. (The event is taking place tomorrow on Tuesday, November 16. Find out more.) He recently sat down with Street Roots to talk about the broader faith-based movement in Portland.

Israel Bayer: The faith-based community is very engaged with homelessness and poverty issues. Can you talk about what the faith-based community is already doing beyond the upcoming event?

Paul Schroeder: There are a lot of things happening in the faith community. All of the family warming shelter beds that exist in the city are being provided in partnership with the faith community and churches. There are a lot of churches involved in the Daybreak Shelter Network and offering meals, the list goes on and on.
One of the things I would like to emphasize is that there are a lot of ways that faith communities can become engaged just by developing relationships with people who are sleeping outside. I used to be the priest the Holy Trinity Greek Orthadox Church here in Portland and we started a Greek cooking class that is still going on. Doing things like this is a great way of breaking down barriers for people on both sides and building authentic community.

I.B.: Can you talk about the Daybreak Shelter Network to give readers some context?

P.S.: It’s a network of congregations throughout Portland that provide shelter to families on a rotating basis one week at a time. I believe there’s about 25 or 30 people that have accessed shelter through this network. There is also a variety of other congregations involved in providing meals and other services through the network. It’s an amazing thing.

I.B: I think sometimes people take for granted the amount of work and organizing the faith-based community is doing around these issues

P.S.: There’s not a real clearinghouse for the faith-based community to know exactly how to engage in things like the 10-year plan to end homelessness, or ending poverty, but that’s changing.
At a basic level we are working to draw attention to what’s being done so people can look at something and say, yeah, I can do that. We then work to educate people on what then is possible. If you look at the one night street and shelter counts the past two years there’s about 2,500 people who are sleeping outdoors. Maybe the real number is twice that, close to one percent of the population of our city. But the really good news is we’re working at engaging over 500 congregations in Portland. If we could get every congregation to engage on this issue and create authentic community we could transform the reality of homelessness in this city.

Extra! Extra!

Street Roots vendors will be out in force tomorrow with a new edition of Portland’s finest independent media, if they do say so themselves! Here’s a peek at what will be served up Friday morning for your weekend reading enjoyment:

Chasse’s champion: Joanne Zuhl does an in-depth interview with attorney Tom Steenson about the landmark wrongful death case of James Chasse, and how little may actually change on the police force as a result.

Time’s up at the West: Amanda Waldroupe goes inside the West Hotel where low-income high-barrier residents have less than a month left to find new homes, fearing they may end up on the streets. Our editorial calls for changes to prevent ensure tenants get relocated without the threat of homelessness.

Day of Homelessness Awareness: Find out how the faith community is organizing around the city to bring awareness to the homeless, and why this event isn’t just window dressing. The faith-based community delivers much needed services day-in and day-out to fill gaps in a slumbering system.

The unmitigated gall of cartoonist Ted Rall: In editorial cartoons and columns, he lambastes liberals and conservatives alike. His latest move? Calling for revolution. Now. Rosette Royale interviews the controversial journalist.

Vancouver, B.C., may endorse new global drug policy: Vancouver could soon become the third Canadian city to join the international movement to come to terms with the real damage the war on drugs has reaped, and how harm-reduction policy is the future.

Plus, poetry from the great Jay Thiemeyer, commentary and artwork from the streets of Portland, where you’ll also find the best vendors west of the Mississippi. Get your copy Friday, and as always, thank you for your support!

The education of Marcus Camby

By Jules Boykoff, Contributing Writer

Marcus Camby plays center for the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team. A 14-year NBA veteran who has played for the Los Angeles Clippers, Denver Nuggets, New York Knicks, and Toronto Raptors, Camby is renowned for his hard work and defensive capabilities, earning the league’s defensive player of the year award in 2006-2007. Camby is also highly regarded for his work off the court. He founded the Cambyland Foundation, which focuses on educational opportunities for youth, and has been honored widely for his community service work. As the Blazers prepare for the new season, Camby sat down with Street Roots at the Blazers practice facility in Tualatin to talk about education, history, and the work he does in the community.

Jules Boykoff: You’ve done a lot of volunteer work and philanthropy around education. And your NBA.com profile says you would like to someday become an elementary school principal. How have you come to care so much about education? Have your own experiences as a student affected your views on education?

Marcus Camby: I think so. You know I was an education major at the University of Massachusetts and part of my curriculum was substitute teaching, going into elementary schools. I substitute taught in Math, English, and Science, so I always took a liking to the younger generation. The old cliché is that “the children are our future” and I’m just trying to better as many kids’ lives as possible while I’m still blessed to be able to do it. Growing up as a kid, one of my heroes was my high school principal. I liked how he was well liked by everyone in the student body. I liked how he carried himself. And I liked how he cared. So he was somebody I have tried to pattern myself after. He really got me into education.

J.B.: Speaking of schools, a recent count found that there are more than 1,000 students in Portland Public Schools who are homeless.The Trail Blazers and sports in general have been called symbols of hope for many people experiencing homelessness and poverty. Would you like to say anything directly to the homeless community in Portland?

Street Blues: Show me your hands, and we’ll get along just fine

My friends sometime ask me if I notice things now that I didn’t before I was an officer. I always mention hands.

Hands manipulate the weapons, the weapons hurt people. After a number of years as an officer, it causes me almost physical discomfort when I’m talking with someone on the street and I can’t see their hands.