City Begins the End of Park Camping

 By Sarah Owens and Michael Livingston

 

More like:..before...after...before...after...before...after...before...after...before..after...before...

Just a little over a year since Councilor Nordyke first praised City Council and staff for "helping move the needle on a crisis that has been decades in the making" by opening Cascades-Gateway and Wallace Marine Parks to overnight camping (See "COVID-19 Returns Campers to City Parks."), the Salem City Council agreed conditions in the parks had, sadly, become "unsanitary and a potentially a threat to public health and safety" and camping should, once again, be banned.  See "Has Council "moved the needle" on Homelessness?" (2 May 2020); "Council & Park Camping Tensions" (28 October 2020;  City to Extend Park Camping to June 2021"  (4 December 2020); "Park Camping to Continue for Now" (7 Jan 2021).   It seems that the growing chorus of senior outrage under the baton of Paradise Island Park owner and SEMCA Chair, Cory Poole was no match for Salem's so-called homeless advocates.  Cf. Hayden, N. "Where else would they go? Portland standoff with homeless campers at Laurelhurst Park dramatizes personal and political costs of inaction." (16 May 2021, Oregonian/OregonLive.) (Portland) and Caps, Kristin, "The High Cost of Clearing Tent Cities."  (12 April 2021, Bloomberg City Lab.) (Chicago, Houston, San Jose, and Tacoma).   

 

Thus it was that Monday night that Council passed Resolution 2021-21, extending the C19 emergency through 13 December 2021, but not extending the suspension of the parks camping ban (i.e. making camping in the parks illegal after 31 May 2021).  Any misgivings about the fact that, a year on, the City is no more able to accommodate (commit, house, shelter, jail) the campers than it was before, were effectively quelled by a paragraph added to the Resolution after the Council's May 17 work session, stating, "It is the policy of the City Council that camping be concluded in a legal and humane manner as soon as practical", and Councilor Hoy's insistence that the move was needed to hold Council "accountable" (the way slumlords tear down slums, one supposes).  The unanswered question on everyone's mind, however, was what will enforcement (or, if you prefer, the "rolling back" of what some called a sanctioned camping "program") look like.  See Whitworth, W.  "Homeless park camping ends June 1, but Salem officials say enforcement will be gradual."  (25 May 2021, Statesman Journal.);  Harrell, S. "Managed camps and new shelter options could be coming online soon as parks camping ends."  (25 May  2021, Salem Reporter.) ("could" here being entirely speculative).  No one, including the City, really knows (though it will be "section-by-section").   

 

What is the message here?

The staff report explains (rather, acknowledges, at long last) the legal strictures that prevent the City from immediately sweeping the camps the way it used to (see, supra, before...after).  In all probability, the promised "gradual" process will never be completed.  Just reducing the number of campers will take "an extended period", meaning several months but "not years", according to remarks made by Gretchen Bennett during Monday's meeting. 

 

During "debate", Councilor Phillips rightly pointed out that last year's decision to allow camping in the parks fulfilled its stated purpose, which was to prevent as far as possible the spread of C19 within the street homeless population.  He believes the decision probably did save lives (he is, remember, a doctor).  It also put increased pressure on the City Manager's Office, specifically Gretchen Bennett, the City's Human Rights and Relations/Federal Compliance Manager (Senior Policy Analyst), who was assigned the task of fielding complaints about the City's response to homelessness and liaising with the City's homeless service providers, amateur and professional, to coordinate mundane but critical government services such as garbage disposal, a role that previously tended to fall de facto to Urban Development Director, Kristen Retherford.  2020 was thus the year that saw City Manager Steve Powers begin publicly reporting to Council in granular detail how the City and "partners" were managing the hoards living in the parks, in the streets and under bridges.  From his May 7 report:

 

While not City property, we have been directly involved or have helped coordinate services at the Market St./I-5 encampment. Every Wednesday, outreach teams visit the Market Street underpass and along I-5. This includes, ARCHES, Northwest Human Services (HOAP -medical outreach, as well as HOST Youth and Family outreach), Easter Seals (to locate and help house veterans), HIV Alliance - Needle Exchange, and Salem Housing Authority.  Arches has completed around 20-30 housing assessments with those staying there. Salem Housing outreach checks to see who has had a housing assessment and helps them with any next steps, or to check where they are at on the wait list. A couple people in this area have been referred to the HRAP program, and Salem Housing is working on getting them enrolled. Easter Seals has connected with about two or three people and offered services/housing through their programs. ARCHES has also placed five to ten people from this area into the hotel program due to them being medically fragile/vulnerable. HOAP's team provides medical case management as well as wound care. They can transport to the hospital, as well as to HOAP to receive COVID vaccinations. Volunteers have been helping transport to the Arches mobile shower truck.  The garbage is picked up by ODOT every other week; volunteer teams collaborate with people who are camping there to get the garbage collected and into trash bags. The City has provided trash bags and gloves on two occasions to nonprofits involved in this effort. Gretchen Bennett and Ryan Zink have just recently negotiated a great deal with Covanta Marion.  Garbage collected at unsheltered encampments can be delivered by approved haulers to Covanta at no charge. Rite-Aid, outreach organizations, and the City worked together on a concentrated deep cleaning of the sidewalks surrounding Rite Aid.  The same humane, coordinated approach will be taken for the sidewalks along the Marion Parkade. 

Given the inevitability that the numbers in the parks would swell, the parks would flood, conditions would grow increasingly miserable, many would be unable to conform, some would prey on the vulnerable, and the neighbors would complain loudly and bitterly that "nothing" was being done, it was perhaps inevitable that the City would begin referring fraudulently to homeless camping as "sheltering."  "After the sheltering ends in the two parks, damaged facilities will be repaired." "Staff are aware of the growing number of persons sheltering on sidewalks and at the parking garages, also referred to as "sheltering hot spots."  The reality was just too, je ne sais quoi, depressing.  

The City estimates its decision to end parks camping, if fully implemented, would displace ~500.  If ODOT were to resumes camp "cleanups" en masse, as many as 400 would be displaced (but of course  ODOT cleanups never happen all at once).  The Church at the Park's Safe Park vehicle camps and the temporary pallet shelter/vehicle camp on Portland Road appear to be full up.  See Whitworth, W.  "A new homeless shelter is opening in north Salem. How it plans to address neighbor concerns."  (2 April 2021, Statesman Journal.)  Council seems ready to approve Church at the Park's proposal for 3, temporary, 20-tent managed camps, and a temporary 40-bed low-barrier shelter somewhere in the vicinity of downtown.  Not nearly enough, obviously, but for some strange reason, Council's so-called progressives appeared Monday night to feel as though much had been accomplished (perhaps they were still feeling the glow from Janet Carlson's May 17 presentation on the achievements of the Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance).  With all the state and federal funds now at the City's disposal, money appears to be no object, everything's either a "best practice" or "innovative", so why not try everything, at least until the money runs out.  If there's a strategy here, it's to be seen providing minimal supports while hoping (praying?) affordable housing booms.  

Hope, as we know, is not a plan.  So, let's be clear and state what should be obvious.  Salem needs to focus on reducing the number of  chronically homeless persons who are living in its streets, parks and under bridges.  These are the individuals that everyone in Salem (really, anywhere) had in mind when they said (for last 5 years running) that homelessness was their No. 1 concern.  Doing that would mean prioritizing placing 579 persons with at least one disability, according to the City's numbers in permanent supportive housing.  Not in a pallet shelter or a tent or a vehicle camp or even a hotel, but in P-S-H.  That will require more support for HRAP (which accepts only the "more" vulnerable, not the "most" vulnerable because of inadequate staffing and facilities) and the development of more PSH than is currently in the pipeline (Sequoia Crossings* will not be nearly enough).  A sobering station and another mobile crisis response unit (both state ARPA candidates) will do nothing repeat nothing to house Salem's chronically homeless.  Nor will managed camps or the MWV Homeless Alliance.  Yet these, sadly, are the shiny objects that compel Council's full if uncritical attention.  If some enjoy what Councilor Nordyke and Salem Reporter refer to as  "overwhelming support", it is because people have been misled about what such programs can, and cannot, do.  City staff want to take a more strategic approach;  Council should be supporting that effort, not pulling in the opposite direction just so they can be seen to be "doing something."  (Yes, it's obvious.)

*Oregon's Housing Stability Council is expected to approve awards Friday 6/10/21

 

In other news, Salem finally made the "severely rent burdened" grade for 2020, finally creeping past the 25% threshold to 25.3% (a city was severely rent burdened when >25% of residents spent >50% of income on rent). Corvallis was 36.9% (Oregon's highest).  Keizer was 24.2%.

 

6/3/21 Update:  Gretchen Bennett on evicting campers:  “We strive to see what the alternative shelter locations and safe park (for vehicle) locations there are.”  Harrell, S. "'Having to be moved like cattle is ridiculous.' Hundreds ponder what’s next as city-sanctioned homeless camping is expected to end"  (2 June 2021, Salem Reporter.) 

 

6/11/21 Update: "Salem Police Department officers and parks crews were focusing this week on moving people from the Cascades Gateway Park area east of Mill Creek and the Beaver Grove Shelter picnic area" (improved areas supposed to be off limits for camping).  Lugo, W and Whitworth, W.  "Salem crews begin removing homeless from Wallace Marine and Cascades Gateway parks."  (11 June 2021, Statesman Journal.)  "Before the clearing began, police counted 211 tents at Wallace Marine Park and 171 tents at Cascades Gateway Park."