City of Portland vs. The Houseless

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

03 October 13

t was dark out and I didn't know exactly where I was going, but the sound of drums and bells rang loudly enough under the Hawthorne Bridge near downtown Portland for me to get there by sound alone. The six- to eight-month rainy season had begun just a few days ago, but the rain calmed down enough for the Sunday night drum circle to draw out around 20 participants. One man allowed me to sit in on a few rhythms with a six-piece drum set he made out of three buckets of varying sizes, a set of roto toms, and duct tape to strap the entire assembly to a cart. Some of the drummers had lengthy facial hair and were clad in dirty clothes with trash bags taped to their shoes to keep the rain out. Other drummers were younger people with newer clothes and layered haircuts. You've got both homeless and non-homeless people here," said a man who introduced himself only as Dominic, who had been dancing in the middle of the drum circle just minutes ago. "Portland's street dwellers are a very tight-knit community, and they all stick together. I'd invite almost any of these people over to my house for dinner and a place to sleep."

"You've got both homeless and non-homeless people here," said a man who introduced himself only as Dominic, who had been dancing in the middle of the drum circle just minutes ago. "Portland's street dwellers are a very tight-knit community, and they all stick together. I'd invite almost any of these people over to my house for dinner and a place to sleep."

The activist community in Portland refuses to use the term "homeless," preferring that allies use the term "houseless" instead. While America has roughly 633,000 people considered houseless, 293,000 of them are houseless as a family. Oregon has the largest percentage of long-term houseless people of any state in America. And there are currently 6 vacant buildings for every 1 houseless person in the entire country. Houselessness has been on the rise in America since the Great Recession of 2008, when the slow job market and millions of new foreclosures pushed millions of Americans into the streets. However, simply seizing these vacant buildings from the banks who own them and converting them into housing for the houseless is complicated. The process has to involve cities, banks, developers and advocates for the houseless all coming together on what to do with which property.

"These people still have a home in Portland, and they're as much a part of our community as we are," said John Langley, co-manager of the Red & Black Café, a worker-owned co-op in the Buckman neighborhood. "They aren't homeless. They just need a house to live in."

The Red and Black Café considers itself a small business allied with the houseless cause in Portland. Langley said the café has been known as a safe haven for the houseless ever since a famous altercation between a journalist named Cornelia Seigneur and a Portland police officer named James Crooker.

"We have a lot of houseless people who sleep under our awning to stay out of the rain, and we let them come in the shop without buying anything," Langley said. "Officer Crooker walked by some of the people in the shop, and at one point it looked like he was being intimidating to a customer, so I politely asked him to leave. He finally did, after he made some snide remarks."

After that altercation, Cornelia Seigneur wrote a column about the experience, which caused a media firestorm, even leading to Fox News picking up the story and putting the Red and Black Café in the national spotlight. Langley said while there were block-long lines of people waiting to patronize the Red & Black Café in the wake of the story, the incident took an emotional toll.

"We had a lot of people sending us death threats, calling us on the phone, saying 'I'm going to kill you,' all for us using our right as an establishment to refuse service to anyone," Langley said. "We had to hold a press conference to counter their framing and defend people's basic right to have a safe space in their own city without being harassed by police."

As an ally to the houseless community, Langley said his business has been targeted twice in the past by vigilante organizations using vocabulary with white supremacist overtones, as have other houseless allies like Sisters of the Road and St. Francis, just around the corner from the Red & Black. The emails Langley sent me come from an organization called "Volunteer Vigilantes Enforcing Victory Against Vagrants," headed up by a man called "Chief M. Freeman" and filled with fascistic messaging about how the Red and Black Café and St. Francis were enabling the houseless by caring for them and tolerating their presence. You can read the emails here.

Lif Bowers, an activist ally of Portland's houseless community, helped organize sit-ins at the mayor's office last year and early this year. Lif said the city has made its priorities clear in how it allocates city money, and with whom police side with in landlord/tenant disputes.

"They cut off all money for free rail systems and funded a new police training center instead," Bowers said. "And the police served as the goons of a landlord who didn't pay his mortgage, instead of a tenant who paid her rent, assisting the landlord in evicting her."

John Langley also recalled an incident from the summer of 2013, when notices were put up all over the neighborhood giving the houseless 72 hours to move their belongings elsewhere or to face arrest. According to Langley, the city came through roughly 11 hours after the notices were given, and people had their things thrown away as they watched.

"The mayor has this whac-a-mole approach of pushing people out," Langley said. "He talks about 'livability' and 'cleaning up our streets,' as if houseless people weren't even human beings."

Dana Haynes, communications director for Mayor Charlie Hales, said he didn't know anything about the threats made by vigilantes, and said stories about putting the houseless' earthly belongings in a dumpster were "false." According to Haynes, Oregon law states that people have the right to sleep on the sidewalks at night, but doesn't allow people to camp or claim one part of the sidewalk as theirs. He said that after four arrests were made on the first day of Mayor Hales' initial "sweep," the houseless community complied with police orders to move.

"We gave people the location of the city facility where they could pick up their belongings within a 30-day period," Haynes said in a phone interview. "Portland police walked the streets with homeless advocates like Clean & Safe and JOIN. The only things we threw away were things that were obviously garbage, like empty bottles and candy wrappers."

To call Clean & Safe and JOIN "homeless advocates" is a bit of a stretch, considering how closely aligned the board members of both organizations are to the local government and the police. Eight of 11 members of JOIN's board are corporate or financial executives, and JOIN Board of Directors Vice President Sara Westbrook is listed as a member of the Portland Police Bureau. The sheer number of business executives, condominium developers, and parking garage owners listed as members of the board on Portland Clean & Safe District's website reads like a sponsors list on the back of a program for a symphony, or an expensive Broadway theatre production, rather than a list of people who work tirelessly to serve the houseless.

In the aftermath of the eviction of Occupy Portland, several activists in the houseless community set up a camp on the edge of Chinatown called "Right to Dream Too," known as "R2D2" colloquially. The location of the camp at 4th and Burnside, in the heart of the downtown business district, was somewhat controversial at first. The camp is surrounded by a wall of doors with murals painted on each one, depicting the struggle of the houseless. At the front gates, I watched an R2D2 volunteer security guard turn someone away in the rain due to a lack of space for the night.

"R2D2 is a place for people to come and get 8 to 12 hours of undisturbed, dry, safe rest," said Ibrahim Mubarak, chairman of R2D2. "We have at least 100 people staying here every day, and have to turn away 20 to 30 people each night."

Mayor Hales' candidacy was supported by much of the city's business community during his fall 2012 election campaign. When he was still a member of the Portland City Council, Hales was the only one who voted against allowing an encampment for Portland's houseless community, arguing it would be detrimental to the downtown business district. As mayor, he drove the houseless away from their original campsite in front of city hall with food carts.

"A lot of the businesses didn't really want us here at first," Mubarak said. "But they got to like us after they saw the violent crime rate went down. We have groups who regularly patrol the surrounding blocks, pick up the trash on the sidewalks, giving resources to people sleeping on the streets, de-escalating conflict between the houseless and the police."

Mubarak is optimistic that the city wants to do the right thing. He said several city council members, like Amanda Fritz, have attended grassroots events hosted by the houseless community and pushed for more subsidized housing. But Mubarak, who has been personally cited several times for sleeping in public at $250 per ticket, still has a few core demands for the city.

"Because we live in the streets, we're criminalized for exercising our basic human rights," Mubarak said. "We need a homeless peoples' bill of rights, where we can be guaranteed things like hygiene centers where we can use the bathroom and clean up, storage space for our belongings, and no tickets for sleeping on the sidewalk."

Both John Langley and Dana Haynes can agree on one thing – life won't improve for the houseless until the overall economy picks up.

"We obviously need more jobs, not just here but everywhere," Haynes said. "We need an increase in shelters of all kinds, for men and for women, and women with children. And we need more low-income housing in general."

"I'm sure that the city is aware that it needs to send a more palatable message than the one Chief Freeman is sending here. My point is that their goals are essentially aligned." Langley said in a follow-up interview. "I think, unfortunately, that in times of economic hardship some people react by attacking poor people."

Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.

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