The woman and a man – in their 20s, with big eyes and gentle smiles – stood next to a red sedan. People often come knocking at their car window, the woman told me, because they are told this is a safe place to sleep. With little else, the couple do have the car they sleep in, so they feel obliged to share. Sometimes six people sleep sitting upright in that sedan parked in a diagonal spot on a slight decline.
That morning, police officers knocked on the car window, waking everyone up. Someone had parked their shopping cart in front of their car, which, the woman speculated, called attention to their sleeping arrangement.
“I felt like a bad host,” the woman told me. The one thing she could give other unhoused people was a little sleep, and that morning, they woke in fear.
I looked at the car, startled to realize it was like a little inn. Or something else. I recalled the story that gets told this time of the year – that one where there’s no room at the inn, so a couple and their newborn sleep in a manger.
As of 2017, Portland was the 10th-wealthiest major city in the nation. But all that economic growth happens for the wealthiest people. The actual measure of our well-being should be this: 34% of residents of Multnomah County cannot get their basic needs met. That’s more than 260,000 people. And the report highlights that more than 60,000 people are deeply poor in this county – they live on less than $6,250 per year.
This is according to the 2019 Poverty in Multnomah County report released this week by the Multnomah County Commission for Economic Dignity. The report measures how many people meet the self-sufficiency standard — a person’s ability to meet the costs of housing, child care, food, transportation, health care and taxes.
It’s not just that people are homeless in our region.
It’s that they are poor and not getting their basic needs met.
The glitter of wealth simply masks the legions that struggle. People can work full time and be too poor to meet their basic needs. Many will certainly be too exhausted and sick to participate in civic spaces where they can demand that their experiences be centered.
African American, Native American and Latinx residents all face this level of poverty at twice the rate of other populations. Poverty strikes both the young and the elderly the hardest. And the disabled. Compared to the rest of the city, the outer East Portland has a larger percentage of people in poverty.
And, the report makes clear, the areas where poverty strikes the largest swaths of people are the areas where public resources are the scarcest: the sidewalks, the transit, the parks. Clearly this is how our city’s health should be measured – not by the wealth that grows in fewer households in neighborhoods where parks and other amenities are more prevalent than in East Portland. We subsidize wealth.
Among the 50 largest cities, Portland experienced the fourth-largest increase in household income since 2010. Wages are only increasing for the highest-income workers. There is abundance in this city where too much scarcity prevails.
A key takeaway from this report is that more than a third of the people need social services and income subsidies to meet basic needs. We know where the investments should reside from this abundance. We don’t need more concentrated wealth that falsely suggests a thriving region.
Over the next two years, Street Roots is focusing coverage on the next generation of homelessness and poverty – and what to do about it. The 2019 Poverty in Multnomah County report makes this clear: That next generation will only grow, without strong course correction. People need income, housing and services.
After all, the population in poverty grew at nearly twice the rate as that of the population as a whole. That, coupled with the large numbers of people in poverty under the age of 25, bodes for an even larger number of people who will suffer poverty in the future.
The couple who open up their red sedan to everyone who needs it – they didn’t even have money for gas to move and avoid being towed. But the car was lodging, so they shared what they had.
Public attention is often directed at the next idea offered by those who are holding the vast majority of the wealth. It’s worth highlighting ideas from some of the poorest people in the region – ideas like sharing all that’s possible to take care of each other’s basic needs.
Director's Desk is written by Kaia Sand, the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand.