After several weeks of intensive planning between city workers, community organizers and organizations, three temporary camp villages are set to open on city land.
Forty-five tents are slated for each of the campsites which should begin opening early next week — one in Old Town and two campsite in the Central Eastside. A minimum of 135 people will have access to these shelter-in-place camps. Partners who already share tents could increase that total.
Since the city began to shut down over COVID-19, unhoused people wandered a suddenly quiet city of shuttered services and boarded-up doors. Gone are the libraries where people would spend days, the Starbucks where some unhoused people would splurge on coffee and use the restroom. Drop-in spaces limit the number of people who come in. At Street Roots, people wait on duct-tape lines spaced 6 feet apart to access mail, income, and sinks with soap.
COVID-19: Hygiene needs increase as homeless resources shrink with closures
As those of us with housing comply with gubernatorial orders to "Stay Home, Save Lives," unhoused people become more desperate.
So on Monday, March 23, Street Roots worked with Sisters of the Road and Afro Village PDX to draft a proposal to the city with ideas for increasing shelter, hygiene and other health services in Old Town. A coalition grew, and JOIN began leading a coordinated effort steered by Victory LaFara who, as Dignity Village support specialist, brought knowledge on setting up village living. The larger organizing committee includes JOIN, Afro Village, Dignity Village, Gather: Make: Shelter, Ground Score / Trash for Peace, Hygiene4All, Portland Street Medicine, Portland People’s Outreach Project, Right 2 Dream Too (R2DToo), Street Roots, Sisters of the Road, The Equi Institute, and the PDX Trans Housing Coalition.
Playing off the Star Wars' themed R2DToo the effort is called “Creating Conscious Communities with People Outside” – or C(3)PO. Organizer met intensively these last few weeks, planning with city of Portland workers, including the staffs of Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty and Mayor Ted Wheeler.
Harbor of Hope is providing tents and sleeping bags.
These supported campsites are an important next step for unhoused people to shelter in place while meeting hygiene needs. We need many more places for unhoused people, including camps farther out east, hotels and motels everywhere. But these campsite villages allow people to shelter in place with some of the supports that are necessary. Many people on the streets take care of each other, forming street families. This might mean transporting a person from her wheelchair to her tents, retrieving adult diapers, or making sure someone has access to his medicine. Disabilities, after all, are widespread on the streets.
And as more services shut down, people do need each other's ears. They've lost access to meeting in groups for recovery.
One of the top priorites at Street Roots has been to support the temporary campsite villages with health care. Raven Drake, a Street Roots vendor who has been co-chairing our Street Roots action team, has built a network to support the camps with Portland Street Medicine, Rose Hip Medics, PPOP, Cascadia's CAP program and other community health workers. She will now step into the role of health coordinator for the new campsites. Expect us to report much more on this effort.
An extraordinary collaboration between community organizers and the city of Portland and Multnomah County, these three temporary campsite villages demonstrate that we can be creative and constructive in pursuit of public health. It makes me hopeful for what more we can do.
The camps are set to open as soon as possible, so people need to sign-up as soon as possible through an online form or filling out a paper application at one of the following locations.
• Street Roots (9-11 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday), 211 NW Davis St.
• St. Francis Dining Hall (10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Monday–Friday), 330 SE 11th Ave.
• Sisters of the Road (10 a.m.–noon Wednesday–Saturday), 133 NW Sixth Ave.
For more times and locations, email PDXTransHousing@gmail.com.