The new Mayor of Portland won the election in a landslide because he said he had a new bold and expedited plan to move homeless people off the streets and into shelter, then housing.

He’s got a lot of work to do, all across the city. For example, in my neighborhood, the last month:

A woman as made her home between a bus bench and garbage can at a busy intersection. She has no tent or tarp. She covers herself with blankets and pizza boxes. She’s been an addled and erratic fixture in the area for six months and clearly has no capacity to seek help or perhaps even understand what is happening to her. Every time I pass her, which is several times a day on walks with Elmer or in my car, I wonder if I should call someone. I know people in the neighborhood already have, but why not another one?

At six in them morning, a man with no pants was nodding and leaning in front of a Thai restaurant, seemingly ready to fall into the flower bins. Two hours later he was acting the same way in front of the grocery store a quarter mile away.

A woman dressed in pink was passed out on the sidewalk with Cheetos arrayed around her. It was the bleakest and most colorful still life (but alive) painting I’ve ever seen.

A man sleeps in a tent next to a convenience store. He’s been there for at least four years. He has a key to the fenced area behind the store where the garbage bins are. Every day he breaks down his tent and moves it, a pallet, and his gear into the fenced area, locks it up, and then enters the store, where, I am told, he is the custodian and quasi security guard. His felony criminal record prevents him from obtaining housing, but the store owner has forged this”housing” arrangement with him. I believe this kind of thing is happening all over America.

A housed man lets homeless people use his large and covered front porch to play video games at certain times during the day.

I met a homeless man named Rick, in his 70s, who used to live in St. Louis and was a successful screen printer and owned his own business. Addictions ruined his life and he headed west to Oregon 20 years ago because Oregon sounded like a good place to start over. He licked the addictions and now just moves around Portland and always camps alone. He illustrates pieces of wood he finds on his wanderings.

A young homeless man sat at a picnic table in darkness in a park as it rained. A picnic table 20 feet away was under cover courtesy of a towering Douglas fir. I said good morning and he said the same to me.

A young homeless man carrying a plastic bag full of cans sprinted down the sidewalk in pajamas and slippers.

A homeless man wore one of those silver emergency blankets as clothing under his coat.

A homeless woman lived under a golf umbrella in a parking lot.

Several men in their 70s pushed baby strollers full of cans/bottles/possessions through the neighborhood. Something about those baby strollers and the homeless people really gets to me.

A homeless man knelt on a sidewalk near a busy intersection, holding (barely) a sign, as a rainbow arced overhead.

A young homeless woman with a tarp draped over her danced on the sidewalk, then on the street, occasionally creeping into a busy intersection at rush hour. I waited for her to move onto the sidewalk so I didn’t hit her when I turned right. Traffic was backed up. Nobody honked. We all waited until the dancer danced to a safe spot. At one point she did, and I drove away.

A homeless man leaned against a commercial building at 6:30 in the morning with a laptop in his lap. The computer was plugged into a hot outlet. The man was playing a game of some kind. Elmer and passed by him and he never looked up from the screen.

Four junior high students walking to school walked around a homeless woman standing on the middle of the sidewalk with a blanket over her head.

A homeless woman in a wheelchair wheeled it backwards up a hill.

A homeless man asked me for a smoke at six in the morning.

Two homeless men fired up a hit of fentanyl across the street from house at 6:15 in the morning.

A homeless man sat in a bus shelter and banged his head against the plastic walls.

A homeless woman spun like a whirling dervish in an intersection. I almost hit her with my car.

How about some good news on the homeless front in Oregon from one of my favorite places near the ocean?

I stumbled upon the below article in the Yachats News, an outstanding online newspaper on the Central Oregon Coast serving one of the great small town in the state. It is free to read and features outstanding reporting on local issue and is the model for how newspapers stay alive these days. It is also exactly what I want to do one day with a newspaper serving Gold Beach and Port Orford. Please consider donating the paper and the shelter profiled in this story. The effort to help the homeless in Yachats is inspiring and seems like it could be duplicated by other churches around Oregon. So many are just sitting there, practically unused, with tremendous facilities already in place. Well done Yachats!

Homeless shelter at Yachats church moves to full-time, six month schedule to house five individuals

By CHERYL ROMANO/Yachats News (October, 29, 2024)

YACHATS — After operating just 21 days in its first full season, the emergency cold weather shelter in the parking lot of Yachats Community Presbyterian Church is changing to instead house five local homeless people daily for six months.

Operators of the Don’s Place shelter plan to open it Nov. 15, shifting away from being a weather-driven service available to the homeless only when temperatures drop below 35 or when heavy rain with cold is forecast.

Under its new model, the shelter will house a pre-approved group of five individuals each day and night for six months through the end of April. Instead of nightly, weather-driven check-ins and having to vacate the units by 8 o’clock each morning, the residents will have access to their units throughout the day with the ability to occupy them full-time through April 30.

To take the strain off volunteers, the shelter’s oversight committee is hiring two to three staff to supervise the operation overnight and have added a combination shower/laundry/toilet unit next to the shelters for residents to use. Shelter residents will also have access to a vestibule at the back of the church that has a refrigerator, microwave and electric kettle.

In a presentation Wednesday to the Yachats City Council, committee member and church pastor Bob Barrett said Don’s Place was used for just 21 days last season. The new format will be re-assessed in May.

“We realized we were not open enough (last winter) to make a significant impact,” he said. “It was not a good use of our resources … the beds just sat empty.”

Being open only when certain weather thresholds were met was “impractical and unsustainable for both guests and volunteers,” Barrett said in a news release announcing the changes.

The changes are designed to “make it easier for individuals to use the shelter without having to move their belongings back and forth — and having to go back out into the rain each morning with nowhere to go where they can keep warm and dry,” Barrett said.

“The shelters in Florence and Eugene have already gone this route — to being open 24 hours,” Barrett said in an interview.

The Don’s Place committee had “significant input from the unhoused community, even those who didn’t apply,” said committee member Morgen Brodie of Yachats. Barrett told the council Wednesday the five individuals were to be notified of their selection Friday. All are from or have ties to Yachats or south Lincoln County.

“We’re not a hub for the unhoused. We just want to do small things well,” said Barbara Loza-Muriera, a committee member and church staffer. “As we are helping people get their basic needs met, we’re calming their fears; they’re able to become more integrated into the community.”

Barrett told YachatsNews he has yet to hear any negative comments about change from the community. He told the council Wednesday, “We want to do this with as much respect as possible for the community but to also keep people alive.”

“Nobody’s calling; there hasn’t been much pushback,” he said. In fact, he said, one or two people who expressed concerns about providing shelter to the homeless have since made donations to the program. “A lot of the fears just haven’t manifested.”

In answer to a question Wednesday, city planner Katherine Guenther told the city council that the church did not need the city’s permission or a conditional use permit to change the operation.

The new operating model “prioritizes local unhoused residents from the Yachats and south County area,” according to the presentation to the city council. Barrett said last year volunteers noticed that the Yachats shelter attracted some homeless from out of the area, preferring its individual sleeping units over Lincoln County’s larger, mass shelter in Newport.

This winter Don’s Place will not host any “drop-in” guests, the committee says, and the homeless passing through Yachats seeking shelter will be redirected to the Newport facility. To get there, the committee may issue bus tickets or possibly use a county van.

The Don’s Place committee operates in cooperation with YCPC, which hosts the shelter, as it does the Yachats Food Pantry. Only one church member serves on the committee.

The paid staff hired to supervise the operation from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. nightly are “all local candidates that have experience working with the unhoused,” said Loza-Muriera. Candidates are being sourced through a temporary employment agency in Newport that is also used by the Newport shelter to hire staff.

Barrett estimated that the total staff cost for the season will be $30,000. Electricity and water costs are estimated to be $400 monthly. The new shower/laundry unit costs just under $50,000.

Most of the shelter’s funding came from the Housing Authority of Lincoln County, in addition to private donations.

The five prefabricated shelter units sited in the church parking lot were originally funded by a $70,000 city allocation from an unused pandemic community loan fund, a $20,000 grant from Lincoln County and $15,000 donated privately. Each insulated, 8-by-8-foot shelter has light and heat.

The project is named after Don Dougherty, a longtime and well-regarded local homeless man who died in 2022 after being found unresponsive in his car.

Many years ago I wrote a column about something related to the Oregon Coast that included the epitaph I wanted carved on my headstone if I was ever to be buried in a cemetery, which I won’t: “I’d rather be dead than incurious.”

As I recall, the epitaph generated a lot of comment, especially when I wrote something to the effect that incessantly googling things doesn’t necessarily make you a curious person. That’s an easy (and immensely profitable for Google) form of satisfying one’s curiosity and is usually performed to retrieve some useless tidbit of pop culture (e.g. what year did Dirty Harry come out? Who sang “Dancing in the Moonlight”?)

I am talking about real curiosity, not trivia or a passing fancy. It has always surprised me when I meet people who evince absolutely no curiosity whatsoever about the world around them. It’s not just mere indifference or calculated ignorance; it’s simply a total lack of awareness or the ability to reflect on something outside someone’s private experience.

I count myself as one of the most curious people around. That typically goes with a writer, but not all. Some writers I used to know were only curious about their writing’s attention, not any other writers’ books. I mean, I once dated a published author and she never read a single book I wrote! I guess it bothered me at first, but then I got over it. We didn’t last long. I also once dated a fairly high profile (at least regionally) rock/country singer and knew all her albums by heart. She never bothered to read any of my writing. It was sheer lack of curiosity of what was going in my mind and heart. Oh well. We didn’t last long either.

Speaking of my writing, I always found it interesting that virtually none of my students read any of my books when I began regularly publishing them while teaching on the Oregon Coast. I can name on one hand the students who did. I know if any of my teachers had published a book while teaching me, I would have raced out to buy and read it. I wouldn’t have cared if it was a manual on repairing lawnmowers!

It has always surprised me that people can walk right by a busker or other kind of street performer and not give them a minute of their time and perhaps a donation. I always stop and listen, even if I have somewhere imperative to go. I am curious what this performer is trying to do. They are putting their talent (or lack of talent) out their for experiment, fun or survival. How can I not pay attention to that!

I think for some people living in comfortable residences, the sight of homeless people in their various states of distress or squalor or sheer incomprehensibility, was initially something that invoked a lot of curiosity but now longer does. Indeed, I think the opposite is true now.

It seems I have a knack for discovering writing left behind: journals, letters, messages on cardboard, messages written on beaches, etc. I will always engage with what looks like writing that was left behind. I can’t say I’ve ever found literary gold, more like utter anguish.

And why not have a homeless man read your Tarot cards if you are walking by with nothing to do or something to do.

Trump had won, even the popular vote. The Republicans had retaken the Senate and most likely would retain the House. A Catholic Supreme Court had its grip on America’s secular life.

Jimmy Carter made it to a hundred for that?

Elmer the husky and I set out at 6:05 in the morning. Dry. Stars shined. No clouds. We rounded a corner and I heard the screams of a homeless man a block away. He sounded exactly like the cartoon Tasmanian devil on the loose.

We kept moving toward the park. Elmer did his thing. I thought in short sentences as I walked.

Despair must be defeated.

I must rally and then advance.

“Advance always” said General Grant.

Oregon fared well in the election.

Is the novel Ecotopia finally going to come true?

Portland elected an outsider as Mayor.

He won on a bold plan to end homelessness.

Maybe I can become part of that.

Is my writing irrelevant?

It feels like it at the moment.

I live in a Blue state. I have means and a great dog.

My family didn’t fracture because of MAGA.

Many did. They’ll never get back together.

Elmer took his Ted Cruz and picked up his pace. I bounded along with him. Light was coming on. Jack O Lanterns sagged from recent rain. People drove downtown to work in offices. Freight trains lumbered in the distance. Ducks swam in the creek. I saw three vehicles serving as domiciles.

What would I do today?

I would not read the recap.

I would take Elmer to the dog park.

I would visit my Dad in assisted living and discuss the news.

I would rake leaves in the back yard and fend off Elmer’s attacks.

I would read a Henry Miller work of nonfiction and marvel at his straightforward and profane prose that would make me laugh.

I would work on my Mom’s book about her extraordinary life as a young Christian missionary in Brazil.

I would console friends.

What does one drink when watching the possible end of the Republic as we know it?

What does one drink when watching when the Republic as we know it survives?

Either way, there should be unhealthy snacks.

I think Harris is going to win. If she doesn’t, it is time to consider that the American Experiment is over and many American people are terribly diseased in mind and beyond healing.

Will I live to see the Electoral College abolished? No.

I am beginning to favor the dissolution of the United States, something akin to what transpires in the novel Ecotopia. Remember that groovy 70s novel? I think it may be time to reread that hippie classic.

I wonder what it’s like to be a high school social studies teacher right now? In big cities? In places like Drain or Klamath Falls? How are teachers teaching what is happening or what might happen? I’ve written many times that the rise and embrace of Donald Trump is proof that garden variety and super progressive American high school social studies teaching the past 30 years both totally failed.

The last Presidential election I lived in a dilapidated RV in one of the most conservative places in Oregon. This Presidential election I live in a $800,000 home in one of the most liberal places in Oregon. I prefer the latter to ride out the event.

The people I want in one room to discuss the state of America as the media announces the returns: George Washington, Harriet Tubman, Bob Dylan, Gore Vidal, Jimmy Carter and a random homeless person.

I never thought I’d live in a time when someone firebombs ballot drop boxes. That’s the kind of shit that goes on in South America! But wait, the Brazilians banned their would-be dictator from running again. We didn’t and the opportunity was right there, a few Republican Senators’ votes away.

I voted NO on ranked choice voting for statewide elections.

I have never missed voting in a primary or general election.

Dad and went through the ballot together and he voted. I said I didn’t think this would be his last Presidential election. He said, “I sure hope it is!”

If the polls are widely wrong (again), they must never be consulted by media organizations again.

That the Presidential race is a toss up is a testament to the utter failure of the Democratic Party to convey a winning message to a huge majority of poor and middle class American voters. They should be killing on the senior issues. They aren’t.

Consider this: There will be Grateful Dead fans that will vote for Trump.

I rarely write about politics on this blog (or in my journals). It’s just too exhausting.

I am writing this post listening to Portland’s socialist jazz station. Good ol’ socialism!

The political discussions we have in the dog park are very enjoyable to me. The men all loathe Trump and say so. The women support Trump and never enter into the discussions, but they eavesdrop all the time, then move away after hearing a salient point. I intuit they don’t have the guts or intelligence to take us on, especially since we are all friends and love our dogs.

I’m cooking a steak for Elmer the husky on election night. As Jim Harrison once wrote, “There is something about doing a favor for a dog that calms you down.”