Vulnerable People and Places Blog

  With a second deadly heat wave hitting Portland, it’s important to take a moment to understand the effects of the heat on one of our most vulnerable populations: the homeless. A large percentage of Portland’s homeless population live on the street rather than in shelters, which can be incredibly harmful when temperatures rise over 100 degrees. Without air conditioning, fans, or shelter, people are at risk of severe heat exhaustion and dehydration which in some cases can lead to death. While there are many volunteering to provide cooling centers, cold drinks, and cooling supplies for those who need it, it is not nearly enough. As climate change continues to worsen, these heatwaves are likely to become more regular throughout the Pacific Northwest, with the possibility of some extreme cold weather concerns during the upcoming winters. After regular sweeps, many people have lost their belongings and their shelter items such as tents and tarps. The City of Portland needs to create a ...

Hostile architecture is a form of design found in public places meant to dissuade certain acts, like sitting in areas that apparently shouldn’t be sat on, or doing skateboard tricks on them. In recent times, however, hostile architecture has mostly been associated with antagonizing members of the houseless community, who often find themselves having to sleep outside. Sometimes these modifications are subtle, like placing individual armrests between spots on public benches, or just flat-out removing the spaces between seating areas on those benches. But in other instances, it’s things like putting spikes in places that people might be inclined to sleep on.  Money is invested into building something purely to antagonize a community, instead of investing in potential solutions to their situation which necessitates them needing to reside in public areas. Hostile architecture, as it exists in our modern world, seems to consist of directed attacks toward the houseless community, under th...

What might be simple for some of us to obtain, becomes more complicated for others when experiencing homelessness, aside from housing, hygienic products, clothing and food. Food is a primary resource anybody needs in order to survive as we need nutrients to be able to be active on a day to day basis, while being homeless people will experience malnutrition due to already having the struggle to find a safe place to sleep and not being able to possibly afford food. Thankfully there are programs around that are doing what they can to feed those in need, one program in specific that will be covered right now is “Feed it Forward PDX”.  Feed it Forward PDX is a program that was started by Toro Bravo IncThis program is a non-profit which counts on donations to be able to provide free meals to those in need. They also have a “sliding scale rate” where people can pay what they can or also have a free meal if they don’t have the means to afford it. With donation to the program they also are ...

Weather affects houseless people in the worst ways, because they have no choice but to stay out in the cold, rain, heat, thunder, whatever the case may be, with nowhere to clean themselves or nowhere to turn to for shelter. Many people in Portland care about the houseless community, and are pretty generous when it comes to spending money to try and help them off the streets. The public officials are blocked by the courts from regulating vagrancy in many places, a law which made it a crime for a person to wander place to place without visual means of support, criminalizing being houseless and jobless, which is why many houseless people want to travel to Portland. In Portland, the houseless are so visible that it’s encouraged nonprofit relief efforts so much that other cities have, and still are considering adopting these efforts.  Another reason why people travel to Portland is because of the weather. New York has a third more rain than Portland, and California is normally hot all y...

On Thursday, July 29, the city of Portland executed a controversial plan to remove a 50-tent homeless camp from Laurelhurst Park. The sweep began at 8 am with the arrival of four marked police cars and about 50 Rapid Response Bioclean employees. The eviction of people from the iconic park, where they had slept for months, marked the beginning of an uptick in regular sweeps of camps. And these sweeps are not just taking place in affluent close-in southeast neighborhoods but across the city. In the same week, the Laurelhurst sweep took place, 11 other sweeps were conducted with little or no media attention. A spokesperson from the Portland Office of Management and Finance, who oversees the sweeps, says that the uptick in sweeps will be the new normal. The bureau plans to conduct 10 –15 camp removals for the foreseeable future, up from 4 – 6 sweeps at the beginning of the year. Before the beginning of the pandemic, OMF conducted an average of 40 sweeps per week. City Commissioners say t...

Regardless of the people afflicted or the time period under consideration, homelessness may be both a cause of and one of the more extreme outcomes of poverty. As such, how governments at all levels and private philanthropy respond to homelessness is of paramount importance. We are starting to see more young people even children who have been homeless. According to the analysis in 2017, there is 0.4% of these individuals were unaccompanied youth under 18 years old in Multnomah County. It may seem the percentage is small, but it can still increase no matter what. Homeless advocates in the Portland area say it’s clear that more families with young children and babies are without a permanent place to sleep. Once young people are homeless, getting another job can be challenging. It’s not easy and anyone who gets themselves out of that situation deserves special recognition. In order to get a job, one has to have a phone number for a call to interview. if they can’t afford rent, it’s likely...

  Image courtesy of istockphoto.com   Monica* is a 61-year-old disabled woman working three jobs to make her ends meet. She makes roughly $2,500 a month, pays $1500 for rent, $300 for car, plus add in bills and food and it becomes impossible to save any money. Monica’s rent is going up, and she needs cheaper housing. She needs to drop two jobs because she physically cannot work that much, but if she does this, she will be homeless. Monica applied for several waitlists for federally funded housing, housing vouchers, section 8, section 42, and more. She isn't old enough for senior housing (age 62). She was denied every time for “making too much money” to meet income restrictions or “not enough money” to meet 3x rent for the apartments. She would literally need to be homeless to get help. And even then, some places require jobs, a specific monthly income, and base your income on last year’s tax return.   Post COVID-19 the housing voucher and housing assistance waist lists ha...

  Mental Health Professionals– A New Type of First Responder First Portland Street Response team working in the Lents neighborhood. First Responders, such as firefighters, paramedics, and police, are vital to the health of our communities. However, this past year, with the many movements protesting the brutality of police towards our black and brown communities and those with mental health issues, it is obvious that we need to make a drastic change. Police are often called to a scene where an individual is suffering a mental health crisis. The problem, police officers are not mental health professionals and may not be equipped to appropriately handle the situation. The City of Portland is making a big change in how these emergency calls are responded to. On February 16, of this year the Portland Street Response (PSR) program was launched. PSR offers a non-police response to assist people experiencing houselessness or low acuity behavioral/mental health crisis. Currently, the city ...

Homelessness has been a huge problem in the United States of America for quite some time now. It seems that no matter what people do, it only seems to worsen. Approximately 53% of houseless veterans have disabilities. In addition, more than half of the houseless veteran population in the United States has a mental disability. It is very sad that these veterans with disabilities have had to resort to living on the streets because they don’t have any other options. Many are without families, jobs, support systems, and friends to go to. There are many barriers that people with disabilities may come face to face with, such as not being able to find a job or earn any money simply because of the fact that they are houseless and have a disability. This makes it hard for them to land jobs. Society as well can prevent them from escaping houselessness, because of the opinions and thoughts that many people have towards disabled houseless people. That they may have addiction problems, or even the ...