Mayor Hales – Page 2 – North Park Blocks ~ PDX

February 17, 2016

Terminal Chaos Forces Bolt Bus To Street Corner

Dear Mayor Hales and City Commissioners,

I know that some other residents of my building (The North Park Lofts at 300 NW 8th Ave.) have written complaining about the Bolt Bus “stop” (read: depot) that has been moved from SW Salmon St. to NW Everett St. at 8th Ave. I won’t add to the litany of complaints but suffice it to say that the noise pollution, traffic congestion, illegal parking, litter, etc. from this has had a materially negative impact on the livability of our homes. And most likely the property values as well.

I met with Joe Darden, Senior Operations Manager of Bolt Bus, yesterday to get their side of the story and to share our concerns with him. I met him at the Greyhound bus terminal on NW 6th Ave. and it was evident immediately why he would want to use a city street as a depot rather than the modern facility they own; a facility with seating, bathrooms, concessions, garbage receptacles, etc. that was completely deserted and in lockdown at 2pm. Outside were probably 25-30 presumably homeless people who had taken over the sidewalk and mall surrounding the terminal. I am a 6’1”, 195lb. man and it was very uncomfortable for me to walk the length of the terminal. I was twice asked if I was “looking” and one man glared and spit at me. I cannot imagine a woman, an elderly person, a family, or anyone really who would feel safe going near the terminal.

Joe is a very reasonable man who was sympathetic to our concerns. He agreed to implement a no-idling policy which, although less than 24 hours in effect, has already made a big difference in the noise. I didn’t even bother asking him the question why Bolt would use a city street for a depot, with all the attendant issues that creates, because it was painfully obvious that the terminal has been rendered virtually unusable. His frustration with the situation was palpable, and as someone who endured the similar and horrible situation on the North Park Blocks last summer, I shared his frustration.

When will this City Council do something concrete and meaningful about this? This is not a Bolt Bus problem, it’s a city-wide livability problem. The “temporary” moratorium on enforcing the no-camping ordinance is only going to make matters worse. Perhaps we could take a “temporary” time-out from creating bike lanes, couplets, and extending the Streetcar and Max lines to seriously address this. If the city’s scarce financial resources could be redirected to create one or two permanent camps/shelters with concentrated services and drop-off/triage centers for the police, then maybe the city could find the spine to enforce our laws and make the city inhabitable for tax-paying residents. The PBA and downtown business owners would no doubt enthusiastically support this and possibly contribute financially. Even groups like Mercy Corps and Medical Teams International might be willing to offer help in addressing what amounts to a humanitarian crisis in their own backyard.

I know that homelessness is not a crime, and my heart goes out to those who are in that condition through no fault of their own, but what has happened to the once-fair city I grew up in and have lived in for nearly 60 years is a crime. Doing nothing is not compassion and only enables, nay exacerbates, a tragic problem for all of us. Thank you for listening and I look forward to your response.

Eric Stromquist
North Park Lofts

February 9, 2016

PDX Tries Homeless Camps. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

We first saw this prank sign in Jameson Park last week. Turns out it wasn’t far off message from Mayor Hales’ top-down experiment in homeless camps.

“There are just certain times when the city, faced with an emergency, … has to just buckle down, put their heads down, create something and just try it.” ~ Josh Alpert, Chief of Staff to Mayor Hales. KGW

No, Mr. Alpert is not talking about a unexpected natural disaster. Portland homelessness is a chronic problem. And the city’s inability to insure safe and livable streets has been in the news at least since our blog embarrassed City Hall last summer with park porn photos.

We attended yesterday’s City Council public work session to hear about Portland’s new four-point plan to deal with homelessness in Portland (photo below – that’s right, Housing Commissioner Dan Saltzman was not in attendance).

The session featured testimony from Portland Police, a few city officials and homeless advocates. No opportunity for votes, public comment or input from neighborhood groups or businesses that will be impacted. As Mr. Alpert said, “… just buckle down, create something and then go try it.”

The four point plan looks something like this – What could possibly go wrong?

1. Tents
Overnight sleeping on city sidewalks will be allowed, provided that homeless Portlanders use only a sleeping bag and tarp, do not block the sidewalk, and do not exceed six sleepers in one location. Tents are not allowed on sidewalks.

But tents will be allowed from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. in certain locations, such as city-owned property that is not a sidewalk. The city plans to release examples of property where overnight-only camping would be allowed.

The guidelines don’t apply to parks, although the Portland Parks Bureau generally hasn’t gone out of its way to fight off overnight tent camping.

“No one should have a tent up in this city all day,” Alpert said.

2. Organized camping system
Alpert hopes to establish several — perhaps 10 — city-sanctioned campsites that must be linked to a nonprofit service provider.
Campers wouldn’t necessarily sleep in tents. Instead, the city may order a “couple hundred” disaster-relief pods that homeless Portlanders could sleep in, Alpert said. Later, those pods could be reused by the city in the event of a wide-scale disaster.

The locations of such campsites would be established with the help of neighborhood associations, Alpert.”It’ll be temporary,” Alpert said of the campsites.

3. Organized car/RV system
Similar to the camping system, the city would designate property where homeless Portlanders could legally camp in cars or RVs. Church parking lots are an obvious choice, Alpert said. Any site would require city approval and would need to be affiliated with a nonprofit service provider.

4. More temporary shelter space
Alpert said the city is looking at three or four locations in the hopes of securing more temporary shelter space. He wasn’t ready to speculate how many beds could be added to the system or when they’d be ready.

~ From Oregonian This is Charlie Hales’ plan for allowing homeless camping in Portland (Feb 8, 2016)

February 8, 2016February 9, 2016

Mayor Hales Emergency Declaration Bait & Switch

Tent-and-tarp city on the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge. (Joseph Rose:The Oregonian)

The emergency declaration was a bait and switch, and Mayor Hales has exceeded his authority. Mayor Hales sold the State of Emergency to waive zoning codes and convert city-owned buildings into shelters through an expedited. Source

The Impact Statement noted the need, which included “[homeless camps] pose potential health and safety threats for both the campers and the surrounding communities.” Ordinance and impact statement here

Instead of removing threatening homeless camps and moving people indoors, Mayor Hales has expanded and multiplied the outdoor camps.

The emergency declaration did not waive laws that regulate public sidewalks or public parks. It waived zoning laws that apply to built structures.

Commercial and residential zones are not appropriate places for homeless camps. Renters and homeowners become victimized and scared. Businesses fail.

One of Mayor Hales’s other goals is to reduce rents. We suppose Mayor Hales’s tolerance of crime and misconduct will accomplish that goal by making downtown housing undesirable.

“Gentrification” is a rallying cry against upgrading a neighborhood. We suppose putrefaction is one way to counter that.

January 21, 2016January 21, 2016

City Neglect Closes Another North Park Blocks Business

First, Glyph (another North Park Blocks eatery) closed in Sept 2015. Now Remedy.

Remedy Wine Bar featured huge windows that overlooked the North Park Blocks. A park-side location should be an asset to a gracious wine bar. But not when it’s adjacent to a space that city neglect has turned into a de facto homeless encampment.

Portland Parks Commissioner Amanda Fritz lacks an appreciation for public perceptions of safe and livable spaces. In a KGW interview she stated “Every neighborhood in Portland will be asked to find a spot to put a homeless camp.”

We wonder what’s ahead for Portland in 2016.

Remedy wine bar interior

Pearl District Wine Bar Leaving Neighborhood Because of Homeless People From Willamette Week 1/20/2016 by Matthew Korfhage

Pearl District wine bar Remedy, at the edge of the North Park Blocks on Broadway and Everett, is closing after three years.

Owner Michael Madigan says the problem is the neighbors.

Specifically, he believes that city sweeps of camps on the east side last June caused the houseless population to explode near his wine bar, and that the city has made a “conscious decision” not to solve the crime and drug use he says had become a problem in his neighborhood.

“One day last June when the city swept the inner Southeast,” he says, “Everybody showed up on the North Park Blocks. It was literally overnight.”

The city of Portland conducted a series of sweeps of east-side encampments beginning in May 2015.

“I counted 42 people between Everett and Flanders,” says Madigan, who is also owner of KitchenCru commissary space, CorksCru wine shop, and Bowery Bagels. “It had an immediate impact.”

Madigan says his business was down this summer by a significant margin year-over-year, after gains in the springtime.

He says that the problem was the crime he and his employees consistently observed near his wine bar, a second story space looking out on the park blocks that serves $15 wine flights, along with kale Caesar salad, and cheese and charcuterie plates including a $35 five-charcuterie platter.

Madigan says area hotels stopped sending customers to his neighborhood, and that the city was ineffectual in stopping drug use nearby, even when the city parked a police van outside the area. Remedy was named after a hundred-year-old pharmacy that once occupied the building.

“It was like the an episode of The Wire,” Madigan says of the North Park Blocks area. “As soon as the cops left, the drugs and the crime showed up again.”

He also says that people frequently urinated in the stairs that lead up to his wine bar.

“Every day those stairs are used as a latrine. There are public restrooms two blocks,” he says. “I remember asking people why. Why aren’t you going to those restrooms? They said, ‘The drug dealers won’t let us in.'”

Madigan says he talked to a police lieutenant about enforcing laws against camping, and smoking in parks, but that police were unable to do so.

“‘There’s a no smoking ordinance,'” Madigan says he told a police lieutenant. “‘Why aren’t you citing them for smoking?’ We were told that only park-rangers can cite people for park related ordinances.”

Local business owners took to documenting evidence of lawlessness on a website, northparkblocks.org. and formed an organization led by Michelle Cardinal—an owner of multiple properties and founder of boutique ad-firm R2C—to lobby the mayor and City Council.

“We took pictures of people having public sex in the parks,” he says. “One of our employees took a picture of a dealer injecting drugs into someone’s neck.”

In response to a video Cardinal produced, Mayor Hales and Commissioner Fritz visited the neighborhood, and the Oregonian published a series of articles documenting the “summer of lawlessness” in the park blocks. But Madigan says that this did not give him the results he needed to stay in the neighborhood.

He plans to re-open Remedy in an undisclosed space, after declining to renew his lease for an additional four years.

Glyph art cafe, also on the North Park Blocks, closed last September, citing similar concerns, although former owner Sandra Comstock said she believed that the situation had improved by the beginning of September. Madigan says the same, but that he thinks it will worsen again.

“When we moved in we knew the neighborhood was transitional,” he says. “We said all right, this will be a good thing to do.”

The last day of business at Remedy wine bar will be January 30.

January 19, 2016

Park Behavior Drives Out Business

Remedywinebar — Remedy Wine Bar ~Stephanie Yao Long/The Oregonian

A historic city park should be an asset to adjacent businesses. But the city’s failure to address the deterioration of the North Park Blocks has claimed another causality. Remedy Wine Bar announced that it will close on January 30th.

In an announcement Remedy writes:

We’re sad to announce that Remedy Wine Bar will be closing at the end of this month, but we do intend to relocate! We have decided not to renew the lease at our current location overlooking the North Park Blocks due to the pervasive camping in and around the park throughout summer and fall of 2015, and the related crime issues, that went largely unaddressed by the city. We have little confidence things will be different this summer.

This past September, Glyph – a North Park Block’s cafe closed after deteriorating conditions in the park negatively impacted their park-side business. Glyph’s owner noted in the PDX Eater:

In the past, we’ve had homeless people and everything was fine. This summer was different. Palpably different. And I don’t know why that was. It had a different element… that is, a new more difficult element moved in… .

Mayor Hales and Parks Commissioner Amanda Fritz ignored the conditions in the North Park Blocks for most of last summer. Their failure to address growing concerns about safe and livable parks has consequences.