Hillary and Joel’s tent near Lambert Field along the Springwater Corridor. Photo by Thacher Schmid.

With the September 1 “sweep” of the homeless camps along the Springwater Corridor nigh, let’s take a look at a recently-released document by a key group of 50 experts representing a range of regional stakeholders.

Oregon Consensus describes itself as “the state’s program for public policy agreement seeking.” It’s a program created by Portland State University; a team to work on the Springwater Corridor homeless problem was requested by Portland Mayor Charlie Hales. The group is a broad spectrum of staff from the cities of Portland and Gresham, Multnomah and Clackamas counties, state representatives, homeless outreach and social services agencies, law enforcement, health providers, and nonprofits.

Its “Final Summary” for the seven meetings it conducted this summer — as the controversy around the Springwater camps went from simmer to full boil — contains important, if obvious, truths.

Its 11 pages are also full of jargon and circular thinking.

Various forms of the word “coordinate,” for example, appear 41 times.

The imminent Sept. 1 sweeps, the document says, are an example of this new and improved “coordination.”

“The proposed September 1st effort to reduce concentrated high-impact camping activity along the Springwater Corridor is an illustration of the improved coordination between the jurisdictions themselves and also with non-profit organizations.”

The explosive growth of the population in the area, which Tony Bernal of Transition Projects told me back in July could run as high as 500, may also have had something to do with lack of coordination.

The first “theme” mentioned by the document found during its initial assessment?

“There was little effective interjurisdictional coordination of public safety (or social service) efforts along the 21-mile length of the Corridor.”

The stakeholders are understaffed, the report says, and the homeless folks just move around too much.

“[M]any of those interviewed noted that they are too understaffed to effectively cope with the scope of the situation. The Corridor moves through four cities in two counties. Each jurisdiction attempts to provide law enforcement within its own territory but there has been little or no interjurisdictional cooperation and the mobility of the homeless population makes traditional public safety measures less effective.”

The basic points of the initial assessment can be summarized as:

There has been too little coordination

There is not enough good data about the problem

What’s happening is not “appropriate” nor “acceptable”

Immediate removal is an “incomplete solution”

Taking this as its initial finding, then meeting seven times in large and small groups, Oregon Consensus came up a group of “overarching themes” that look suspiciously like its initial assessment findings.

The first?

“Increasing coordination is needed.”

The second?

“The Springwater site is not an appropriate site for homeless camping.”

The others include a “desire for more accurate data and coordinated data”; the observation that the campers have negatively impacted local natural areas (a variation on the “not appropriate site” theme); “neighborhood involvement” (file under: need more coordination); a desire for “improved communications” (see theme number one).

All in all, it makes one wonder. If you start with the idea that you need more coordination, and end with the idea that you need more coordination and “improved communications,” it seems like perhaps you just did a little jig in place.

Now, having worked in direct service to homeless individuals and families for years, and having made four trips of three hours or so each to interview campers living along the Springwater, I would be the last person to say that coming up with solutions to this situation is easy.

Put yourself in the shoes of anyone with any job related to this mammoth homeless camp. What would you do?

Yet the huge challenge doesn’t quite excuse such an important document employing circular logic that uses the same word over and over.

A more cynical take would be that this document is simply a form of plausible deniability for what comes next. What’s likely to happen is: displacement, “sweep,” the moving of tents and lean-tos and structures and the ushering into shelters, or other local self-organized homeless camps around the city, as Willamette Week’s Rachel Monahan recently wrote.

Photo collage of recent interviewees, 15 from the Springwater Corridor homeless camps. Photo by Thacher Schmid.

The people along the Springwater, 15 of whom are pictured above, all have diverse situations that defy easy answers.

But the Oregon Consensus document’s finding that “we needed more consensus; we should have more consensus” isn’t a solution either— the more systems “align” and “coordinate,” the harder it can be for people who need help to get accountable answers from a single agency or organization.

One could say, and this may be a symptom of our present age of seemingly limitless interconnectedness. When enough coordination is in play, perhaps the buck never really stops with anyone. Not the mayor, not Parks & Rec, not Clackamas County nor Gresham nor JOIN, Transitions Project, Multnomah County, Metro, the State of Oregon — nowhere.

This kind of circular thinking creates stasis, and fertile ground for private sector visionaries, such as Homer Williams, the architect of the Terminal 1 plan that has recently galvanized the city, and whom I interviewed for my last Poor for a Minute post.

Back in 1961, Joseph Heller wrote about circular logic in government, specifically a bomber pilot who couldn’t get out of the war he was caught in. The landmark book was called Catch-22:

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.”

If the Oregon Consensus report’s endless “coordination” is any measure, people along the Springwater may also caught in a kind of Catch-22, albeit in a different era, and a different kind of war.