Nearly a year after Wapato Jail was sold to developer Jordan Schnitzer to be razed and turned into a warehouse, it is back in conversation as a potential homeless shelter.

A group that includes the Portland police union president, nonprofit leaders, neighborhood activists and developers appears to be gearing up to solicit funding to turn the jail in a community wellness center that would provide shelter, mental health and addiction services.

The Wapato Jail, which cost $58 million for the county to build in 2004, was never used. Multnomah County commissioners sold it last year for $5 million. They said offloading the unused jail was the most cost-efficient option, since the county paid about $50,000 a month for upkeep.

Schnitzer said he bought the industrial property with plans to demolish the facility and build a warehouse. However, once he owned the jail, he put out a community call for ideas to use it for some good.

Schnitzer stipulated a proposal must have funding attached to it.

At the same time, he said he wouldn’t hold on to the building forever and was moving forward with contractors – and his demolition permit. Yet, when permit expired earlier this year, he requested an extension from the city’s Bureau of Development Services.

He now has until Oct. 28 to demolish the facility.

Volunteers of America Oregon President and CEO Kay Toran is leading the coalition. She is working with the Portland Police Association, the local police union, which appears to have commissioned a video that calls for community support to use Wapato as a behavioral health services center for homeless people.

Toran did not return a request for comment.

The version online is a 10-minute segment of a longer video that bears the association’s logo at the end. It was created by The Silent Partner Marketing agency, which specializes in videos for law enforcement groups.

Union President Daryl Turner refused to comment on the purpose of the video is. He suggested that it is merely a conversation starter until a more formal announcement he estimated might come in early October.

The coalition has already begun to air the video publicly. A version was shown at the Volunteers of America Oregon gala in early September. It has also been shown to the Lents Neighborhood Association, Turner said.

“Obviously they have a stake in wanting to help find a place where people are homeless, who have eviction issues, mental health issues, get the resources they need,” Turner said.

Turner declined to say who is involved in an effort to put services in the old jail -- yet the video shows a cast of prominent critics of the public sector’s response to homelessness and nonprofit leaders.

Homer Williams and Don Mazzioti, who spent their careers in development, both appear as part of their nonprofit Harbor of Hope, which opened earlier this year. Williams said he is supportive of the attempt to turn the jail into a community wellness center.

“The only way it’ll work is if it’s truly some kind of public-private,” Williams said in an interview. “There’s got to be some kind of private money brought into this.”

Angela Todd, an interior designer, also appears. She helped form the controversial Montavilla Initiative, which has tried to pressure the city to ramp up police presence in neighborhoods with large numbers of homeless campers.

The volunteer-run organization has been accused of harassing homeless people.

In the video, Todd says that the term “houseless” hides the many reasons people lose their housing and are unable to get new housing -- other than unaffordable rents. And, she said, there needs to be more emphasis on figuring out those reasons.

Todd and Turner have previously discussed how the city might better handle calls about homeless people.

In the past, Turner has called the city a “cesspool” after The Oregonian/OregonLive reported on the high rate of arrests of homeless people. His comments painted a dire picture of a blighted, dangerous city that resonated with many residents who dislike the growing presence of homeless people in their communities.

In the Wapato video, he made a softer case. He said that police have nowhere to take someone in the midst of a mental health crisis late at night, except for the emergency room.

Turner said in the video that the lack of resources drives arrests.

“We’re creating this vicious circle ourselves because we have no other resources,” he said. “We have no other outlets to be able to provide to people.”

Wapato owner Schnitzer said city and county leaders lack vision for the facility.

“We need the leadership to help coalesce us and bring us together and show us how we can all work toward solving this problem,” Schnitzer said, “that’s what’s missing in this community now.”

Schnitzer declined to speak on the record about his plans for the facility.

However, public officials have largely made it clear that they do not intend to fund any services at Wapato -- at least on their own.

“Despite years of exhaustive efforts, we found we didn't need an old jail 14 miles from downtown,” said Julie Sullivan-Springhetti, a county spokeswoman, in a statement. “But we do need behavioral health resource centers near where people in crisis are already living, and we’re working on opening our first one in downtown Portland. We know that providing services to people in a convenient location with trusted peer mentors is the key to recovery and stability.”

Multnomah County recently bought an empty building on Southwest Park Avenue in order to create a mental health center for this purpose, though it is expected to take years to complete. Sullivan-Springhetti said no one has reached out to commissioners recently about Wapato.

Mayor Ted Wheeler had a “productive meeting” with Volunteers of America about Wapato recently, said spokesman Timothy Becker.

Becker said that Wheeler is interested in “supporting innovative ideas” around homelessness, and that he is open to hearing more about this recent iteration of the Wapato-as-homeless-services-facility discussion. Wheeler has entertained the idea before, only to back away by saying it wouldn’t pencil out.

“As you know, over the years, many calculations have been made about the facility, especially surrounding the operating costs and the sustainability of those costs. It would be fiscally unwise to fund a program that doesn’t have a long-term and sustainable plan,” Becker said. “The mayor has reached out to Jordan Schnitzer about his vision for Wapato and requested to see a statement of financial sources and uses. That statement should have a viable, actionable, financially sustainable plan. He will be convening a meeting soon with Jordan and all the key partners.”

The desire to move homeless people out of neighborhoods and business districts has long fueled the debate around Wapato. Homeless advocates and some public officials say that people who want to house homeless people at Wapato just don’t want to see very poor people on the streets outside their homes and businesses.

Supporters say they see a 150,000-square-foot facility with built-in places to sleep and eat as a natural fit for some kind of homeless shelter.

One of the hang-ups of past Wapato plans was its distant from services in the central city. In the video, though, Volunteers of America CEO Toran quotes TriMet Board President Bruce Warner as saying the agency could figure out a way to provide transportation to and from the facility.

Yet an undercurrent of the video is clear: People living on the streets should not be allowed to cluster in the visible areas they currently occupy.

“Where are the rights of the other folks in the community that are paying taxes, that are working hard, trying to make a living?” Schnitzer said at the end of the video. “There has to be a balance here.”

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com | 503-294-5923 | @MollyHarbarger

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