Stephanie Yao Long

Above: Piles of trash dot the landscape along the multi-use path parallel to I-205 in the Lents neighborhood.





By Molly Harbarger

Lynne Palombo contributed to this report.

The Oregonian | OregonLive



Erik Benson wants to sell his dream home. After nearly 20 years on the double lot, he and his wife are thinking about unloading the Southeast Portland house they customized for their retirement -- high ceilings, hardwood floors, a hot tub in their bedroom.



They didn't anticipate that within yards of their front door, dozens of people would make their homes in tents and other make-shift encampments along a state-created pedestrian and bicycle path that runs along Interstate 205. The pathside community has become a hot spot for drug use, Benson says, and litter piles dot the way to Johnson Creek, where a rusted shopping cart and algae-covered jugs mar the scene. Some campers inflict racist graffiti and homophobic slurs on a diverse range of neighbors.



Homelessness is not new to Lents. But the throng of people camped there has increased steadily over the last few years, residents say, and exploded after the Springwater Corridor was swept a year ago.

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Stephanie Yao Long

Above: Concerned Lents neighbors gather after seeing emergency vehicles pull into their cul-de-sac for the second time in a week. On this day, the responders get a 911 call that a homeless man is having an allergic reaction to a bee sting.



It is the most dramatic example of numerous places around Portland where, as never before, homeowners and people without housing live cheek-to-cheek. The number of homeless people in Oregon's biggest city exceeded 4,000 people this year, official tallies show. And unlike in past years, more than a third of those men, women and children don't bed down on downtown streets or inside shelters but in residential neighborhoods.



Although the city and Multnomah County are devoting unprecedented levels of money and staffing to lessening the effects on homeless and housed people alike, the two groups' coexistence remains uneasy in most neighborhoods where it occurs. Currently, it ranges from a reluctant truce in North Portland's Overlook to a crackdown-induced retreat of homeless from Laurelhurst to a caldron of complaints and mistrust in Lents.



Calls to the city's hotline for complaints about homeless people or campsites were highest in the latter two neighborhoods this spring and summer. But they dot every part of the city except portions of Hillsdale and the Southwest Hills on the city's west side and Irvington, Grant Park and Eastmoreland on the east.

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Lynne Palombo | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Above: Homeless camp reports in summer 2017.

Citywide, calls exceeded 1,600 a month for the first time in the spring, then hit a fever pitch of 2,200 a month or higher in June, July and August, records obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive show.

WHERE THE CALLS CAME FROM, MAPPED

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Stephanie Yao Long

Above: People gather south of the Springwater Corridor on the multi-use path parallel to I-205.



Advocates say that renters and homeowners have a right to feel safe. But, they say, they also should tolerate homeless people living near them who keep their space tidy, use restrooms and respect quiet hours.



City officials want to win back residents who they say have lost compassion during years of seeing more needle caps in their playgrounds. So Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has steered more city money to what he calls "livability" issues -- keeping needles out of parks, towing decrepit RVs out of neighborhoods and more stringently enforcing environmental and public safety laws. Most neighborhoods are seeing results.

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Stephanie Yao Long

Above: Gabi, who lacks a permanent home, travels the multi-use path along I-205.





Joint efforts by the city and county have helped conditions for housed and unhoused Portlanders alike. Officials doubled available beds in year-round shelters, and added more that open in winter to allow a record number of homeless Portlanders to sleep inside. The Joint Office of Homeless Services reported record-setting numbers of people lived for a time in subsidized housing meant to help occupants become secure enough to pay rent on their own.



Despite those efforts, more people than ever in Portland are forced to live outside. Officials acknowledge the official estimate of 1,600 at any given time understates the problem.



A growing number of vocal residents in hard-hit Eastside neighborhoods are calling for more long-term solutions, such as organized camps and stricter enforcement, to ease the repercussions of living side-by-sid

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Above: The intersection where the Springwater Corridor and multi-use path cross.

UNHAPPY NEIGHBORS INSIDE AND OUT



For now, the Bensons have turned to their own solutions. They have three guns hidden in the front room and both Erik and Kristy, his wife, carry handguns at all times. The real protection, he says, is two large cans of bear spray stashed behind a black-and-white photo of their son within reach of the front door. Benson said he bought those on the advice of a police officer who suggested that an intruder is more likely to back down from the spray, knowing you might use it, than a gun whose trigger you would hesitate to pull.



His wife faced that very choice months ago, when a man aggressively approached her car as she pulled out of their fenced and gated backyard. When she went into the house to make sure her son was OK, the man followed her in. She held him at gunpoint while her son called the police. The man was arrested and later released.



But the incident left them shaken. "I've never stared down the barrel at somebody," Benson said.

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Stephanie Yao Long

Above: Houses line the multi-use path to the right. I-205 is on the left.



People who live along the paved trail near I-205 say their lives are made hard by the fact that housed neighbors treat them all as troublemakers or criminals just because a fraction of them are. People whose only transgression is not being able to afford the city’s escalated rents not only endure the struggles of living and sleeping outside but also being reported to police or yelled at by those with homes nearby.

Gabi lost her housing two years ago when she escaped a domestic violence situation, she said. She didn't want her name used because fears from that abuse still linger. She said she stays along the multi-use path in Lents because it's one of the few places she isn't rousted from her camping spot, as happens to people in city-owned parks that are patrolled every week. Still, she woke a Friday in September to being robbed again while she slept. She lost blankets and her phone, among other smaller items.



She says business owners and residents assume everyone uses drugs, but she doesn't. Yet she understands why her friends and fellow campers do. Some drugs keep you awake so you are always on guard.

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Above: Gabi, who wants more help, camps in Lents and says she understands why some homeless people resort to drugs, though she does not



"I'm not saying drug problems are OK, but how many times will it take you to lose everything but the clothes on your back before you snap?" Gabi said as she piled her scattered clothes into a shopping cart.



She says she wants help getting services, but she's been approached by outreach workers only a few times. She missed a recent opportunity to sign up for a low-income apartment, and plans to ride MAX downtown in a few weeks to get on a waitlist.



She said most people who rent or own along the bike path don't give her trouble.



But some campers say they are harassed for things they didn't do. Many point to the trash bags they fill with old pizza boxes and other garbage as evidence they take care of their space.



They also say they have nowhere else to go.

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Stephanie Yao Long

Above photo: This sign posted by ODOT along the multi-use path and near homeless camps warns that personal property will be removed in 10 days.





A TRANSPORTATION, NOT HOUSING, AGENCY



The bike path is on Oregon Department of Transportation property for the most part, though some areas intersect with TriMet or city jurisdiction. The state agency is required to give campers more notice – 10 to 19 days, rather than the six day required by rules governing city property -- that workers will be coming through to tell them to move and dispose of whatever they leave behind. State workers nor city crews have the authority to force campers to leave unless they are on private property, but can strongly encourage it.



Lents residents say that from the time they file a complaint, it takes about six weeks before crews arrive, which leaves a lot of time for campers to become entrenched. When the cleaning is over, many move right back, frustrated neighbors say.



Don Hamilton, spokesman for ODOT, said agency officials know that the big encampments impact neighbors.



"It means fear, it can mean increased crime, it can mean health problems," Hamilton said. "We're also aware of the human consequences of this. This is a problem that tells us about some serious social issues that need to be addressed."



The transportation agency is not a homeless services organization, he said, but is trying to balance all sides of the debate and keep people on dangerous highway right-of-ways safe.

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Above photo: People living outside at Laurelhurst Park in Southeast Portland were sent on their way in August 2016.



CRACKING DOWN, HUMANITARIAN-STYLE



Lents residents are not the only people lighting up complaint lines over the presence of homeless people nearby.



Portland police and parks workers now clear Laurelhurst Park every Monday of all trash and possessions that people without permanent homes have left there. Cops scan the park in the upper-middle-class Southeast Portland neighborhood, talking to the people who use it and trying to troubleshoot conflicts between the homeless people who sleep or hang out in or around the park and other park users. "No camping" signs now hang from trees over the sidewalk around three-quarters of the park.

It's one of many places in the city, Mayor Ted Wheeler said, that enforcement increased. In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, he listed several steps his administration has taken that Portlanders might not see: towed away 299 derelict RVs parked on neighborhood streets since November under a new program, hired additional staff for the One Point of Contact homeless complaint system, added six walking beats for Portland Police officers, hired more park rangers to patrol downtown, the South Waterfront, Eastside parks and the Springwater Corridor.



"There's nowhere trash is acceptable. There's nowhere needles are acceptable. There's nowhere graffiti on public right of ways are acceptable," Wheeler said.



He says his predecessor, Charlie Hales, was lax on enforcing laws related to homelessness, which led to the problems residents say they are now seeing.

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Beth Nakamura

Above photo: Laurelhurst Park in August 2016.





But his administration isn't just focused on cracking down on infractions, he said. He also wants to make sure people living on the street are reached by social workers and service agencies better than ever.



"It's not a clear line, and we're always mindful of the fact -- and the community constantly reminds us -- that we need to focus on illegal activity and have compassion for those who are caught up in this humanitarian crisis," Wheeler said.



Laurelhurst homeowner TJ Browning walks her neighborhood park nearly every day with her dog and takes note of where people are sleeping. She keeps a tally of how many needles and people sleeping in the bushes she sees.



On a late August morning, Browning noted she hadn't seen so many elderly people, women with strollers and joggers in the park for awhile.



Just six weeks earlier, exasperated neighbors demanded action at a meeting with city officials. The improvement since then has been dramatic, Browning said.



She is still on watch, though. "I'm starting to feel like a vigilante," she said, mocking herself for scanning the ground for needles.

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Stephanie Yao Long

Above photo: DJ Antlitz (second from right) says he and his father delivered water bottles to the homeless along the Lents multi-use path during the hot days this summer. "We couldn't bear the idea of anyone dying of heatstroke." Richard Christman (right) says firefighters sometimes come to put out camp fires along the path.



The park's seasonal maintenance worker said he had picked up four that morning. He was in the midst of ushering an apparently homeless man out of the park with a couple trash bags of possessions.



Browning points to that as proof the problem persists. But the scene is a stark contrast to the line of tents that used to barricade one end of the park.



Browning's husband, Scott Pratt, is the president of the neighborhood association. He ended up the voice behind the group's June resolution asking Wheeler to step up enforcement of rules against littering, drug use and public urination around all Portland schools and parks.



The idea, Browning said, was not to move homeless people from Laurelhurst to other neighborhoods but to create safe spaces around places children congregate citywide. She hopes that if no one is allowed in those public spaces, the city and county will move faster on a plan to put a roof over everyone's heads.

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"Why are there people without houses? They deserve to be safe, too," Browning said. "If we don't push on City Hall, I don't see it being addressed."



In a letter back to the association in July, the mayor formally declined to adopt its proposed ordinance, citing existing Portland laws that deal with camping. But in an September interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Wheeler said police were in fact targeting those areas for extra patrols.



"We are focusing on high-impact areas, that's parks, that's public right of ways, the vicinity of schools," Wheeler said.

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Above photo: Hazelnut Grove resident Desiree Rose gives a hug to Vahid Brown, a homeless advocate who helped her move into the camp in North Portland.



FORUMS FOR THE FRUSTRATED



Elsewhere, people who feel the city and county are ignoring their problems are also trying to leverage their neighborhood associations to deal with the same issues. These bodies don't set policy but serve as forums for the frustrated.



At countless meetings across the city, residents try to draw a line between criminals and people down on their luck. It's a politically and emotionally fraught subject, made more so as people living in tents and camps have started to show up to neighborhood meetings, too.

Montavilla erupted in debate this summer after new board members helped pass a resolution asking the city to stop sweeping homeless people from the neighborhood. Those residents sided with homeless people and their advocates who say the practice causes people without an address to lose belongings and identification, which in turn makes it harder to receive services and prompts some to steal replacement items.

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Samantha Swindler

Above photo: Hazelnut Grove



Many Montavilla residents resisted, saying sweeps are the only relief they have from finding urine and feces in their yards or being insulted and harassed.

Ben Tertin, a former board member, pastor and seven-year resident of Montavilla, voted against the resolution, saying he wants housed and unhoused people to equally be held accountable for criminal acts. He repeatedly said he wants people who have had a rough time to get help. But he recalled an incident the day before when he said two people shot heroin and fell asleep within a few feet of a church's daycare playground.



"What we have to do as a Christian mission, the heart for homeless in the core. It's very big," Tertin said. "But not to the point of saying leave your used condoms and needles at our children's playground."



"People are talking more in the neighborhood about homelessness than they ever have since I have lived here," Tertin said. "You have this scenario where that's not something that's happening before, but it's happening now. And it's happening more places than 90th Avenue."

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Mike Zacchino

Above photo: People gather around a fire in a community tent at Hazelnut Grove on Dec. 29, 2016.



ARE ORGANIZED CAMPS THE KEY?



In the Overlook neighborhood, Chris Trejbal, president of the neighborhood association, toured Overlook Park at 8:30 a.m. Holding his coffee cup, he walked the perimeter, where a chainlink fence separates the freshly mowed grass from a forested cliff. He just finished explaining that many people climb the fence and camp on the cliff to avoid being hassled when he spotted the tell-tale orange cap of a syringe and a few empty cans of beer.



The park is directly above Hazelnut Grove, an intentionally created village of semi-permanent tiny houses envisioned as a model way to humanely house homeless people inside Portland neighborhoods. Supporters and Hazelnut Grove members say their community should draw support, not disdain, from those who rent or own homes nearby.

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Samantha Swindler

Above photo: Christian Bolding paints Native American-inspired artwork on the outside of his sleeping pod at Hazelnut Grove.



The community, home to more than 20 long-term residents who built and inhabit 19 tiny homes, is bounded by a chainlink fence and nestled in a triangle where North Interstate and Greeley avenues intersect. Residents dug French drains in the dirt and are working on an ever-evolving kitchen and bathroom space.



It's the kind of self-governed place some residents of Laurelhurst and Lents say they want: small in scale and well-organized instead of a sprawl of tents and tarps in a public right-of-way or park.



Versions of the model are clustered in North Portland. Wheeler struck a deal to move Right 2 Dream Too, a "rest stop" model where people can sleep for up to 12 hours at a time, to a city-owned parking lot between the Willamette River and the Moda Center. Dignity Village, similar to Hazelnut Grove and connected with nonprofit JOIN, is approaching 20 years at its Northeast Portland location near the airport. The city initiated a pilot project in Kenton, where 14 women live in 8-by-12-feet structures meant for sleeping and storing belongings.

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Dennis "Mack" McKenzie, Sr., lives in a tiny house at Right 2 Dream Too, an organized rest stop for homeless people across from the Moda Center.



Across the country, homeless "villages" with tiny houses are seen as an short-term alternative for people who don't want to be packed into shelters with other people and haven't found permanent housing. They provide an address and and some measure of security.



But Overlook residents are ambivalent about the semi-housed residents. While the temporary tiny homes are removed from most other houses, they are down a steep slope that has a high risk of wildfire. The village also attracts hangers-on, who pitch tents nearby and don't necessarily abide by the rules Hazelnut Grove members must follow.



The neighborhood association has called for city officials to remove it for about two years. Trejbal recounted a long saga of mediation with Hazelnut Grove and city officials to try to craft a good neighborhood agreement. The latest twist came a few weeks ago when Overlook representatives walked away from the table, saying Hazelnut Grove was conspiring with the city behind their back.



Grove members, for their part, say they try to be model neighbors. They volunteer in the community, exist on donations and anything they earn themselves and will give a tour to nearly anyone who walks up to the gate.

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Stephanie Yao Long

Above photo: Benson High School students built these tiny homes and donated them to Right 2 Dream Too.



Some neighbors and advocates say that a Kenton Women's Village or Hazelnut Grove should go in every community to provide shelter and spread the burden of taking in the unhoused between wealthy and poorer communities.



The small scale of homeless enclaves makes them tolerable to neighborhood associations -- but also makes them an unlikely way to fundamentally solve the crisis affecting much of Portland's East Side. It would take more than 20 Hazelnut Groves, with fewer than two dozen residents, to house the estimated 200 people camped along the I-205 bike path alone. The people who live in them must abide by strict rules, which would turn off many people dealing with substance abuse.



Others want more drug rehabilitation and mental illness services dispersed throughout hard-hit neighborhoods, rather than concentrated in Old Town and downtown. While many advocates would cheer that development, the cost of multiple facilities would be high for nonprofits that rely on donations, grants and taxpayer money.

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See maps showing complaints submitted over one year to the city of Portland’s "One Point of Contact Campsite Reporting."

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Stephanie Yao Long

Above photo: Gabi walks to a convenience store on Southeast Foster Road, a few dozen feet from the multi-use path.





TRY TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBOR



Most often, people who straddle both worlds say the best solution in the short run is better communication.



Hazelnut Grove members' attempt to integrate into the community is a key technique in volatile conditions, Jim Hlava says. Hlava is vice president of housing at Cascadia Behavioral Health, a nonprofit that does outreach to unhoused people with mental illness and operates hundreds of units of housing for those clients.



He has invested hours in the Eliot neighborhood, which straddles North and Northeast Portland, and elswhere to smooth tensions with residents resistant to having housing for people with mental illness, many of whom would otherwise be homeless, next door.

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Above photo: Edward Krotz chooses to camp outside with Julie "Phoenix" Salmon, despite having an apartment with roommates. It's the only way he knows his girlfriend, who is homeless, will be safe.



"Whatever impact we have, we answer calls, we call back, we'll show up to meetings, we'll problem-solve," Hlava said. "We'll negotiate to try to figure out how to be a good neighbor."





Stigma against homeless people can make it hard to stay safe for people like Edward Krotz and Julie Salmon, who goes by Phoenix on the street. They worry where they will go if they can't stay in public places.

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Above photo: Edward Krotz and Julie "Phoenix" Salmon



The couple of five years said they try to move every day or two to avoid upsetting neighbors or getting involved in drama with other campers. On a sunny 80-degree September afternoon, they rested in the grass a few yards from the Bensons' house in Lents. They had been in that spot the night before and would likely not be far from it that night, either, because Salmon was nursing a left ankle swollen to twice its normal size and bruised almost to the point of being unusable. She said it was hit with a baseball bat in another camp.

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In August, she was arrested on allegations of damaging hospital furniture in a hospital emergency room. She has not been convicted.



"We need to go somewhere," Krotz said. "They call the parks public, so let them be. You don't need to put a house there, but there are ones better than this, so let us go there."



Krotz says he has an apartment with roommates after about three years on and off the street but is staying with his girlfriend under a tarp to keep her safe.

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They sleep far enough away from the row of five or so tents nearby so they aren't kept awake by people using drugs or fights. But they don't want to be so far away from fellow campers that they are vulnerable to predators.



"For everyone else who takes care of their stuff, it makes it look bad for us," Salmon said. "Some people just want to sleep."

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-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger