Dignity Village rescued Lisa Larson.

The Northeast Portland homeless community rescued her from two abusive relationships. It rescued her from living on the streets, and cold, wet nights under Portland-area overpasses. The nights, born from desperation, where she broke into abandoned homes to rest. Nights that led to her criminal record.

"It's helped heal me," said Larson, 47, the current CEO of the nonprofit camp.

She arrived at the village three years ago with a self-imposed deadline of six months in her mind to "get a job, get safe and get out." Today, she and her boyfriend, Scott Layman, are still there and leaders in the community.

Larson and Layman aren't the only ones with long stays at Portland's first city-sanctioned "transitional campground." More than half of Dignity Village's 60 current residents have been there two years or longer, and one-third have lived there for five years or more, according to the Portland Housing Bureau.

Complacency has settled in, Larson said.

Ten miles away, another homeless community with ties to Dignity Village wants to create the city's second publicly approved transitional campground. Two years after it first arrived on a prominent corner in downtown Portland, Right 2 Dream Too is embroiled in a public and political fight not dissimilar to the one waged by Dignity Village supporters 13 years ago.

The two camps have a lot in common beyond their mission of providing safe, dry and accessible shelter to Portlanders experiencing homelessness.

Ibrahim Mubarak, a former Chicago gang member turned Portland homeless advocate, helped start both movements.

Both communities have clear rules: no drugs, no alcohol and no violence. Residents must take turns manning the security desk, which is open around the clock, at both sites. Stealing and discrimination, sexual, racial or any other form, aren't allowed.

Like R2D2, residents at Dignity Village govern and police themselves.

Pete Simpson, a Portland Police Bureau spokesman, said he couldn't remember the last time police were called to Dignity Village.

Portland Fire & Rescue has a great relationship with Dignity Village, spokesman Ron Rouse said. Rouse makes frequent visits to the community, with its dozens of elevated, often brightly colored wood dwellings.

Many villagers have their own garden boxes. There's a shared shower area, office with computer and a basketball hoop. Bikes are plentiful. Recent donations to the village included the original Star Trek movies.

Rouse said the fire department has donated space heaters to keep the non-insulated homes warm. Residents take and implement any feedback he offers. For example, homes are now individually numbered to help firefighters respond to the right spot in the event of a fire.

Differences matter

R2D2 vs. Dignity Village

R2D2

Founded: October 2011

What: Tent city, "rest area" for homeless

Size: sleeps 70

Location: Northwest 4th Avenue and West Burnside

Legality: illegal, but could be sanctioned if moved

Success: 76 residents have found jobs

Dignity Village

Founded: 2000, downtown Portland

What: makeshift community of structures for homeless

Size: 60 people

Location: 9401 N.E. Sunderland Road

Legality: a legally sanctioned campground authorized by the city in 2004

Success: The village hosts tours for people from around the world. Celebrating 13 years from the start of the movement, nearly 10 in Northeast Portland.

As the Portland City Council weighs what to do with R2D2, Dignity Village residents are far from the fight. It's been that way for years.

After initially setting up camp downtown in 2000, they hopped from spot to spot.

Former Commissioner Erik Sten, who oversaw the Housing Bureau then, said he was sympathetic to the campers' plight, but that there never was a grand plan for siting the village.

At the time, Sten said Dignity Village could remain on land underneath the Fremont Bridge, but the landowner, the Oregon Department of Transportation, said no. By process of elimination, land at the city's Sunderland Yard recycling center became the default destination in 2001.

"It was the only place that the city controlled that the city could move it to without madness ensuing," Sten said.

In 2004, the city formally recognized Dignity Village as an approved campsite.

The city has a contract with Dignity Village, a nonprofit, which grants use of the one-acre site adjacent to a leaf composting facility. The beeping of heavy machinery sounds throughout the camp, and wind can blow dust throughout the village.

The nonprofit pays an estimated $2,000 a month for water, electricity, garbage pickup and portable toilets, Larson said. Donations help buy supplies, and revenue from the nonprofit's micro-businesses -- selling firewood, for example -- help pay collective bills.

Part of the village's longevity can be attributed to its distance from downtown. It truly is out of sight, out of mind.

But that distance also helps fuels complacency, residents and homeless advocates say.

Housing officials recognized that in a three-year contract signed last December. Residents now have a two-year clock ticking over their heads before they must move out.

It's a change that Larson and Brad Gibson, a four-year resident of Dignity Village, termed "frustrating."

Sally Erickson, who manages the Housing Bureau's contract with Dignity Village, is aware that the two-year limit scares many villagers. But the city can grant extensions in some cases and hasn't worked out all the details, she said.

Mubarak, a driving force behind Right 2 Dream Too, said that if he could start Dignity Village from scratch again today, he would do it differently.

He would regulate how long residents could stay, though he didn't say precisely how long he'd allow, make sure residents do more work for the village and themselves than just the 10 hours a week they must devote to the community now (Those hours can include working on the security desk, or in Larson's case, conducting an interview with The Oregonian).

Most of all, Mubarak said he would insist on putting the camp closer to the central city, saying distance is the main reason people remain "dormant," and don't hit the streets to find permanent work or housing.

"I think we enable them to be dependent and lazy," Mubarak said from a wood table under a tarp at the R2D2 site. "We're trying to create independency here."

That was the goal for Dignity Village. A 2001 visioning document predicted a different outcome from today's reality. Camp organizers sought ownership of their own site, "in Portland's core." They wanted a spot "visible to the homeless population being served" and large enough for future growth.

Gibson, who is both a vice-chair of R2D2 and a four-year resident of Dignity Village, echoed concerns about the Sunderland Yard site.

It's past time for Dignity Village residents to "start mustering up support" to find a permanent location. Gibson, a former Dignity Village CEO, said that's not happening.

"Nobody wants to put in the effort," to find a new location, he said, "if they don't benefit from the outcome."

Unlike the people living at R2D2, most of Dignity Village's current residents "didn't have to fight" to get a safe place to stay off the streets, Larson said. Most arrived to find finished, artfully decorated buildings and an established community.

"Way out here, nobody is touching us. Nobody is worried about us," she said.

Part of the beauty of Dignity Village, its supporters say, is the community's democratic model, in which everyone does their part. Members elect a governing board to one-year terms. There's constant turnover in leadership.

That's a concern to Erickson. "It would be helpful if they had a sustainable board structure," she said.

Constant turnover leads to "ongoing challenges" and inconsistencies, Erickson said.

The camp is supposed to turn in quarterly and annual reports documenting who lives there, who leaves and why. Those reports are often error-prone, Erickson said, and frequently late.

Gibson said the site would benefit from more "external checks and balances."

That sentiment isn't new, said Erickson, who's overseen the contract for five years. "Depending on who's on the board, they request less and more involvement," she said.

It's cold outside

The road to Dignity Village sends you on a lengthy detour these days. Construction work along Northeast 33rd Drive sends drivers through a maze of industrial buildings. It only serves to further capture the isolation and the distance from everything else.

Dignity Village's persistence has to be, at least in part, a testament to its environment.

"If it wasn't so far away, it probably wouldn't still be there," Sten said.

But beyond that, Sten feels there's a tug of human connection at play for both R2D2 and Dignity Village.

"A sense of community is really lacking for these folks," Sten said. "I think these encampments are more about people feeling part of something."

The number of homeless people in Portland is a hotly debated issue. City commissioners often cite the figure of 2,000 people sleeping outside on any given night. Last year, at least 56 people died on the streets in Multnomah County, according to the county health department and Street Roots newspaper.

Homelessness isn't a cookie-cutter experience. Larson said she used to have a pretty normal life: "Two kids, two dogs, two cats, two jobs, two cars, a mortgage."

Three years in, she feels more stable, and also inspired. A weekly visit from a counselor helped her realize that she loves helping other people. She plans to apply for grants to help her go back to school to pursue a career in therapy.

On an elemental level, she said, Dignity Village works because residents have to be themselves. There are no false pretenses when you live with 59 other people, far afield from the rest of society.

Larson said she's rooting for the people at R2D2. "They are down fighting in the trenches," she said. "They need to keep fighting. We'll send them a postcard."

She foresees getting more active in efforts to address homelessness once she leaves the village for good.

There are, after all, a lot of people sleeping outside tonight.

-- Andrew Theen