The ‘magnet myth’

Most of Portland’s homeless people were born and raised here, or lived in Oregon for years before ending up outdoors. But the magnet myth is rooted in some realities.

Advocates call it “the magnet myth,” the notion that Portland’s progressive politics and forgiving nature make it a destination city for homeless people.

The theory — that the region’s generosity works against it — is flawed. Surveys done by government agencies and nonprofits that serve homeless men and women routinely show that a quarter of Portland-area homeless people are new arrivals. Most were born and raised here, or lived in Oregon for years before ending up outdoors.

“I don’t really think a youth in Pittsburgh says, ’Oh, I hear the scrambled eggs at Outside In in Portland are really great,’” said Kathy Oliver, whose downtown nonprofit helps homeless teenagers find housing, job training and medical care. “That’s vastly oversimplifying it.”

Oversimplifying it, yet not flat-out wrong. The magnet myth is rooted in some realities.

For example, homeless men and women are attracted to urban areas nationwide because they’re usually hubs for the soup kitchens, shelters and government services homeless people need. Nationally, homelessness is on the decline in smaller cities and rural areas, at least according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s narrow definition of “homeless.” It’s rising or holding steady in major cities.

Recent surveys in Seattle and San Francisco mirror studies done in Portland: About one in four homeless men and women arrived within the past two years.

“It’s a pretty uniform talking point in a lot of cities: ’If you build it, they will come. If you provide services, you will have more homeless people,’” said Israel Bayer, executive director of Street Roots, the alternative weekly newspaper sold by homeless men and women. “The media covers this in a vacuum, so the same corporate talking points can be used in every city. But if you look at the latest counts, you’ll see it’s not one city’s problem. It’s almost every urban area.”

West Coast cities, because of their temperate climates, are appealing to nearly anyone contemplating a major life change. It’s no different for people struggling to rise out of poverty: California is home to 12 percent of the U.S. population, yet accounted for almost 25 percent of the nation’s homeless in a 2014 study. Milder weather helps explain Portland’s summertime boom in younger homeless people, the “road warriors” and “street punks” who tend to congregate downtown and along the Willamette River.

“It becomes a different world out here in the summer when the kids show up,” said Lewis Davis, a homeless man in his mid-40s who camps along the eastern bank of the Willamette River and in the Central Eastside Industrial District for most of the year. He heads farther out in the warmer months when the urban core grows more crowded. “Some of them are runaways who really need help. Some of them are just out for a lark. They hop a train to Portland or San Francisco instead of backpacking through Europe. The weather turns, and they go back wherever they came from.”

Being homeless isn’t easy, no matter where you are. But is it easier in Portland?

“People are going to get mad at me for saying this, but yes. Absolutely yes,” said Rhona Mahl, outreach director for Transitional Youth, a Christian-focused nonprofit that provides free meals for young homeless people downtown and transitional housing for young homeless men in Beaverton, Vancouver and rural Clark County.

Mahl was born into homelessness; from the hospital, her parents took her “home” to the family car. She started using drugs at 12, was living on her own on the streets of Portland at 13 and pregnant with her first child at 14. Today, at 45, she spends most of her days talking to people living on the streets in downtown Portland. She’s trying to start a combination coffee shop/bike repair store that would be staffed by young homeless people.

“Portland allows things other cities don’t allow. Portland provides things other cities don’t provide so readily,” Mahl said. “There are kids who come here specifically to be homeless. They think they’re making a choice. You and I might recognize otherwise, but that’s what is going on in their minds.”

Portland, with its compact downtown and ample public transit, is easy to navigate. More than a dozen organizations offer homeless men and women free meals, clothing swaps and, if not shelter, at least easy access to sleeping bags and tarps.

“There’s a saying on the street: You have to be stupid to starve in Portland,” Davis said. “If you sit down on any sidewalk, eventually someone will bring you a meal.”

Elsewhere in the United States, city leaders have decided to use a tough love approach: In 2014, for example, three dozen cities banned public meals for homeless people, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell signed a law late last year that made it illegal to sit or lie on public pavement from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., ordered police to increase how frequently they sweep transient camps and described his city’s approach to homelessness as “compassionate disruption.” “We cannot let homelessness ruin our economy and take over our city,” Caldwell, a Democrat, wrote in a newspaper op-ed last summer. “It’s time to declare a war on homelessness.”

Portland-area leaders have opted to err on the side of compassion. That’s partly because of the city’s more progressive politics. “You can’t be a liberal state — everything is OK, keep Portland weird — and not attract a certain population,” said Teri Gant, who runs Father’s Heart Street Ministry in Oregon City and has ministered to homeless men and women in Portland for almost 20 years.

But it’s also a practical response to harsh reality: Portland and its neighbors don’t have enough shelter space or affordable apartments to make a serious attempt at criminalizing their way out of homelessness.

Nationally, federal judges have repeatedly rejected anti-loitering laws in communities that have not made a concerted effort to give homeless people safe places to go. Locally, police will break up large camps and those in prominent spots — the Willamette Riverfront becomes a different place just before the start of the summer festival season, for example. But officers usually tell campers to “move along” rather than writing tickets or taking repeat offenders to jail.

There’s simply nowhere for police to tell homeless people to go, besides the generic “not here,” and there are not enough jail and hospital beds, police officers, social workers, physicians and psychiatrists to move people off the street for good. Instead, when law enforcement does get involved, its primary role is to shift the problem, which disappears from downtown Portland but shows up across the river. It migrates east on the MAX line or south along Interstate 5.

“My big fear is that maybe we’re unwittingly creating a cycle of poverty,” Mahl said. “A young person learns to navigate the system very quickly, they learn how to provide for their basic needs. Then once they’re on the street, it’s so much harder to get off.”

It’s harder because while Portland might be an easy place to find a free meal, finding a job or apartment remains difficult. Regionwide, the vacancy rate for rentals hovers between 2 percent and 5 percent and falls even lower for units affordable to the poorest of the poor, say people earning less than 50 percent of the median family income. Portland’s unemployment rate remains above the national average, and the gap between the number of people who need work and the number of available jobs is larger in fields that don’t require a college degree or computer skills.

People who come to Oregon with good intentions — to work, pay rent, stay out of the social-service network — end up homeless.

“Any city that has a large in-migration is going to attract all kinds of people — rich people, middle-class people, poor people,” said Ed Blackburn, executive director of the nonprofit Central City Concern. “I don’t think I have ever met anyone who came here to be homeless. They came to find a job, and that didn’t work out.”

The real challenge, advocates say, isn’t that Portland attracts homeless men and women. It’s that Portland, an appealing destination to so many, lacks the services to support those whose luck turns bad or who make poor, sometimes life-altering decisions.

“I hate this conversation about whether people are attracted to Portland, because the problem isn’t that we have homeless people. It’s that we haven’t matched our generosity with enough resources,” said Jean DeMaster, executive director of Human Solutions, an East Portland nonprofit that builds affordable rentals and helps families find and stay in housing. “Wouldn’t you rather live in a place known for compassion and generosity than the alternative?”