Please come down to city hall on Thursday to stand in solidarity with our neighbors on the Springwater Corridor who are facing imminent sweeps with zero to minimal options for relocation! The city needs to continue hearing that August 1st is an unacceptable time frame to sweep people with nowhere else to go with no added services to provide support. Bring signs and your voices. Please spread widely!
Below is a compilation of what has transpired over the past week. Today (Monday) several people...
Please come down to city hall on Thursday to stand in solidarity with our neighbors on the Springwater Corridor who are facing imminent sweeps with zero to minimal options for relocation! The city needs to continue hearing that August 1st is an unacceptable time frame to sweep people with nowhere else to go with no added services to provide support. Bring signs and your voices. Please spread widely!
Below is a compilation of what has transpired over the past week. Today (Monday) several people from the houseless community along with advocates delivered the below requests to the city, which were not met with any conciliation. In light of this, we ask that you come down to City Hall Thursday and let the mayor and commissioners know that it's unacceptable to sweep hundreds with virtually no support or plans for relocation.
On the morning of Saturday, July 23, 2016, around 100 Portland community members gathered at Lambert Field, an area along the Springwater Corridor Trail where people are living together without permanent housing. People living in Lambert Field and in similar living situations on other parts of the Trail gathered with advocates, outreach volunteers, community organizers and other members of the community to hold a general assembly to discuss the City's plan to sweep the Corridor of the people experiencing homelessness. The general assembly process is horizontal, democratic, and included the input and voices of housed and unhoused participants. In a consensus based decision making process the assembled community agreed to issue a list of demands to the City of Portland with regard to the planned sweep. Those demands are as follows:
- Do not sweep the Trail on August 1st.
The community demands that the City abandon the plan to sweep the Springwater Corridor Trail on August 1st.
- Relocation not displacement
The community demands that, in instances where land occupied by people without permanent housing needs to be cleared of such occupation for legitimate reasons, that the affected persons be relocated. We demand that the city identify where they are to be relocated and commit resources to the relocation.
- Accommodate disabilities and other mobility constraints
In relocation efforts the city must make accommodations for people with disabilities, the elderly, the sick, and people with small children. The timelines within which the City is currently asking people to disperse puts an undue burden on these people and must be lengthened.
- Stop seizing possessions
The community demands that the City cease appropriating the belongings of people who lack permanent housing.
- Stop criminalizing homelessness
There is not sufficient affordable or subsidized housing to place all the people without permanent housing on the Corridor (or in Portland generally) inside in the near future. There will be people living outside tomorrow and next month. Their doing so is not a crime and the City must stop treating it as one.
- Deploy storage units before relocations
If a storage unit or facilities are going to be made available to people involved in relocation, that should be made available to such people at least a week prior to the scheduled relocation.
- Meet with Springwater Corridor houseless people
The community calls on Mayor Hales to meet with people who lack permanent housing who live on the Springwater Corridor to hear their proposals and discuss options.
- Legalize private hosting of people lacking permanent housing
The community demands that the City modify the code enforcement environment so that people who legally occupy residential private property may host on such property persons who they agree may sleep there in something other than permanent housing, for example a tent or recreational vehicle.
- Impose a real estate development tax to fund social services
The City of Portland must impose a tax on real estate development projects that can provide a dedicated funding source for social services.