Donel A. Courtney
Attorney at Law
April 21, 2022
Office of Commissioner Dan Ryan
Portland City Hall
1221 SW Fourth Avenue, Suite 240
Portland, OR 97204
RE: Proposed “Safe Rest Village” in Lents Neighborhood
Dear Commissioner Ryan:
I represent the Lents Neighborhood Livability Association and I am a long-time Lents homeowner. I currently rent my Lents house out and reside elsewhere due to the increasing burden of violent crime I experienced. I was mugged on two separate occasions while walking in the vicinity of the proposed village by people who appeared to be houseless.
I am writing to indicate our united opposition to the proposed plan to locate a “Safe Rest Village” in Lents at least as the plan currently exists, due to:
(1.) All of the sites are located in areas already suffering from high burdens of homelessness, related drug selling, and related gun crime—this violates the City’s duty of care to residents of Lents as it will increase the number of gun crimes, gun injuries and deaths in this already violent neighborhood.
Your plan indicates that these residents are to be relocated from “high impact camps” and there is no requirement for drug-testing or entry into treatment. High impact camps are populated by heavy drug users who tend to disregard their neighbors and create the trash, drug use, and violence that get the camp called “high impact”. Heavy drug users attract drug dealers, drug dealers fight with guns;
(2.) the lack of adequate safeguards for neighbors with the proposed plan.
There are further a number of ways in which this proposed location violates the City’s published and adopted goals for this program and for equity.
(3.) Because all of the new sites are located at the periphery of the City which are now the lowest income and most diverse neighborhoods in Portland, this plan is structurally racist and likely intentionally racist, and violates the City’s stated goals to focus on quality of life outside of the City’s core, white areas.
(4.) The City announced a broad reaching plan to restore the Johnson Creek watershed to protect local residents from flooding and to increase the wildlife of the area. The proposed site is open space is immediately adjacent to the Beggars tick refuge. This land forms a sort of buffer zone and increases the overall viability of the project from both a wildlife and water absorption perspective. Covering it with an impermeable surface will increase runoff and not absorb water; introducing heavy drug users into the area will increase trash and toxic byproducts of the drug using lifestyle into the environment. The increased human activity and the toxic garbage will affect the nascent wildlife restoration going on in the area.
We feel strongly about this issue and will be exploring any, and every option to oppose and prevent it being located here, including litigation and teaming up with other partners across the City impacted by this unsound and dangerous plan.
I. THIS IS ABOUT DRUGS AND GUNS THE CITY OWES US A DUTY OF CARE NOT TO INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF EITHER.
Our opposition is largely about drugs and assaults, which increasingly involves guns.
We do not want to be shot. The City owes us a duty of care NOT TO WILLFULLY INCREASE THE PHYSICAL DANGER LEVEL WE FACE.
Advocates for the houseless have recently released statements saying that neighbors opposed to these villages do so because they are victims of misinformation about houseless people. This information is supposedly being propagated by nefarious, unnamed agents.
False. This isn’t about houseless people, this is about people with severe and persistent addiction to methamphetamine being brought in and sold by violent, unscrupulous people.
This addiction causes severe psychosis and a medically documented and proven increase in aggression.
This drug trade involves a documented (we document it below) increase in assaults with guns.
We live in Lents, we aren’t just reading about these problems, we experience it every day in our own yards!
We are not victims of propaganda, we are speaking from experience. Houseless people have been living around and amongst us for a decade now.
a. Not all houseless are addicts. Again we know this from experience:
I allowed a woman to live in her SUV in my driveway for six months and plug her heater in to my garage. “Darla” was not an addict and she eventually found housing with family in the Midwest.
I also struck up a friendship with a sweet young man who would rap at my window looking to hang out. He was lonely; its hard to make good friends on the Multi-Use Path. He always turned down my offers of food and beer, but accepted cash and clothing. He regularly entered meth psychosis speaking to people who were not there. I turned down his offer to smoke meth with him.
My experience with houseless people in Lents also includes being followed, screamed at, and chased by people in what appeared to be a meth related state of psychosis while walking in Lents. It was very scary.
The distinction we are making is between people who have no homes and people in meth psychosis, I repeat: the problem is with people in meth psychosis not people who have no homes.
Perhaps I need to repeat this again because advocates and activist City employees seem to have trouble understanding this distinction. The activist crowd also has trouble understanding those who make this distinction, calling us all sorts of names like “fascists” or “ignorant” or “victims of propaganda” against the houseless.
Let me make this very clear: adding to the population of people eligible for a no-barrier shelter, i.e. heavy drug users, to a neighborhood already suffering from the second worst problem with drug addiction in the City, is unwise, and unfair to those of us who live here, housed and unhoused. Not to mention these are to be people from the most impactful of the existing camps—the hardest of the hard.
Look what happened to Old Town—we live here! Old town is not primarily residential. Lents is!
Here is a list of crimes in the area that happened to us, Lents residents, just within the past two months that are likely drug related: EXHIBIT 1 (“Lents Gun Crimes in Last Two Months”).
Before I outline to you the serious and dangerous flaws in the proposed plan and its location I want to give you some background about the LNLA and in what capacity it represents the will of the neighborhood.
II. LNLA IS THE REAL VOICE OF LENTS DESPITE THE CONTROVERSY—IT AIN’T PRETTY BECAUSE THE SITUATION IN LENTS AIN’T PRETTY
I know there is, surprisingly, for a neighborhood association, a fair bit of press about the LNLA.
This is perhaps the only neighborhood association that receives any regular press in Portland and it does so because it’s become some kind of political lightning rod.
Much of the criticism of the LNLA comes from “activist” voices, largely on Twitter, that unfortunately the City has been listening to too much, given that they do not represent a large number of people.
The City sanctioned “Lents Neighborhood Association” failed the residents of Lents.
As the neighborhood began to experience more and more problems with crime and garbage after the tenure of Mayor Hales when camping was allowed to proliferate on the Multi-Use Paths and floodplain public parks that are in Lents (we have the longest stretch of the 205 path of any neighborhood as well as some of the most isolated stretches of the Springwater Corridor and the ever-expanding acreage of the Foster Floodplain),
there was no help for residents from the City nor the City recognized Lents Neighborhood Association.
The LNA became controlled by a tightly-knit group of recent-transplant millennials who took a stance on social issues that was at odds with most of the residents of Lents, or at the very least most of the residents of Lents who attend neighborhood meetings.
As a result attendance dwindled.
By 2021, their activities were attended by no one, and their meetings were only attended by the same clique who was on the board, and one guy who opposed and disrupted them—there were not enough members present at successive meetings to even conduct board elections so the board decided to take the only path available to it and disband.
In contrast, the Lents Neighborhood Livability Association has regular and motivated community attendance for their meetings, cleanups, and their partnership with a local church to serve the houseless community.
The approach of the Lents Neighborhood Livability Association balances the need of housed residents for cleanliness and safety for their children, with compassion and services for the unhoused. This alone raised some hackles in parts of the Portland online community that are very concerned with language with regard to houseless issues in Portland.
Word policing isn’t going to solve the houseless problem in Portland.
LNLA doesn’t mince words. However LNLA actually gets attendance at cleanups and service days for the houseless.
But LNLA does not agree with uncontrolled drug sales out of RVs, unregistered cars idling at all hours in our back alleys, we don’t agree with injection of illegal drugs in public areas including rights of way, bike and walking paths and natural areas abutting our residents’ homes and yards.
I guess that’s old fashioned. Sometimes wisdom comes with age, a fact lost on this youthful City.
We don’t approve of camping in public rights of way and in natural areas set aside for the public.
Lents has a lot of poor residents with no personal yard space.
We don’t approve that their—that is to say, our poor residents’, housed and unhoused, our parks, gardens, and natural areas are given over to camps with “no trespassing signs” on them along with indications that violence will be used upon members of the public that enter these PUBLIC areas.
I myself have been mugged on the Springwater Trail, its lovely, connecting lovely areas. Currently the residents of Lents who do not actually live on it, or sell drugs to those who live on it (and come armed), are unable to use it for fear of being injured.
Injecting of poisonous drugs that cause psychosis and assaults on innocent people should never be tolerated. It is absolutely unacceptable.
The sale of these substances all throughout the proposed location should not be allowed by the City and County and yet it is. While it is, we cannot support adding to the customer base and bringing more violent drug peddlers in to the streets where our children and grandchildren USED TO ride their bikes.
Portland seems to forget that injecting methamphetamine is far, far more toxic than cigarettes and diesel pollution. It’s going right into your veins. It is not a victimless crime as it causes a documented drastic increase in aggression against others.
We tax cigarettes and ban airborne toxins, why have we encouraged these other poisons? It makes no sense to us.
Sadly, merely saying this has caused controversy and we own it.
III. THESE CAMPS DO NOT HAVE ADEQUATE PROTECTIONS FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD VIOLATING THE CITY’S DUTY OF CARE TO LENTS RESIDENTS
Now I will move on to our specific opposition to this proposed camp.
The proposed camps are supposedly “low barrier” and for people from pre-existing “high-impact” camps. With at least one organization having refused to manage one of these camps, which was in fact the only reputable organization we have seen associated with these camps, we gave them a call.
What we heard was discouraging.
There will be no requirements for entering treatment to live in these camps. Having suffered with addiction to alcohol myself I know that someone who is not currently wanting to be in treatment is going to be using regularly.
What this will result in is an increase in the regular drug using population in the immediate vicinity of the camp which is already suffering the effects of a large population of drug users. .
Surrounding this camp site there are already large areas of gravel lined roads that are poorly policed. My former assistant came in one day and said “dude, come with me I found a part of Lents that looks like Ukraine!” (where he is from).
These areas are lined with RVs that have vulnerable people living in them. Further, Beggars Tick has a consistent tent camp. Right across the freeway at 94th and Pardee there is a consistent camp of tents, along with vast areas of camps south of Beggars Tick around SE Foster and the Springwater corridor.
Together these areas create a nexus of houseless people that is likely the second largest in the City outside of Old Town. Except this exists in a residential neighborhood in and around apartments, single family homes, Lent Elementary School and many parks.
And now you want to put ANOTHER camp here, with the most hardened of drug users in it? For shame.
Just like Old Town, this situation combined with the laxity of enforcement that is sadly just a reality of living in Multnomah county, has resulted in an explosion of illicit drug commerce that takes place out of stolen cars that come in at night and results in shootouts. There is so much gun violence here already and the City is proposing adding even more drug demand to this drug and violence plagued neighborhood full of poor people just trying to make it and keep a safe place for their kids?
Again, for shame.
IV.
PLACING THIS CAMP IN BIPOC-HEAVY AND LOW INCOME LENTS. ALREADY SUFFERING THE SECOND WORST OF ANY PORTLAND NEIGHBORHOOD FROM VIOLENCE AND HOUSELESS ISSUES IS INEQUITABLE
Taken from CITYWIDE RACIAL EQUITY GOALS & STRATEGIES, available at https://www.portlandoregon.gov/oehr/article/537589
EQUITY GOAL # 3. We will collaborate with communities and institutions to eliminate racial inequity in all areas of government, including education, criminal justice, environmental justice, health, housing, transportation, and economic success.
OVERALL STRATEGIES
#1 Use a racial equity framework: Use a racial equity framework that clearly articulates racial equity; implicit and explicit bias; and individual, institutional, and structural racism…
#3 Implement a racial equity lens: Racial inequities are not random; they have been created and sustained over time. Inequities will not disappear on their own. It is essential to use a racial equity lens when changing the policies, programs, and practices that perpetuate inequities, and when developing new policies and programs.
Why are you siting these camps only in areas that are racially diverse and not in white areas? The answer, to us, is a blatant violation of the equity principle.
The answer I’m sure that comes to your mind is:
1. Lents already has all the services these people need and has good transport
2. Those neighborhoods don’t have open plots of land.
Regardless of your reasons, the unavoidable reality is locating the camp in a BIPOC, poor neighborhood does not promote equity for BIPOC or for East Portland. Lents is the most diverse neighborhood in the state, it is low income and has many poor Black, Hispanic and Asian residents who are living paycheck to paycheck.
Compare this image of your proposed locations and demographic maps of Portland provided by the City.
Now compare this to a map of Portland by poverty level:
Now compare it to a map of immigrants:
I’m tempted to say “enough said.” You will note that the locations of your villages correspond to the poorest and the most heavily minority areas of the city.
When you were developing this new program you did not “use a racial equity lens” and you did not build the new program to redress racial inequities but rather you are reinforcing them. And you are thus violating your published, democratically adopted equity guidelines.
Question: Is locating a camp with the most hardened of drug users with no requirement for treatment, within a half-mile of Lent Elementary School, already the worst performing in the state, helping these Black and Brown children, is it creating safe places for them to walk?
Answer: No, it is pulling poor and BIPOC children down, bringing drug users and dealers into their streets where they play.
There is no way putting large numbers of people who are regularly shooting fentanyl and meth is going to help push Lents, one of the poorest, most disadvantaged neighborhoods up.
There is no way putting large numbers of people who demand ever increasing amounts of chemicals that can only be supplied by interstate drug gangs bringing the poison up from the southern border, all out of stolen cars, with multiple guns in them, blocks from a school, is going to be able to be done without decreasing the safety of the people who live around it.
People who are already some of the most economically vulnerable people we have in the state of Oregon.
And all the while there are none of these villages proposed in any affluent part of South East.
How’s that for equity? Its just a sad continuation of the way the city has always dumped its garbage in Lents.
V. You were going to fix the floodplain and restore our blighted neighborhood, long suffering from polluting industry, trash and flooding. So instead, on the floodplain itself, you want to put housing. In areas that are supposed to be returned to nature for water absorption and wildlife.
Another lie and broken promise to East Portland. Yet another.
CONCLUSION AND DEMAND
We hereby demand that you locate the Safe Rest Village planned for Lents, some where else, somewhere not in our backyards.
Sincerely,
Donel Courtney
On behalf of the
Lents Neighborhood Livability Association