Where else would they go? Portland standoff with homeless campers at Laurelhurst Park dramatizes personal and political costs of inaction

Robin David Michael closes his eyes, raises his hands to the sky and lets his head fall to his chest as his friend plucks at a guitar.

Walking is a struggle for the 61-year-old Portlander, whose pained body bends uncomfortably from a hernia he can’t afford to get fixed. But as he sits in a green lawn chair on a recent Wednesday afternoon, his mind calms as he sways ever so slightly to the music. His friend plays “Angel from Montgomery” on an antique guitar.

Michael sings along to the words that cut through him: “Just give me one thing / That I can hold on to / To believe in this livin’ / Is just a hard way to go.” His face crumples somewhere between sadness and content.

Michael lives in a tent just outside Laurelhurst Park in what has become one of the city’s largest homeless encampments, with nearly 55 tents and 15 vehicles including at least two RVs. Even as other encampments around the city have been cleaned up, pared back or forced to relocate entirely, the city has stuck for nearly three months with a hands-off approach to the ad hoc living situation.

“It’s hard to be out here,” Michael says. “But there’s no place else to go.”

Residents in nearby houses have grown frustrated with the unsanitary conditions and some campers’ raucous behavior. But city officials say clearing the camp is not logistically or politically feasible. When city workers showed up to force campers out at the end of March, activists blocked the road, evoking the possibility of a violent confrontation. To avoid one, the city took a step back.

Seven weeks later, city officials weighing the perils of both action and inaction have opted to let the sprawling outdoor community remain, said Zach Kearl, policy adviser to Mayor Ted Wheeler. Action plans won’t be announced until all five city commissioners agree, he said.

The decisions city officials make about how to proceed at Laurelhurst could pave the way for new encampment policy citywide, he said.

An influential homelessness activist group called Stop the Sweeps PDX has largely focused its work on Laurelhurst, a wealthy community whose neighborhood association leaders have for years pressured the city to evict campers, said Benjamin Donlon, a member of the anti-sweeps coalition who has spent a significant amount of time volunteering at the park.

TJ Browning, who chairs the Laurelhurst Neighborhood Association safety committee, said the association continues to push officials to address the encampment because “the city has continued to mishandle it.”

Activists have shown up day after day to make clear they oppose any action to move the Laurelhurst campers. Some have carried rifles, Browning said.

The delicacy and potential danger of resolving the latest standoff has led city leaders to delay action until the City Council decides how to handle the tent community, a step they have not required prior to cleaning or clearing any other homeless encampment.

All commissioners concur aggressive actions should be avoided. And the city’s most left-leaning commissioner, Jo Ann Hardesty, says she won’t agree to force the Laurelhurst tent community to relocate until the city can provide other outdoor or individual settings in which its members can live.

A few things seem clear, however: If trust between outreach workers and people experiencing homelessness isn’t rebuilt, if more caseworkers aren’t on the ground to help people start the process of finding other safe housing and if more sanctioned camping sites and tiny house pods aren’t built, nothing will change.

THE STREET CAMPERS

As Michael tells the chronological story of his 15 years of homelessness, he gets lost in the details. Eventually the story becomes a blur of expensive medical emergencies. A spinal surgery. An ankle surgery. A friend cuts in to remind him what happened when. But the summary of that tale isn’t what matters, Michael surmises. What matters, he says, is that he yearns for a home to call his own but doesn’t know how to begin.

“I just want a door that locks,” he said. “It’s getting creepy out here and it scares the hell out of me … It’s cold at night and it hurts.”

His hope ran out a long time ago and he no longer believes anyone – not physicians, not caseworkers – has enough empathy to help him. Navigating the housing system is challenging, feeling near impossible at times, he said. So, Michael finds community and safety living with others at the park.

Not everyone at Laurelhurst has the same housing goals, but most take care of each other. They make sure their neighbors have food. They pitch their tents side by side to feel safe. And they know how to de-escalate situations when someone gets riled up. On this day, it’s “Angel from Montgomery” that calms Michael down.

His friend Morgan, who continues strumming the shared guitar, wants housing as well. The 48-year-old declined to provide his last name because he hopes to find a job soon and doesn’t want his past to reflect on his potential. “People don’t like hiring you if they know you’re homeless,” he said. Morgan has dreams of building a tiny home of his own, putting his carpentry skills to use.

Joey Crosby, 33, who sleeps in a neighboring tent but keeps to himself, also wants housing. But he doesn’t know how to begin the process and wishes he could speak to a caseworker.

“I stick to myself and I am pretty shy,” he said. “I haven’t seen caseworkers walk through here but maybe they were here and just didn’t approach me since I am quiet.”

Others choose to camp at Laurelhurst Park because they are seeking freedom. A 32-year-old, who declined to share his name because he didn’t want his parents to know where he was, said he lives outside because he doesn’t trust banks, doesn’t want to work and doesn’t want to pay rent. He has a college degree and a family home he could return to, but he doesn’t want to operate under any rules, he said.

He’s not the only camper at Laurelhurst who just wants to live outside without being bothered. But overwhelmingly, campers either want their own apartment or would be open to an alternative outdoor shelter. A sanctioned camping cluster or tiny homes would provide feelings of community while not requiring people to sleep on a cot next to a stranger, Michael said.

THE CITY

Portland’s official rule, while it is not regularly enforced, is to break up camping groups that have more than eight tents to minimize the impact on surrounding housed neighbors and businesses and to keep encampments safe and clean.

This rule has been used to push people out of Laurelhurst Park in the past, primarily to move them to other spots nearby, only to have them return when the new spot faced pressures to similarly clean up or move along.

Five months ago, campers were forced to move from the same sidewalks at Laurelhurst Park. The space remained largely uninhabited, with just six tents or so as recently as mid-February. But as March approached, the encampment quickly grew again.

The city’s decision to step back this time was largely driven by activists’ response, Kearl said. But commissioners are embracing the chance to agree on a reset. There is hope that the new approach they craft could stop the cyclical movement of campers from one piece of sidewalk to another, as has happened repeatedly with the clearings of Sunnyside and Laurelhurst parks. Those clearings have been undertaken largely to placate neighbors who complained.

“We don’t have the dynamic of activists at the other sites, so that has pushed us into having a different conversation here,” Kearl said.

Forcing people to move can cause trauma because individuals often lose possessions during the process, as it is often too difficult to carry items to another location. This means people must find new tents and other supplies. It could also be traumatic if there are confrontations between police, activists and residents. Violence or loud commotion can be a trigger for homeless individuals suffering from mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Both city and county officials are planning for additional sanctioned camping sites, tiny home clusters or safe parking lots, but those efforts are in the early stages with no timeline on when new shelters could materialize.

With more than 80 people camping alongside the 27-acre park, it would require at least two new alternative outdoor shelters, which represents just a sliver of the city’s broader need.

Many campers at Laurelhurst and elsewhere prefer alternative shelter models because they allow individuals to sleep alone instead of next to a stranger. The city has indoor group shelter beds to offer but if people don’t feel safe, they won’t use them but instead just move to a different piece of land, Kearl said, from the Mayor’s office.

While many people living at Laurelhurst Park say they haven’t received help from a caseworker, the city said its employees and contractors reached out to help campers find other safe places to stay before announcing their plans to make campers move in March.

“(The city’s) Navigation Team began conducting regular site visits to the park on August 26, 2020. For the first week they went to the park every day for at least an hour, sometimes more – to have conversations with people and to try to get them connected with services and community resources,” said Tim Becker, a spokesperson for the city.

On Aug. 31, he said, the team started visiting the encampment three times per week. By mid-October, the team shifted to weekly visits, which continued until March. At that time, the team determined they had sufficiently met campers’ needs, he said.

The outreach team reported talking to 78 people between August and March. Of those, 69 were referred to mass shelters, seven were helped through the first step toward permanent housing, five people entered treatment centers and one person received permanent housing.

“The individuals who remained at the camp either refused our services or simply maintained that they wanted to stay at Laurelhurst because ‘it was a good place to camp,’” Becker said in a statement. The city still deploys Rapid Response crews to pick up trash from the encampment, he noted.

THE ACTIVISTS

On March 30, Crosby, one of the campers at Laurelhurst Park, turned 33. There were no candles to blow out or wishes made. But he does remember it was the day city officials showed up to ask people to move their tents.

City contractor Rapid Response Bio-Clean workers arrived to evict campers and clean the area.

They were met by activists from Stop the Sweeps. The group, which has existed for a year and a half, had delayed encampment sweeps in the past but hadn’t been able to stop them completely because police showed up to enforce the evictions.

The Laurelhurst standoff marked a first.

Two crew members were “followed around and heckled by activists,” Becker said. “(And) were coerced to leave the property.”

“When they came back a little while later,” he continued, “activists had blocked vehicle access to the park. Later that afternoon crews came back to assess the situation and saw a large group of people had gathered.”

Workers chose not to engage and left to work elsewhere.

“Not too much happened,” Crosby said. “The Stop the Sweeps people blocked the road and then the city turned around and that was it. I expected the city to come back with police, but they didn’t. And they didn’t come back the next day or ever again after that.”

The situation reflects similar strains that delayed city action at North Portland’s Red House occupation, which erupted in early December when Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies attempted to enforce a court-ordered eviction of the house’s Black and Indigenous former owners. Activists outnumbered police and targeted them with rocks. Police retreated and stayed away, even as neighbors decried the activists’ disruptive behavior and damage to neighborhood property.

At Laurelhurst, Stop the Sweeps volunteers and other activist groups have provided daily meals to campers since March. They serve food in front of a painted plywood sign spelling out resident rules reminding campers to pile up their trash for city pick up, to discourage drug use, to respect each other and the surrounding community and to not fight or steal.

“I think their constant presence has stopped the city from coming back,” Crosby said. “Recently I have seen police here, but they are just hanging out and handing out cigarettes, which is very different than last summer when they were forceful when trying to move us out.”

Donlon, from Stop the Sweeps, said the group has been pushing the city to create additional outdoor shelters, which is what many Laurelhurst campers told him they want.

Kearl said he knows individuals living outside mistrust certain social service providers, which makes it difficult to connect them to help.

“There is a perception of some of our service providers as being more harmful than helpful and reputation is a very difficult thing to overcome,” Kearl said. “It makes it difficult to provide wrap-around services.”

While caseworkers haven’t visited the site since the standoff, the city and Stop the Sweeps have plans to work together to address people’s housing needs, Kearl said. If the two parties can find a way to collaborate, it would be a landmark step that could address long-standing broken trust that has been a barrier to housing people. An agreement between both parties hasn’t yet been reached, though.

THE NEIGHBORS

Many of the encampment residents pitched their tents on the sidewalk along Southeast Oak Street, which cuts through the park, with sprawling greenery that surrounds the duck pond on one side and the thumping of tennis balls on the other. Campers initially picked this location because it isn’t directly in front of housed people’s residences, Michael said.

However, as the encampment grew, it inched closer to the manicured lawns of nearby houses. As the line of tents wrapped around Southeast 37th Avenue, campers planted tents and rickety vehicles right across from homes.

Neighbors are growing increasingly flustered with the city’s lack of action.

Browning, who chairs the neighborhood association’s safety committee, said the encampment is negatively impacting housed neighbors and isn’t safe for campers.

“I understand that many of these homeless individuals have addiction problems or mental health problems while others are just down on their luck,” she said. “But that doesn’t negate the terror people feel when it is 2:30 a.m. and there is an explosion outside and you look out your window and a tent is in flames or when someone is passed out on your front porch and won’t leave or when someone is trying to get into your house.”

Commissioner Hardesty said she is working on a fire safety plan and increased trash collection to address neighbor concerns.

Browning wants the city to downsize the encampment and increase trash pickup. She believes just eight to 10 campers should be allowed, requiring the remaining individuals to move elsewhere.

Additionally, she said neighbors have reported concerns about activists walking around armed, causing fear among the housed community. Donlon, from Stop the Sweeps, declined to comment on the issue but said he is open to collaborating with the association to address the encampment.

Browning agrees with campers and activists that a sanctioned camping site would meet unhoused people’s needs, but she doesn’t want it in the Laurelhurst neighborhood. Kearl, from the mayor’s office, said a “challenge we have faced in the past when seeking to open new shelter is local opposition.”

But many of the encampment residents have only positive things to say about their housed neighbors. Crosby said he thinks they are incredibly welcoming, “probably more than they should be.”

Michael said the neighbors are kind “even though their property values probably go down because we are here. But we aren’t trying to hurt them.”

Some neighbors walk their dogs through the open spaces between neighboring tents. They say “hello” to campers, who yell a cheery “hello” back. The neighbors are one reason campers feel safe living there.

“In the past when the city has swept us, I have asked ‘Where would you like me to go?’” his friend Morgan said. “And they don’t have a response because there is nowhere else for us to go.”

Nicole Hayden reports on homelessness for The Oregonian|OregonLive. She can be reached at nhayden@oregonian.com or on Twitter @Nicole_A_Hayden.