More than 100 people turned out in Portland Tuesday night to offer solutions for meeting the needs of the city's unhoused population.
"We are looking everywhere. We want to figure it out, and we want your help," said Mayor Kate Snyder. "There are frustrations, and I hear them. And they're valid. They run the spectrum. Portland, you're not doing enough. Portland, you're doing too much."
Ideas ranged from city management of encampments to the purchase of temporary shelters just outside the new Homeless Services Center on the outskirts of Portland.
Resident Susannah Sanfilippo said she supports subsidizing tiny homes on the properties of those who are willing to host asylum seekers. And she favors a local option sales tax on lodging and dining that could fund homeless services, rather than tourism promotion.
"I don't think I'm alone in thinking that the housing crisis is actually a crisis, where I don't think that tourism right now is in crisis," Sanfilippo said.
Portland has asked for such a tax on at least four different occasions over the last 15 years, said City Manager Danielle West, who added that she liked the idea.
But for others, the proliferation of encampments around Portland is a safety concern.
"It's really hard not being able to look out my windows for what I see," said Elizabeth Smith, who said she lives near Harbor View Memorial Park where people have been living outside. "It's not easy having to live where you feel bad for the people who are there. But you're scared to death of them, because when I ride my bike down through the park, I'm accosted with all kinds of profanity."
Smith, along with a handful of others, called on Portland to do more to police encampments.
But Jim Devine, an advocate with Homeless Voices for Justice, described how his struggle with alcoholism forced him out of stable employment and onto the street. He now has a place to live, and he urged city officials to decriminalize encampments and convert vacant university buildings or private properties into housing.
"It disturbs me to see a broad brush applied to the homeless community because of one or two... a few individuals who do some negative, disturbing things," Devine said. "People are just trying to exist."
None of Tuesday night's speakers identified themselves as currently unhoused, likely, as one advocate suggested, because it was difficult for those living in Portland's encampments to get to the site of the city's forum.
West said a newly-formed crisis response team continues to work on plans to transition those living in each of Portland's encampments into temporary or permanent housing with social services. Once those plans are finalized, the work will begin with an encampment of nearly 50 tents along the Fore River Parkway Trail, she said.
