the ticket collector: Homeless Pouring into Portland

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Homeless Pouring into Portland

We moved into our current place on 26th and Burnside in January 2015. I didn't see any homeless people in the surrounding blocks until one day last October when I had to step off the curb into the street to accommodate an old man with a shopping cart heaped with his belongings. He was trundling down the narrow sidewalk on Burnside near 24th Street, where sidewalk narrows to go by the bus shelter.

At that point I'd already seen the growth of camps down closer to the river on the east side. They had been colonizing the sidewalks block by block in the area around SE Pine and 11th, which I began to call "Homeless Heights."

Sure enough within a few weeks of seeing that man with the cart, I noticed another man with a backpack sleeping in the doorways of businesses near our place during the night hours. Within a month, there were others.

Since then there has been a continuous occupation of our area. I'd bet at least a dozen people spend the night in the open in the blocks nearby to us, especially since we are near a school with a large public playground.

With spring weather has come a big flush of newcomers, many more than before. Where are they coming from ? The older occupied areas are full up and people are colonizing new bits of ground that were not occupied last year.

Almost every day now there are tents in new areas where they weren't before. The occupation is brazen. It is as if the city is slowly filling up for a giant summer music festival.

I notice this on my morning commute, how the placement of tents changes day to day, even as the density increases.

Often I like to detour along the river north of the Broadway Bridge. I've been keeping my eye on the woods there, and noticing when new tents colonize a new patch of ground.When one tent appears, usually more will crop up beside it almost immediately.

The arrival of a new camp is marked invariably by an abrupt uptick in the amount of strewn garbage, often as if someone opened a trash bag and flung the contents around.

Looking wets across the Willamette from the hill above N Interstate Ave just north of the Broadway Bridge.. Northwest Portland is in the background across the river. In the foreground, the blue tent next to the tree is one of several in a small camp just north of the bridge. They have been in the same place a couple weeks now. Many new arrivals have come with spring weather. There has been a definite uptick from last new, with many new patches of ground colonized with tents. Almost every median next a freeway exit or bridge has as at least one tent or camp on any given morning. May 23, 2016

Area of East Portland just north of the Broadway Bridge.

SE Pine St Area

There seemed to be a huge number of new arrivals late last nummer. I noticed them walking to work down on the East side.

By last October, the tens had taken over the sidewalks for entire blocks in the vicinty of SE Pine St and SE 11th Ave. Oct. 16, 2015.

Near Colonel Summers Park

SE Taylor and 17th. Oct. 15, 2015. A patch of ground, a vacant lot owned by the city apparently, was the site of about a dozen tents when I walked number. The number is actually greatly fluctuating from day to day. Many homeless hang out in the nearby Colonel Summers Park, which even today is the locus of many of the nicer older homes in the area.