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By Tara Williams | CNA Media Team

When Oregon native Chris Gibbons was a child, he often stayed with his grandparents who lived at 32nd Avenue and Killingsworth Street. Since last August, Chris has been living in a homeless camp at 33rd and Dekum Street.

“A couple friends of mine were staying here. They told me ‘Hey, we got a spot open down here if you need it.’ I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was thinking to myself, ‘Wow, how ironic is this?’”

Concordians may have passed Chris’ camp and noted its whimsical touches – holiday lights and the outfits of the day displayed by Manny the mannequin. Neighbors who frequent Nextdoor.com may know Chris from his posts that offer snow shoveling and handyman services.

Some have contributed to his GoFundMe.com requests, which he started in November to raise money to clean up piles of trash left in the camp by previous residents. “It looks so much better,” Chris observed.

Challenges facing the houseless include taking care of basic needs. “When I first got here, I was trying to figure out, ‘Where does everyone use the bathroom at?’” He and his campmates take turns walking to a nearby gas station, store or restaurant, or they use the compost toilet they made.

“That’s one of our biggest challenges. A bathroom would be just awesome, and that would be a big step. I heard they put a lot of port-apotties out last summer. But a lot of them got destroyed or vandalized, and those people kind of ruined it for the rest of us.”

Chris said the camp could use a generator to provide electricity. “It gets so dark here,” he said. “There’s no outdoor lighting in this area.”

Food storage is also a problem. “We get a lot of rats here.” One of his campmates’ cat kills several per night. And Chris now has a device placed in the ground outside his tent that keeps the rats from digging under and up.

In March, Chris’s 1994 red Mustang was stolen . “You gotta watch your stuff 24/7. It’s not a good situation.”

He could also use a more durable tent, and he is very interested in tiny homes. A friend of his in another camp was offered a job building tiny homes on Powell Boulevard and received housing when the project was completed.

Tara Williams is new to Concordia and loving life on Liberty Street. She’s a writer and English professor, not always in that order. Contact her at Eudaimonia.Dr.Williams@gmail. com.

By Tara Williams | CNA Media Team

Chris Gibbons became unhoused last August, six months after being released from prison. An attempt to make hash oil in his apartment kitchen had ended in an explosion and three years in prison.

“I wasn’t out burning anyone or anything up. It was due to me doing something stupid, and it blew up in my face,” Chris said. “I got burned up really bad. I was nine days in Emanuel’s intensive care burn unit.”

He had been out of the hospital for a week. “The police came at 2 a.m. I was still all bandaged up and looked like a Q-tip, but they handcuffed me anyway. I was terrified.

“I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t talk to anybody. The court declared my wife and two daughters victims because they were there. I had no contact with any of them until I was sentenced and placed into prison.”

Chris pled guilty to the arson charge, which reduced his sentence. His marriage did not survive his prison term.

Recently an organization that had denied him housing in the past notified Chris he is eligible for a grant to pay for two years of housing.

“They said the problem now is finding a place that is suitable and will accept me. Some places won’t accept me because of my arson charge. That’s my biggest barrier. That’s why I’m still here at the camp.

“I know someone who had an arson charge, and it took him four years.”

Chris acknowledged not all campers would rather be housed. Some are happy with how they’re living. “They’re content being here. I’m not trying to sound rude, but it’s like they don’t care. That kind of threw me for a loop.

“They don’t care that they might have to move spontaneously, so they just create these big giant messes. Then they leave it for people like us, and we get stereotyped because we’re stuck with it.

“It’s kind of sad, you know? I guess I’m trying to emphasize that we’re not the type that don’t care.

“A lot of people come up to us and ask, ‘Hey, do you mind if I post a tent up over here?’ At this camp, we’re really selective about who we’re going to have here,” he said. “We don’t want trouble.”

Chris shares camp space at 33rd Avenue and Dekum Street with a couple who live in another tent. “We talk a lot. We want to change. We do care. We know that this is just a step we have to take in order to move up or to improve. “Unfortunately we’re here. We’re going to try to make the best of it.”

Tara Williams is new to Concordia and loving life on Liberty Street. She’s a writer and English professor, not always in that order. Contact her at Eudaimonia.Dr.Williams@gmail.com.

By Nancy Varekamp | CNews Editor

The encampment on 33rd Avenue between Columbia Boulevard and Marine Drive is just one on the radar of the city. And there’s no easy solution for risks any of them may pose for the campers and/or their housed neighbors.

Assemblies of cars – ones burned to uselessness – are one concern, Jonathan Lewis told 30 Concordians at the March 3 neighborhood association general meeting. “Whenever they go to remove a vehicle, it only seems to make space for people to bring in another vehicle,” added the Portland Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program coordinator.

Health and safety are the chief concerns of his agency, which is assigned to provide services related to homelessness. “Our vision is to achieve a community where everyone has a safe and lawful place to sleep, access to basic hygiene, and public sanitation standards are maintained,” he said.

Reporting on the One Point of Contact system anything contrary to that vision is how everyone can help. “It’s designed to identify where the camps are that pose the greatest risk to public health and safety,” Jonathan said. Report-generated assessments are averaging 1,500 per week.

“Our response is based on risks posed, not volumes of complaints generated,” Jonathan reported. Flooding One Point with the same complaint doesn’t move a site to the top of the list.

Depending on conditions of camps, some are removed, and others receive services that include garbage removal. “When you’re in a crisis mode, you literally cannot be concerned with garbage,” Jonathan explained. With the pandemic’s economic ravages have come a dramatic increase in campers, and their waste. Garbage removal prior to the pandemic averaged 60,000 pounds per month, but January’s was 800,000 pounds.

The unhoused aren’t alone in increasing that situation. “We have gotten reports where unhoused people are telling us housed folks are driving by and dumping their garbage.”

Other health and safety concerns related to houselessness also have no easy solutions. “Our program is just one spoke on the wheel,” Jonathan said. City, county and regional governments and organizations work together in their efforts to make Portland safe for its residents, housed and unhoused. He also pointed to individuals’ efforts to help each other during the ongoing pandemic, the February ice storm and especially to projects like the Free Fridges popping up across the city.

“I feel there’s no shortage of creative solutions within the Portland community,” he noted. “There’ s no shortage of opportunities for folks like yourself to get involved. What that looks like is for you all to decide.”

Nancy Varekamp is semi-retired from her career in journalism, public relations and – her favorite work engagement – writing and editing targeted newsletters.

By Garlynn Woodsong CNA Board Member, SW1 CNA LUTC Chair

Two new studies released last month drive home the point that the human species needs to be working to end the era of fossil fuels as quickly as possible, for our own sake if nothing else.

The first study found that burning fossil fuels kills nearly nine million people worldwide and 350,000 Americans annually. That’s more than twice what was previously estimated, according to the study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research by scientists from Harvard and three British universities.

‘There’s a perception in the United States that we have this under control, but that’s a mistake,” Joel Schwartz, told the Boston Globe. He is a Harvard professor and one of the study’s authors.

The second study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It found burning fossil fuels is making the North American spring pollen allergy season come earlier, linger longer and be all-around more miserable.

“This is a crystal clear example that climate change is here and it’s in every breath we take,” lead author Bill Anderegg told the Associated Press.

The study measured changes in pollen concentrations across North America from 1990 to 2018. It found the pollen allergy season now starts 20 days earlier, and results in 21% more pollen in the air.

The study further found this trend to be caused by global warming, which is caused by higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that are produced by the burning of fossil fuels.

It’s more than just an obnoxious cause of sneezing and sniffly noses. Worsened pollen allergies are a significant public health concern because they can set off or exacerbate respiratory diseases like asthma. That chronic condition already costs the U.S. medical system $80 billion annually in lost productivity and treatments.

Concordia is not immune from fossil fuel emissions with the roads, rail lines, airport and industrial facilities in and near our neighborhood.

The only silver lining for us is that we’re not as bad off as some. The worst U.S. pollen impacts, the study found, are in Texas, closely followed by the Midwest and Southeast.

Worldwide, nearly one in five deaths are from fossil fuel combustion. In much of east and southeast Asia, the rate is nearly one in three deaths.

The good news, however, is that reducing fossil fuel emissions can save lives. Emissions were cut nearly in half in China between 2012 and 2018. That saved 2.4 million lives worldwide during 2018, including 1.5 million in China.

Cutting, and eventually eliminating, fossil fuel consumption is something we can do.

Doing so will literally save our lives.

Garlynn Woodsong lives on 29th Avenue, serves on the CNA board and is an avid bicyclist. He also is a dad who is passionate about the city his son will inherit. He is the planning + development partner with Cascadia Partners LLC, a local urban planning firm. Contact him at LandUse@ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Karen Wells | CNA Media Team

Taking photos in the neighborhood recently, two images got my attention. A photo of Judy Mae Phillips in the window of Alberta Cooperative Grocery and a “Black Mamas Matter” placard in another window nearby.

A Google search revealed a 2017 Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) story on the former.

Judy Mae “Pretty Eyes” was a 5-foot, 3-inch “tiny” woman, “a force of nature,” passionate about community with a beautiful singing voice.

She cared for her aging mother and older brother, helping with self-care, meals and daily routines.

When she wasn’t caregiving for family, she passed the time on the bench outside of Alberta Co-op, keeping an eye on life passing by. The bench was “her office,” a porch for her “day job.”

Judy Mae had a trusting familiarity with passersby, regardless of outward appearances. She was a cultural placeholder, a reminder of a way of life being replaced by a faster cadence.

She was the “eyes and ears” of the community. Judy Mae was woven into the cultural landscape, and she greeted volunteers and staff at Sabin Community Development Corporation, Alberta Co-Op and adjacent businesses.

Her purview included Otesha Place just across 15th Avenue. She knew the kids and parents.

Otesha Place is a mixed-use building with offices and affordable apartments. At the time of her passing in 2017, Judy Mae had progressed to first on the wait list for Otesha Place. She would’ve had a home of her own.

The OPB story used “panhandler” to describe her vocation while “at the office on the bench.” This description suggests Judy Mae was a “vagrant.” That’s the label used in the post-Civil War South for Blacks who couldn’t find work because of race codes of the era.

Judy Mae was a mother of three, a grandmother of 15. A symbol of “Black Mamas Matter,” she had a vocation and was always home by midnight to care for her mother and brother. She contributed to the social fabric of community.

Unfortunately “vagrant” hints at unintentional bias coloring her aura of humanity. Judy Mae was the embodiment of a neighborhood fading from the Alberta Arts District landscape.

What connects a photo in a storefront window and a placard in a neighbor’s? Humanity’s resilience. Do we celebrate an activist or pen a requiem for a neighborhood?

Thanks for asking.

Karen Wells is a semi-retired adult and early childhood educator. She serves on the planning committee of Womxn’s March and Rally for Action in Portland, WomxnsMarchPDX.com.

To the Editor:

For over 10,000 people living in Portland’s Concordia neighborhood, there is a lot at stake with the impending sale of the private Concordia University campus on the steps of the Multnomah County Courthouse on 29 June.

Given the site’s current educational zoning and the 116 years of continuous investment in building academic property assets, my first hope is that a large public Oregon university, such as OSU or UO, would purchase the 24-acre campus to establish a campus foothold in the state’s largest metropolitan area with access to over half of Oregon’s population.

Like OSU’s Cascades campus in Bend, it is an amazing opportunity for a large and diverse public institution to establish new educational opportunities for people of Oregon. With this, PSU or OHSU, already based in Portland, would also seem to be a logical new owner possibility as an extension of their existing Portland campuses.

Beyond that, perhaps a private Oregon college could be a new owner with the goal to establish a vibrant Portland campus.

This kind of intact and close-in campus coming up for sale is exceptionally rare and could be an academic game changer not just for the institution that acquires it but also for the equity of a whole new population of Oregon students that already live right here in the City of Roses. Because of over a century of investment, certainly preservation of the site as an academic institution makes sense.

It fits well into the site’s history and proscribed use as well as it is a prime opportunity for a new century of scholarship and good neighborly relations that serves progress for the people of Oregon. — Keith K. Daellenbach

CNA respects the views and beliefs of all Concordians, and their cultures and faiths. The views expressed by these writers do not necessarily reflect the views of CNA. Submit letters (250 words maximum) to CNewsEditor@ConcordiaPDX.org.

By Peter Keller | CNA Chair

It’s mid-February as I write this, and we’ve just come to the end of a long, snowy weekend and possibly winter’s last gasp. When we get these occasional big snow storms, we’re fortunate to live on one of the best hills in our corner of Concordia for sledding.

Every year we watch the neighbors with their various sleds, tubes, cardboard boxes, etc. as they slide down the hill. While I was covering some of my plants to protect them from freezing rain, I decided to try to use one of the bottoms of the plastic planters as a makeshift saucer.

It didn’t work, but one of our neighbors ran up with a saucer for me to borrow. It was a perfect day for it, and I felt like I was a kid for those two rides down the hill. I love how the snow puts everyone in a great mood, and you see the best in people.

The next morning the power went out and stayed out for more than 24 hours. This is not uncommon when we have these ice storms, and fortunately this wasn’t too bad, but living without power for 24 hours or more helps you empathize with how hard it must be to be houseless – especially in the cold.

We have thousands of people currently living outside in Portland as we all know. Comparatively, the inconvenience of a power outage is nothing.

In 2007, the city declared it would put an end to homelessness but, despite all the good work and money going into the effort, the crisis may get a lot worse especially with looming evictions in June.

On the Feb. 16 broadcast of OPB’s “Think Outloud,” Lisa Bates, of Portland State University’s Homeless Research and Action Collaborative, said 89,000 households in Oregon are behind in their rent. Of those households, they predict 25-62% could be evicted in June. Of these households, over 90% have suffered unemployment due to the pandemic, 50% are households with children and 40% are BIPOC households.

These statistics are alarming, and I cannot do the topic justice in this short column, but we do want to start a dialogue with the neighborhood.

At the upcoming CNA general meeting we will have Jonathan Lewis, program coordinator for the city of Portland’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program, on hand to make a presentation.

He will speak to the program’s mission, vision and strategic plan – as well as expanded hygiene access, outdoor emergency shelters and the Shelter to Housing Continuum project.

Please join us for the presentation and Q&A at 7 p.m. on March 3. Details on how to join the virtual meeting are at ConcordiaPDX.org/CNAMeetings.

Native Portlander Peter Keller has lived in Concordia since 1997. He runs a small marketing agency with partner Max, out of their home studio. He loves exploring outdoors with and without his dogs.