Portland’s Safe Rest Village in Southwest neighborhood on track to triple capacity

The city of Portland’s Safe Rest Village in the Southwest Multnomah Village neighborhood is one of two city-run shelters that’s set to significantly expand capacity. The Multnomah Safe Rest Village, which opened in June 2022, will go from 28 units to 100. Volunteer groups like Southwest Outreach and Clean Camp PDX have been working for years to support the people they call their houseless neighbors.

One of the key pieces of successfully integrating such a shelter into a neighborhood of concerned and housed residents is what’s known as a Good Neighbor Agreement. The Multnomah Village agreement has been years in the making and was just finalized Thursday. We hear from Sandy Stienecker with Southwest Outreach, Will Denecke with Clean Camps PDX and Laudie Porter, the community engagement coordinator on the city’s Shelter Services Team.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Two years ago, the city of Portland opened a homeless shelter in the Multnomah Village Neighborhood. There have been tensions in the neighborhood, but it’s also a kind of success story. The site known as a Safe Rest Village will soon more than triple its capacity, going from 28 units to 100. Yesterday, after years of conversations, a good neighbor agreement was finalized between shelter residents, and surrounding homes and businesses. And volunteer groups like Southwest Outreach and Clean Camp PDX have been working steadily to support the people they call their houseless neighbors. We’re going to dig into all of this right now. Sandy Stienecker is the co-founder of Southwest Outreach. Will Denecke co-founded Clean Camps PDX. And Laudie Porter is a community engagement coordinator on the city’s Shelter Services Team. Welcome to all three of you.

All: Thank you.

Miller: Sandy, first. You now live in John’s Landing, not far from our studios right here. But you were in Multnomah Village when the Safe Rest Village opened in June of 2022, two years ago. How had you seen the neighborhood change in the years leading up to that?

Sandy Stienecker: I lived there for 25 years. It changed a lot.

Miller: Specifically, in terms of homelessness is what I’m wondering.

Stienecker: Well, I began to see unhoused people. I now know that they were there before, but because we have a lot of canopy there, people were able to stay tucked away and hidden a little bit better maybe than in other places. So we saw a pretty steady increase.

Miller: What were conversations among your housed neighbors at that point, when you and others were seeing that increase?

Stienecker: People were concerned and I think people were afraid, trying to figure out what was happening, why it was happening.

Miller: What do you think they were afraid of?

Stienecker: The unknown. I think they see a camp and they see things piled up outside, and they get into the myths and the stereotypes of people who are criminals, and drug addicts, and who want to be living in that situation. And so I think the usual fears. Actually, my brain goes immediately to a neighbor who called and said “We have somebody camping right behind our house. Can you get her out because there are little kids there?” And so I said, “I can’t get her out, but I’ll go with you. Let’s go talk to her.” And she and I went and talked to her and by the end of the conversation, the two of them were discussing how they were going to work things out. It was astonishing, like where she could put her tent so it wouldn’t be in the way of kids who were walking by, what kinds of things she needed to help her get through the winter and what the neighbors could do to help.

I think people just want to know what they can do and that these are people just like their house neighbors are. You like some of them, some of them you don’t. [Laughter]

Miller: How much interaction did you personally have with homeless people before you got involved, before you helped found this group, Southwest Outreach?

Stienecker: Not very much. None here. I’m from Toronto originally and I taught social work actually. So I had some experience but mainly with people in shelters and stuff, not people living outside. That’s different.

Miller: So when did you start going out and talking with people in your neighborhood who were unhoused and asking them what they needed?

Stienecker: We started going out in about December of 2022 and it was before the last really bad storm. And we started going out asking people if they wanted to go to emergency shelters. Did they need tents and sleeping bags? Because it was scarily cold. So that’s when, yeah.

Miller: How did those conversations turn into Southwest Outreach?

Stienecker: Immediately. It was astonishing. As soon as we started to talk to people … I mean, the minute you walk up to somebody, put your hand out and say “hi, I’m Sandy,” they put their hand out. I have yet to have a person who didn’t respond graciously, not one. And they want to talk and they want to tell you how you can help. So we engaged from the get go. It was easy to do.

From that point, we started to attract volunteers. There were two of us at that point [laughter], aided by some other groups like the Friends of Multnomah Safe Rest Village helped us out once and a couple of other people. And we started to add volunteers very quickly after that and started to raise money for 10 more tents, and things like that.

Miller: I want to hear more about the work you’re doing. But as I noted, Laudie Porter is here from the city, community engagement coordinator on the city’s Shelter Services Team.

Laudie, first, can you just remind us what a Safe Rest Village is? Even careful listeners to this show over the last couple of years may have gotten confused as I have about the different acronyms and different names for different ways the city has come up with ways to help people experiencing homelessness. So, what is this version of the Safe Rest Village?

Laudie Porter: Yeah. So Safe Rest Villages was originally … the idea was originally proposed by Commissioner Dan Ryan in June of 2021 as part of the streets to stability ordinance that passed around that time. And basically what Safe Rest Villages are – and temporary alternative shelter sites, frankly, because we operate them under the same model – they are tiny home shelters ranging in size. Safe Rest Villages started out up to 60 units and then temporary alternative shelter sites expanded that size quite a bit. And they include wraparound services. All of our units have electricity, AC and heating for folks to stay comfortable during whatever season they’re in. And they’re also all managed by a variety of different shelter operators around the city. In the case of the Multnomah Safe Rest Village, it’s run by All Good Northwest .

Miller: And these are, in the case of Multnomah Village, sort of small individual pods?

Porter: Yeah. So each shelter unit is about eight by eight. And we do allow couples to stay in our shelter and we do allow pets.

Miller: How long are people expected or allowed to stay?

Porter: So in the Multnomah Safe Rest Village, for example, we expect a stay there to be around six to nine months. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we expect people, if they’re there longer than nine months, to move on. It just means that we really try and set the expectation that we want people to see this as a transitional space and to focus on identifying the barriers to housing. And to go about identifying and removing those barriers to a more substantial living situation.

Miller: And how often does that happen in six months, or nine months, or a period sort of like that? How often are people able to move from one of these tiny houses to more stable, more permanent housing?

Porter: So we’ve seen about 50% of people are able to move into permanent supportive housing from our shelter. Additionally, we’re serving a really underserved population, about 50% of our population are chronically homeless people. So we consider that to be quite successful in such a short period of time. For folks that have been homeless for 10, 15, 20 years, being able to move into housing within less than a year, about half of them, that is huge for us. And it’s a big improvement in what we consider to be a big improvement for our homelessness crisis.

Miller: How are Safe Rest Villages different from temporary alternative shelter sites?

Porter: So in our heads, they’re not. Our temporary alternative shelter sites were started by Mayor Wheeler and he proposed them as larger sites. So the first temporary alternative shelter site, Clinton Triangle, has 180 units. It’s run by Urban Alchemy. But just like all of our other sites, they allow couples, they have pets, they receive wraparound services and meals on site. So, the only difference really was size and we have completely merged those two programs. They’re all managed under the city Shelter Services Program.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for the best estimate for the total number of people who are thought to be living unsheltered or in unsanctioned sites in the city right now, in relation to the total number of shelter beds in the region?

Porter: According to the last point in time count – and the point in time count is essentially a census done every year by Multnomah County to determine what the population and demographics of our unhoused population is – we’re short about 3,000 shelter beds to account for every single homeless person within our city. So we’re going to add about another 300 units in the next year to continue trying to make sure that we are meeting the increased demand for services that we’re seeing within our city.

Miller: Even with that increase, we can say that that’s just 10% of the current gap right now?

Porter: Yeah, and we certainly can’t solve this alone. We are working with the Joint Office of Homeless Services as well as a bunch of other organizations to move as quickly as possible to meet the level of demand that we’re seeing, and to accentuate the valuable work that Sandy is doing in reaching out to people. Because ideally, what we would like the system to be is that people outreach, they say they want services and then they can immediately access services at whatever type of shelter works best for them. We’re just not in that system right now, so we are working in close contact with the Joint Office over at Multnomah County, as well as a variety of organizations to just rapidly increase capacity quickly. And we’re seeing that there’s a lot of demand for alternative style shelters.

Additionally, back in 2021 when the Safe Rest Villages were originally designed by Commissioner Ryan, we also passed what was called the Temporary Outdoor Shelter Guide. What that did was basically set the parameters for any organization to open their own style alternative shelter. So ever since that past, we’re seeing a variety of other organizations take that model and build it for themselves. And they are equally as valuable and equally as important in helping to mitigate our homelessness crisis.

Miller: I mentioned, Will Denecke is here as well, co-founder of Clean Camp PDX. Will, what is Clean Camp PDX?

Will Denecke: It’s a volunteer nonprofit group that’s been supported by Metro and by Republic [Services], which is big waste management to provide garbage service for homeless camps. And we started this three years ago because a couple of us got very frustrated in terms of working with the city and getting cooperation. And we thought, OK, what can we do on our own that doesn’t rely upon the city or any public entity to provide this? So we took the initiative, worked up an agreement with Republic. We got a grant from Republic to start providing service at specific camps.

Miller: What was the problem that you wanted to address?

Denecke: Well, everybody knows that we have a huge garbage problem which was out of control. And unfortunately, the city was not willing to provide service to camps and it was obvious that there was a need for it. So we took the initiative and organized that service.

We can go into it later, but our biggest challenge by far is the sweeps that the city initiates where it breaks our relationship with that community. And that’s very unfortunate and it’s an ongoing huge problem, these sweeps, because they’re counterproductive. Then we lose contact and then these people get moved, and within weeks they usually move back. The whole cycle starts over.

Miller: Well, instead of talking about it later, let’s talk about it right now. One of the ideas of sweeps is to clean up problematically messy places. That’s not the exact language that the city uses, but that’s the gist. There are other reasons that they have put forward as well for sweeps. So, are you saying even if, with that as a reason, the sweeps are not accomplishing that?

Denecke: Yeah. I think it’s pretty clear to anybody. Nonprofits that are involved in homelessness see that the sweeps are counterproductive. They’re not getting people to any kind of housing. They’re moving around the corner and those people often lose a lot of their possessions. Their possessions get stored. If they can’t get to that site, they lose their possessions. So the sweeps don’t provide any more capacity or get people into housing.

Unfortunately, the city provides no sanctioned camping and there’s an element of the homeless who will not move into shelters because they perceive rules and the lack of privacy. But the city doesn’t provide any sanctioned camping. So these people are essentially camping illegally. They get and then within weeks, they usually come back. But one of the elements is garbage because most of these sites don’t have garbage. So people have no place … they have no toilets and they have no place to put their garbage. So, I mean, the lack of sanitation is a big problem.

Miller: And what are you doing to provide sanitation? I mean, how does this system actually work?

Denecke: What we’re doing specifically in camps is we go by sites and decide, OK, is there some kind of community that has some kind of cohesive element to it? Is there someone we can talk to? Can we get access to get a truck in there on a weekly or biweekly basis? And will those people cooperate with us to try to keep their site cleaner?

Miller: Do you have those conversations?

Denecke: Yes.

Miller: So you’ll go to what you think, maybe this is an organized enough camp where I could have had this conversation. What might you say? What conversations do you have?

Denecke: I explained, “look, you have an incentive to keep your site cleaner” because one of the factors that goes into deciding a sweep is garbage and a lack of hygiene. So most times, they get it and they want to cooperate and they want some stability. It’s very disheartening for residents to get moved time and again. And it’s groups like Southwest Outreach that we’re now working with. I didn’t know Southwest Outreach existed until like six months ago, but I’m in Multnomah. Personally, I live there. And they are focused on that and they, and Sandy, have allowed us to engage with certain camps that we didn’t even know about because many of these camps are hidden very well.

So when you engage them … as Sandy says, once you engage with these people, the majority want to be constructive, they want to do something, they want to clean up. And Southwest Outreach has allowed us to engage with campsites and communities that we wouldn’t know about otherwise.

Miller: Laudie, how do you think about these sweeps? My understanding is it’s a different part of city decision making and city governance that’s in charge of them. But all of these issues are hyper-connected as we’ve just heard from Will.

Porter: Yeah.

Miller: What do you think about sweeps and the role they play in the larger effort that you’re desperately working on?

Porter: So as you said, it’s run through what we call the Impact Reduction Program led by Lucas Hillier. But what I can say is that we are working as fast as we can to build shelter. So that it’s less about moving people around and more about moving people into places where they can receive help. And what I would say is that I would politely disagree with Will that the people we work with … people are not resistant to shelter, they’re resistant to the types of shelter that have previously existed? The type of shelters that we’re building, people have been really excited and really motivated to move into.

Miller: Meaning, that there isn’t still some not insignificant percentage of people that you interact with who say I still don’t want what you’re offering? That doesn’t happen regularly?

Porter: No. I would say every single person … I am contacted every day. I’m the first line of contact for our program, both through our email at shelterservices@portlandregon.gov and our phone number at 503-823-1340. And I am called every single day asking for a referral into one of our shelters. I am asked every day for a referral, both by unhoused people and by their caseworkers that they’re working with. People know specifically. They’ve heard of our model of shelter and they’re really, really excited by it in a way that they’ve not been excited by congregate shelters or other types of shelters.

Miller: But even if 100% of the people were interested in the shelters that you’re bringing online, as we talked about before, the numbers are stark. And even if you add 300 more in the coming year, that still leaves, according to the last point in time count, according to what you’ve just said, 2,700 people in the county who are shelterless.

Porter: Yeah.

Miller: Given those numbers, do you think that the current system of sweeps is rational?

Porter: And I want to clarify, with those 300 beds that we’re adding, we’ll be sleeping about 1,000 people per night. So we are adding a big chunk, but it’s definitely as you’ve pointed out, not the whole chunk.

What I would say about cleanups as we call them, they are responding to a different part of the process. We are responsible for all parties in this system, right? We are the city government and we are the audience to all of these parties. When we’re building a shelter, it’s because we see the need and we’re trying to respond to the needs provided by our unhoused neighbors. But at the same time, there are housed neighbors living nearby where one of their first explicit requirements is that we clean up the areas that they’re living in because there have been real livability concerns for them in those areas.

So it’s a hard paradox to be enough. We are doing our best to provide quality service as quickly as possible, while also responding to the livability needs set by other constituents that we’re responsible to.

Miller: Sandy, about a month ago, we talked to two folks who were providing people with showers in Southeast Portland. That’s something that you have done, my understanding is, following their lead in Southwest Portland. What have showers meant to the people that you’re serving?

Stienecker: They meant a lot of things. When we went out, that was the first of two things people said they wanted: laundry and showers. These are the people who are saying don’t care about garbage, don’t care about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. So we set about with the help of an amazing church in our area called Rivers Gate Church who provided the facilities to provide the showers. Last Tuesday, we had 24 people come in from 1pm to 5pm for showers and they get clean, which makes all the difference in the world. They get clean underwear, they get clean socks, they get a hot meal. Some people talk to us and other folks they know from the street. They get a place to curl up and take a nap, because they’re tired, because they can’t sleep because of the stress on the street.

It’s also become very clear that it’s a hub. When one of our friends, one of our neighbors, was hit by a hit and run driver, he came to the showers because he knew that’s where he could get help.

Miller: Before he went to an emergency room.

Stienecker: He was scared to go to the emergency room. And I learned why when I accompanied him. He was humiliated by the first place we went to when they said we don’t deal with people like you. So finally got him to OHSU emergency and they took care of him, seven hours of surgery. He had a brain bleed and broke an arm that required surgery. And it was clear that if we hadn’t been there, he would have just wandered around because he was afraid, he was afraid to go.

And we’ve had another guy who said the other day, he said, “I’m gonna go to rehab because I figure if I can make myself show up here at one o’clock every Tuesday, I can do rehab.” That had taught him that. So it’s a hub.

Miller: Do you get pushback from housed neighbors who say you’re just enabling people?

Stienecker: Not very much really. One of the things that we have found is that there is overwhelming support for what we’re doing, but we do get it from some. And the answer to me is, yeah, we do. We enable people every chance we get, we enable them to survive after they get hit by a car, we enable them to get clean so that they can face another day. We enable them to stay dry with a tent and so on. We enable them to survive.

Miller: After the city announced it was going to more than triple the occupancy in your Safe Rest Village, my understanding is you went around to talk to people who are in unsanctioned campsites to spread the word and to see if they wanted to be on a city list, so that maybe they could move in. What did you hear from people?

Stienecker: I agree with Laudie. It’s a very quick yes, please. Where do I sign up? The most dramatic example I can give you of that is a man who’s lived under a bridge for years and years. And he came to the showers the day he was asked to sign up and he had his umbrella and he said, I can’t stay here to wait in line, but I’ll sit outside until it’s my turn, which was going to be an hour and he knew it. And he sat in the rain, the pouring rain with his umbrella outside for his turn to sign up for that Safe Rest Village.

Miller: You recently sent a letter to ODOT and city of Portland officials to call attention to sweeps, the exact issue that Will brought up. Why? What was the issue that you wanted ODOT to think about?

Stienecker: I think our area is a kind of microcosm for this because of our good neighbor agreement with the city, and the Multnomah Neighborhood Association, and All Good Northwest includes a phrase that says that people in the area will have some priority for placement in the expanded spots. And so we felt like we should find out how many people were interested. It was overwhelming, overwhelming.

What happened then was they started sweeping, over and over and over again. In two months, there are people who’ve been swept five times. They set up their tent and they come by again and they move everything, throw it in the bin if they’re not there. And that includes IDs, that includes laptops in some cases, and so on. It’s been pretty horrific, but over and over again is the piece, they don’t stop. There’s no place they can go. We went to a camp just on Tuesday and Wednesday and the guy said – both legs, by the way, were completely infected so I was spending my time trying to encourage him to go to the ER – he said, I just don’t know where to go. They’re going to sweep us and I don’t know where to go. Where can they go? They’ve swept every place we’ve ever camped. Where can we go?

We’re saying, hold on, just hold on because you can get into the Safe Rest Village. They keep coming to the showers because that way they can maintain contact because we lose track of them. We can’t find them anymore. Every time now we send out three teams of volunteers a week doing outreach. By the way, we’re a totally volunteer organization. Three teams a week go out and now all we’re doing is looking for people, just trying to find them again instead of really helping them and working with them.

Miller: Laudie, assuming that some percentage of those people can be found, they are in the neighborhood, they’ve expressed interest in one of the soon to be 70 spots in the Safe Rest Village. What’s the chance that they’ll be able to actually get a spot when the village expands?

Porter: So, yeah, as Sandy said, we are part of our good neighbor agreement and it’s one of many agreements that we’ve made at the city, to work with the neighborhood to find people living in the area and bring them into the shelter. We do have the list that Sandy put together and she worked with Emily Stroud at All Good Northwest to put it together. And we’re really appreciative for her partnership in that. We’ve been able to contact nine of those folks and bring them into the village.

We would really appreciate it if folks would call 311 to request contact from a city outreach worker if they’re unable to get contact otherwise. The thing about our shelter is that we are referral-based and 311 would get them in contact and would allow them to request contact from a city outreach worker, who can potentially provide service and referral if it’s available. So that would be my suggestion.

Miller: As opposed to self referral, as opposed to saying I’d like to go, they have to go through a more official process to get access.

Porter: Yes.

Stienecker: 311 is a good idea. Makes sense. It’s systematic, and gives people a place to register their needs. The problem is that we had a fellow come and do training with us from 311 last weekend. He said there are, I think, 4,000 people on the list. And he said a lot of those are duplicative calls because people keep calling, trying to get in touch, like if I call three times they’ll remember me. But he figures there’s probably 1,400 to 1,600 actual people who’ve called wanting help. There are five outreach workers.

Miller: To respond to at least 1,700 people?

Stienecker: Yes. So some of those nine people got in because I tracked them down. I had phone numbers. I knew somebody who’d seen them. I went and found them. They’re waiting for you. Come on and help them get there. I drove one woman there. She was crying and she said I’d given up, I’d given up because I couldn’t get it because they couldn’t get hold of her because she’d been swept three times.

Porter: Yeah, and that just speaks to the level of demand and again it’s a paradox, right? We are in a situation where there is a demand for people to be moved and there’s also a deep demand for services that we are working to meet and we are trying. Our referral process isn’t perfect. I unfortunately can’t necessarily speak to the depths of it, but it’s because of people like Sandy and neighborhood advocates that are able to represent and be experts in the areas that they’re working, that we’re able to continue to develop and improve our process and to fill in those gaps.

Miller: Laudie Porter, Sandy Stienecker and Will Denecke, thanks very much.

All: Thank you.

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