Sweeping Scarecrows

[November 3rd, 2004] Scarecrow's wake-up call is a cheery hello from Officer Mike Castlio, telling him to get up and move out. Scarecrow, whose real name is Seth, peeks out from a sleeping bag he shares with his young wife, Pyratte, under the east side of the Hawthorne Bridge. Sheltered by a blue tarp and separated from the sidewalk by a wooden pallet with cardboard for a cushion, Scarecrow nods a head still fogged by sleep.

Castlio's been working the east side for 15 years and has earned the trust of nearly all the homeless denizens of his beat these days. He sees keeping tabs on folks like Scarecrow as part of the job. But taking part in the recent sweeps--wholesale dispersal of tent villages--is not a mission he enjoys.

Over the past several weeks, Castlio and other Portland police officers have been called in to roust scores of men and women from under bridges, where they had set up camp. The missions came at the request of the Oregon Department of Transportation, which owns the land under the overpasses.

ODOT spokesman Dave Thompson says safety concerns prompted the sweeps. ODOT officials worry about campers trying to cross freeways to get to their tents, and about debris falling off interstates onto the homeless cities underneath.

"Our concern is for safety," says Thompson. "Are we responsible for the welfare of people living on our property?"

ODOT workers also say they've come across a great deal of garbage, needles, debris and human waste, when they clean up after the campers have moved on. "It's not a matter of we don't care," Thompson says. "Where a law is violated, or safety's at stake, we have to take action."

No one connected with the police sweeps seems to be very happy about them. Southeast Precinct Commander Rosie Sizer doesn't like the sound of the word. Homeless advocates say they raise the tension level on the streets. Even Thompson concedes, "We make no claim that an effort to move people off ODOT property is any kind of solution."

Where do the homeless go, once the camps are taken down? Anywhere they can, from Northwest Portland and the industrial area near the West Hills to the outlying reaches of the MAX lines, where the parks of Gresham and the woods near Beaverton Creek are said to offer temporary havens.

But don't count on a mass homeless exodus to the suburbs anytime soon. Most of those dislodged in the sweeps try to stick near central Portland, where the social services are clustered.

Indeed, before he drives his cruiser away from the Hawthorne Bridge, Castlio gives Scarecrow and Pyratte a pitch about JOIN, a local outreach group, and leaves them with a gentle warning: "Cold weather's coming--you'd best be inside when it hits."

This season, JOIN is pushing a charity designed to get the homeless off the streets for more than a night. Called Home for the Holidays, the program asks businesses and church groups to donate cash or living space that would allow homeless men, women or families to live off the streets and outside shelters for three to six months.

The idea is to free people like Scarecrow and Pyratte from a Catch-22 of the streets: Jobs are hard to come by, if you don't have an address or a phone. But getting a lease if you don't have a job, especially if you don't have first and last months' rent money, is near impossible.

Some say the long-term fix to the problem would be rental vouchers, funded by the city. Vouchers would give Portland's homeless a chance to be clean and sober, employed and able to stay inside to take medication, all of which are critically needed to break the homeless cycle that has become so common as to render them nearly invisible.

Scarecrow, an epileptic who's been on the streets for most of his twenty-odd years, says he still can't get used to that. "They walk past us like we're not even human," he says. "Sometimes I'll say to them, 'Excuse me, I'm a human over here. I could use some help.'"