Point, Counter-point: Sunnyside neighbors hooked up to
hash out their differences Jan. 11, a month before the
media jumped in.By now most of the metro area--and a good
chunk of the nation--knows that all's not well in Southeast
Portland. For the past month, the local media have been
chronicling the conflict between the Sunnyside Neighborhood
Association and the Sunnyside Centenary United Methodist
Church over the church's Wednesday and Friday evening
food and fellowship program for the city's homeless. Neighbors
who challenged the church's land-use permits have been
sketched out as selfish NIMBYs. The church has been portrayed
as a victim. Reality, though, doesn't quite square with
that picture.
Myth #1: Neighbors blind-sided the church.
In reality,
neighbors went to then-pastor Frank Shields, now a Democratic
state senator, more than 18 months ago. They complained
that the down-and-outers drawn to the evening programs
crapped in neighbor's yards, hung out on their porches
and left syringes in Sunnyside Park. Shields told them
the church had a mission. If neighbors couldn't hang with
that, then they could go hang. Last summer, neighbors
went through formal mediation with the church but got
the same message. Only then did the neighbors turn to
the land-use process.
Myth #2. It's the work of black-hearted yuppies.
Program
defenders, such as Shields, have claimed that the dispute
stems from new homeowners, who brought to Sunnyside an
upscale obsession with property values and an intolerance
of the poor. Sunnyside, however, isn't Yuppieville. It's
solidly middle-class, peeling paint and unkempt yards
included. For every Zupan's, a Dixie Mattress Company
sits across the street.
Myth #3. There's no proof that there's even a problem.
Until
recently, the church argued that there was no link between
its programs and neighborhood problems. Media coverage
has largely buttressed that claim. Police statistics aren't
a big help: The types of incidents neighbors complain
about rarely result in an incident report. But at a Jan.
11 neighborhood association meeting, a month before the
media circus kicked off, Portland police officer Dan Jensen,
who has worked the Sunnyside beat for more than a decade,
said that neighbors had a legitimate beef. Every Wednesday
and Friday, when there were problems in Sunnyside, he
said, it was always related to program attendees.
Myth #4. An evil city bureaucrat tried to regulate
worship services.
On Jan. 14, Elizabeth Normand, a
city hearings officer, ordered the program closed. That
decision surprised a lot of people, but the real shocker
came when she capped church attendance at 70--an order
that made national news. Normand was vilified by the press
and politicians for breaking down the wall between church
and state. It turns out, however, that she was enforcing
a condition of existing permits.
In 1988, the church applied for several conditional-use
permits, including the ones allowing its food and fellowship
program. As part of the process, it stated that 50 to
70 people attended Wednesday and Sunday worship services.
So when the city granted the permits, it limited church
attendance to 70 people (not that the fire marshal was
planning on head counts during the Eucharist).
Eleven years later, neighbors asked Normand to review
the church's permits, to see whether the church had lived
up to its bargain. In reaching her decision, she was legally
bound to restate all the permits that had been in effect,
including the 1988 cap on church attendance.
Two weeks ago, as the City Council met to weigh Normand's
ruling, the church did what it should have done two years
ago: 'Fessed up to running an imperfect program. City
commissioners saw the escape hatch and, unanimously, called
for Sunnyside neighbors to make nice with the church,
using a new church plan as a baseline, and return inside
of 60 days with an agreement.
This plan would have had a far better chance had it come
two months ago, before the myths about the conflict heightened
distrust and enmity.
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Willamette Week | originally
published March 15,
2000
