 MOVING ON UP: The city may pay $150,000 to move this North Portland mobile home and put a new homeless shelter at the site.
IMAGE: chrisryanphoto.com |
Pastor Mary Overstreet Smith won nationwide recognition when she found housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina and set up a free health clinic on North Williams Avenue, near her church, Powerhouse Temple.
But this summer, she angered some North Portland neighbors by putting a bright blue double-wide mobile home on one of her other properties at Blandena Street and Kerby Avenue. She intended the roughly 20-by-50-foot double-wide to serve as a temporary shelter for hard-up families.
Her plan went on hold, however, after neighborhood residents flooded city officials with complaints and took their case to a state appeals board. As a result, the city found in October that the mobile home was too old to meet code and does not belong in the neighborhood, though inspectors had already given Smith the go-ahead in May.
“I think it was an oversight,” says Sterling Bennett, land use manager with Portland’s Bureau of Development Services.
Now, Commissioner Randy Leonard has proposed a novel checkbook fix: The city will buy the mobile home from Smith and help her build a new shelter at the site.
Leonard is asking the City Council for $150,000. About $27,000 of that will go to buy Smith’s mobile home. The rest will cover the cost of transporting it 30 miles to Portland Water Bureau property at Dodge Park near Sandy, where it will house a park caretaker; and the cost of building Smith’s new duplex for the homeless at Blandena and Kerby.
“I don’t want to just leave her hanging,” Leonard says. “I want to help her do the good work she’s doing.”
Leonard says his plan—which the council will have a final vote on Dec. 5—saves money, because the city needed housing at Dodge Park anyway. A new mobile home recently bought by the Water Bureau for Powell Butte Nature Park cost over $100,000, Leonard says.
Either way, Leonard’s plan would provide a generous subsidy to Powerhouse Temple Church. Smith won’t say how much she paid for the mobile home.
Smith says she’s sheltered the needy, free of charge, for years without anyone complaining—and, usually, without anyone knowing. Her son lives in an existing house on the same lot as the mobile home. Smith says she lets out the spare bedroom of the house. The vibe outside is not exactly “Love thy neighbor.” A sticker on the door of the house warns that “trespassers will be shot…survivors will be prosecuted.”
Molly Hershey, whose home is across Kerby Avenue from Smith’s trailer, began making inquiries to the city about permits for the planned shelter in mid-June. She says she wanted to ensure that the city was following its own guidelines.
Other neighbors had various concerns about the shelter—from its effect on property values to the poor notification they’d received.
“I’m not against a homeless shelter,” says Jason Allen, a carpenter who lives one house north of the trailer on Kerby Avenue. He does, however, express fears that the property could become a “crack house.” And he wishes Smith had been more forthcoming. “The main thing about community is communication,” Allen says.
The pastor isn’t apologizing for the reaction to her plan.
“Who’s to say they’re not crackheads?” she says. “Who are they to point a finger at anybody?”
When neighbors called to ask about her plans for the mobile home, Smith dismissed them as newcomers and busybodies. “I said, ‘That’s none of your business. I have a right to put a house there if I want to,’” Smith says.
“I cannot see them complaining,” she adds, “except that they’re evil and they’re vicious.”
“No matter what they do,” Smith says, “they will not be able to stop me.”
FACT: Oregon law prohibits cities from restricting the placement of mobile homes. However, that doesn’t apply to mobile homes built before June 1976, when the federal government enacted new safety standards to keep them from becoming firetraps.
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Before the city council appropriates public funds for more public housing in the Humboldt neighborhood I urge them to gather public housing statistical data which will prove that the Humboldt neighborhood is not already overloaded with public housing. Best current estimates suggest that the Humboldt neighborhood is approaching or above the 15% threshold.
The Humboldt neighborhood is in the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area. In a recent email vote a majority of the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area Advisory Committee endorsed the following letter which should be a model for all Urban Renewal Area committees as well as all neighborhood associations:
Dear Portland Development Commission:
We, the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area Advisory Committee, support a public housing location policy of equitable distribution of public housing (defined as requiring three components: means test + government subsidy + rental agreement). This is consistent with the public housing location policy of the Portland Bureau of Housing and Community Development's published public housing location policy which is:
1. Maximize housing choice, especially for low-income people who have traditionally been limited in the location of housing that they could afford;
2. Discourage the concentration of low- or no- income households in any one area of the city;
3. Encourage the creation of additional housing resources for low-income households integrated throughout the community.
Much of the work of the citizen volunteers on the ICURAAC involves advising the PDC on how to spend public funds on public housing. Acknowledging equitable distribution of public housing as a policy gives us the foundation upon which we can make reasonable, justifiable and defensible decisions.
As an operational imperative of a public housing location policy of equitable distribution of public housing, we have set 15% as a cap on the percentage of public housing clients in any of the 10 neighborhoods included in the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area which would allow future PDC funding for public housing projects. The Portsmouth neighborhood, which has more than 30% public housing clients, is indisputably in this category. As a result, we, the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area Advisory Committee, exercise our advisory responsibility by advising you, the Portland Development Commission, to stop all future funding for pubic housing projects in the Portsmouth neighborhood and redirect those funds to other Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area neighborhoods with a population of less than 15% public housing clients.
Thank you for your support of this recommendation by the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area Advisory Committee.
Sincerely,
Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area Advisory Committee
The city of Portland would be violating a policy of equitable distribution of public housing whenever it arbitrarily funds any public housing project in any neighborhood without knowing the percentage of public housing clients already living in that neighborhood especially if there is a known high probability that the neighborhood in question is at or above 15% public housing clients.
Please do not use public funds to support this project unless and until you are sure that you are not using taxpayer dollars to continue to develop income segregated ghettos in North Portland neighborhoods.
Richard Ellmyer
Community activist leading the campaign to stop all potentially new public housing (means test + government subsidy + rental agreement) in the Portsmouth neighborhood, especially the following:
1. Hacienda CDC public housing project on N. Newell Street
2. The recently decommissioned Sharff Army Reserve Center
3. The former John Ball School site
4. The recently closed Clarendon School site
Standards for Equitable Distribution of Public Housing Resolution author and project champion
Writer/Publisher - HAP Watchers commentary - Published on the Internet (http://www.goodgrowthnw.org) and distributed to thousands of readers interested in public housing policy in Multnomah County. To Subscribe: HAP-Watchers-on@goodgrowthnw.org
President, MacSolutions Inc. - A Macintosh computer consulting business providing web hosting for artists and very small businesses. Located in Portsmouth, the neighborhood with the second highest concentration of public housing clients, 30% and rising, within HAP's Multnomah county jurisdiction of 117 neighborhoods.
Commissioner Leonard's solution is generous and diplomatic. Let's hope and pray that the entire Council will make us proud to be Portlandians this December 5.
Smith's position of "It's my property, I'll do what I want with it" is troubling. As evidenced by this week's ballot measure results, most Oregonians agree that land ownership does not entitle you to develop any way you please. Without doubt, the City did Mary Smith a real disservice in allowing her project to move so far forward before slamming on the breaks. The City likely didn't know what it was dealing with when the permit was issued, and only after the trailers arrived on site did the red flags start flying up.
So now the City is trying to make it right, and I have a couple lingering questions: If the trailers are unsafe for human occupation in Portland, why should moving them to Dodge Park make that any different? And for the $100k+ that might be left for a new shelter, could you really afford much more than new versions of the trailers we already have?