Portland, the City of Bridges, and beneath almost all of them, miserable-looking camps constructed of tents, plastic tarps, and shopping carts. Rag-tag homeless people also sleeping on park benches and in doorways.
An easy solution said many activists: Throw enough money at treating the root causes—addiction, mental illness, job training and housing. “Build it and they will come.” And so the City did, but they couldn’t fill the beds. Seems many of them like the drugs better than people. And certainly better than structure. Infrastructure. Sure, they’d like warm, indoor beds okay, but not if they have to change their ways. Hey, nobody likes to change their ways. I don’t. You?
More than a decade ago, a group of homeless people tired of being rousted from downtown doorways, pitched some tents together under one of the City’s bridges and called it “home.” But the City chased them away. After all, a bridge is not a home. The real problem: They were too close to the “normal” residents for social and political comfort.
After several failed “homes,” the City allowed them to pitch their tents on a city-owned lot near a drainage canal, surrounded on one side by a state-run prison and on the other side from Portland’s international airport. The location was “perfect.” Translation: No “normal” neighbors anywhere nearby to be offended, or to complain. The homeless campers dubbed “their” site Dignity Village, and adopted the motto, “Out of the Doorways.”
Something between a refugee camp and a slum, right? Wrong! Once they discovered that they actually had a permanent location, they scrounged together as much money as they could—from donations, panhandling, recycling bottles and cans, and odd jobs—and began purchasing castoff and recycled materials and upgrading their accommodations into what the “normals” and the homeless alike now call . . . “tiny houses.” Nothing fancy, but many of them with a degree of panache—front porches, pitched roofs, fresh paint jobs. These homeless aren’t the only ones who have taken root. Some of the homes have climbing ivy taking root on the exterior walls of the tiny houses.
Because a house now is a home, and there is pride of ownership, the atmosphere around Dignity Village has also become quite pleasant—friendly, orderly, quiet streets because no one owns a car, even, dare the “normals” say it, civilized. The village is actually governed by an elected council. The village is required by the City to provide their own security, but the residents say they would have done that anyway. Dignity Village is the smallest gated community in Portland, whether to keep trespassers out or residents in, possibly a little bit of both.
Dignity Village costs local taxpayers nothing. Residents pay all their own utility bills, including $35 a month for space rent. They pitch in to pay for community water, electricity, garbage collection and a shared wireless Internet account. The houses have no indoor plumbing and most aren’t wired for electricity, but some have solar panels, and all have propane heaters to maintain warmth in the winter. Charging stations for cellphones and laptops have been placed near the community kitchen, the community shower house and the portable toilets.
You can buy a 200 square foot “tiny house” for as little as $1,200 (in the poorer neighborhood), but $3,000 is more typical. If you don’t blow it on drugs and alcohol, you can save that up panhandling or working part time at Starbucks. We know that because they’ve been doing it. Many have found part-time jobs. One resident mows lawns. Another chops and sells firewood. The elected mayor fixes computers—when his day-to-day mayoral duties permit. He’d like to move up and out someday, but he’s working to make the most of it for the time being.
Not only have the residents improved their homes over time, just like the residents of Beverly Hills do, but they also make the rules and run the place, like they also do in Beverly Hills—just enough, but not too much, personal responsibility on all of them. They pay their own bills. They work. They take care of each other. Just like Beverly Hills. Hmm, maybe with the exception of residents of Beverly Hills taking care of each other. Drug and alcohol offenses or anti-social behavior will get you evicted. So will missing your rent payment three months in a row, if you are renting rather than buying, or failing to put in the mandatory ten hours per week of community service. Once stereotypical homeless folks sleeping under bridges and pushing their shopping carts around, these folks are no longer homeless, stereotypical or otherwise, even if not quite yet “normals.”
What explains it? With some help from the City, but certainly nothing like any of the failed big-government programs, these homeless have found a place to call their own. They’ve put together some structure and order in their lives. They’ve worked to better their circumstances. Now that they have something to lose–the American dream–they’ve actually become quite . . . responsible.
No, it ain’t Beverly Hills, and it won’t work for the mentally ill or substance abusers who can’t or won’t change, but it’s an incredible step forward, and an example of what may become a real working model across the country. No a house may not be a home, but these tiny houses are.
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