Homelessness in Portland, part 3: The Road Warriors

At this juncture, I want to point out that my comments are not intended to be authoritative or exhaustive on the nature of homelessness in Portland. Rather, they’re an accumulation of observations and information gathered by a longtime downtown resident.

I’ve had close-up views of people on the streets for decades now, but that doesn’t mean I understand everything about their situation or their origins, let alone their motivations. I merely offer my remarks as an addition to the general public discussion.

We have come to the group that causes much more of the problems on the street that we attribute to “the homeless” than some of the actual homeless people I described here last week.

And I would argue that this group should not be classified as “homeless.”

Category 4: Road Warriors / Vagrants

A type of street person that has become prominent in recent years are folks the police and social service workers refer to as “road warriors.” These individuals tend to be young -- teens and early twenties -- but some are older.

They travel up and down the West Coast with their gear, following the good weather from city to city (and possibly dodging fines, citations, and potential or actual stopovers in jail). They may be in couples; they may have a pack and bedroll, and a dog. So you are more likely to see them in Portland during the summer and fall, when the weather is its best, and you encounter them far less often during the rest of the year. Unlike some of the folks in the preceding categories I’ve described, I’ve never recognized any of them from one year to the next.

Brangelina . . . and Your Duty as a U.S. Citizen

Friday afternoon I dropped into a pharmacy-variety store downtown and saw the rack of magazines below on the counter between the cash registers, which I photographed. I want to draw your attention to three of the four publications: the one at the upper left and the two on the bottom . . .

In case you can’t make out the full text about the cover stories, the Vanity Fair cover reads: “Angie Solo…” and there’s some sort of subhead about “…Became Difficult.” The current US Weekly issue proclaims: “Angie & Brad: The Divorce is Off! Inside the incredible story of how they’re fighting for their marriage, family & love.”

There He Goes Again . . . Puns and Wordplay from 2016

And the silliness runs on. These are some of the puns and plays on words that occurred to me last calendar year. . . . 

January 10: Faces-the-Sea was chief of a coastal First Nations tribe. One day he had the bright idea of building a breakwater in the bay to catch codfish that swam over it during high tide and would remain trapped behind it when the tide went out.

The tribe thought this dam would be a splendid and easy way to catch many fish, after the initial hard work of building the structure. It seemed as if it would work; the pool behind the submerged stone wall captured many cod.

But alas, the breakwater collapsed as the tide went out again, and all the fish escaped. In disgrace, Faces-the-Sea exiled himself from the tribe. The people agreed, it was a cod dam shame.

February 21: Although the King had a Queen for appearance’s sake, he preferred to spend his time with pretty young men. The Queen began to suspect the truth when she overheard him singing to himself, “I’m always chasing reign beaus. . . .”

February 28: I will never forget the time I worked with a playwright who was casting a new play. She loved my audition, but didn't really have a suitable role for me in the production ... until she got the idea of ripping several scenes out of another piece she was working on and inserting the character on those pages into the pending project.

You see, she was tearing me a part.

March 3: Joe wanted one of those smart houses -- you know, the ones where you can remotely control the HVAC, electricity, water, etc. -- and everything responded to his mobile except the faucet next to the microwave and range.

So he had everything but the kitchen synch.

Homelessness in Portland, part 2: The Professionals

There’s a certain class of panhandlers you may encounter on the streets of Portland that should not be classified as homeless. The reason is simple: They have homes.

These are, for want of a better term, professionals … though they probably aren’t registered as a small business or full-time worker subject to withholding, and they may not pay taxes on their income at all.

I do not intend the term “professionals” in any sarcastic or disparaging sense, but in a strictly neutral one . . . because this is what they do. They ask you for money on the streets of the Pearl District, on Broadway, and outside supermarkets week in and out, year after year, but they probably go home at the end of each day.

There’s Larry, “the blanket man,” who tends to wander SW 10th and the South Park Blocks near the Portland Art Museum. There’s a second blanket man, Mike, whose activities center more in the Pearl District and on the streetcar between the west and east sides of the Broadway Bridge. And there’s the tiny elderly woman who used to beg on her feet outside Art Media when it was on SW Yamhill between Park and 10th in the 1990s and the turn of the millennium; but these days she may be seen sitting in a wheeled walker along the brewery blocks, on NW Couch between 10th and 11th.

[Note: None of the photos on this page depict actual street people, which would raise permission and privacy issues; they’re all of me pretending to be a homeless person in various commercial or indie film projects over the past seven years.]

Homelessness in Portland, part 1

During my Aug. 1 Best of Portland walking tour, a guest from Santa Clarita asked about “the homeless” in Portland. Very helpfully, a passing street person overheard her and began yelling his opinions on the matter as I went into my three-minute explanation of the situation (and why “homeless” is a misnomer) in Portland.

I also mentioned offhand that I intended to write about this on my blog. (I’ve been saying that for years.) Nearly two hours later, as I wrapped up the tour on the west bank of the Willamette, the woman asked: “Where do we read your blog?”

A bit startled, I didn’t even have a business card to give her, but I told her my full name and the title of my blog, which she might or might not remember. I thought: Dang, now I’ll have to write something. So here goes.

Does Portland have a homeless problem?

Well of course it does . . . but, in some senses, the answer is no. There are massive legal, economic, social, and political factors, of course, but before they can be addressed, we have to clarify what we’re talking about when we say “homeless.” Much of the public disagreement and rhetoric arises out of confusion over categories.

When we use the word “homeless,” we’re often speaking of at least four fairly distinct populations (and maybe more), with not a lot of overlap between them. I would argue that at least two of these groups do not qualify as homeless in a technical sense, and those two may include most of the people on the streets who cause most of the problems we automatically blame on “the homeless.”

So let’s separate ’em out.