City Remove Homeless from Laurelhurst Park

Dozens of homeless campers were swept out of Laurelhurst Park in Southeast Portland on Tuesday. The move had been previously announced but there were still several people there when city workers arrived.

The camps started springing up in the past few weeks after the city announced that they would be removing campers from the Springwater Corridor starting September 1st. Several of the hundreds of campers there have been moving to other parks around the city.

The clean-up was a combined effort of several agencies including police officers and social service workers.

Any items that wee left behind on Tuesday will be brought to a storage facility where their owner will have one month to claim them before they are disposed of.

Last month, the city opened up a 200-bed shelter at the Hansen Building, which used to be home to the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office and two weeks ago moved forward with plans that would create a one-stop facility combining a shelter and social services at a former warehouse.

The city council narrowly voted to have the Bureau of Environmental Services lease a 14-acre site known as Terminal 1 to city's housing bureau.

Meanwhile, a Portland lawyer who has battled with the city on how the city spends its money has filed suit in an effort to prevent that plan from progressing.

John DiLorenzo argues that the city's plan to open the shelter on land owned by the city's water bureau will prevent the bureau from getting what it could from the property.

In his suit, he argues the decision will cost the bureau millions of dollars in revenue, forcing the bureau to take on added debt.

DiLorenzo has won several victories along these lines in the past.

Photo via City of Portland