Portland Looks to Move Hazelnut Grove Homeless Camp While Moving Conversation on Homelessness

Portland is looking for a new home for the Hazelnut Grove homeless camp  that sprung up last fall along North Greeley and Interstate Avenue.

"We want to find them a new home," Josh Alpert, chief of staff to Mayor Charlie Hales, tells Patch. "We will find them a new home."

Alpert says the city has been working with the leadership of the homeless camp and had made a lot of progress when then person they were dealing with left.

"And that created a problem at first but I think we're on track," Alpert says.

Alpert says he recognizes that people have a right to be skeptical given the problems the city encountered in trying to get the camp known as Right to Dream, Too or R2D2 into a new location.

"The city is changing," Alpert says. "It's not the same place. People understand things need to happen."

Hazelnut Grove is just part of a much larger problem, Alpert says. And the goal is to try to come up with a unified solution.

Part of the answer, he says, is small, almost semantic.

"Instead of calling them homeless camps, we are referring to them as outdoor shelter communities," he tells Patch.

Along those lines, the city is developing ways to help camps develop management plans, help them become organized communities.

For people who question the wisdom of helping the camps, who say the goal should not to help people make life on the street more organized, it should be to get people off the street, Alpert has an answer.

"It would be great if we could just focus on the long-term, the endgame," he says. "But that is not going to help the 2,000 people who will be out on the street tonight.

"This is not a down the road problem, it is a tonight problem."

Along those lines, Alpert is intrigued by a proposal being pushed by two of Portland's more prominent developers, Homer Williams and Dike Dame.

They suggest a $100 million homeless camp for 1,400 people hat would be built on industrial land by the waterfront/

While Alpert is intrigued - "there are positives," he says, he has several doubts.

"A big issue for me with this, as it was at Wapato (an empty jail that has been proposed as a homeless facility), is that instead of integrating people, it separates them," Alpert says.

"We need to come up with solutions that work on getting people into society, not keep them far away from it."

Meanwhile, Portland's Mayor-elect, Ted Wheeler, is also intrigued by the proposal, calling it "a promising alternative.

"We are smart, we are innovative, we are compassionate, and we must find a way to put those qualities into action to give those in our community experiencing homelessness a safe, dry place to sleep; the services they may need to fight addiction, address mental health, and find a job; and – ultimately – permanent, affordable housing."