St. Johns Homeless Meeting A Failure Of Public Participation

More than 400 citizens showed up to become informed, comment and ask questions about the proposed homeless housing site in the St. Johns neighborhood of North Portland. They were not informed, nor allowed to comment nor ask questions. As an exercise in public participation it was a total failure. This unsettling scenario of government ignorance and indifference can and probably will play out again and again as projects of the recent Metro housing bond are planned and executed in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties.

Parity, Equity and Accountability were deliberately absent from a public meeting about the proposed hard walled campsite for the homeless in St. Johns. Instead of serving facts by credible and knowledgeable officials and challenges to on site actual decision makers by citizen participants we were fed vary large portions of sugary hopeful opinions

Where are the maps?*1

A public meeting of this sort without maps is like being invited to a meal without food. More than 400 diners left hungry.

The homeless are part of the Public Housing continuum of households with incomes <=80% MFI. There was not a single mention of PUBLIC HOUSING*2 nor any maps showing the distribution of PUBLIC HOUSING within Multnomah county neighborhoods, including St. Johns, and the Metro regional government’s area of authority.

There were no maps revealing the lack of parity and equity of Public Housing households among Washington, Clackamas and Multnomah counties as well as among the neighborhoods of Multnomah county.

There were no maps displaying ALL the sites in the Metro jurisdictional catchment available to accept transfer of the Hazelnut Grove homeless campers.

Without these maps there can be no fact based, credible, meaningful discussion and defensible decision making among the parties involved regarding Public Housing policy, which includes the homeless.

The prevailing Public Housing policy primarily promulgated by Portland’s mayor and most powerful Public Housing policy maker in the state of Oregon, Ted Wheeler, is Targeted, UNLIMITED Neighborhood Concentration of Public Housing which allows government to load the neighborhoods of its choosing with up to 100% Public Housing households. This stealth policy can only continue as long as there are no maps to expose this discredited and abhorrent policy and no map centered public participation to challenge self-inflicted ignorance, political convenience and extortion which are the current criteria for Public Housing decision making.

Richard Ellmyer

North Portland resident and political activist since 1975.

Author of more stories on the politics, players and policies of Public Housing in Oregon over the last seventeen years than all other journalists and elected officials combined.

Author of The Ellmyer Report, a newsletter that informs, educates and influences on public policy. Occasionally distributed to more than a quarter of million readers in Oregon and beyond. Facebook, Portland Politics Plus . Contributor Patch News

*1

Preliminary editions of Public Housing location maps for the state of Oregon and the Metro area, including the St. Johns neighborhood, are under development and will be publicly available in the not too distant future.

*2

Means Test (<=80%MFI) + Government Subsidy (any government any type) + rental agreement.