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houselessnessdowntownpdx · 4 years ago

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3- Interview with Pastor Bruce Arnold on Houselessness During Covid-19

Pastor Bruce believes that COVID-19 has “given steroids to the issue” of houselessness. As community resources shut down there has been less access to food and water as well as internet access to find out “what is rumor and what is the truth”, electricity to recharge cell phones, and it is harder to access hygiene supplies and restroom facilities. HomePDX has been tripling their efforts to help fill the gaps of other closed facilities.

Pastor Bruce has been staying in a church and returning home only on weekends in order to be on the front lines helping the outdoor community. Something that personally impacts Pastor Bruce is being away from his family for long periods of time because of this. Pastor Bruce sees negative impacts due to COVID-19 as someone directly serving the houseless community. In our interview, he mentioned that the food pantry is no longer somewhere that houseless people can shop through, they have to point through a window at what they want now. Additionally, there is no more closet shopping for clothing items, it is something that has to be brought out to them. These things require more volunteers, as well as give houseless people less freedom of choice. Something that hasn’t changed due to COVID-19 is Sunday lunches, which happens to be outdoors.

Interview transcript: Melody “What is your view on the topic we are talking about- on houselessness in Portland right now and especially since COVID-19 started?”

Bruce: “So COVID-19 has basically just been giving steroids to the problem...and...I mean we’ve had people living outdoors in Portland as long as we’ve had Portland. So it’s not a new problem, it’s not a unique problem. What happens is there’s this eb and flow based on policy of where people live, how visible they are, how concentrated they are. So, what happened with COVID, I actually, I kinda saw this coming way back in March of last year and I negotiated with this church that I’m in right now, First Christian Church, to lock down in the church if there was a lock down, so that I could be on the front lines helping our people instead of hiding away at my house. Thought it might be 4-6 weeks, I’m still here, go home once a week and see my family, but I’m basically living downtown, and part of what happened is other people closed their doors and went home. We suddenly had a population that had less access to food, almost no access to water at the beginning, no where to charge their phones or get on the internet and figure out what’s going on, what’s rumor and what’s truth. Fewer showers, all those other fun things. So we basically tripled what we were doing in the space of a week to try and fill some of those gaps.”

Stephanie: “What other groups are you working with on this issue?”

Bruce: “So...there’s a whole bunch of groups working downtown. Before COVID-19 I was told there’s 84 different groups that offer at least one meal a week in downtown Portland. So that’s what it takes to feed everyone who’s outdoors. I know that number has gone down, I don’t know entirely who’s still serving and who isn’t, but I work pretty closely with Clay Street Table. I have referral rights to Portland Rescue Mission. I’m on a first-name basis with the chaplain at the jail..and the chaplain at the police force, actually, so we’re partnering with a whole bunch of churches right now who are supplying us with resources and volunteers.”

Evan: “Yeah, so do you mind clarifying just a little bit what specifically you’re most involved in right now?”

Bruce: “Home PDX is chartered as a church, and I am officially a pastor. I don't usually throw that around unless I want to get inside a jail or a hospital. But we are first and foremost a community, and actually that's one of the things that COVID has really challenged because as we've stepped in to provide more services, people are starting to get confused as to whether we are a community, or a service provider and even in the midst of COVID, we are trying to concentrate on community. So I'm still walking around in the mornings on the streets with coffee, still walking into camps and seeing how people are doing and delivering food. Our biggest event is a Sunday lunch and because it's actually outdoors, we've never actually paused for COVID, we've kept delivering all the way through.”

Stephanie: “Which we at Outlandia miss doing”

Bruce: “Yeah, they’ve changed who is providing the meals, but we are still doing the meals”

Evan: “So working around COVID things, so you guys haven't had to pause your Sunday lunches, are there any specific events that you have had to cancel that come to mind?”

Bruce: “Not really, we have just had to reframe everything. So for example, we loved that people would come and walk through a clothing closet and shop for what they want, but we can't do that anymore, so we go outside, ask them what they need, go inside, grab a couple items, come outside, do you want one of these? It's a little more labor intensive but it's a lot less contact. We have a food pantry where people, again, get to pick what they want instead of just being thrown a box of whatever and instead of having them come indoors and do that, their looking through a window saying 'I want one of those, one of those, one of those'', we’ll pack the bag right there and hand it outside the door. So we are still doing services, even more service, but we are doing them differently. It slows things down, it takes more volunteers, but it still works.”

Melody: “I was going to ask, do you get any like funding from the state, or like private organizations?”

Bruce: “All of my funding is pretty much individuals, and churches, a couple organizations. We did get a COVID grant just to continue doing what we are doing”

Melody: “Was that federal or state?”

Bruce: “It was, I believe it was county. And Multnomah County also gave us one thousand masks to hand out.”

Stephanie: “So what are the issues that you are finding in some of the camps?”

Bruce: “Oh boy, thats so complicated right now. So early on in COVID the city made a promise to stop sweeping camps because they didn't want people to mix around and spread around and as a result, a whole bunch of tents showed up all over the place, especially downtown where we aren't used to seeing that many tents. So the big challenge now is, they are starting to sweep again, they are doing it very quietly, but how do we manage, I mean your question is talking about stakeholders, downtown businesses, the downtown church associations, hotels, restaurants, they've got a stake in what happens here, the county has a stake in what happens here, so the question is, how do we humanly let people live without letting them, sort of take over, and destroy the usability of the city. And what i'm finding is that there are a lot more tents in the city itself, there are a lot more camps showing up outside the downtown core, but i'm not sure, i'm not sure its a lot more people. It is some more people, but I think they are just more visible. Because they aren't getting chased as much, they don't have to hide as much, they are just much more visible.”

Stephanie: “So do you think they are congregating more?”

Bruce: “In the especially north town, like old town area, yes for sure. Out in the camps I think its about the same as it always has been. People do like to be in the camps where they can watch each others stuff and be a kind of pool of resources. The one change that i have noticed that i think is kind of interesting is just in the last couple of months, most of the camps have a car or two. They didn't use to ever have a car. And that I'm assuming is either newly outdoors, like just got kicked out of an apartment and drove and started camping, or in some cases it might be outdoor residents who have gotten a stimulus check and therefore gotten a vehicle.”

Stephanie: “I was thinking that maybe it was somebody that had lost their job, and then a couple months later lost their apartment, and then ended up outside in one of these community camps.”

Bruce: “My impressions is that is what it is. We are also seeing more RVs than ever before just parked on the side of the road in clusters.”

Stephanie: “So do you think that is because people have lost their jobs and income and in turn lost their homes? And they are turning to RVs?"

Bruce: “Yes. We’ve always had a certain number of RV campers, the city used to chase them around mercilessly, now they are allowing them to congregate in certain areas.”

Melody: “Have you noticed in those certain areas if there happens to be a trend about which areas they are allowing people to congregate at or is it kind of just random around the city? Is it in poorer parts of the city, wealthier parts of the city, that kind of thing.”

Bruce: “Its in areas where they’re not going to get chased out. So it’s not near a big store or a hotel or anything like that, its industrial areas, or abandoned areas. So one of them is on 33rd street for basically most of the mile south of marine drive, and there is nothing out there. One whole side of that street is just the airport property. So the city will come through about once a month and tag everything that is all broken down and unusable and will tow it away, but they aren't telling people to leave, they are just cleaning up after them to a certain degree.”

Stephanie: “Now, we as a group read an article about the Laurelhurst sweep in Street Routes. First of all, Ted Wheeler states that there were notifications put up two weeks in advance to the sweep. Have you seen notifications going up in any of the areas, warning them that it will be happening?”

Bruce: “So there is a statewide law that they have to give notice at least 72 hours before a sweep. So legally they are supposed to do that. It happens most of the time, not all of the time. What happens is they will put one up and they will immediately take a picture of it because within moments of their leaving, someone will tear it down. So you or I walking up to a camp seeing a notice is pretty rare. They do post it, they do let people know in the area that it has been posted. They will usually actually tell them “We will be here at 8 O’clock Monday morning”. They will tell them pretty specifically. Then when they show up its okay, its been posted, you've been warned, you have ten minutes to pack what you can pack, the rest of it is going in this dumpster here.”

Stephanie: "Another question, with the rapid response team that does come to clean, have you seen any altercations between the camps and rapid response? Or heard of any?"

Bruce: “I have not. So rapid response used to be the people who would do the sweeps. The cops would come through, get it started and then leave, then rapid response would do the sweep. The thing that has changed that i actually like is now rapid response is coming through and most of the time saying hey can we pick up the trash, tell us what's trash and we will take it away, they are not doing nearly as many sweeps. I actually talked to the guy that heads that whole bureau just last week actually, and he said they've gone from 15 sweeps a week to three. So rapid response has become better in terms of its worked together with the camps, let’s figure out where the trash is and we’ll take it away, but not let’s necessarily up end everybody and send them packing a couple blocks.”

Stephanie: "So in that article, it did state there are less sweeps, but there are also less garbage pick ups. Which is making the camps even more undesirable.”

Bruce: “That's true too. Yeah, so the reason we were talking to this last week was because we were trying to organize a thing where we are talking to people, we are getting into relationships, and they want to clean their camps up, so can we schedule a time for a garbage pick up? What rapid response is saying is right now is two to four days, we can't promise you a day. And what the camps are saying is you know, if we put garbage in a bag and put it at the curb, overnight that garbage is opened up and scrounged through and theres is garbage all over the place. So if you are saying two to four days, you are worthless. It's going to be a pile of trash, not a pile of garbage bags. And that's kind of what is happening and it does make the camps look really bad, the ones that are actually trying to clean themselves up, but rapid response isn't rapid anymore.

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