Stop safe rest villages
Dan Ryan would like to incorporate 70 safe rest villages throughout Portland. Safe Rest Villages are not the answer to ending Portland’s homeless crisis. Dan Ryan, Portland City, Multnomah County, and the Joint Office have made a commitment to keep a low barrier of entry to these sites. This creates high-risk encampments where crime, littler, drug addiction and assault may take place and spread to neighboring communities. This leads to neighborhood decay. Safe Rest Villages are a misuse of $16 million of public funds. How many villages will we have to build in every community to end the homeless crisis? What is the criteria to live in these villages? For how long will a “transitional” lease last? The answers to these questions do not exist. Thus, Safe Rest Villages are not the answer.
Instead of promoting urban camping and Safe Rest Villages as treatments for addiction and mental illness, I propose we use those resources to help the homeless and people suffering from mental illness. Putting them into tiny sheds sprinkled throughout every community in Portland is not a safe or compassionate solution.
I propose a halt to Safe Rest Villages. This form of housing has been tried in other cities and these sites are an expensive band-aid that fails to address the bigger issue. In Los Angeles, the city government pays $65,000 per unit, per year to manage villages like this. This makes them the most expensive resource for homeless housing in Los Angeles. I'm afraid that maintaining these Safe Rest Villages will end up being much more expensive than the median cost of a one bedroom apartment in Portland. In San Francisco these types of villages have turned into drug consumption sites. What happens to an individual living in these sites when this form of harm reduction fails?
The spaces targeted for villages should be used for permanent affordable housing solutions. There are too many unanswered questions for these sites to continue in Portland.
Dan Ryan and the City Council are trying to paint a picture of the "Safe Rest Villages" as being quaint, white-picket-fence additions to Portland’s neighborhoods.
The reality is that these sites are unkept and potentially dangerous, with no conditions for residence and no requirements for treatment or rehabilitation. They are another example of the council’s “anything goes” approach to policy.
