Street roots., February 10, 2017, Page 10, Image 10

News
Street Roots •
Feb. 10-16, 2017
is iB ilii
Page 10
BY A M ANDA WALDROUPE
STAFF W R IT E R
T t is 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 31, and close
I
A
to two dozen people wait outside the doors
of Catholic Charities’ main Portland office
on the corner of Southeast Powell Boulevard
and 28th Avenue.
They are young, old, white, of African
descent, Hispanic, homeless and living in
shelters. Some are case managers standing in
line on behalf of their clients. They are
accompanied by friends, family, or in some
cases, their dogs.
They wear scarves, hats, hoods over their
heads, gloves, coats and layers beneath their
coats. Their breath form small clouds in the
cold air as they stand or sit in walkers, which,
with their brakes on, are immobile and thus
unable to careen down 28th Avenue, which
drops steeply down the block from Powell.
They carry backpacks or manila envelopes
thick from the amount of paperwork - the
rental application, financial paperwork and
other necessary documentation - held inside.
They are all filled with high hopes and
anxiety.
The people are all potential tenants of the
S t Francis Apartments and they are lined up
outside Catholic Charities for the organization’s
“lease-up event” the first time applications
opened for people to apply to live in the S t
Francis Apartments.
The S t Francis Apartments will be a new,
102-unit building scheduled to open this April.
Located in inner southeast Portland on the
ground that was once S t Francis Park, it will
be the first apartment building affordable to
the lowest-income Portlanders to open since
the Fern Grove apartments, a 33-unit building
located in outer east Portland, opened in June
2016.
This past year, Portland had the fastest
rising rents in the country. In the past month,
news of two affordable buildings in North
Portland facing a 100 percent rent increase and
a mass eviction ricocheted throughout the city,
amplifying the fact that the region’s affordable
housing and homelessness crisis is not over by
a long shot.
Catholic Charities will accept applications for
.the S t Francis Apartments through early April,
but the people waiting in line before the sun
rose on Jan. 31 stand the best chance of being
accepted. Completed applications are being
considered on a first-come-first-serve basis.
While Catholic Charities has gone to great
lengths to create an application system to help
people interested in applying, the initial
requirement - to show up in person, on a
Tuesday morning - led Some housing and
social service advocates to question how fair a
first-come-first-serve process is, given the
vulnerability and barriers many homeless and
low-mcome people face.
TA eborah K., who declined to give her full
-Lx last name, was among the first dozen
people standing outside of Catholic Charities.
Her gray hair was neatly pulled back in a
ponytail, and she clutched a coffee-filled
thermos to her chest with both hands.
“I wanted to be somewhere near the front to
make sure that I had a
chance at one of the
" I wanted to be somewhere
apartments,” she said.
Deborah, 64, moved
aear the front to make sure
to Portland this past
that I had a chance at one
August from San
of
the apartments."
Bernardino, Calif. One
month later, she
SC
became homeless.
APeLv iN^
Aí N1NA^ I ? M° ” ™
“It was poor
-FRANO!
planning,” she said.
She camped, along
with her grown son,
who moved with her.
“It wasn’t too bad at first,” she said. “It was
kind of fun. Then the weather changed.”
She’s been staying at a shelter since fall, but
she didn’t say which one. She said »any of the
women staying in the shelter are escaping
abusive domestic situations.
Ten of the 102 units at S t Francis wUl be
reserved for people earning less than 30
percent of Portland’s median family income
which amounts to $14,300 per year for a single
See ST. FRANCIS, p ag e 11