Street roots., July 28, 2017, Page 7, Image 7

Street Roots • July 28-August 3, 2017
News
Trash collectors
People on an d o ff the streets are working together
to address a universal problem: garbage
BY A M A N D A WALDROUPE
through Southeast, Northeast and North
Portland. The program also cleans up the
garbage left at camps that have been
abandoned or swept by the police.
The program started about a year ago and
is operated by Central City Concern, one of
the city’s largest social-service agencies
that, in part, designs programs that provide
homeless people with jobs.
The Clean Start PDX program is funded
by One Point of Contact, the new city
program that oversees camp sweeps and
clean ups. The Joint Office of Homeless
Services also contributes funding. It’s a
separate program from Clean & Safe, the
Portland Business Alliance-funded program
that cleans up a 213-block area of downtown
Portland.
Clean Start PDX is made up of three two-
person crews, consisting of people who have
experienced homelessness the past, that
visit camps each day to collect garbage. The
garbage is then taken to Stanton Yard, the
city’s trash dump in inner northeast
Portland.
The program provides the camps with
blue bags, and Jay McIntyre, the program’s
manager, said that Slack and his co-workers
only pick up those bags, so a person’s
personal belongings are not taken away.
The crews visit the camps at least once or
twice a week. Slack said that he will make
two trips to Stanton Yard on any given day.
The number of bags Slack and his
co-workers collect number in the thousands.
person would be trespassing if he or she
attempted to put their garbage there.
uring the spring and summer last
It s not a lifestyle choice,” Mingus
Mapps, the director of the Parkrose Historic
year, Gilligan, a 40-year-old homeless
District, said, speaking of the amount of
man who lives in the Parkrose
neighborhood along the Columbia Slough,
trash that can exist near camps. “It’s an
infrastructure failure.”
took handfuls of garbage bags to the
homeless camps throughout the Parkrose
Parkrose’s garbage collection service is
neighborhood.
the brainchild of Mapps, who came up with
While handing the bags out, he and other
the idea after three listening sessions about
homelessness that the Parkrose Historic
volunteers reminded the campers that their
District helped convene last spring. One
garbage had to be bagged and taken to
designated drop-off areas by the next day.
session was with the business community,
On Friday mornings, inmate work crews
another with the neighborhood association,
from Multnomah County Inverness Jail
and the third with the neighborhood’s
homeless community.
collected the bags and took them away.
One issue came up over and over again:
The ad-hoc garbage collection service was
trash.
the brainchild of the Historic Parkrose
“That is one of the biggest issues, is
Prosperity Initiative, a neighborhood
garbage,” Gilligan said.
nonprofit focused on economic equity. The
The existence of trash at a camp, Gilligan
program was quickly effective - the camps
and others said, can make camps unsafe and
in Parkrose were noticeably cleaner.
unhealthy places to live. Rats and other
‘It made a big difference in how we
vermin can be attracted to the area. “It’s
lived,” Gilligan said.
demoralizing,” Mapps said.
According to data collected by the program ,
S T A F F W R IT E R
D
G
arbage is inextricably con n ected to
hom eless camps. Unfortunately, trash
near camps adds to the stigmatization of
homeless people and can perpetuate the
idea that homeless people and camps are
unsafe.
As Portland’s shortage of affordable
housing and housing crisis continues - with
no apparent end in sight - homeless camps
will continue to exist in large numbers.
There is a growing desire among policy
makers, neighborhoods and grassroots
organizations to make those camps more
livable - which involves cleaning up the
“Homeless people don’t want to live in
filth,” Gilligan said. “But we don’t have an
option (for how to get rid of garbage).
issue orders for the camps to be swept.
“The city is very complaint driven,”
McIntyre said, adding that the crews are
trained to .talk to campers about the effects
removing garbage can have on their lives,
which includes drawing less scrutiny.
he existence of garbage, and the limited
options people on the street have when
it comes to getting rid of it, is not something
that can be ignored, Mapps said.
“Humans beings produce refuse. That’s a
reality that is unavoidable,” he said. “One of
the problems that we face right now is a
lack of imagination around how people live
today. We have thousands of people living
out on the streets, but we haven’t created
the basic infrastructure for restrooms,
showers, laundry, garbage service.”
Stephanie Rawson, the manager of
Metro’s Solid Waste Cleanup &
Enforcement Program, which cleans up
illegal dump sites, agrees that more can be
done.
“People understand that this is an issue
and a challenge that needs to be addressed,”
she said, adding that she has been part of
some low-key conversations with various
service providers about starting more
garbage-collection services.
One lesson Mapps learned from
Parkrose’s program is that effective
collection is dependent upon knowing the
location of homeless camps. Placing
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The neighborhood’s garbage collection
to treat diabetes or other health conditions,
service started fairly easily: Mapps worked
McIntyre was unable to say). “It’s a huge
with local businesses to donate garbage
amount,” McIntyre said.
bags, and he worked with Gilligan and other
Slack takes before-and-after pictures of
people experiencing homelessness who
every clean-up that he does. The difference
volunteered to distribute the garbage bags
between a camp before a clean up and after
a clean up is like comparing night and day.
to the neighborhood’s camps. Mapps
The clean-ups and garbage collection of
guesses that there are between 20 and 25
camps in the neighborhood, mostly along
the camps makes them more
livable, McIntyre said, and
the Columbia Slough.
The entire program, including collection
also decreases the
chance that the city
services done by inmate work crews from
will receive
Inverness Jail, cost nothing.
garbage.
complaints about
“That’s just five or six entities working
When the numbers of homeless people
them and
together,” Mapps said.
camping along the Springwater Corridor
subsequently
But the program fell apart six months
Trail last year swelled to the hundreds, the
later after a number of the camps -
issue of garbage became more urgent. Then-
including Gilligan’s was swept by the
Mayor Charlie Hales placed porta-potties
Portland Police.
and dumpsters along the trail.
(Editor’s note: Gilligan was also featured
M ost of them were removed after the
this week in the July 25 Willamette Week after
mass sweep in September, but the city
security forces hired by the city threw away his
continues to collect garbage from 12
belongings in violation of the city s contractual
dumpsters and cans placed under the Steel
agreement for camp sweeps. Read more on that
Bridge, along the Springwater Corridor, and
issue at www.wweek.com.)
near Hazelnut Grove, a homeless village in
“Our partners kind of disappeared on us,”
the Overlook neighborhood.
Mapps said.
It’s the first time there has been a
He would like to re-start the program
dedicated effort to collect garbage from
again, which depends almost entirely, he
homeless camps and provide dumpsters.
said, on re-establishing the relationships
For people who live in homes, getting rid
with the people who live in Parkrose and
of garbage is easy, a weekly ritual for
finding out where they are.
Portlanders: the trash is bagged, put out in a
trash can and the can is emptied once a
week by garbage collection services.
rian Slack visits dozens of homeless
But people without an address do not
camps each week. He never knows what
have that option, and in many cases it can
he will find when he jumps out of his truck
be illegal for people to throw their garbage
and picks up the blue garbage bags he left
away in a privately owned garbage can. If a
with campers the last time he saw them.
garbage can is on a public sidewalk or right
As a crew leader of the Clean Start PDX
of away - the night before collection, for
program, Slack helps provide garbage
instance - a person can put their trash m it.
collection services to nearly 50 camps
But if the can is on private property, a
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a n d d ro p o ff th e ir g a r b a g e .
“It’s a place-based service,” he said.