Street Roots • Dec 8-14, 2017
News
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WAIT-LISTED, from page 4
(shelter) at a couple hundred beds even
through the early part of 2017” and as the
Joint Office’s budget was being formulated,
said Denis Theriault, the Joint Office’s
spokesperson.
But demand steadily increased
throughout the winter and early spring,
then spiked as summer began. More than
400 people sought shelter throughout the
summer. By September, that number crept
close to 500 people.
Average stays in the shelter have also
dramatically increased. Three years ago,
the average stay was 23 days. Now it is 65
days.
“I can’t tell you why,” Miller said.
“Everybody wants to know why. Our best
guess is that the housing crisis is reaching
an impact.”
The average length of stay and the
increase in homelessness might be driven
by the unavailability of affordable housing
that families could live in - apartments
with multiple bedrooms.
According to data compiled by Oregon
Housing and Community Services, only 22
percent of rental units in Multnomah
County as of 2015 were affordable to those
earning up to 30 percent of the median
family income, or about $15,500 for a
single person.
And while housing is being built
throughout Portland, the only income
bracket that can afford most of the recently
built housing are those who make above 80
percent of M FI.
“We’ve watched over the last three years
as the market has pushed more and more
(families) out of housing and into our
system,” Theriault said. “We always knew
that we would have to keep looking at the
no-turn-away policy. We wanted to make
sure that families had a chance at a place
that was safe.”
Miller also said that the funds Human
Solutions has available for short-term rent
assistance, which helps families pay a
portion or all of their rent for a few
months, has quickly dwindled. Human
Solutions also has “diversion funds” to try
to stop families from becoming homeless,
whether that means paying overdue rent or
other charges.
“We were very rapidly spending down”
both pots of money, Miller said.
Ultimately, the family homeless system
is struggling with how best to manage the
financial resources it has.
Shelters are more expensive than
housing. Miller said it costs approximately
$25 per person per night in the shelter.
That includes staffing, food and so on. At
$100 to shelter a family of four each night,
that equates to about $3,000 per month -
well above the monthly rent for an
apartment that could house that family.
Motel rooms are more expensive, at $50
a night, but if an entire family can stay in
one motel room, it costs approximately
$1,500 per month.
“M e and many providers are torn about
where to spend the dollar,” Miller said.
“Do you expand the shelter system, to get
more folks off the street? If you’re
conscious, you know you’re taking a dollar
away from the programs that move people
... into permanent housing.”
‘I had no
choice’
Portland’s Leonard Higgins
has been convicted fo r his
role in the nation’s
biggest takeover o f fossil fu el
infrastructure
BY THACHER SCHMID
S T A F F W R IT E R
n Nov. 20, 350Montana.org hosted a
mock trial of “Valve Turner”
O
Leonard Higgins at the University of
Montana in Missoula.
One of the witnesses was Steve Running,
a Nobel Laureate scientist who gave 10
minutes of expert testimony on climate
change.
At the end of the mock trial, Higgins was
acquitted.
Two days later and four hours north,
Higgins’ real trial in Chouteau County
District Court played out differently. There,
scientific evidence about climate change —
the core of what activists call the
“necessity” defense — was not allowed.
“Every time I talked about climate
change and referenced (NASA climate
change scientist) Dr. James Hansen and my
feeling that I had no choice,” Higgins
explained, “the prosecution would object
that it was immaterial or irrelevant, and
the judge would uphold the objection.”
And so, a few hours before Thanksgiving,
a jury convicted Higgins of felony criminal
mischief and misdemeanor criminal
trespass after an hour’s deliberation. The
conviction stems from his role in the most
expansive, coordinated takeover of fossil
fuel infrastructure ever attempted in the
U .S.
On Jan. 2, Judge Daniel Boucher will
sentence Higgins, a longtime state of
Oregon IT manager and lifelong Oregonian.
Higgins, who was featured in Street Roots
last December, faces up to 10 years and
$50,000 for the felony, and six months and
$500 for trespassing. There are no
sentencing guidelines, so Higgins doesn’t
know whether he’ll get the book thrown at
him or a slap on the wrist.
Whatever happens, the four-state action
Higgins and the other Valve Turners
spearheaded on Oct. 11, 2016 may someday
be seen as a turning point in the fight
against climate change denial. On that date
the Valve Turners essentially shut down
the flow of Alberta Tar Sands oil from
Canada into the United States.
By early 2018, the legal consequences -
and the uneven sentences given in states
with divergent politics - will come into
focus. Fellow Valve Turner Michael Foster
in North Dakota faces up to 23 years at his
sentencing Jan. 18.
By contrast, Ken Ward got 32 days and
probation in Washington state, and Emily
P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F C L I M A T E D IR E C T A C T I O N
Leonard H iggins after he closed a block valve Oct. 11, 2016, on a pipeline in Montana.
Johnston and Annette Klapstein may also
get off comparatively lightly in Minnesota.
As in Montana, Washington and North
Dakota courts disallowed the “necessity”
defense, cutting off all connection between
climate change science and the activists’
actions.
In Minnesota’s fourth and last Valve
Turner trial, however, the worm may finally
turn.
In Clearwater County, Minn., Judge
Robert Tiffany is allowing defendants
Johnston and Klapstein to use the necessity
defense. The prosecution has appealed, but
Higgins believes the situation is “working
towards an appropriate crescendo.”
That trial will likely begin in February or
March.
In the meantime, Higgins isn’t kidding
himself about what he’s facing at Fort
Benton, the most inland port in the world
on the Missouri River.
“I’m planning that I won’t come back and
planning that I’ll be gone up to a couple
years,” he said. “I’m making arrangements.”
hat unemotional, plan-oriented response
is pure Leonard Higgins, who admits
he’s a “get-’er-done” kind of guy. Higgins’
approach isn’t based in radicalism, but
rather science - the stuff he relied upon
during three decades of information
technology project management for the
state.
“I’ve lived my whole life pretty much out
of responsibility and obligation,” Higgins
said.
“As an IT manager on large projects, I
T
was the person who figured out how to get
things done despite the red tape and
challenges,” Higgins said.
“This (civil disobedience) just kind of
continues that.”
Yet he just became a felon because of his
commitment to “mitigate catastrophic
climate change and its effects on public
health and the natural environment,” as
attorney Herman Watson TV’s
“Memorandum of Necessity” explains.
“It’s not incidental to be a felon for me,”
Higgins said. “It’s a label now. It’s not as
harsh as it could have been if my colleagues
in Washington and North Dakota were not
also felons, but it’s a bit shocking.”
The Valve Turners turned off five
pipelines spread across four states carrying
2.8 million barrels per day of tar sands oil,
often called the “dirtiest oil on the planet.”
Their action was coordinated with the
Standing Rock protests of the Dakota
Access Pipeline.
Now, as the Trump administration seeks
to repeal Obama-era carbon emissions
standards, push pro-coal policies and sell off
public spaces like Utah’s Bears Ears
National Monument, the court of public
opinion is growing more receptive to
environmental activism, graduating from
activist media to mainstream publications.
Higgins says being locked up is less scary
than doing nothing. His basic moral calculus
holds that what matters most is saving life
on Earth.
“We’re basically dooming our children
and future generations to an earth that
See CHOICE, page 11