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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JULY 13, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
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JEREMY FELDMAN
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Business Manager
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Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
GUEST COLUMNS
Winter is coming
Let’s marshal
resources now to
help the homeless
I
n a “mild” 2017/18 Astoria winter, two
desperate people experiencing homeless-
ness died of exposure.
Ronnie was an outspoken character whose
bark was worse than his bite. By his own
admission, he adopted an attitude (even of
incivility, at times) for self-preservation. He
admitted he had been roughed up by those
he thought were friends and carried a pocket
knife to deter others from stealing his coat,
blanket, and change of
underwear – again.
Ronnie was among
regular Astoria Warming
Center clients — during
Astoria’s most inclement
evenings — looking for a
BILL VAN shower, hot meal and warm
NOSTRAN bed.
The other fatality, this
year in town, was known to me only as
Janine. She came to the basement of the
Methodist Church only on occasion, and we
all wondered where she might be staying
whenever we did not see her. She reportedly
expired where she slept, on a park bench in
front of Video Horizons.
We are not certain that anyone will miss
Janine, particularly, but there are a number
in town who are trying to imagine and create
alternatives. And because this kind of night-
mare is becoming reality, we mourn.
Recently, Helping Hands Development
Director Raven Brown shared statistics with a
city task force which suggest upward of 1,000
are experiencing homelessness in Clatsop
County. According to surveys conducted by
Clatsop Community Action — in time for
annual reporting — there may be indicated
“a few less.” However, both Raven and CCA
Executive Director Elaine Bruce agree the
number is significant and alarming.
By the numbers
So, let’s use 1,000 for talking purposes.
And let’s also say the recent deaths, while
tragic, do contain a ray of hope for this
dilemma. The sooner that vagrants and
transients recognize that North Coast weather
is an issue which cannot easily be predicted
or managed, the less likely people will be
to come to the beach without resources and,
unfortunately, be relegated to living on our
streets.
Too harsh? Well, at least, with 30 cots at
the warming center and two deaths, Clatsop
County is now down to just 968 homeless.
The Astoria Rescue Mission provides an
additional 30 beds for men and, perhaps, their
House of Hope has nightly openings for a
similar number of women. However, the res-
cue mission does not permit any in its shelters
who have jobs, they have strict guidelines
about substance use, and they require clients
to participate in worship and enroll in religious
instruction. In truth, all are barriers to entry
into that program.
I regularly encounter folks who let me
know, “(They) would not darken our door
or get involved with organized religion if
their life depended on it!” I imagine many
people who are desperate have much the same
reticence about church — even though their
fragile lives, unfortunately, sometimes do.
Be that as it may, let’s give the rescue
mission the benefit of the doubt. For sake of
argument, let’s assume the best. That would
bring the number experiencing homelessness
in the county down to 908.
Enter Helping Hands Reentry Outreach. An
exciting project, undertaken by an ambitious
purveyor, with a plan to reclaim an abandoned,
but historic, boarding house in Uniontown.
Armed with both personal street experience
and impressive street “cred” (favorable track
record) assisting those who are willing to
commit to their own recovery make transition
from helpless to hopeful; Alan Evans Inc. is a
welcome partner — not only at the solutions
table, but with a promise of 60 bedroom
opportunities, as well. 848.
And yet, the announcement that a num-
ber of “affordable” units at the Emerald
Illustration by Noel Thomas
A mattress and bedding at the Astoria Warming Center, housed in the First United Meth-
odist Church.
Apartments will soon be upgraded and
repriced “closer to what the market will bear”
would seem to diminish some enthusiasm. At
very least, the coincidence there may be 60
individuals or families displaced (by a hike in
household rent expense, or by an inability to
cope with more than a $500 financial surprise)
is disheartening. 908.
Richard Garner — a member of First
Presbyterian Church — and I recently identi-
fied a distressed property on Alameda Avenue
which had been taken by the county for
failure to pay property tax. We asked County
Manager Cameron Moore to consider, “What
if … that 6-plex had a new owner and it could
be reclaimed/refurbished so as to make a
temporary home for people in transition?” To
which Moore revealed that Greater Oregon
Behavioral Health Inc. had already spoken
for the property and is planning something
similar. Fantastic! 902.
Reasons for optimism
Such creativity, generally, and dedication of
these community energies and resources, spe-
cifically, are certainly reasons for optimism.
And, in mid-July, it would seem we have
time — while the sun is out and temperatures
are so much like summer. After all, it has been
a number of months since anyone had to think
about the possibility that someone might, actu-
ally, perish in the North Coast cold and wet.
However, we do not want to wait too long
to begin identifying vacant, available and/or
underutilized commercial spaces in town. We
do not want to wait too long to begin making
our plans, developing our partnerships and/
or lining up the requisite financial supports.
Because for those whose daily existence
depends upon the struggle to find food,
facilities and overnight shelter, the mantra of a
popular HBO fantasy series is all too real.
No matter how sunny and warm it is today
and regardless of how long the TV meteo-
rologists predict summer in Astoria will last:
“Winter is coming.”
Bill Van Nostran is pastor of First Pres-
byterian — “The Big Yellow Church” on the
corner of 11th Street and Grand Avenue in
Astoria.
West Coast cities struggling with prosperity
I
t’s beyond laughable that a one-bedroom
apartment can sell for $1.5 million in
San Francisco — and get multiple offers
within a day. Or that dumpsters sport satiri-
cal “for rent” signs. Or that the asking price
for a side order of Brussels sprouts at many
restaurants is $16.
Beyond laughable because such stories
pass like a Bay Area breeze in the city
named for a pauper from medieval Assisi.
But the latest assessment
of the out-of-reach quality
of one of the world’s great
places to live came as a real
jolt:
A family of four earning
$117,000 is now classified
TIMOTHY as low income in the
EGAN
San Francisco area. This
threshold, used to determine
eligibility for federal housing assistance, is
the highest in the nation — and no surprise.
Once upon a time in the American West,
the most exclusive places — Sun Valley,
Aspen, Lake Tahoe, the San Juan Islands
in Washington state — were known as
“Golden Ghettos,” an imperfect term used
by trendy demographers.
But now the entire West Coast, from
San Diego to Vancouver, British Columbia,
is a string of gilded megalopolises. These
are the tomorrow cities, the tech cities, the
cities of the young and educated. And each
of them is struggling with a prosperity crisis
that threatens the very nature of living there.
A New Yorker would say, so what, get
used to paying through the nose to live in
a tiny space on limited land — Manhattan,
Brooklyn and now Queens have seen
it all. But people on the West Coast,
perhaps naively, are not ready to say,
“Fuhgeddaboudit.” Not yet. With varying
degrees of success, they are fighting for the
soul of their cities.
Residents of San Francisco are troubled
by the same things that we are in my home-
town, Seattle — the homeless and the high
cost of living. The issues are linked, but not
entirely.
“Walking the streets of San Francisco
can be a frightening, demoralizing, even
unhealthy experience for residents and tour-
ists alike.” This comment came not from
the medical association that just pulled its
convention because its members no longer
feel safe in a city of 7,500 homeless. It came
from the woman just elected mayor of San
Francisco, London Breed.
Raised in poverty, and the first African-
American chosen to lead the city, Breed has
vowed to remove homeless encampments
within a year. There is nothing compassion-
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
Large spheres take shape in front of an Amazon building as new construction continues across the street in Seattle.
ate or financially sound in spending $250
million a year on homeless services that still
leaves thousands sleeping on the street.
In order to do the other thing that Breed
wants to do, build more housing of all kinds,
she has to secure the social contract. That
is: Can people accept more crowded neigh-
borhoods, in a city that is already the second
most densely populated among big cities in
the nation, if they feel that elected leaders
do not have a decent plan — or a clue?
As Breed notes, San Francisco has
created only one home for every eight new
jobs between 2010 and 2015. She may not
be ready to utter a hard truth that some res-
idents already have: that not everyone who
wants to live there can.
In Seattle, the nation’s fastest-growing
city for this decade, the social contract is
nearly broken. The city used to be run by
creative problem solvers. Now, an ideolog-
ically driven City Council dreams up new
things to anger residents while seeming to
let the homeless have the run of the place.
The latest backward move was a tax on
jobs — quickly repealed after a citizens’
revolt. While the council was trying to
target Amazon, the city’s biggest private
employer, the tax would have also hurt
grocery stores and family-run businesses, as
if they caused the homeless crisis and spike
in real estate.
An unholy alliance of socialists and
developers threatens to destroy the city’s
single-family neighborhoods with a major
upzoning — further disrupting trust between
residents and politicians. If the intent is to
make Seattle more affordable, this approach
has failed. The city has built more new
units of housing over the last five years than
in the prior half-century. And yet Seattle
continues to lead the nation in home price
increases.
Vancouver has taxed speculation, hitting
foreign buyers and those who own homes
that sit empty. Prices have stabilized some-
what. But the globalization of the housing
market is a problem more particular to
British Columbia.
No matter what you hear anecdotally, peo-
ple will continue to move to the West Coast.
The city of St. Francis has seen far worse than
the present crisis. More than half the popula-
tion was homeless after the 1906 earthquake.
But by midcentury, it was the American city,
birthplace of the United Nations.
We need a new urbanism. For all the
grumping about how great the cities facing
the Pacific used to be, they can be greater
still if the bright minds now trying to “dis-
rupt” a grilled cheese sandwich can focus on
the biggest challenge of this generation. We
know what doesn’t work. The task is to find
a creative mix of solutions that do.
Timothy Egan is a syndicated columnist
for the New York Times News Service.