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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 12, 2018)
4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2018 Homeless: ‘It’s heartbreaking. We weren’t bothering anybody’ Continued from Page 1A At the end of Franklin Ave- nue on the east end of Astoria, the sound of heavy machines, people talking and items being hauled through the underbrush resounded through the woods while Linda Taylor watched her dog, a Labrador pit bull mix, worry a stick. Taylor hadn’t been sleeping well for the last few nights, knowing this day was coming, and she didn’t know where she would be staying that night. Now, as friends helped her take apart the campsite that had been her home for more than a year, she went back and forth about whether to call in to work and say she couldn’t make it for her shift that eve- ning. She has been trying to save up to move indoors. People — a city leader, a social service representative, police officers — would trek up a path slick with wet, fallen leaves and mud and stand with her while her dog sniffed at them suspiciously and barked. Each time, they would ask, “Where do you think you’re going to go?” “I don’t know,” she told people again and again. “It’s heartbreaking,” she said as city employees moved stuff out of camps downhill from her. “We weren’t bother- ing anybody,” She and her partner had been living in the woods for around three years, keeping to themselves. Now, they felt sin- gled out because of other peo- ple’s bad behavior — a feeling echoed by other campers who declined to be quoted by name. “We’re here to help you,” Viviana Matthews, deputy director with Clatsop Commu- nity Action, told Taylor. Matthews and City Coun- cilor Cindy Price were pres- ent on Friday to talk with the remaining campers and see if they needed help contacting social services. Price, a mem- ber of Mayor Arline LaMear’s homelessness solutions task force, volunteered to be a point of contact for homeless campers. Matthews asked if Taylor could come by the agency that afternoon to talk about housing and what services she might be eligible to receive. Taylor shook her head, thinking again about whether or not she could afford to skip work later. The people Mat- thews talked to Friday were not ready to seek out services for a variety of reasons, but Mat- Sultan: ‘My plan is to stay local’ Continued from Page 1A Parks and Recreation Depart- ment, but has launched him- self full time into building his snack company. “It’s tough to go from a reg- ular paycheck to, ‘I don’t know what’s coming next,’” he said. Sultan is working with Clatsop Community Col- lege’s Small Business Devel- opment Center and the Ore- gon Entrepreneurs Network, taking trainings and reading up on entrepreneurship. The key to making it is slow, steady growth, while establishing his product with consumers and vendors, Sultan said. “My plan is to stay local, in the Pacific Northwest to begin with, and to expand very slowly,” he said. Selling fewer than 500 snacks a month, Sultan is far from many of the federal requirements, such as post- ing the nutritional informa- tion about his bars, but said he plans to do so on his web- site to help build trust with consumers. For production space, Sul- tan rents the kitchen at 3 Cups Coffee House. He hopes to one day open a commercial produc- tion kitchen other micropro- ducers can also use, and to one day attract investors, similar to when cereal giant Kellogg acquired protein bar-maker RXBAR for $600 million. Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian ABOVE: Trash and other debris is removed from a home- less camp in Astoria. RIGHT: Vernon Hall helps remove trash from a camp. thews hoped to at least provide information about how Clat- sop Community Action could help them. She encountered, and tried to correct, several misconceptions about what the agency is able to offer. “I’m just a face,” she said. “A friendly face, hopefully.” Conflicted Vernon Hall, an advocate for the homeless who until just recently had been home- less himself and living in the woods, helped city workers haul out trash and abandoned items. He felt conflicted as he worked; he could see the issue from all sides. While he sym- pathized with people like Tay- lor who have not caused any problems for the neighbor- ing homes, he also understood the city’s standpoint. Neigh- bors worry about people com- ing and going constantly and about possible illegal activ- ity — police have found sto- len items at some abandoned camps — while the fire and police departments say it would be difficult to respond to any kind of emergency in the woods. Still, Hall couldn’t say exactly why he decided to come help the city. “I don’t know,” he said. “To make sure everybody’s treated right — with respect.” And they were as far as he could see. “They’ve been given plenty of warnings, plenty of lee- way,” he said of the campers. But he remains critical of the city’s approach and won- dered how they are deciding what is trash, which will be thrown away, and what is a personal belonging to be held at the police department for people to claim. “We threw away what was obviously garbage and what the remaining campers told us was garbage of theirs or left by others,” said Kenny Hansen, the police department’s home- less liaison officer. Cleanup crews left one camp alone until they could get in touch with the man who they knew had been liv- ing there. They are still work- ing on disposing of buckets of human waste left by campers, Hansen said. While Friday’s effort removed trash from the woods and broke up camps, it hasn’t stopped people from camp- ing. Many people have simply moved deeper into the woods. “Right now, it’s a cat and mouse game,” Hall said. It was City Councilor Price’s first time seeing the camps. She walked with Han- sen and Matthews from site to site. “Everyone’s just working hard to get it together,” she said, including both the home- less and the workers cleaning up the camps. Some of the homeless cou- ples Price talked to had the added difficulty of getting their partners to agree it was time to abandon their camps, she said. Franklin Avenue neighbor- hood for about a year, walked down a city access road Fri- day morning and watched the cleanup crews work for a while. He used to walk his dog and run on trails in the woods. But he worried about encoun- tering off-leash dogs belong- ing to campers, and the camps themselves made him uneasy. The cleanup is a positive step for the city to take, he said, concerned about envi- ronmental impacts and health issues associated with unmon- itored and unofficial camps. “You can’t just let peo- ple camp anywhere that they want,” he said. Spalding has said police do not plan to go out and clean up any camps besides the ones they identified in August. They will, however, respond to reports or complaints of new camps. Several new camps have been reported in a grassy area not far from the Franklin Ave- nue camps, off Lief Erikson Drive. They are uphill from a muddy trail, hidden behind a screen of trees. They are likely the next camps the city will address. Sleigh this holiday season! Take the reins on holiday spending with a low-rate holiday loan. Positive step Phil Wickey, a federal biol- ogist who has lived in the Divorce need not be expensive. We help you get the paperwork right and provide mediation to help you divide your assets. Christy Shoop Brian G. 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