Racial Equity
Progress
Hazardous
Beauty
See story, page 2
An intersection
of gender, race
and class
Report inds success
but more work ahead
QR code for
Portland Observer
Online
See Local News, page 3
‘City of Roses’
Volume XLV
Number 3
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • January 20, 2016
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
photo by o livia o livia /t he p ortland o bserver
A temporary men’s shelter was opened Monday in a building on the corner of Southwest Fourth Avenue and Washington Street, a site which had previously housed the
now-defunct Western Business College.
Property owners
give up space
for homeless
o livia o livia
t he p ortland o bserver
For many, the Martin Luther King Jr.
holiday was a reminder of the late civ-
il rights leader’s dream for freedom and
equality. Across the city, service projects
and community gatherings took place to
honor King’s work and set an example for
giving back and racial progress, but one
of the most notable moments came with
Monday’s opening of an emergency men’s
shelter in downtown Portland.
Beds now ill the former classrooms of
the Washington Center, which had housed
the now-defunct Western Business College
on the corner of Southwest Fourth Avenue
by
Shelter
Answers
Call
and Washington Street. The building’s
owners, Menashe Properties, temporari-
ly donated the mostly empty site to help
homeless people, where the gap between
the American Dream of owning a home
clashes so sharply for disadvantaged resi-
dents who are living on the streets.
The donation could be compared to a vi-
sion King advocated for when he called for
a “Beloved Community,” in which all peo-
ple can share in the wealth of the earth and
where poverty, hunger and homelessness
would not be tolerated because interna-
tional standards of human decency would
not allow it.
The plan to use the Menashe property
as a temporary housing site was formal-
ized with the help of Portland City Com-
missioner Dan Saltzman who is responsi-
ble for the Portland Housing Bureau. The
Portland Business Alliance also threw
their support behind the proposal and met
with Menashe Properties to facilitate the
temporary use of the building.
The effort followed a declared hous-
ing state of emergency by Mayor Charlie
Hales and a rental state of emergency as
issued by the Community Alliance of Ten-
ants of Oregon, a non-proit group that es-
timates there are 4,000 people in need of
shelter on any given night in the Portland
area.
The number of people without a place to
call home has been on the rise in the past
C ontinued on p age 14