April 11, 2018 The Skanner Page 3
News
cont’d from pg 1
In the hours leading up
to his death Elifritz suf-
fered an apparent mental
health crisis, and a video
of the shooting shows
him more than 20 feet
away from the officers in
the building. He entered
CityTeam
Ministries
homeless shelter as an
Alcoholics Anonymous
meeting was about to
start; friends of Elifritz’s
say he had graduated six
months before from an
addiction recovery pro-
gram at Central City Con-
cern. Police and witness
accounts say Elifritz held
a knife to his own throat
during an earlier police
encounter in Southeast
Portland after calling 911,
and later crashed a stolen
car near the shelter.
Tuesday local media
reported on a resurfaced
Portland Monthly arti-
cle from 2007 that said
Elifritz was at one time
involved with the White
Mapping
supremacist gang Euro-
pean Kindred.
Local activists orga-
nized a vigil Sunday af-
ternoon and planned to
demonstrate a Portland
City Hall Wednesday af-
ternoon after The Skan-
ner’s press time. They’ve
said they’re aware of Eli-
fritz’s prior affiliations
but also his struggle with
mental health and addic-
tion, and will organize
around the underlying
issue of police brutality.
“We are going to con-
tinue to organize around
this but not based on the
individual. Instead, we
will be focusing on the
impact on the houseless
community, the ways the
mayor plans to further
criminalize the poor and
our police union contract
which discourages ac-
countability,” Portland’s
Resistance leader Greg-
ory McKelvey wrote on
Twitter Monday.
Remembering Dr. King
Pastors and members of the clergy join hands and sing “We Shall Overcome” at the end of “A Day of Remembrance -Commemorating
the Life and Legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” on the 50th Anniversary of his assassination April 4 at Mount Zion Baptist
Church in Seattle. The evening featured many distinguished speakers and performers like the Rev. Paul Benz with faith Action Network,
State Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos, Radio Host and longtime Civil Rights activist Eddie Rye, King County Council member Larry
Gossett, Spoken word artists Louie Tan Vital and Tia Yarbrough and Pastor Wright and the Total Experience Choir celebrating Martin
Luther King Jr.’s contributions to the fight for equality and social justice.
cont’d from pg 1
ated.
“They’re still coming in. I get
emails all the time,” Smith told
The Skanner. The map shows
neighborhoods in southwest
Portland, Laurelhurst and the
section of northeast Portland
currently known as Sabin.
Clicking on map entries re-
veals text from residents’ hous-
ing deeds restricting purchase
of the property to Whites, or
excluding specific races (typ-
ically African Americans and
Chinese and Japanese immi-
grants).
Smith started collecting the
covenants as an intern with
the Bureau of Planning and
Sustainability, and has contin-
ued her work as an intern with
the Portland Housing Bureau.
Ryan Curren, a project man-
ager with the Bureau of Plan-
ning and Sustainability, said
he got the idea for the project
while working on planning for
the city’s southwest corridor.
He wanted to know the history
of the affected neighborhoods
before making recommenda-
tions, and was aware of a data-
base in Seattle that mapped re-
strictive covenants and helped
shape housing policy in the
future.
“
into moving into or out of cer-
tain neighborhoods, as well
as policy in the Portland Real-
tors’ code of ethics that threat-
ened real estate agents with
blackballing if they integrated
neighborhoods.
Barber is also placing Port-
land’s exclusionary housing
practices in the context of the
We knew [segregated neighbor-
hoods] weren’t natural
“We knew [segregated neigh-
borhoods] weren’t natural.
They were a result of choices
made in private action and
public policy, an understand-
ing which helped us in terms
of land use planning,” Curren
said.
PSU history professor Katy
Barber said her students are
also researching artifacts like
real estate ads, which in the
first half of the century used
overtly racist language to ma-
nipulate White homebuyers
Donation Land Act — which of-
fered free land to some White
settlers, but excluded Native
Americans and immigrants
— and the creation of reserva-
tions for Native Americans.
According to Curren, the
most concrete outcome of the
creation of the Seattle database
was the passage of a subse-
quent law making them easier
to remove from housing deeds.
This year Oregon’s legislature
passed a similar law intended
to remove the bureaucratic
headache of striking the lan-
guage from deeds. Historians
say racially restrictive cove-
nants were typically enforced
by neighborhood associations
that could — and sometimes
did — file lawsuits if a home in
their neighborhood was sold
to a person of color.
Melissa Lang, a graduate
student in public history at
PSU and the secretary of the
Portland NAACP Branch, said
it’s also important to note that
Portland’s labyrinth of racist
housing policies was also met
with heavy resistance. She
studies the ways in which res-
idents, both Black and White,
resisted policy by forming
financial institutions that
would offer loans to African
Americans when most banks
would not, and by working
with White businessmen and
lawyers to act as legal repre-
sentatives for loans to African
Americans. Starting in the
1910s and 1920s, she said, the
Black press played a key role
in encouraging and promoting
Black homeownership.
“African Americans have
owned property all across
the city. It was not just a way
to throw roots down; it was a
form of defiance,” Lang said.
Smith is still searching for
covenants, and she, Barber and
Lang spoke at Oregon Histori-
cal Society April 8 as part of a
series of events honoring the
50th anniversary of the Fair
Housing Act, which was signed
into law April 10, 1968. Next
week’s edition of The Skanner
News will include a four-page
insert on Fair Housing with
more information on local
events celebrating the law.
Barber’s students will also
present their research at the
Vanport Mosaic Festival in
May on the long-term effects
of housing discrimination.
“The long reach of that his-
tory is still playing out today.
Just as important, or maybe
more important, is the tools of
resistance,” Barber said.
cont’d from pg 1
project, he wanted to do something big-
ger, so he called in the partners.
“We’re very lucky to be in the posi-
tion we’re in, and we know some people
aren’t as lucky. And because they aren’t,
we know we need to assist them,” said
Goodwin, who grow up volunteering
alongside his mother for Habitat for
Humanity in North Carolina. “I work
with a lot of millennials and younger
people, so this is an opportunity for
them to see that there’s another side to
the way people live in our community,
and it gives them an opportunity to as-
sist with that.”
Beginning in July 2017, the four tiny
houses were constructed on site with
the help of trade trainers Portland
Youth Builders, Constructing Hope and
Oregon Tradeswomen, which togeth-
er provided a chance for women, low
income communities, marginalized
youth, people of color and justice-in-
volved individuals to accrue hands-on
building skills in the creation of safe
shelters.
Students of Portland Youth Builders
were also onsite at the tiny house un-
veiling last week to build a number of
garden beds for residents of Dignity
Village.
“The problems we’re all interested
in solving are systemic problems that
“
We’re very lucky to
be in the position
we’re in, and we
know some people
aren’t as lucky
are deeply inter-related,” said ReBuild-
ing Center executive director Alison
Dennis. “It’s the connection between
environmental sustainability and an
alternative to a disposable economy –
and putting back into use both the ma-
terials that are salvageable as well as
the people, who society maybe thinks
aren’t part of the solu-
tion, they’re just seen
and stereotyped as the
problem.”
Since Dignity Village
opened, the ReBuilding
Center has been donat-
ing and replacing its ma-
terials as they reach their
life expectancy, mainly
due to mold and leaks.
“I’m so stoked about
this,” said village res-
ident Scott Layman.
“When we first got here, Left to right: Josh Kopczynski of DPI Solar, Portland Youth Builders
we used whatever we student, Alison Dennis of the ReBuilding Center, John Goodwin of
could, however we could. the Portland Trail Blazers, architect Yianni Doulis, James Rice of
But it wasn’t all up to Constructing Hope, and Tom Patzkowski of the ReBuilding Center.
code. We started out with
our tents on palettes.
an additional four tiny houses, which
And when it rained here, we were in a will also be outfitted with solar panels
puddle. And then we slowly started re- that will tie into the village’s electrical
placing the old structures with livable grid.
structures.”
Read the full story at TheSkanner.com
The project partners are working on
PHOTO BY MELANIE SEVCENKO
Dignity
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
Shooting
