Friday, September 24, 2021 | Seaside Signal | SeasideSignal.com • A5
‘It is a home visit, but their home is outside’
For homeless liaisons, the
outreach is often personal
By ERICK BENGEL
The Astorian
It’s shortly after 8 a.m. on the Astoria
Riverwalk, just east of the trolley stop near
Safeway. Cheryl Paul and Jodi Anderson,
the homeless liaisons of Clatsop Commu-
nity Action, stroll toward the bushes and
greet a 44-year-old man who emerges from
a small, makeshift shelter.
“Anything going on?” Paul asks him.
“Oh, just the same,” he said, clutching a
small coffee in one hand, a bag of tobacco
in the other. He’s broke and waiting for the
beginning of the month. For much of the
last three years, he’s been homeless.
Paul tells him he’s high on the list to get
into the Merwyn Apartments, the renovated
affordable housing complex downtown.
“Really?” he said.
“You may be next, so you need to make
sure that you’re checking in with them,”
Paul said.
“OK,” he said.
He’s in the queue for a studio apartment,
as long as he follows through with the prop-
erty manager. “Please check in with her,
OK?” Paul urges.
“Uh-huh.”
“And then we’ll help you after that, you
know?” Paul said. “Don’t spend all your
time down here and not check in and miss
your apartment ...”
“OK.”
“ ... because she can’t get a hold of you,
you know? Got it?”
He said he planned to head that way after
he finishes his coffee.
The conversation is casual, but Paul’s
drift is intentional, structured. She is help-
ing the man, who has autism, map out his
day, break it down into little missions that,
taken together, could make his life better, or
at least prevent it from getting worse.
Paul, the former coordinator of the Asto-
ria Warming Center, a seasonal, low-barrier
homeless shelter, has known him for about
three years, when he became a frequent
overnight guest. Anderson met him when
she served dinner there.
Paul reminds the man it is “shower day,”
a thrice-a-week service where he can wash
up and get some fresh clothes at the warm-
ing center. She and Anderson want him to
look nice when he visits the Merwyn. And
later that day, they tell him, there would be
pizza at Ninth Street Park furnished by Fill-
ing Empty Bellies.
But, she tells him, make sure you check
in with the Merwyn so that apartment
doesn’t go to someone else. “I want you,
you, you to be housed,” Paul encourages.
“He’s kind of special to us,” Paul said
afterward. She and Anderson worry about
him. He may become frustrated, not show
up at all.
It’s shortly after 8 a.m. on the Astoria
Riverwalk, just east of the trolley stop near
Safeway. Cheryl Paul and Jodi Anderson,
the homeless liaisons of Clatsop Commu-
nity Action, stroll toward the bushes and
greet a 44-year-old man who emerges from
a small, makeshift shelter.
“Anything going on?” Paul asks him.
“Oh, just the same,” he said, clutching a
small coffee in one hand, a bag of tobacco
in the other. He’s broke and waiting for the
beginning of the month. For much of the
last three years, he’s been homeless.
Paul tells him he’s high on the list to get
into the Merwyn Apartments, the renovated
affordable housing complex downtown.
The homeless liaisons — born of a rec-
ommendation from Astoria’s homelessness
solutions task force and inspired by similar
outreach in other cities — were launched
in spring. They work to connect the local
homeless population with services that can
assist them: food access, medical care, drug
treatment, transportation, legal services, aid
for veterans, places to get clean — all bend-
ing toward housing as the ultimate goal.
They also introduce them to the state
Department of Human Services, Clatsop
Behavioral Healthcare and The Harbor,
an organization that advocates for people
who have faced sexual assault and domes-
Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
Cheryl Paul, left, and Jodi Anderson stop at the Garden of Surging Waves in Astoria.
again, mostly with new arrivals.
Some would-be encounters have the
potential to be problematic.
There is, for example, a homeless camp
near the Seaside Depot on Alder Mill Ave-
nue. Paul and Anderson have been advised
by both Clatsop Community Action and
Seaside police not to enter without a police
request or a police escort. And some people
just give off a bad vibe. “I’m not going to
approach them,” Paul said.
‘I had all my arrogance
burned out of me’
Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
Housing is the ultimate goal for Clatsop Community Action’s homeless liaisons.
tic violence.
According to Clatsop Community
Action, since April the pair have logged
about 2,000 miles in Paul’s blue Subaru
Outback, which is packed with bottled
water, snacks from the Astoria Food Pantry,
spare blankets and clothing such as socks
and underwear. The liaisons have reached
out to about 90 people, many of them
repeatedly. The average is about 14 con-
tacts per day, Paul said.
They’ve helped get seven people into
the Merwyn, and a veteran into housing
near the Astoria Aquatic Center, according
to Viviana Matthews, the executive director
of Clatsop Community Action.
Matthews said at a May forum that the
county had more than 1,000 people expe-
riencing homelessness in 2020. “We’re
talking about 1,000 people who are staying
in a place not meant for human habitation,”
which includes streets, shelters and vehi-
cles, she said.
Home visits
Paul said that having relationships
already in place from her warming center
days made her new job “1,000 percent” eas-
ier.The liaisons know the places their clien-
tele haunt — not just the high-profile hang-
outs, like Ninth Street Park and the Garden
of Surging Waves downtown, where a ris-
ing homeless presence has attracted atten-
tion, but the doorways where they take
cover.
“It is a home visit, but their home is out-
side,” Anderson said.
Paul often knows who’s around by seeing
a cart and its contents, or clothing and bed-
ding left behind. She recognized a woman
from a distance by the pink shoes she was
wearing; they had come from Paul’s car.
After the pair visited the Riverwalk,
they drove through Astoria looking for two
young women who have been struggling on
the street, have even been beaten up. The
liaisons wanted to see if anything was obvi-
ously wrong, if they were passed out on
the sidewalk somewhere, but the women
weren’t in their usual spots outside bars,
banks or other establishments.
En route to Seaside, the liaisons scoped
out Warrenton’s Premarq Center, but no one
was there, nor was anyone at the restrooms
behind the Seaside Carousel Mall. For
many of the liaison’s regulars, it was sim-
ply too early.
At one point, Paul and Anderson drove
by the restrooms near the Seaside Chamber
of Commerce. A group sheltering beneath
the restrooms’ overhang was still tucked in;
one of them lay within an improvised tent,
an orange tarp draped over a bicycle. At a
couple of sites — such as where avenues D
and E meet behind Safeway — the liaisons
left black trash bags, giving the people who
dwell in the abutting thicket a means to pick
up after themselves.
At a homeless hotspot on Avenue E,
where a sign reads, “No loitering or solicit-
ing,” they handed out water and bus passes.
A young woman asked for Q-tips; Paul said
she would bring some next time.
On Necanicum Drive, where people liv-
ing out of trailers and campers park on either
side of the road, Paul gave one woman who
needs legal advice a card for the Oregon
Law Center. When Paul knocked on another
woman’s trailer door, she was greeted with
a firm, “Go away!” Early in the job, the
Seaside Police Department asked the liai-
sons to try persuading the nomads there to
move along. For a time, they had accom-
plished it, but now the street is filling up
Back in Astoria, they brought a shell-
pink bath towel to Bruce Zinzer, a 71-year-
old they recently helped move into a
fourth-floor studio apartment at the Mer-
wyn. A long-retired claims adjustor, Zinzer
had been living in his Lincoln Navigator,
getting by on Social Security, camping at
places like Saddle Mountain and across the
river in Washington state.
“I had enough arrogance, I guess, to
think that I could pull it off and stay that
way for a while — and did for about a year
or so,” he said.
But he ended up at the Astoria Warm-
ing Center. He had spent a handful of
nights in the rain, exposed to the elements.
“It majorly sucked,” he said. He had slept
behind the American Legion, then in a
restroom. “Wow, what a pathetic life,” he
marveled. “That’s when it started adding up
to me,” he said. “I mean, it really didn’t take
much to convince me that maybe I ought to
get an apartment again.”
“Anyway,” he added, “I had all my arro-
gance burned out of me.”
The liaisons helped him narrow down
housing options, fill out his lease and apply
for deposit and utility assistance, brought
him kitchenware and other provisions —
every tool they could provide to make sure
he stays housed.
“You made the entire transition possi-
ble, and way, way easier,” he told Paul and
Anderson.
Zinzer has enough street-level experi-
ence to know how much needs to be done
to take even slight steps toward stabil-
ity — all while looking daily for a secure
place to eat, use the bathroom and sleep
undisturbed. And all amid a pandemic. “I
would have been overwhelmed,” he told the
liaisons.
Just outside the Merwyn, the liaisons
checked in with a man who suffers from
Huntington’s disease, a brain disorder. And
they observed a guy sleeping in the sun in
a corner of the Garden of Surging Waves;
he’s been on their outer radar, but Paul said
it might be time to make overtures.
Later in the week, the liaisons found
out what became of the man living in the
bushes near Safeway.
He was scheduled to move into his new
apartment.
RVs: Vehicles could be towed at city expense, with risk of litigation
Continued from Page A1
“Obviously the word
is out,” Seaside’s Pamela
Schwenzer wrote. “‘Free
camping in Seaside with
a river view.’ There are no
facilities for dumping waste
or dirty water. I’m concerned
about our river. This is adja-
cent to a playground and
public restroom.
“Having fled Portland
four years ago, I have seen
how such a setup can attract
problems, causing a deterio-
ration in livability in a neigh-
borhood. We left Laurelhurst
— I suspect you’ve heard of
it.”
City Councilor Tita Mon-
tero said there is a lack of
clarity between local ordi-
nances, state law and a fed-
eral court ruling on home-
less camping. The 9th U.S.
R.J. Marx
Vehicles parked in the lot north of Goodman Park on Necanicum Avenue.
Circuit Court of Appeals,
which covers Oregon, has
ruled that ordinances against
sleeping outdoors on pub-
lic property when there are
no shelters available are
unconstitutional.
“We’re also working
on pulling information and
strategies together so that the
council can look at what can
we implement, what is going
to be legal — first of all —
and for the benefit of the
whole community,” Mon-
tero said.
City Attorney Dan Van
Thiel has said police are
doing everything they can
by creating a constant pres-
ence in the area. He said
issuing citations is of limited
value if people do not show
up for court or pay fines. The
city has not yet moved to
tow vehicles, which he said
would come at city expense
and could subject the city to
litigation.
While trash and unsan-
itary conditions have been
concerns for neighbors, trash
has not been an issue among
those parked at the city lot,
Public Works Director Dale
McDowell said. “I have
handed out trash bags, and
they are picked up several
times a week by the Public
Works Street Department,”
he said.
At last Monday’s meet-
ing, Mayor Jay Barber said
homelessness is the issue
that “kept him awake at
night.”
A new state law approved
this year requires that local
regulations on sitting, lying,
sleeping or keeping warm
and dry in outdoor public
spaces be objectively rea-
sonable for the homeless.
The law aims to protect the
homeless from fines or arrest
for camping on public prop-
erty when there are no other
options. Cities and counties
must comply by July 2023.
“If we do not do that, or
are unable to do that, then,
as I understand this, they are
permitted to lie asleep in any
public property in our city,”
Barber said. “That is truly a
challenge.”