Walking with the homeless

Five students in the Mental Health and Human Services (MHHS) program at MHCC and a reporter from The Advocate experienced 24-hour homeless immersion Dec. 2-3, hosted by JOIN, a social service day center in Northeast Portland.

Students gathered around 7:30 p.m. Friday at the JOIN center on Northeast 81st and Glisan. That night the students discussed what homelessness is and what it means to them, and then went to sleep around 11 p.m. in the center.

The day starts dark and early at 5:20 a.m. as the six students awake in their sleeping bag on the hardwood floor of the family room at the JOIN day center.
JOIN worker Joe Clark hands each of the students three TriMet tickets for the day before they head out. The temperature was near freezing as the students left JOIN and crossed the bridge over I-84 to get to the Northeast 82nd Avenue MAX station.

“Remember that many of the homeless people out there did not have the luxury of sleeping inside,” said Clark, as the students shiver in the frigid morning. Many homeless people cannot afford to buy a ticket to ride the MAX either, he added, and they take a risk of getting caught and facing a fine which they would not be able to pay. But if they don’t ride the train, they will not be able to eat breakfast.

From there, the students rode on the red line train heading west and got off at the Old Town/Chinatown station. Then it was another brisk walk to Blanchet House on Northwest Glisan Street and 4th Avenue.

By the time they arrived around 6:20 a.m., there was already a line of people wrapping around the first corner of the building. Breakfast is served from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. and there is a Blanchet volunteer who stands outside the door to regulate the number of people entering as spots open up inside.

Inside, people sit four to a table, with five at one table, for a total of 41 available seats at any given time. Once one is seated, a volunteer gives each person a plate of food. When finished eating, they may go back outside, wait in line and then come in and eat again. Clark had planned to have the group volunteer in the morning, but a La Salle High School volunteer group had already signed up to work that morning.

After the students finished eating, they waited outside for Larry Bishop, an ex-homeless person who JOIN found housing for six years ago. During the wait, a homeless man was untying his cart from a pole when MHCC student Bill Boyd noticed that the man had dropped an orange under his cart.

“Sir, I think you dropped your orange under your cart,” Boyd said politely. But the man gave no indication that he heard, so MHHS club president Geri Criss stepped in and tried to help him out.

“I think he thought I was trying to steal his cart,” she recalled later. But she only tried to get the orange from under the cart, when it seemed like the man became upset and tried to swing his cart at her in jerking motions.

He hurriedly fumbled to untie the cart as he mumbled and shouted obscenities to her and the people around, as another homeless man got in between them and said apologetically to Criss, “Just leave him be, he’s not having a good morning.”

A moment later, a man rushes out of the Blanchet House and hastily asks if people have seen anyone walk out with a green backpack.

He gets a tip that a man in a red jacket may have taken it by accident since there were two green backpacks left inside, and he runs off toward the Bud Clark Commons, where some guessed he may have been headed.

“Everything was in there, my birth certificates and family photos,” he said before he took off. The students from JOIN stood quietly outside Blanchet House in the cold, still waiting for Bishop.

About 10 minutes later, the man came back smiling broadly with another man who had, in fact, taken the wrong bag in an honest mistake.

“There’s only so much you can lose,” he said, and thanked the man as they both departed on their respective ways for the day.

Bishop showed up around 7:30 a.m. in a denim jacket with a cutout of an Occupy Portland shirt pinned to the back with “coffee man” hand-written across. Bishop, 63, is from Illinois and first came to Portland in 1967. Since then he has been “back and forth” between different cities.

Up until six years ago, he had been homeless and so he knew about the services provided around Portland like the back of his hand. He has been helping JOIN immersions by giving tours of the various services around town.
“Here in Portland, a person cannot starve,” Bishop said. “There’s always a place serving free food.”

Walking, Bishop led the student to a variety of stops —the Royal Palm, Bud Clark Commons, p:ear, Sister of the Road Café, the Macdonald Center, the Downtown Chapel, SAFES, R2D2, the Union Gospel Mission, and the Portland Rescue Mission — with Bishop explaining the different services provided at each location and oftentimes running into people he knew.

After the two-hour tour, which ended in front of the Portland Rescue Mission, Clark separated the group into three pairs for a scavenger hunt. He gave a page filled with scenarios and questions that might come up if one was homeless and each pair had to find answers by talking to people.

Clark also gave each person a dollar and challenged the students to eat lunch with only the dollar, or even less if possible.

The pairs were Criss and first-year MHCC student Ashley Bright, Boyd and first-year MHCC student Angela Gilleran, and second-year MHCC student Liz Fosteer and the reporter. The pairs went in different directions and had varying experiences. Boyd and Gilleran were mistaken as a homeless couple and Boyd said the cops had eyed them a few times, probably thinking they were homeless. He also noted that the shelters were ready to give Gilleran a room in a shelter while they told Boyd that he can be in the warming rooms.

All six ended up back at the Blanchet House for lunch since the meals are free. Fosteer met a cheerful homeless man, Steve, who also went by “Old School” or “Ikey”. Steve had a full shopping cart covered in a tarp, and offered to escort Fosteer to the Bud Clark Commons.

The group met back up at 12:30 p.m. in front of Portland Rescue Mission and went to their last stop at Dignity Village via bus 73. The village, a state-recognized homeless camp, is located near the airport between a composting site and a correctional facility.

Scott and Lisa Layman, who live at the village, showed the students around Dignity Village and talked about its ups and down. Lisa said public transportation is not very convenient, adding that Scott has to go to work early on weekends when the bus does not start coming to their stop until 9:30 a.m.

People also lose their sense of taste because the composting facility next door emits a mix of methane and ammonia, said Lisa.

The little wooden shacks at Dignity Village do not have electricity or running water, with the exception of a few who need it for medical reasons, Lisa said. There are 51 people living in the village, and each person must adhere to the rules and put in volunteer time for the village. There are also 25 cats and eight dogs which are all spayed or neutered and given medical attention by PAWS, a veterinary service.

“We are a member-based community,” said Scott, “How many of you know 50 of your neighbors?”