Editor’s Note: This is the first story of “Unsheltered Truth” in a five-part series from Jeff Gianola on homelessness in Portland.
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — There’s Pops, Princess and Samantha. And Brother Ray.
On a Sunday morning in downtown Portland, the streets are quiet. Some people are headed to church. In a makeshift homeless camp, Pops is laying down on the ground, moaning in pain.
For the past 10 years, Pops — now 70 — has been living on the streets. He suffers from severe neuropathy and said his feet “feel like a box of wood.”
“This is the first time I’ve been down like this,” Pops said. “One time I got sick and I laid on the sidewalk for about two or three days moving around.”
Brother Ray is there, too. But he’s kind of a caretaker, though he is homeless as well.
“I stay out with them,” Brother Ray said. “Someone has to. Father sent me. This is my calling. I won’t refuse that this is my calling.”
Between the winces and the grunts of pain, Pops talked about finding food in dumpsters.
“They’ll throw away packages of Voodoo Doughnuts,” Pops said. “If you’re homeless and you miss a meal at the Mission, you gotta hit the dumpster.”
Nearby, at SW 11th and Columbia, a lone tent dots the sidewalk. Princess is inside and for the past month this spot in this tent has been her home.
Strangers pass by and sometimes offer food. But Princess, a young woman, is a lost soul living on a Portland sidewalk.
Across the Willamette River on the east side of Portland is Samantha. She’s been living by herself in a tent by a dumpster near a loading dock.
“There’s been people who have hit me 10 times and taken all my stuff,” Samantha, who’s only 22, said. Her tent is on top of a pallet. “I had a shopping cart over there with my tools and my clothes.”
Sam admitted she’s been struggling to kick her drug addiction. Living on the street forced her to handle basic necessities as best she can.
She holds up a container. “I just take this thing and I pee in this in there or behind there,” she said, pointing to a spot nearby. “Really, that’s pretty much the bathroom.”
Homeless in Portland, then and now
Thirty years ago, KOIN 6 News anchor Jeff Gianola spent time on the streets with the homeless in Portland. At that time there were a few hundred on the streets — and no one could imagine the future would include thousands of unnamed faces and tents dotting the city’s landscape.
In this 5-part series “The Unsheltered Truth,” Jeff Gianola goes back on the streets to talk with, listen to and learn from the people who are currently living on the streets of Portland.
Jeff Gianola traveled the streets at night the Union Gospel Mission’s Search and Rescue Team, meeting firsthand the people they help.
In “Sweep and Repeat,” you’ll see homeless people swept out of one sidewalk and setting up in a nearby homeless camp — where they’ll stay until the next homeless sweep.
You’ll meet the Portland police officer who knows the homeless people by the bikes they steal and the drugs they use, over and over again. You’ll see why frustrated neighbors and business owners say enough is enough.
In “Lost Chances,” Jeff Gianola looks at the controversial county decision to not turn the never-used Wapato Jail into a homeless shelter.
Then, you’ll have a tour of a homeless center in San Diego that many experts say Portland needs to copy. You’ll see how this program is putting the homeless to work.
Stay tuned for Jeff Gianola’s second piece “Sweep and Repeat,” which airs Tuesday, May 1.