Two local outreach workers sat in a van parked outside Southeast Portland's Reedway Safe Rest Village, or SRV, on a cold December afternoon. They were there to meet with a village resident they’d met with many times before. The resident was expecting them.
This is part 3 in a series covering the San Francisco nonprofit contracted to run Portland’s temporary shelter sites. Read Part 2: Urban Alchemy’s million-dollar lawsuit here.
They worked with the resident for over two months to get them into the temporary shelter. Inside the van, stocked with supplies, 90s R&B played quietly on the radio as the outreach workers discussed a plan of action. A few minutes after they arrived, an Urban Alchemy employee came from behind the fence, approached the van and asked the outreach workers what they were up to.
"We're not supposed to be letting anybody know if the guests are here or not," the employee said. "It's for safety."
The employee said they could take a phone number to the resident if they were there but could not confirm or deny if the person stayed there. Urban Alchemy monitors the surrounding area within 1,000 feet of the site, according to the Reedway SRV community guidelines.
"I understand," the outreach worker told the Urban Alchemy employee. "We have confidentiality as well."
After waiting 30 minutes in the van with no phone call from the resident, the outreach workers left. They did not reach the resident until two weeks later, after multiple attempts.
Mayor Ted Wheeler frequently touts the SRV and Temporary Alternative Shelter Sites, or TASS, as humane alternatives providing homeless Portlanders with access to case management and other community services. However, despite the city opening its first TASS in July 2023 and handing the keys to Urban Alchemy, the California-based nonprofit and the city have yet to generate consistent programming connecting camp residents with services, leaving many residents and service providers to make their own connections.
Even when residents have connections with service providers, Urban Alchemy’s procedures reportedly stifle consistent care and progress toward long-term stability. Urban Alchemy doesn’t maintain a system ensuring residents continue receiving the care and services they received when entering the camp, according to service providers. After an initial Nov. 28, 2023 interview before Street Roots published "Turning green into gold, Part 1," Urban Alchemy did not respond to Street Roots’ requests for comment.
Despite efforts to build long-term trust and relationships, multiple outreach workers whose jobs require them to remain anonymous said it can be challenging to reach people after helping them into Urban Alchemy-run sites.
The uncertain procedures suggest a difference between contracted care coordination and what happens on the ground. Depending on who’s working the gate that day, according to multiple residents and service providers, a service provider could be met with indifference, confusion, or even confrontation.
Street Roots spoke with several homeless Portlanders currently or formerly living at Urban Alchemy-run sites to hear their experiences. They each asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.
One Urban Alchemy camp resident said they no longer meet their peer mentor at the site entrance after witnessing the hostility an Urban Alchemy supervisor directed at someone delivering resources to the camp. They said staff calls or threatens to call the police if someone parks close to the building.
Visitors are not allowed on the premises, though community guidelines make an explicit exception for service providers.
"If a service provider is requesting to meet you at the program, please speak with a UA staff member," the guidelines state. Yet many residents are unable to maintain enough contact with service providers to provide advance notice of each visit, often due to a lack of reliable access to phone and internet.
Another resident told Street Roots the visitation rule is an aspect of living at the site they don't enjoy.
"Kind of puts a damper on relationships and family," they said.
Housing ready or housing
At a July 5, 2023, press conference for the opening of the Reedway SRV, Commissioner Dan Ryan repeated a familiar refrain, referencing what he calls "housing readiness."
"Going from being chronically homeless for years with triple diagnosis into a single occupancy is usually a recipe for disaster," he said. "So, we really needed to have this opportunity for them to connect with services. As I always say, services first."
In contrast with experts’ calls to invest in housing-first policies providing people with concurrent housing and services, Ryan touts the notion that people need to be onboarded to long-term housing by first addressing substance abuse and other health disorders. Ryan is responsible for the city's SRV program, including Reedway and Peninsula Crossing sites run by Urban Alchemy.
Some local service providers try to utilize the city’s temporary sites to help homeless Portlanders transition to permanent housing, but it hasn’t been without difficulties. Some service providers are hesitant to work with Urban Alchemy due to its reputation and practices, while others say inconsistent application of security measures at the sites disrupts continuity of care for the people they work with.
Urban Alchemy is aware of the hesitation. According to Kirkpatrick Tyler, Urban Alchemy's chief of government and community affairs, philosophical differences with Mayor Ted Wheeler cause some service providers to hesitate to work with the organization.
Still, Tyler said collaboration with local organizations is crucial to getting necessary resources to homeless Portlanders. Technically, Urban Alchemy is a site manager — not a conventional service provider — and needs local partnerships to get results.
"There's still some folks that we would really love to connect with so that we can provide the best support possible," Tyler said.
As previously reported by Street Roots, the philosophical differences rise from the ashes of a 2022 memo Wheeler's then-senior advisor Sam Adams sent to state, county and metro offices — a highly criticized proposal to create mass encampments staffed by the Oregon National Guard and Portland State University social work graduate students.
Also at issue is the city's controversial daytime sleeping ban that is inextricably linked with the initiative to create mass encampments. The time, place and manner ordinance threatens homeless Portlanders with criminal and civil penalties for sleeping in public spaces if they do not accept an offer for shelter. A Multnomah County Circuit Court judge issued a temporary injunction, halting enforcement of the ordinance Nov. 9, 2023.
Local support
“I’ve had to do a lot of damage control,” Jennifer Langston, Portland Street Medicine certified peer support specialist, said.
Langston, whose lived experience informs her work with the local nonprofit medical care and social work provider, said staying with a person for an extended period of time is essential to building trust, particularly with a vulnerable population regularly promised opportunities that don’t come through.
Langston said she spent more than a year supporting a client through Portland Street Medicine, building trust and working to refer the homeless Portlander to Clinton Triangle in early August. The client was unsure about moving into the site but accepted the idea after building a relationship with Langston and Rapid Response Bio Clean staff, who wrote the referral.
“It was very traumatic to drop (them) off there,” Langston said.
She said the staff would not allow her into the site or allow her to help with onboarding paperwork despite the client’s challenges with reading and writing.
“I was literally holding (their) hand through the chain link, letting (them) know that I'm not going anywhere,” Langston said. “Telling (them) to trust these people that I don't know and hoping that this was going to be better than where (they) had been for the last four years.”
Langston said some of the issues with access to residents at Urban Alchemy sites have started to improve since her first interactions in August, but the first time she could get into Clinton Triangle to visit a client was at the end of December, after an altercation between a staff member and her client.
She typically wears street clothes when working with clients but not when visiting an Urban Alchemy-run site. Since there is no clear process for maintaining contact with residents, Langston now wears a Portland Street Medicine shirt, jacket, and a lanyard and brings business cards anytime she goes, hoping to avoid barriers to her work.
“If certain staff doesn't know me, then I could get the runaround,” she said.
She said some Urban Alchemy staff seem to underappreciate her history with her clients and fail to recognize she can express information about the client to assist in their progress.
For its part, the city works closely with the city-county Joint Office of Homeless Services to develop the shelter system, including the TASS and SRV sites. The city opened its first SRV in 2021, and Urban Alchemy took over management of its first SRV in May 2023.
Jake Dornblaser, the city’s Streets to Stability program coordinator, said the city wants to facilitate deeper collaboration between local service providers who want to continue working with clients while respecting the privacy of residents staying at the sites.
“If somebody has a connection with them, we want them to maintain that connection and continue working with them,” Dornblaser said.
Langston noticed a recent shift but attributes much of the difficulty to a chaotic rollout process that excluded many established local service providers.
“More organizations are starting to partner with Urban Alchemy, which I think is a good thing because that's more transparency about what's going on within the villages,” Langston said.
A few larger organizations like Do Good Multnomah, Transition Projects and Central City Concern actively engage in housing initiatives throughout the county, including those at the city's TASS and SRV sites.
As local organizations continue to develop a process for working together, Drew Grabham, Central City Concern director of behavioral outreach, said an array of funding sources, each with its specific requirements, creates challenges in providing continuous care.
"We're building this plane as we're flying it," Grabham said.
While the Joint Office is responsible for funding most shelters, Dornblaser said the city of Portland stepped in to bolster services, contracting directly with Urban Alchemy.
“There's some growing pains, and we're also dealing with an emergency where people are dying on our streets, and so we need to provide essential services to them,” he said.
Langston said many people Portland Street Medicine works with have been traumatized by the health care system, making its trauma-informed approach essential to building trust. In her experience with some Urban Alchemy staff, there appears to be a lack of ongoing training in trauma-informed care, specifically with regard to health care. That makes it all the more important for traumatized residents to get the care they need from the people they trust.
“One of the reasons I work with Portland Street Medicine is because I myself have been traumatized by healthcare,” she said. “That makes us better advocates.”
Concerns for residents with disabilities are particularly prevalent at the Reedway location, which is in an area neighbors say is a "food desert."
While the Clinton Triangle site is adjacent to a Max line, the closest bus stop to Reedway on a main thoroughfare is six blocks away. Langston said the distance creates issues for clients with disabilities who need to leave the site to access meals or other services.
Tyler said it is a serious issue that demands more attention and monetary resources.
"As we look at future budgets for sites like this, how do we press and push to ensure that the budget includes a larger food budget if we're in areas where it's a food desert — or where it's not a food desert?" Tyler said.
The sites promise access to hygiene, meals, laundry, storage, and case management, according to the city’s price agreement with Urban Alchemy.
Local nonprofit Feed the Mass provides meal service at its sites. The organization delivers frozen and hot meals — enough for at least one daily meal for each person staying at a site.
One camp resident told Street Roots that Feed the Mass and the meals it provides are “a total blessing.”
Still, they said the lack of multiple meals a day remains concerning for people with diabetes or other disabilities who need dependable access to food more than once a day. They said multiple people in the community have disabilities that put them at a higher risk for complications without access to food.
The data backs up their concern: 63% of people served at the city's temporary sites self-report at least one disability, according to Homeless Management Information Systems, or HMIS, data obtained by Street Roots. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, requires communities receiving federal assistance to file HMIS reports to better inform homelessness policy.
Expectations vs. Reality
While the contract states Urban Alchemy is to provide one meal and one snack daily, homeless Portlanders have varied expectations based on what they hear from the referral teams. Some homeless Portlanders report a discrepancy between the services promised at the temporary sites and what they receive.
One homeless Portlander told Street Roots the referring partner from Portland Fire and Rescue told them what to expect inside as they transported them to Clinton Triangle. Inside the drug-free site, they would have a tiny home pod with heat, air conditioning, power and three hot meals daily. Another homeless Portlander said they were promised access to a kitchen, but in fact, residents are not allowed into the building to cook.
“There’s one microwave that there's generally a line for, and generally three staff members hovered around,” they said. “I don't like interacting with staff; it makes me uncomfortable. So, I don't use a microwave. I just eat, like, cold food.”
The intention is for the sites to be a temporary place for residents to regulate stress and meet basic needs. No time limit exists for an individual's stay, and on average, people stay at the sites for 103 days, according to HMIS data.
"Every shelter must be understood to be a temporary living situation that offers safety, stability, and support to facilitate successful transitions to permanent housing," the price agreement said.
Systemic barriers to case management can cause delays in health care, transitions to housing and other resources. The homeless Portlander said when they checked into Clinton Triangle, a case manager scheduled them for an appointment two weeks after the initial intake. For them, the circumstances demanded more urgency. They hoped they could check into the site and immediately start working on getting into housing so they could get on top of life alongside their dog and their partner, who is in addiction recovery.
"This is a stepping stone for me," they said. "I don't want this to be permanent. Why would we wait two weeks?"
The weeks turned into months, and they said they had yet to meet with a case manager two months after moving in.
Another homeless Portlander said they met with a care coordinator to do intake paperwork the day they checked into Clinton Triangle in August but never saw them again. They didn’t meet with anyone else at the site until four months later.
“I didn’t even know she existed until like a week ago when she was knocking on my door at eight in the morning,” they said.
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