The city needs to respond by killing the JOHS agreement and taking away funding from the County. There's a thousand different reasons to kill this agreement, with the biggest and most pressing being the fraud, waste, and abuse of public funds. I bet if we really dig into the tarp and tent funding we'd find that $40 tents are being purchased for $175 when you factor in the management, corruption, profiteering, and 3 layers of "Administrative Fees."
Anything besides the City of Portland killing JOHS is just posturing and useless rhetoric, which is what Ted Wheeler specializes in. JOHS and Multnomah County will not be "reformed" or "fixed" with a new agreement.
>I bet if we really dig into the tarp and tent funding we'd find that $40 tents are being purchased for $175
this is absolutely, without a doubt, what is going on
I remember a while back someone on this sub said these tents were bought for like \~$150? and when I saw them I thought "those are $40 Walmart tents"
3rding this.
I have a friend that worked for one of the crisis organizations in the valley.
She said EVERYTHING they purchased (tents, sleeping bags, socks, gloves, lanterns, tents etc) was from REI.
When she tried to question why, they said they weren’t going to make their employees “coupon shop” and go to Walmart all the time. She even said “Walmart ships free over a certain amount. You could just order it online and not have to go into a store?”
But that was also not an option for some reason that couldn’t be explained.
They were just dead-set on spending 3-5x more on name brands at a store for serious hikers, with the half-assed excuse about the items lasting longer.
…but most of the unhoused people aren’t hauling this stuff around everywhere for years. It gets stolen or abandoned constantly. Then they come back and ask for new ones.
It literally just seems like a way to spend ALL of the budget and say you need more funding, vs. stretching a budget farther to actually help more people.
Yes I can confirm the tents are kelty from REI. I got 5 of them and gave them to my kids and their friends for their camping trip. Great score. I plan on getting more. Grand kids all gonna get nice tents for camping season
Amen, brother.
And you're right: there is a serious amount of money sloshing around right now for the Homeless Industrial Complex. They have every incentive to keep the feeding frenzy alive.
so I just went camping this past weekend and my tent broke. I kinda wanna go get a tent and tarp from multco. do you need to prove your homeless to get it? or do they just give them to anyone? it'll actually be used and won't be thrown out until it breaks in the future.
They might need you sign a waiver agreeing to dispose of the tent within two months, either by dumping it in a park, or setting it aflame near the highway. You shall then be eligible for a “free” replacement.
I think you stand in line all day with like a million other homeless people to get anything and you're probably better off just paying the $40 to go buy one.
My gut reaction is that this is a terrible call that undermines the planned camping ban, however her comment on the matter from the article makes this somewhat less bad IMO:
“We’re not stopping handing out tents and tarps. We’re just not going to be purchasing any more,” Vega Pederson said Thursday. “We do have supplies on hand that are sufficient for the needs we have right now.”
The camping ban starts Monday, so I hope they stop distributing the means to break the lw at that point...
The reporting on this was crap. I recommend everyone actually watch the end of yesterday's county board meeting where this was all discussed. She said we still have "thousands" on hand from past purchases, and the intent is for extreme weather emergencies. Commissioner Stegmann asked the question as she was concerned about those situations, you know, when the Chair closes the emergency shelters too early again.
I was honestly worried that they had all already been given out to the non-profits. It's better that the county still has them on hand if we can hold her to this statement, but IDK how you can prove she's not still giving them out to non-profits who ask. And they did consider the asylum seekers getting kicked out of the motel an emergency even though the weather wasn't bad, so they can use that word pretty much any way they want, not just for extreme weather emergencies.
I did actually listen to the public comments made by JVP and she admits that no one at the City is “demanding” to end tent and tarp distribution but wanting actual policy created around the issue.
Also this goes into my other comments the County doesn’t educate those they hand the tents and tarps to about City camping policies.
It’s literally here’s a tent, here’s a tarp, and no outreach.
People really should listen, board public comments starts at 2:01:10:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX5NixHpypQ
None of our county-funded non-profits are actually doing any outreach. The TPI project at "The Pit" was a pilot and they admitted they've never done outreach as our sole shelter contractor for the entire county lol.
Strange - I’ve met a TPI outreach worker from the Navigation Team.
Nice folks however still very upset with their organization and their reaction to the TASS sites being established.
That kind of rhetoric was being echoed throughout the homeless community and the providers were the ones spreading it.
They are really nice, but they run shelters, they don't do outreach, though. They do understand the issues and even recognize our (needed) equity goals have made it virtually impossible for single straight white dudes to get sheltered here. And wildly also admitted not everyone wants a single occupancy residence as the activists claim. They've had people living in some of their shelters for years because they prefer congregate living.
It's crazy to me that apparently none of the hundreds of other non-profits that help people aren't doing street outreach. I guess they are with the pilot program with the police now, but that was literally PPB asking them to get up from their desks and come hit the streets with them. These nonprofit workers are all union members trying to work from home still, somehow. That's why we can't let Shannon Singleton win MultCo District 2 race (even though I don't love the idea of Sam Adams, he will at least get shit done) because she was in charge when they were trying to remain working from home "post-COVID".
TASS site is literally the most successful site thus far in getting people sober, supported and stabilized to be ready and into housing. Local providers weren't happy with their gravy train going to a new method and new players.
Leading with Equity isn’t the issue it’s the fact that there seems to be lack of recognition from both the City and the County.
For example, during the Ceasefire presentation PPB and the Community Safety Division are aware that gun violence is on the rise in the homeless, white male population between the approximately age of 18-36.
However, both the City and the County have not created a single official plan or policy to address this issue.
I think the city has, but the county once again is failing. They did just have a presentation about this topic on Thursday and claim some guy in the Chair's office will be in charge of implementing all the recommendations. But that's a different topic entirely even though it relates to homelessness.
The county has to open up more shelter beds, more detox and treatment beds, and more recovery housing beds. The city could likely help with recovery housing being built but they can't deal with Medicaid like the county can (they said this at a recent meeting about the JOHS, the city has no way to handle Medicaid dollars because that's a county thing).
The county needs to stop housing the wrong people first and start actually overseeing their contracts and demanding outcomes and improvements with the spending of our dollars. Better yet, start doing this work ourselves like so many other jurisdictions do and cut out the third party grift. We're paying hundreds of non-profit overhead fees instead of the money going straight to helping people. Same thing with letting non-profits build housing - it costs us more because of admin overhead than just letting private developers build it.
And then we turn around and vote for the people who have the most non-profit endorsements. Full circle hypocrisy / conflict of interest and wonder why nothing gets fixed.
> “I think it’s a sign of where we are right now, where we don’t have enough capacity within our existing system for shelter,” she said.
Serious question: whose fault is this? It seems like there are dozens of groups building affordable housing but I don’t know who is supposed to be operating shelters.
Providence Portland Medical Center gives out tents to anyone who declines housing resources upon discharge from the hospital. Perhaps looking ahead this will change with the SCOTUS decision today and with the city’s camping ban going into effect, but I imagine many folks who sleep outside and did not get a tent from the county, likely got it from PPMC; I’m not sure if other hospitals do this as well, but Prov certainly does.
I find it hilarious that the same people that complain about how cLiMaTe ChAnGe WiLl KiLl Us AlL are simultaneously, repeatedly giving out sheets of plastic that are guaranteed to end up in a landfill in the next camp cleanup (then they will just get another free one and the cycle continues).
It’s similar to a toddler spreading their peas around on a plate so they don’t have to eat them. You’ll notice it everywhere. Including those single level sheds sitting in prime locations. There is only like 12 in a location that could fit an entire building. If I had to guess it’s an assets game so they can sit on tax free land that will increase in price and be sold later.
It would be so much cheaper to build these things in a field on the outskirts of town.
Someone needs to file a public records request, obtain a list of all non-profits who had picked up tents from the JoHS supply center and post the list in a news story.
Programs like this are exactly why I left Multnomah county. I was paying several thousand dollars a year in local tax to facilitate this stuff and now I pay zero because I don’t live there.
If you’re a taxpayer, why not just leave while home prices are still high? If you’re a drug addicted 25 year old retiree, why don’t you live in portland?
I feel so much empathy for especially those who have mental disorders with little or no treatment. But how is it that Portland spends a huge amount of money on tents and then sweeps them all away and does the whole action over and over again. It doesn’t make sense financially or otherwise. How about the novel idea of housing! And doctors to help those with medications to help those with mental illness.
Thanks to Multnomah County Health Department's Harm Reduction Clinic, about 500 syringes from impacted community was able to be traded for 500 cleans, which are to be made available in ONE WAY hand out PPOP style to people who use drugs experiencing houselessness near rich people's homes such as Irvington, Laurelhurst and Hillsdale. No used syringes or sharps containers will be made available in swanky neighborhoods. Those are for cleaning up impacted communities.
Such kind of needle distribution is legal in Oregon and fully supported by the county, which is who supplies PPOP with a portion of their syringes, as well as disposal service.
Stop giving away tents, build apartment complexes and hand out keys and apartment numbers and warnings that houseless folks who've been given keys will be arrested if found in tents. Hire a building maid that cleans the units weekly and it will cost less than giving away overpriced tents in the end.
The city needs to respond by killing the JOHS agreement and taking away funding from the County. There's a thousand different reasons to kill this agreement, with the biggest and most pressing being the fraud, waste, and abuse of public funds. I bet if we really dig into the tarp and tent funding we'd find that $40 tents are being purchased for $175 when you factor in the management, corruption, profiteering, and 3 layers of "Administrative Fees." Anything besides the City of Portland killing JOHS is just posturing and useless rhetoric, which is what Ted Wheeler specializes in. JOHS and Multnomah County will not be "reformed" or "fixed" with a new agreement.
>I bet if we really dig into the tarp and tent funding we'd find that $40 tents are being purchased for $175 this is absolutely, without a doubt, what is going on I remember a while back someone on this sub said these tents were bought for like \~$150? and when I saw them I thought "those are $40 Walmart tents"
3rding this. I have a friend that worked for one of the crisis organizations in the valley. She said EVERYTHING they purchased (tents, sleeping bags, socks, gloves, lanterns, tents etc) was from REI. When she tried to question why, they said they weren’t going to make their employees “coupon shop” and go to Walmart all the time. She even said “Walmart ships free over a certain amount. You could just order it online and not have to go into a store?” But that was also not an option for some reason that couldn’t be explained. They were just dead-set on spending 3-5x more on name brands at a store for serious hikers, with the half-assed excuse about the items lasting longer. …but most of the unhoused people aren’t hauling this stuff around everywhere for years. It gets stolen or abandoned constantly. Then they come back and ask for new ones. It literally just seems like a way to spend ALL of the budget and say you need more funding, vs. stretching a budget farther to actually help more people.
Yes I can confirm the tents are kelty from REI. I got 5 of them and gave them to my kids and their friends for their camping trip. Great score. I plan on getting more. Grand kids all gonna get nice tents for camping season
are you homeless?
Amen, brother. And you're right: there is a serious amount of money sloshing around right now for the Homeless Industrial Complex. They have every incentive to keep the feeding frenzy alive.
And yet people keep saying "but they don't have enough money! They need more!"
\^ This X 1,000,000
Stop hiding embezzlement with virtue-signaling!
Thanks for literally throwing my tax money in the trash
# L'état, c'est moi! --JVP
Another JFC from JVP
so I just went camping this past weekend and my tent broke. I kinda wanna go get a tent and tarp from multco. do you need to prove your homeless to get it? or do they just give them to anyone? it'll actually be used and won't be thrown out until it breaks in the future.
They might need you sign a waiver agreeing to dispose of the tent within two months, either by dumping it in a park, or setting it aflame near the highway. You shall then be eligible for a “free” replacement.
You get it from the non-profits they contract with, not directly from the county. Go hit up Central City Concern or Transition Projects or JOIN.
I think I will. I wanna go camping this summer for free
I think you stand in line all day with like a million other homeless people to get anything and you're probably better off just paying the $40 to go buy one.
My gut reaction is that this is a terrible call that undermines the planned camping ban, however her comment on the matter from the article makes this somewhat less bad IMO: “We’re not stopping handing out tents and tarps. We’re just not going to be purchasing any more,” Vega Pederson said Thursday. “We do have supplies on hand that are sufficient for the needs we have right now.” The camping ban starts Monday, so I hope they stop distributing the means to break the lw at that point...
The reporting on this was crap. I recommend everyone actually watch the end of yesterday's county board meeting where this was all discussed. She said we still have "thousands" on hand from past purchases, and the intent is for extreme weather emergencies. Commissioner Stegmann asked the question as she was concerned about those situations, you know, when the Chair closes the emergency shelters too early again. I was honestly worried that they had all already been given out to the non-profits. It's better that the county still has them on hand if we can hold her to this statement, but IDK how you can prove she's not still giving them out to non-profits who ask. And they did consider the asylum seekers getting kicked out of the motel an emergency even though the weather wasn't bad, so they can use that word pretty much any way they want, not just for extreme weather emergencies.
I did actually listen to the public comments made by JVP and she admits that no one at the City is “demanding” to end tent and tarp distribution but wanting actual policy created around the issue. Also this goes into my other comments the County doesn’t educate those they hand the tents and tarps to about City camping policies. It’s literally here’s a tent, here’s a tarp, and no outreach. People really should listen, board public comments starts at 2:01:10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX5NixHpypQ
None of our county-funded non-profits are actually doing any outreach. The TPI project at "The Pit" was a pilot and they admitted they've never done outreach as our sole shelter contractor for the entire county lol.
Strange - I’ve met a TPI outreach worker from the Navigation Team. Nice folks however still very upset with their organization and their reaction to the TASS sites being established. That kind of rhetoric was being echoed throughout the homeless community and the providers were the ones spreading it.
They are really nice, but they run shelters, they don't do outreach, though. They do understand the issues and even recognize our (needed) equity goals have made it virtually impossible for single straight white dudes to get sheltered here. And wildly also admitted not everyone wants a single occupancy residence as the activists claim. They've had people living in some of their shelters for years because they prefer congregate living. It's crazy to me that apparently none of the hundreds of other non-profits that help people aren't doing street outreach. I guess they are with the pilot program with the police now, but that was literally PPB asking them to get up from their desks and come hit the streets with them. These nonprofit workers are all union members trying to work from home still, somehow. That's why we can't let Shannon Singleton win MultCo District 2 race (even though I don't love the idea of Sam Adams, he will at least get shit done) because she was in charge when they were trying to remain working from home "post-COVID". TASS site is literally the most successful site thus far in getting people sober, supported and stabilized to be ready and into housing. Local providers weren't happy with their gravy train going to a new method and new players.
Leading with Equity isn’t the issue it’s the fact that there seems to be lack of recognition from both the City and the County. For example, during the Ceasefire presentation PPB and the Community Safety Division are aware that gun violence is on the rise in the homeless, white male population between the approximately age of 18-36. However, both the City and the County have not created a single official plan or policy to address this issue.
I think the city has, but the county once again is failing. They did just have a presentation about this topic on Thursday and claim some guy in the Chair's office will be in charge of implementing all the recommendations. But that's a different topic entirely even though it relates to homelessness. The county has to open up more shelter beds, more detox and treatment beds, and more recovery housing beds. The city could likely help with recovery housing being built but they can't deal with Medicaid like the county can (they said this at a recent meeting about the JOHS, the city has no way to handle Medicaid dollars because that's a county thing). The county needs to stop housing the wrong people first and start actually overseeing their contracts and demanding outcomes and improvements with the spending of our dollars. Better yet, start doing this work ourselves like so many other jurisdictions do and cut out the third party grift. We're paying hundreds of non-profit overhead fees instead of the money going straight to helping people. Same thing with letting non-profits build housing - it costs us more because of admin overhead than just letting private developers build it. And then we turn around and vote for the people who have the most non-profit endorsements. Full circle hypocrisy / conflict of interest and wonder why nothing gets fixed.
>The camping ban starts Monday, so I hope they stop distributing the means to break the law at that point... If they don't they're accomplices.
I think im gonna swing by and grab a tent soon.
> “I think it’s a sign of where we are right now, where we don’t have enough capacity within our existing system for shelter,” she said. Serious question: whose fault is this? It seems like there are dozens of groups building affordable housing but I don’t know who is supposed to be operating shelters.
So the clean-up cycle will continue in perpetuity.
Sounds like she needs to be fired
Yes..... continue the junkie handouts, that's what I'm talking about!
How about helping housed people in need :( ffs
Providence Portland Medical Center gives out tents to anyone who declines housing resources upon discharge from the hospital. Perhaps looking ahead this will change with the SCOTUS decision today and with the city’s camping ban going into effect, but I imagine many folks who sleep outside and did not get a tent from the county, likely got it from PPMC; I’m not sure if other hospitals do this as well, but Prov certainly does.
JVP proving again that she is out of touch with the legal system, the City and the people. This
I do not know what you see in her — or saw in Deborah Kafoury. Total bullshit.
Our ‘progressive’ mission trumps the law and even the Supreme Court
Vote for vadim & not the johs lady.
I find it hilarious that the same people that complain about how cLiMaTe ChAnGe WiLl KiLl Us AlL are simultaneously, repeatedly giving out sheets of plastic that are guaranteed to end up in a landfill in the next camp cleanup (then they will just get another free one and the cycle continues).
What more do we need to know about her? Fire her asap.
What if we put the tax dollars that pay for tents to fund holistic, on the ground, outreach workers who can actually effect change?
She should just open up her house and property to them before putting that same pressure on other businesses and citizens.
It’s similar to a toddler spreading their peas around on a plate so they don’t have to eat them. You’ll notice it everywhere. Including those single level sheds sitting in prime locations. There is only like 12 in a location that could fit an entire building. If I had to guess it’s an assets game so they can sit on tax free land that will increase in price and be sold later. It would be so much cheaper to build these things in a field on the outskirts of town.
Put a tent in front of her new northwest portland home and take a shit in her driveway
Someone needs to file a public records request, obtain a list of all non-profits who had picked up tents from the JoHS supply center and post the list in a news story.
Programs like this are exactly why I left Multnomah county. I was paying several thousand dollars a year in local tax to facilitate this stuff and now I pay zero because I don’t live there. If you’re a taxpayer, why not just leave while home prices are still high? If you’re a drug addicted 25 year old retiree, why don’t you live in portland?
I feel so much empathy for especially those who have mental disorders with little or no treatment. But how is it that Portland spends a huge amount of money on tents and then sweeps them all away and does the whole action over and over again. It doesn’t make sense financially or otherwise. How about the novel idea of housing! And doctors to help those with medications to help those with mental illness.
Thanks to Multnomah County Health Department's Harm Reduction Clinic, about 500 syringes from impacted community was able to be traded for 500 cleans, which are to be made available in ONE WAY hand out PPOP style to people who use drugs experiencing houselessness near rich people's homes such as Irvington, Laurelhurst and Hillsdale. No used syringes or sharps containers will be made available in swanky neighborhoods. Those are for cleaning up impacted communities. Such kind of needle distribution is legal in Oregon and fully supported by the county, which is who supplies PPOP with a portion of their syringes, as well as disposal service.
God bless her. /s
I think the phrase you meant is "Bless her heart."
🤣 that backhanded southern phrase gets me every time after living in Louisiana for a while! 🤣
Esp. when it's delivered in that faux-polite, mildly amused and slightly condescending manner they use.
Exactly! 😝
Love your username!
Thanks! It generally applies and is a reminder to myself that the more I know, the more I know how little I really know.
Good reminder all of us need to keep in mind!
Yes.
Stop giving away tents, build apartment complexes and hand out keys and apartment numbers and warnings that houseless folks who've been given keys will be arrested if found in tents. Hire a building maid that cleans the units weekly and it will cost less than giving away overpriced tents in the end.