Nearly every day in the last two weeks, Clatsop County law enforcement has responded to at least one call involving homelessness, responding to everything from transient camps discovered on private and city property to complaints about homeless individuals who are drunk and wandering the streets.
All summer, police in Astoria and Warrenton have dealt with more homelessness-related calls than officers can ever remember — and more complaints about public defecation and urination than Astoria Police Chief Brad Johnston and Deputy Chief Eric Halverson can recall in all their years here.
In Astoria, a mayor-appointed committee formed in August is working on a list of recommendations about how to address homelessness broadly across the community, but it may have already landed on at least one small solution to one particular problem: Public bathrooms.
While bathrooms in downtown businesses are open to paying customers, there are few actual bathrooms available for the homeless to use. There is the bathroom at the transit center on Marine Drive, the public bathrooms on 12th and Exchange Street and the bathrooms under the Doughboy Monument at the corner of Columbia and Marine Drive. And beyond these, the great outdoors.
Now, the coalition, led by Johnston, hopes to place at least three porta-potties along the Astoria Riverwalk, an area that sees a lot of foot traffic by homeless and transient people.
Johnston is very supportive of the idea, but says the city will need to think carefully about where and how it will place these bathrooms.
“That seems like such a common-sense solution, but over my career, I’ve seen a lot of vandalism to porta-potties,” he said.
Still, it is clear, he added, that homelessness and all the issues that come along with it — large and small — are now a community dilemma.
“The concept of homelessness is very vast,” said Elaine Bruce, director of social services for Clatsop Community Action, an organization that works with the poor, homeless and near-homeless.
Groups like the mayor-appointed coalition are primarily focused on a small percentage of that overall population: The ones who prey on the community and other homeless people. Those are the 5 percent who are “actually causing the issues,” Bruce said.
“The other 95 percent are usually just fine (behaviorally),” she explained. “They may be down on their luck. They may have entered the homelessness cycle. Things happen to good people that cause them to become homeless.”
In Warrenton, Chief Mathew Workman and his officers deal every year with illegal campsites in city limits. The campsites aren’t allowed under city code and, as in Astoria, the garbage and human waste that gets left behind can quickly become a community health issue. Most of the campers are homeless or transient people, who, when an officer stops to chat, move along without any fuss.
“They aren’t necessarily trying to cause you any trouble,” Workman said. “There are people who take care of themselves and their stuff and that’s just the lifestyle they choose.”
In other instances, though, police encounter aggressive individuals, men or women who don’t want to move, who suffer from severe and often untreated mental illnesses, who are grappling with substance abuse issues. This is the 5 percent Bruce is referring to, and this is also who have kept police busy in both cities as an unusually warm and sunny summer has morphed into a mild fall.
The Astoria Parks and Recreation Department markets itself to families and visitors, but this year, along with hordes of tourists, the department has also hosted a growing number of homeless people at many of the 63 parks it manages.
“We’ve been struggling to keep up with a larger amount of garbage and just a larger amount of park visitors,” said parks Director Angela Cosby. Especially, she added, on the Riverwalk. At least once a week this summer, Cosby said park staff had to contact police to deal with an issue at park property. Most of these calls have to do with public safety concerns, she said. The staff has not felt threatened or unsafe.
“Different folks camping in parks, public defecation… we’ve had it all across the board,” she said. She estimates their calls to police this year went up by about 40 percent.
The porta-potty plan is still very preliminary, said Astoria City Manager Brett Estes, but it could be one step toward addressing a larger issue. Though it is only a small portion of the homeless population causing trouble for police, those calls drain time and resources, he said.
The city does not provide social services, but now it is trying to be a facilitator, he said. “How can we address this issue collectively and cooperatively?”
“This year seemed to really bring up the level of behavioral issues, and a lot from folks who were not from here,” Johnston said.
The county’s only jail is located in Astoria, he explained. When officers in other cities, from Warrenton to Cannon Beach, have to arrest a homeless person, they bring them to Astoria. But these days the jail is almost always at or above capacity. If the charges against the person are minor, often they’ll be let go hours later to make room for a more serious offender.
“So they go right out the front door and become an Astoria problem.”
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