Outside Looking In

An immersive essay exploring the quiet epidemic of suburban homelessness. With one of the highest unsheltered populations in the US, Oregon struggles to help those who have slipped through the cracks.

Outside Looking In 

This year’s headlines bleed the urgency of a homeless conundrum in, and around, The Rose City. Sidewalk-sleepers, Hope Village and a largely unenforceable ban on public camping tell the story of a city conflicted. When I think about the homeless, visions of ragged and swaddled men and women huddled, in downtown doorways, spring to life against the flat jingle of loose change in a used paper cup. 

A quick Google search provides a dizzying amount of information on the state of homelessness and a universe of organizations offering help. After ingesting volumes of sterile statistics and ridiculous  definitions, I feel no closer to an understanding of the problem. I want to see it for myself.

Just before sun up on a Saturday morning, I pull in to the drive through at McDonalds and order half a dozen Egg McMuffins, and a few hash browns, just to be safe, and head out for a homeless camp I have learned about in an old story done by The Willamette Week. It’s in a wooded area right in the heart of hilltop Oregon City. These woods are no bigger than an acre or two of publicly held land, economically unsuitable for development of any kind. A worthless plot that the town grew up around. It has been an unofficial haven for the homeless for decades, although I have never seen it for myself. I guess out of sight really is out of mind. 

I park in the lot of the Haagen grocery directly across the street from the wooded plot that sits right on Highway 213. Across the street Clackamas Community College bubbles with activity. The immediate area is speckled with apartment buildings and strip malls, but tucked away, just out of sight, dozens of men, women and children, down on their luck, brave the elements. These are just a few of the 90% of longterm homeless who are unsheltered and at the highest risk in Oregon.   

It is cold enough to see my breath and the foliage crackles loudly, underfoot, in the still of the sparse wood. They will know that I am coming. These woods are full of bare sapling elm and towering deciduous wonders of every kind. The quiet is eerie when I stop to queue up the voice recorder and camera on my phone. The battery is low and there are no plugs out here. The thought of life without a smart phone send chills down my spine. In the rustling quiet of nature, I hear footsteps in the brittle fall leaves and turn to see a large man in full rain gear with a billowing grey beard and a black leather ball cap pulled down low on his brow. In a rush, it dawns on me that some people out here may not be as excited to see me as I am them. When our eyes meet he smiles broadly, booming “morning friend” from somewhere deep in his taut belly. His crystal blue eyes wince when he hoists the fifty pound bag of dry dog food down from his shoulder and I try to keep my imagination from getting the better of me. I won’t believe that he’s eating Alpo unless I see it for myself. 

When I offer him an egg McMuffin in exchange for a few questions, he tells me that he’s not much of a talker, although I have my suspicions. I hand him one anyway, and ask for directions to anyone who might be willing to talk to me. Eventually he admits that his name is George. He reluctantly tells me that he’s been camping in these woods over a year. He is guarded when I ask about his story. 

“To be honest, I just don’t have it in me to go back down that road again right now,” he tells me gravely and changes the subject. “Dozens of people out here every night…Everyone keeps pretty much to themselves back in here”. When I ask him why? “I don’t know really, some kind of respect, I guess. People ain’t back here whoopin it up ‘er nothing, so least I could do is leave a guy to suffer in peace.” 

When we finish eating, he puts the wrapper in his coat pocket and leads me into the thicket, pointing out makeshift camp sites along the way. It strikes me as obscene that most of the people who have resorted to camping, or sleeping in cars, will not be counted in the official figures. George steers me clear of the first encampment we come upon, shaking his head and scrunching his face into a scowl. It is a huge brown army surplus tent, twenty by twenty at least, where a vet named Jarred lives. 

“He’s got the PTSD pretty bad, like shelled shocked, ya know,” George tells me in a whisper, shaking his head. “He’s an okay guy… just come unglued around strangers; real paranoid type.” I don’t get to meet Jarred but he is proof of the failure of a five-year-old Federal initiative I have just read about.  The End Veteran Homelessness Initiative promises permanent housing to all homeless veterans, by the end of 2015. Although, Nationally veteran homelessness has come down a reported 33% since 2010. But, I have to wonder just how much of this success is erroneously attributed to the uncounted fringe, camping in cars and green spaces across the state.    

The next camp site is practically on the path. It consist of a worn blue tarp, haphazardly strung over a low-hanging tree branch. The dusty clearing is littered with empty Rockstar cans, food wrappers, and the mangled carcass of a rotisserie chicken which sits, defiled, on the frozen earth. Salvaged treasures sit like random statuary, paired off two by two: a dresser and a deeply scratched antique armoire, a car battery charger and an industrial blow torch, and two Razor Scooters enclosed by a sparkly, purple hula-hoop.     

Under the tarpaulin lean-to, an emaciated and deeply pocked teenager, hands tucked between his thighs for warmth, sleeps uncovered on a dirty blue twin mattress. The front wheel of his primer grey street bike is tucked under the corner of this mattress, presumably for safe keeping. 

“He’s a punk; real nasty cuss.” George says, pointing to a narrow trail beaten into the brush off to the left. He parts the overgrown thicket like curtains and ushers me into a claustrophobic trail. About a hundred yards in, George stops to show me the husk of an abandoned campsite where a family with two small daughters had been living for the past few months. 

“Lost their house and it all went downhill.” The tents are gone but a camouflage tarp is still stretched tight between tree limbs above for cover. I ask George if he has any idea what happened to them but he just shakes his head and shrugs. “The shelters wouldn’t take the husband and they didn’t want to split up the family. He fished a lot, so they ate pretty good and I used to see the girls around the day center over here all the time,” he says waving his arm in the general direction of the Willamette River. “But, that’s how it is out here; sometimes they just go and disappear.”        

We continue down the ambling trail in reverent silence for another few minutes until the brush opens onto a clearing completely encompassed by a thick copse of cedar and elm. I can smell the embers of the fire-pit and notice it’s been dug out and lined with sand. It sits at the center of the orderly campsite, surrounded by a two-man pup tent, a plush lazy-boy accompanied by an oak end table, and a pile of wheeled luggage stacked neatly and leaning against a tree. 

“Albert’s a Vet too, but he’s a real teddy bear,” George admits, and as if on cue, a bright blond head pokes through the very top of the slit in the domed tent. “Who goes there?” he jokes, wrestling with the jammed zipper from the outside and mumbling to himself. George makes the introductions before excusing himself.

“You know your way back don’t ya?” he jokes, before telling me he will be back for me in a while.                                                                               

Albert and I sit on a log, eating our McMuffins and hash browns in silence, as I open the document with my questions and covertly begin recording an audio memo. While I ease into the conversation, rubbing my stiff, cold hands together, all that I can think is Why didn’t I bring coffee too? The cold is piercing and the air feels stagnant, in here sheltered from the wind. The image of that kid,, sleeping uncovered on his stained mattress, weighs on me, but I try to focus on the job at hand. I can’t tell who’s more nervous as we chit-chat about the weather. Instinctively, I check my weather app; it’s thirty-one degrees, but with the wind chill, it feels like twenty-eight, according to the weather channel. I know that fast food restaurants convenience stores are only minutes away, even on foot, but back here, it feels like a different world. A wild tract, alive and obscured, right in the midst of civilization.  

Albert is forty-nine years old and originally from Oregon City. 

“Six years in the Army took me all over. Spent some real eventful years in Iraq. Went out on my patrols and all, but I never saw any real combat.” He has been without a permanent home for the past two years. “Yeah, we camp most nights; the shelters don’t take dogs and I couldn’t make it without my little guy,” he tells me stroking the floppy eared dog sitting quietly in his lap. Chips is a pure bred Lhasa Opso who has been with Albert for years. “The only good thing left over from my old life,” he says staring down at his tattered brown work boots, toeing the dirt. “We started out right here, but when they rousted us, we went downtown; didn’t know where else to go. It wasn’t a safe place though. Heroin’s all over down there. So, we come back out and people left us alone, so we stayed.” 

I want to ask him a so many questions but he is just starting to open up and I figure that I should shut up and just let him tell it. After an awkward lull he spills it. “I come out the service in twenty-eleven " honorable discharge, and started a few jobs but I didn’t take to none of them really. Before long, I was doing day labor and warehouse work where I could get it, but it wasn’t steady enough to pay the bills…. Then we were in and out of cheap motels for a while. I’d sneak [the dog] in and they’d kick us out. Sometime days, sometime weeks, but they always got us. Never made any sense to me, ‘cuz Chips smells better than most of those guys.” Hearing his name, the dog puts his paws up on Albert’s chest and starts to lick his neck. When he gets quiet again I ask how the dog got the name Chips, and his face lights up. 

“When I got out, I was in pretty bad shape. I never saw any combat, but I saw some stuff in Iraq that I couldn’t get out of my head. A neighbor’s dog had puppies and she gave me one. I tried to say no, but I guess she could tell that I was hurting. First night, I fell asleep on the couch with my hand in a bag of BBQ Lays " dinner. Woke up the middle of the night and couldn’t find the damn dog. I started to panic, a little. Tore the place up before I heard him rustling around in that bag. Poor little fella puked everywhere; sure do like him some tater chips though.”                                 

I know that the shelters are out of the question for Albert because of his dog and I wonder how many other homeless, sleeping in tents and cars, are not counted ever year. I ask if he uses any of the programs or services that I have read so much about recently. Albert tells me that he’s a regular at a day center in Oregon City called My Fathers Heart. Four days a week, from 8:30am to 3:30pm, they provide food and a safe warm place, during the day, for the disenfranchised of the area, as well as outreach across the city. A continental breakfast in the morning, hot lunch and a brown bag to-go in the afternoon, showers and a clothing exchange; even free haircuts twice a month.      

“…Get you a mailing address set up there and they got phones and the internet for people to use too…They got doctor once a month and a guy from the VA come out once a week. He got me going on this program for vets. Now, I got a voucher to get us into an apartment, if we could find one.” Albert found out that although he hadn’t seen any combat, his active status abroad fit the criteria and he was eligible for some veteran’s benefits, including the VASH housing voucher program. It provides permanent housing for eligible vets" assuming that they can find a land lord willing to cooperate. “A homeless vet with some baggage ain’t everybody’s first choice, but we’ll get there.” Albert says as if he were try to convince the dog in his lap, and I can only imagine what it must feel like to be so close after two years out in the cold. 

Hiking out, I my head is spinning as I try to rationalize this surreal and fleeting experience. In a daze, I offer George the last two McMuffins but he’s had his fill. As we pass, I drop the greasy bag of food next to the rail thin teenager, still asleep on his dirty blue mattress. He looks pale and dead to me until, looking back, I see him stir with a shiver. For some reason I wish he had woken up, that I had at least seen his eyes.

Just like that, I pop out of the existential rabbit hole I’ve been down, and onto a busy street, back to my own reality.

It is easy to see how people can become desensitized to a problem that is so difficult to conceptualize for most. Suffering is hard to look at; and it should be. The most recent federal data available shows that, Nationally, homelessness is down 2% " across the board. Drilling down, Oregon boasts a staggering 38% reduction in the last four years, alone. Not enough to prevent Mayor Hales from declaring an official state of emergency earlier this year. 

Tonight, the temperature will dip well below freezing for the first time this year. As I tap out the last few lines of my exploration in the woods, double checking facts and figures, I can’t help but wonder what all of this resounding progress means to that skinny kid shivering on his filthy twin mattress.   

                                      

         

Author's Note

Any and all insights are welcome, although I am particularly interested in anything related to structure or flow.

Also, any advise about the integration of statistic for context - too much? too little? just too depressing? General impressions?

Thank you for reading.

Best,
DA Bell-Paris