RV safe park in the balance as Portland City Council discusses state of homelessness
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Portland's new form of government is looking into the state of the city's homelessness crisis as the Sunderland RV Safe Park hangs in the balance.
The Northeast Portland RV park is slated to close at the end of March, with the city planning to move the more than 60 residents who call it home.
The discussions come one week into the term of Mayor Keith Wilson, who pledged to end unsheltered homelessness in a year. Exactly if or how that goal will be met remains to be seen even as the Portland City Council took up the issue as part of their agenda on Tuesday.
During the meeting, Portland Solutions shared statistics from last fiscal year, including that their Impact Reduction Program removed over 6,100 high-risk camps and disposed of 11.5 million pounds of garbage.
While progress is being made in some areas, some members of the new city council are already sounding the alarm as some shelter spaces are set to sunset.
"We don't have time to study, study — we need to do action, review it and then improve it," said Dan Ryan, the only returning member of Portland's new city council.
Among Portland Solutions' other accomplishments, they cited building 10 shelters — most of them over the last three years. They said that from July 2022 to Sept. 2024, 501 people have been moved into permanent housing. In that same time frame, they served more than 2,263 people, overall.
Even with all that's been achieved so far, Ryan expressed worry about upcoming budgetary concerns for continuing that effort.
"It's hard to sit here and think we're choosing a 'monster mulcher' over saving some lives of Portlanders," he said.
"We are at a big budget number, and I want to understand more about that budget number," said newly elected Portland City Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney. "Generally, it's more affordable to keep what we have than to build new, so I'd like to try to keep that resource available."
Pirtle-Guiney said the Sunderland RV Safe Park site is an item she hopes to discuss as a potential budget trade-off in the coming months. With the lease set to expire on March 31, residents are worried about what will happen afterward.
"This place is such a blessing. I can not tell you how much they've done for us," said Sunderland RV Safe Park resident Trevor Laudenslager.
Laudenslager said having the safety, security and WIFI provided in the park has allowed his wife to go back to school. He said the prospect of moving would be a major blow.
"It's too bad because we just moved in here and I've never been in a place where I didn't feel like, 'Oh, our house isn't going to get taken,'" Laudenslager said.
The council also heard an update on the Homeless Response Action Plan. Since launching the program last year, the City of Portland and Multnomah County said they've already sheltered more than 9,000 people — nearly halfway to their goal of sheltering 18,000 people by the end of 2025.