Yesterday we told you about Arbor Village, Portland’s taxpayer-funded no rules homeless shelter. Locals report that the whole area has become an open market for drugs and prostitution. Essentially, the city of Portland is trying to pander to the homeless who refuse to go to conventional homeless shelters. A typical homeless shelter has basic rules against open drug use, open prostitution, and trafficking of stolen goods.
Portland is now tripling down with something even far more extreme than Arbor Village. A so-called “Queer Affinity Village” is about to be placed on city-owned land. This will be a no rules, no questions asked, taxpayer-funded LGBTQP+ themed “outdoor shelter” for the homeless. It will be right across the street from a multilingual elementary school (pre-k through 5) and next door to a special needs middle school.
This is not satire! We are not making this up. Here it is on the official Portland Government website. As you can see by this Google Satellite picture, they are already allowing homeless people to camp out in the empty lot . Soon there will be heated sheds, and free food being served.
This is part of the “safe rest villages [SRV]” project. They have planned two different themed SRVs. A “Queer” village and a “BIPOC” village.
The heads of the two local schools originally endorsed this project. They said they supported it because they assumed it would be better than the uncontrolled homeless encampment the city was already allowing to occur on the empty plot of land. They now realize that what the city plans is worse than the homeless camp they already have!
Bodo Heiliger, head of International School of Portland, and Beven Byrnes, head of the Bridges Middle School, say they have rescinded their endorsement of the “Queer” themed homeless village.
We therefore reached out to other neighborhood associations, and discovered that they shared our sentiment. Together, fourteen neighborhood and community organizations identified three items to include in all SRV Good Neighbor Agreements (GNA)s. We then reached out to City and County leadership with these collective requests. The requests included: a strict enforcement of laws for SRVs located within 500 ft of school grounds; a requirement for background checks for those with felony convictions of violent crimes against a person, sex crimes, and property crimes within past seven years; a 1000 ft buffer zone where camping is not allowed; trash cannot accumulate; no drug dealing or other criminal activities; and the establishment of SRV advisory boards.
Yesterday, we were finally able to jointly meet with the City and County officials. Unfortunately, we can now confirm that none of our requests have been met, the most concerning of which is our request for the requirement of felony background checks for participants.
Given this denial of our requests, we can no longer support the Safe Rest Villages because of safety and security concerns. This is with a very heavy heart, as we truly hoped to be able to welcome the villagers with open arms. After months of providing very few answers to our requested information, the City recently announced that the participants are scheduled to move in next week. We are now turning to our community of parents, teachers, community leaders, and neighborhood associations to join together in a show of disapproval.
Due to the lack of collaboration and support from government officials that we have experienced over the last few months, we can no longer endorse their plans for the Naito Parkway village that will be situated within 75 ft. of our two schools. We hope that you will join us in voicing your concerns to City and County leadership.
The two schools host around 600 students from the ages of 3-13. Byrnes states that students at Bridges Middle School “have multiple learning differences/disabilities and have experienced traumatic rejection, isolation and bullying in their previous school settings.” It is very easy to predict that this will end very badly.
