Homelessness Demands Enlightened Plans not Poltical Correctness

Homelessness is defining the public agenda in Los Angeles and Portland.  In September, Mayor Eric Garcetti declared that homelessness had reached a “state of emergency” and Mayor Charlie Hales stated that a “homeless crisis” had beset Portland.  Since then the cities have allocated a combined $130 million to the issue.  Ted Wheeler, the frontrunner in the Portland mayor’s race after Hales dropped out, has made homelessness a priority in his campaign.

This summer I assessed the homeless use of public parks in Portland. In the course of my research, I walked five miles a day on average and regularly interacted with the homeless.  It was sobering.  Just as there are few atheists in foxholes, encountering the homeless—humans confined to a prison without walls on the edge of the abyss—produces either good existentialists or classical Hobbesian liberals, who see humans as fallen creatures destined for ruin without the oversight of a civic sovereign. Politically correct academics, I learned, have a different take.  Homelessness is not an existential crisis that demands interdiction; rather speaking “truth to power” and raising class-consciousness is the solution to a marginalized population deprived of inclusion.

Last week I attended the Society of American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) Conference in Los Angeles.  I was eager to see how historians are mining the past to address homelessness, as SACRPH’s stated mission is “bridging the gap between the scholarly study of cities and the practice of urban planning.”  American city planning has a rich history of housing the less fortunate. A century ago, John Nolen declared the novice profession’s mission was “housing the industrial classes, which is agreed to be one of the pressing problems of our civilization.” Nolen’s precedent, however, was ignored, as social theory not historical analysis informed the conference's opening plenary’s discussion of the homeless.   

Catherine Gudis, a cultural historian, addressed the issue in a session entitled, “Social Justice Through a Historical Lens.”  She introduced the subject by trumpeting her participation in a parade that celebrated “the accomplishments of Skid Row people and their visionary initiatives.” A worthy endeavor, but after the event Gudis assuredly returned to suburban Riverside where she is employed.  She never shared her encounters with the homeless, a population plagued by mental illness, drug addiction, and physical ailments.  Nor did she mention the need for enlightened plans to coordinate policing and social services.  Instead, she offered academic adages that stressed process over plans, offering street performance and art as mediums to procure a more inclusive public sphere and to inspire political action. Political action, of course, is not enough.  Moreover, to romanticize homelessness as a class struggle is to invite anarchy.  

This fall elected leaders in Vancouver, Washington (part of Metropolitan Portland) lifted the ban on camping in public spaces.  Within two weeks, 150 people occupied the edge of a residential neighborhood near the downtown.  The encampment had no leadership, policies, or infrastructure—no planning—and chaos ensued. Sleeping bags, shopping carts, mattresses, coolers, garbage, luggage and bike frames collected on street corners.  Amy Reynolds, an administrator with the nonprofit that runs Share House, the shelter around which the camp formed, was besieged by calls from alarmed residents complaining that, "Somebody is defecating in my yard. People are undressing outside my house. People are having domestic disputes, getting in screaming matches and physical fights.”http://www.oregonlive.com/homeless/2015/11/vancouver_tries_legal_camping.html  A reality check ensured, and city officials closed the camp.  The lesson learned is that homelessness demands a comprehensive solution, which only well-designed plans can secure.  

Whether attempting to mitigate homelessness, climate change, or housing affordability, livability is the key to good planning.  The Obama Administration restructured the Department of Housing and Urban Development on the Six Principles of Livability, which are drawn from the New Urbanist template for establishing pedestrian oriented neighborhoods with access to transit and a mix of uses. Livability is also keys to the Housing First initiative, which advocates moving the chronically homeless into apartments without preconditions.  Making housing the first the step to stability and sobriety is a radical reversal of standard practice.  In 2006 Lloyd Pendleton, chair of Utah's Task Force on Homelessness, championed the approach, and since then three quarters of the state’s homeless have left the streets.

The Portland Business Alliance is sponsoring Pendleton, a former executive manager of for Mormon Church’s Welfare Department, to speak to the “homeless crisis.” The city, the organization contends, “needs solutions now.”  Academics tend to deride the New Urbanism (SACRPH attendees greeted the term with catcalls) and the Mormon Church, but these organizations are skilled in implementing path-breaking plans that can solve a national crisis.  As history shown, this is the prerequisite to solving problems that demand political acuity not political correctness.

Cultivating Growth, Lessons in Livability for Conservatives

Portland is on a growth splurge; between 2012 and 2014 its population grew faster than 81 percent of the nation’s metro areas.  Sixty percent of the 59,016 new residents moved to the area, a trend that is expected to continue. Portland is a magnet for Millennials; the 18-to-34 years olds who move at nearly double the national average. Since 2010 Portland, along with San Francisco, Denver, and Austin, has experienced the highest influx of Millennials aged 25-34, the cohort crucial to economic growth.  Portland also attracts Millennials with college degrees at double the national average.  Their unemployment rate is 4.8 percent, which is not the scenario Claire Miller laid out in her often-cited article, “Will Portland Always be the Retirement City for the Young?”http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/magazine/will-portland-always-be-a-retirement-community-for-the-young.html?_r=0 Portland is prospering, a lead city in a national urban renaissance.  Since 2008, its gross domestic product (GDP) has increased by 22.8 percent, the top rate in the nation.  The irony is that the city’s greatest attribute—a superior quality of life—is the product of intelligent planning, an attribute the GDP does not measure.

The GDP, as Robert F. Kennedy stated in a celebrated 1968 campaign speech, counts "everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."  It measures “the ambulances to clear our highways of carnage” and “the loss of our natural wonder to chaotic sprawl.”  Nor does it measure “personal excellence and community values” that “are surrendered in the mere accumulation of material things.”  Kennedy’s speech struck a nerve across the nation, and that year Portland’s revival took root after a task force recommended replacing Harbor Drive with a public waterfront park.  Within five years, Mayor Neil Goldschmidt had a plan to renew the downtown and Governor Thom McCall had initiated the “Oregon Experiment” in land use planning, which required cities to establish urban growth boundaries (UGB).  Over time, regulation and innovation meshed the Portland region’s three elemental landscapes—wilderness, rural, and urban—in sustainable and profitable form.  Its lively pedestrian-oriented, bike friendly, nature infused environment offers new venues for work and leisure.  And in a period of political turmoil, it offers a model for conservatives as well as liberals.     

Conservatives fear the nation has entered an “Age of Exhaustion,” as the Great Recession eviscerated capitalism of any moral certitude.  Mass stupidity and speculative greed brought the nation to the edge of collapse, and the problem confronting Republicans is primarily “mental and spiritual,” according to David Brooks.  Sounding much like Robert Kennedy, his solution is to invest in communities and adhere to “a goal more profound than material comfort.” (New York Times, October 20, 2015) 

Brooks believes America is flailing because suburbia is in decline.  For conservatives, the sweet spot in American history for lies between the 1950s and the 1970s: the period when the suburb was in ascendancy, Leave It to Beaver and The Brady Bunch were the perceived norm, and suburban inhabitants “aspired to golf’s paradisiacal vision.” The Great Recession sent the striving for “par,” Brooks’ metaphor for balancing one’s commitment to community with individual desires, into the rough.http://www.amazon.com/On-Paradise-Drive-Always-Future/dp/0743227395  Once pinnacles of stability, suburbia is in transition and golf is in remission.  The sport has lost 24 percent of its participants since 2002, and for every golf course that opens, eleven close.  Proximity to bike trails, not golf courses, now informs real estate decisions, an indication of the new economic geography driving the post Recession economy.

Portland, not surprisingly, is the only major city in the United States to receive a Platinum designation from League of Bicyclists.  Twenty-five years ago, community activists set the groundwork for creating an interconnected system of natural lands and bicycle trails within the UGB.  Today, over 200 miles of bike trails link 17,000 acres of system of parks, a project aided by two regional bond measures and a levy–more than $400 million dollars.  The Intertwine Alliance, a coalition of over 140 public, private and nonprofit organizations, is working to expand the system and integrate nature and recreation more deeply into the daily life of the region.  At the same time the city of Portland is completing a new comprehensive plan to accommodate a population increase of over 200,000 in the next 20 years, and greenways, low stress bikeways, are key components.  They will link a system of “complete neighborhoods,” places that allow people of all ages and abilities safe and convenient access to the goods and services needed in daily life — where they can get to grocery stores, schools, libraries, parks and gathering places on foot or by bike. They are well connected to jobs and the rest of the city by transit.  And they have a variety of housing types and prices for households of different sizes and incomes.

Interestingly David Brooks envisions a similar future.  He thinks Republicans and Democrats should  unite and launch initiatives to enhance opportunity in middle-, working- and lower-class neighborhoods. He is keen on improving educational opportunity and “putting the quality of the social fabric at the center of the politics.” First, however, Brooks must realize that a neighborhood is not a subdivision, it is a place defined by livability--not the groomed vision of a golf course.  Moreover, the policies to create complete neighborhoods are already in place, and not just in Portland. 

The Obama Administration restructured the Department of Housing and Urban Development on the Six Principles of Livability, which focus on making the automobile an option not a necessity.  Establishing safe walkable neighborhoods with transportation choices is the best way to decrease living costs, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote public health.  Investing in livability not only enhances the GDP, it fosters personal excellence and community values.  Once this happens, we will all be shooting par.