City councilors hope to avert closure of homeless village
A pair of Portland City Council members on Tuesday urged city officials to reconsider plans to shut down a Northeast Portland homeless village for people living in vehicles that opened less than two years ago.
The pending closure of the Sunderland RV Safe Park site, which serves about 70 people near Portland International Airport, became a topic of conversation during a council work session focused on city-run shelters and other homeless services.
"I'm not going to sit down on this one and think we can't have a relook," Councilor Dan Ryan told city officials.
Ryan served as a Portland commissioner under the city's previous form of government and had helped lead efforts to expand the number of city-run outdoor shelters in recent years.
"It's disheartening," Ryan said.
After months of delays, the Sunderland shelter -- Portland's first to allow unhoused people to sleep in their vehicles -- opened in July 2023, allowing the city to clear a lengthy stretch of Northeast 33rd Drive chock-a-block with derelict RVs and those living inside them.
Yet last month, officials quietly announced they would close the outdoor shelter on March 31 and turn the lot back over to its owner, the Portland Bureau of Transportation. KGW first reported on the planned closure.
The Transportation Bureau had long used the site for maintenance but had agreed to move its operations temporarily to a nearby Port of Portland property to allow for the shelter, which costs the city about $2.5 million a year to run.
During Tuesday's work session, city officials said the shelter's contracted service provider, the Salvation Army, is working to move residents into permanent housing or help them relocate into another safe park site that opened in North Portland last fall.
Brandy Westerman, Portland's director of emergency humanitarian operations, added that while the Transportation Bureau and Port of Portland had expressed a willingness to help keep the site open, the shelter was funded only through the end of the fiscal year that ends in June.
"At this point, there appears there are options in terms of moving forward with the property," Westerman said. "However, the funding question is a part of that and something that we'd need to solve for."
Councilor Mitch Green said he'd like to see those living at the Sunderland site stay in place and find a way for the city to pay for it.
"For me, it's (about) minimizing the trauma involved with getting people out of an unsheltered situation and eventually into long-term housing," Green said.
Capt. Peter Pemberton, Portland metro coordinator for The Salvation Army Cascade Division, told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Tuesday that the organization "has been honored to successfully operate" the shelter and would "consider continuing operations" past the scheduled closure.
Meanwhile, Mayor Keith Wilson remained noncommittal on the future of the shelter site.
"Mayor Wilson is in discussions with council on how the Sunderland site fits in with an overall strategy to end unsheltered homelessness in Portland," said city spokesperson Cody Bowman. "The uncertainty surrounding the site has been hard on our Sunderland neighbors, and we want to make sure we get this right, not just for them, but for Portland as a whole."
Lillian Mongeau Hughes contributed to this report.