The North Portland Neighborhood Chairs sent the following statement to City Hall. It supports Overlook in our ongoing attempts to convince the city to work with us on the Hazelnut Grove homeless camp and to develop a serious strategy for dealing with the homelessness crisis.
Most of us have a variety of ideas about how to address people in our community that are homeless, but we are unified in our support of the Overlook Neighborhood Association as it engages with their newest neighbors at Hazelnut Grove. The decision to unilaterally sanction the formation of Hazelnut Grove without a public process was misguided and has created a lack of trust of the City by other neighborhoods in the position to consider space for encampments. The lack of planning for Hazelnut Grove is in high contrast to the planned long-time encampment on the border of our district, Dignity Village. The hasty formation by the City of Hazelnut Grove and the continued poor communication with those encamped and the surrounding community has placed an undue and unexpected burden on these residents. Members of the Overlook Neighborhood Association have been put in the role of fending for themselves as the City, with no apparent plan, makes administrative decisions and develops policy without engagement.
While we are not in universal agreement with all of the requests by the Overlook Neighborhood Association for a belated City permit for Hazelnut Grove, we do strongly agree that the City needs to seriously consider their recommendations. We urge the City to begin immediately to communicate with and dedicate resources to Hazelnut Grove residents as well as to the City’s long time officially recognized neighborhood association, the Overlook Neighborhood Association.