Finch is so darn adorable! You’ve got a treasure of an adventurous soul right there!
One thing that seems to jump out as an obvious “win-win” idea for Lloyd Local is to provide a (short term?) step up off the streets community living space for the unhoused. Yes, it would require investment in renovations, staffing and infrastructure. Maybe use the parking lots for tiny houses, and part of the interior for showers/restrooms, mental health services, Food Bank distribution, medical care, etc? Yes, there would be resistance and NIMBY-ism. Yes, it would require great creativity, long term commitment and problem solving modeled on other urban revitalization projects. But Portland is sitting on unspent millions from federal Covid relief …. While unknown thousands of humans are sitting in tents lining the freeways, boulevard medians, parks and empty lots. Every year it gets worse, more people literally circling the city drains.
It would be a shame if the vast behemoth of real estate that is the Lloyd Center is not — at least in part— repurposed towards solving an urgent humanitarian crisis, “Forgotten Eyes” on the streets, visible everywhere in Portland.
Totally! There have been a lot of ideas about what the space could be used for during the now storm in Feb, the old Marshalls was used to house houseless people temporarily and it seems like even a portion of the enormous space could be used as some kind of permanent shelter. I feel like I’ve heard about the potential to turn the space into affordable housing, but the proposals would be about tearing it down vs using the space.
Indeed there will always be NIMBY complaints, but the city really needs to buck ip and find better solutions and ignore the NIMBYs. Solutions for the crisis have been terrible so far and the opposite of humane (the mayor had recently banned daytime camping 🤦♀️). I’m hoping that with a new city council structure in the next couple years with better representation from across the city, we’ll have counselors less beholden to NIMBY-ism. But that is alllll for another post, ha!
Finch is so darn adorable! You’ve got a treasure of an adventurous soul right there!
One thing that seems to jump out as an obvious “win-win” idea for Lloyd Local is to provide a (short term?) step up off the streets community living space for the unhoused. Yes, it would require investment in renovations, staffing and infrastructure. Maybe use the parking lots for tiny houses, and part of the interior for showers/restrooms, mental health services, Food Bank distribution, medical care, etc? Yes, there would be resistance and NIMBY-ism. Yes, it would require great creativity, long term commitment and problem solving modeled on other urban revitalization projects. But Portland is sitting on unspent millions from federal Covid relief …. While unknown thousands of humans are sitting in tents lining the freeways, boulevard medians, parks and empty lots. Every year it gets worse, more people literally circling the city drains.
It would be a shame if the vast behemoth of real estate that is the Lloyd Center is not — at least in part— repurposed towards solving an urgent humanitarian crisis, “Forgotten Eyes” on the streets, visible everywhere in Portland.
Totally! There have been a lot of ideas about what the space could be used for during the now storm in Feb, the old Marshalls was used to house houseless people temporarily and it seems like even a portion of the enormous space could be used as some kind of permanent shelter. I feel like I’ve heard about the potential to turn the space into affordable housing, but the proposals would be about tearing it down vs using the space.
Indeed there will always be NIMBY complaints, but the city really needs to buck ip and find better solutions and ignore the NIMBYs. Solutions for the crisis have been terrible so far and the opposite of humane (the mayor had recently banned daytime camping 🤦♀️). I’m hoping that with a new city council structure in the next couple years with better representation from across the city, we’ll have counselors less beholden to NIMBY-ism. But that is alllll for another post, ha!