Houseless Man Dies of Stroke During Winter Storm in The Dalles
A memorial poster made at St. Vincent de Paul Ministry Office.
By Cole Goodwin
John Michael Doyle, age 63, a lifelong resident of The Dalles who was best known for his laughter, died of a stroke and heart failure at 11 a.m. on Monday, April 11th, 2022 while experiencing houselessness.
“I miss him. He was a good friend,” said Wanda Brian this morning, April 14th, who is also houseless.
“He used to sleep right there,” she said pointing to a wooden box that abuts the St. Vincent de Paul Community Meal building, 315 W. Third St., The Dalles. “It’s hard out here. It was so cold. I was walking around that morning trying to stay warm, and he was right there.”
Wanda Brian outside Community Meals on Thursday April 14th, 2022.
Doyle had been sleeping on the St. Vincent property Monday night when the snowy winter storm hit The Dalles and temperatures dropped to just above freezing as the soaking wet snow fell.
Life-threatening hypothermia can set in between 32°F and 50°F.
And by the time St. Vincent’s opened in the morning, Doyle was in a bad way.
“I am the one that called 911,” said Colleen Ballinger, a nurse who was volunteering at St. Vincent’s when it happened.
“I was letting people in and was told by his friend that he was acting different and that he had had strokes before,” she said.
“I assessed him, and he had a crooked smile which was indicative that maybe half his face had become paralyzed.”
“He was very cold; everyone who came in that morning was very cold,” said Ballinger.
Emergency medical services were dispatched and took Doyle to the Mid-Columbia Medical Center hospital.
A couple of hours later St. Vincent’s was notified that Doyle had died of a stroke and heart failure.
Because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), medical providers could not confirm whether Doyle’s stroke was a result of cold weather.
However, medical studies show that cold weather can increase stroke risk.
A stroke occurs when the flow of oxygenated blood in the brain is disrupted. This can occur as a result of a blood clot forming somewhere in the body.
Cold weather causes the body’s blood vessels to constrict (become smaller) and increase the vessels blood pressure. Increased blood pressure is a major risk for stroke victims. The cold can also cause blood to thicken, which increases the likelihood of blood clots forming.
Being houseless can also dramatically increase your risk of experiencing many compounding health issues.
“People experiencing homelessness are generally sicker than their housed counterparts and more prone to death,” reads the Health Care for the Homeless website. They also report that people experiencing houselessness are twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared to housed people.
And according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, people who experience houselessness have an average life expectancy of around 50 years of age, almost 20 years lower than housed people.
“This is why we provide shelter ,” said Kenny LaPoint, Executive Director of Mid-Columbia Community Action Council. “It’s not a handout; it’s survival. Shelter is critical to surviving the extreme winter and summer weather we experience in the Mid-Columbia region. At the end of the day, the permanent solution is permanent housing. But until we are able to increase the supply of permanent, affordable housing, we must provide shelter.”
A message for John Doyle from Tony.
How Doyle Lost His Housing
John Doyle lived in a house that had belonged to his mother on 13th and Kelly. Doyle had been known to offer his house as a place for those experiencing houselessness to stay. But then the house burned down. After the house burned, Doyle had housing on an off-and-on basis until his death.
The empty lot where the house sat is now owned by Habitat for Humanity, who plans to put two houses on the lot.
CCCNews previously reported that Doyle had been offered a room at MCCAC and had turned it down. However new information available today tells a different story.
Doyle had been offered a room at the MCCAC shelter months ago, but was later denied shelter due to staff’s inability to provide him with the appropriate medical treatment he needed.
”Staff are trained in CPR, first aid, mental health and trauma informed care along with other behavioral health issues. However they were not able to provide John with the medical care that he required at that time,” said LaPoint.
The MCCAC shelter is currently not set up to provide for those who need help maintaining special medical equipment or care providers.
“Our current shelter is located on a piece of land in the City public right of way with some temporary shelters placed upon it, and an RV that doubles as an office space for staff,” said LaPoint. “There is no space there for an onsite medical clinic.”
A photo of the MCCAC shelter in The Dalles.
LaPoint said that the Navigation Center, which would house several community partners providing services, including those that provide medical care to those experiencing houselessness.
“When we build the Navigation Center we’re going to have space for a clinic in the building,” said LaPoint.
“The Navigation Center will allow us to meet more clients needs in one place. If there was the need to have an in-home care provider at the Navigation Center we would have space for that,” said LaPoint.
“Where as if we did that now the care provider would be sitting at a picnic table underneath an umbrella. Our current shelter situation simply does not allow us to provide for those with certain medical needs.”
However, LaPoint also said that Doyle would have been given shelter during the storm if he had asked for it.
“When my team found out he had passed away, it was devastating to them and to myself,” said LaPoint “If he had come to our shelter during the storm, we would have accommodated him.”
A site plan for the Navigation Center. The City has pledged $500,000 to MCCAC for the development of a Navigation Center where multiple services will be brought to single location to serve people who are houseless. However, the money to MCCAC was made contingent upon receiving an approved site plan review from the City’s planning department.
A message to John Doyle from Lurel.
Systemic issues continue to make shelter hard to come by for many Oregonians.
The problem: there’s a fundamental lack of supply, and what is there, is far out of the price range of the people who need it most.
Factors contributing to the housing crisis include more people moving to Oregon, not enough housing to accommodate the growing population, housing not being built fast enough, and too many luxury housing developments that cost more than the average Oregonian can afford.
In fact, many working families in Oregon simply don’t make enough to afford decent housing.
According to Housing Oregon, a worker making minimum wage needs to work 82 hours a week to afford a 2-bedroom apartment. In addition, seniors, people with disabilities, and others who live on fixed incomes are being faced with the increasingly hard choice of choosing between paying rising housing costs and paying for their prescriptions.
Earlier this year Oregon lawmakers told The Portland Tribune that they agreed “the state has a housing crisis but that is fueling houselessness and an affordable housing crisis”, but that major housing production reforms were a year away at best.
A graphic from Housing Oregon presents some possible solutions to the housing crisis.
According to the Climate Reality Project, extreme weather events caused by climate change are leading to rising dangers for those experiencing houselessness.
“This storm was completely out of the normal and snuck up on everybody. “ said LaPoint.
The “freak” winter storm in April was an extremely unusual and record breaking weather event for The Dalles, which historically only gets snow from November 9th to March 12th. The storm also broke records in the surrounding region. The National Weather Service reported that in 82 years of record keeping, Portland had never recorded more than a trace of snow in April.
Lapoint pointed out that due to this historical precedent, most funding for local shelters, including The Dalles Warming Place and The Hood River Shelter only continues through March, leading those shelters to close their doors as spring arrives.
A graph from Weather Spark shows the average snowfall range in The Dalles according to historical records.
Miscommunications between St. Vincent de Paul and other agencies also seemed to contribute to a lack of emergency shelter being available during the storm.
St. Vincent operators said they had given notice to The Dalles Mayor Rich Mays that it had discontinued the management of “Warming Place” services the week prior.
Dave Lutgens, Executive Director at St. Vincent’s, said that it was open to another agency or group running the Warming Place program at their facility, but St. Vincent’s would no longer be running the program. The nonprofit is currently pivoting from being “The Warming Place” and “The Cooling Place” to becoming a day center where those experiencing houselessness can go to get connected to services.
“MCCAC is supportive of St. Vincent de Paul’s efforts to create a new service model and to provide day center services", said LaPoint.
“I was notified that they were going to shut down The Warming Place, but I assumed that they would keep it open until the season was over,” said Mays.
Kenny LaPoint, Executive Director of Mid-Columbia Community Action Council said that he had not been notified of St. Vincent’s decision to no longer operate the Warming Place.
“I had no idea that St. Vincent de Paul was not operating, nobody informed me of that,” said LaPoint. “Our agency along with the City of The Dalles has served as the primary funder of the St. Vincent de Paul services for the winter warming season. However, MCCAC does not control the opening or closing of their warming shelter.”
However, even if communications had been done between agencies, emergency shelter still might not have been available.
MCACC manages The Dalles Non-Congregate Shelter, (The Pallet Homes Shelter) which is funded year round. However, the shelter has only 36 beds, which is not nearly enough to house the 194 people experiencing houselessness in Wasco County.
LaPoint also reiterated that funds for winter shelters typically do not extend past March, and that setting up an emergency shelter for the unexpected storm would have required significant planning, funding, infrastructure, volunteer coordination, and staffing to pull off.
All agencies and folks quoted in this story expressed deep sadness about Doyle’s death and agreed that know one could have predicted what would happen nor would they have ever wanted such an outcome to occur.
Dave Lutgens of St. Vincent de Paul Ministry Office holds up a poster memorial for John Doyle.
Community Mourns the Loss of John Michael Doyle
Doyle, a lifelong resident of The Dalles, was well known and liked amongst local service agencies. In fact he had received meals and services from St. Vincent’s off and on for nearly 20 years.
“When he was around, he was around here every day.” said Lutgens. “He was always laughing. He had kind of a funny laugh. He was always rolling cigarettes. He liked his snacks, but he didn’t have many teeth. He’d speak in spurts because I think he was having a hard time breathing.”
“He utilized the warming shelter quite often. He was a frequent guest at the Warming Shelter this past winter,” said Courtney Crawford, SVDP board member.
“He will be missed,” said Crawford. “He had a defiant dignity. His dignity is what I’m thinking about today.”
LaPoint said that the loss of John Doyle was hitting his team hard.
“John was a great human being, and we’re completely at a loss for what happened, and he’s going to be missed,” said LaPoint. “It’s a tough loss for our team and the houseless community.”
“He was a great guy,” said LaPoint.
Rob Mendoza, MCCAC Shelter Manager had known Doyle for several years in different capacities as a counselor and a friend.
“When I found out I was pretty shook,” said Mendoza.
Mendoza said that Doyle’s laughter would be missed.
“The guy had an infectious laugh,” said Mendoza. “That was John for you; he would just start laughing, no matter what he was doing, or what he was talking about or whatever popped into his head, he would just start laughing. And it was an infectious laugh where you’d just start laughing with him, and you’d have no idea why you were laughing.”
“He was a great guy and a good person to be around. He was kind hearted and soft spoken—just a wonderful person that the community is going to miss,” said Mendoza. “Our community is a little smaller because he’s gone.”
City of The Dalles Police have yet to identify if Doyle has any living relatives.
A memorial service for Doyle is set for Monday, April 18th at 1 p.m. at the St. Vincent de Paul Ministry office located at 315 W 3rd St in The Dalles.
A flier inviting the public to attend a memorial for John Doyle on April 18th at 1 p.m.
