Mill Creek Clean Up Highlights Systemic Housing Crisis
North Wasco County Parks and Recreation employees and The Dalles Police officer working to clean up Mill Creek in The Dalles near Thompson Park.
By Cole Goodwin
Humans generate a lot of trash.
And the pandemic has significantly increased the usage of single-use plastics. For those with housing, trash pick-up is just another utility to pay.
But the unique challenges experienced by those experiencing houselessness, (especially those struggling with behavioral health issues) can make keeping up with the trash an insurmountable task.
It all goes back to the housing crisis.
Local experts agree that the houseless encampment trash problem stems from the ongoing housing crisis that has resulted in an affordable housing shortage. In addition, there are not enough adequate trash, kitchen, and restroom facilities for public use, which could help mitigate the sanitation impacts of houseless camps.
Most individuals experiencing houselessness don’t have the means to pay for trash pick up. And they don’t have a place to store their belongings. Their food and water containers are single-use plastics.
However, action is being taken to address the issue of trash and affordable housing city-wide.
The City’s Unhoused Task Force is headed up by Mayor Rich Mays and staffed by Alan Alford and Kathleen Priest of St. Vincent de Paul, Al Barton from Center for Living, Pat Ashmore from the City of The Dalles Police, Karen Long from the Housing Authority, and Kenny LaPoint from Mid-Columbia Community Action Council.
The task force came into existence about six months ago. It has identified houseless camp clean-ups as an issue that needs to be addressed. However, plans for the committee to get out and visit camps were put on hold due to the latest COVID resurgence.
“We still intend to move forward with our goal to clean up houseless camps locally, but not until COVID has settled down enough for it to be safe to do so,” said Mayor Mays. “We will continue to work towards that goal, and in the meantime, we are working to manage the problem as best we can with the assets and resources that are available to us.”
Although the task force recognized that litter pick up is an issue they also recognized that just picking up trash is not a long-term solution to addressing houselessness in the region, Mays said. The task force has been focused on developing infrastructure to address the root causes of houselessness in the gorge, starting with finding a location for a long-term shelter site and Navigation Center.
The Navigation Center would be the site of permanent year-round shelter and house multiple service agencies, including housing assistance, mental health services and a job center. The Unhoused Task Force has currently narrowed down the list of possible locations to five sites and will present to City Council when they have narrowed it down to their top pick.
Lack of affordable housing makes the trash issue worse.
“The City has taken a proactive approach to address the heart of the issue,” said Kenny LaPoint, Executive Director of Mid-Columbia Community Action Council. “They are updating some of their land use development ordinances to increase the supply of affordable housing in the city while also creating options for siting shelter in city limits. Homelessness is directly impacted by a lack of available affordable houses. And if we’re going to address the issue at its core, we’re going to need to develop more housing options. We have a lot of people that have housing vouchers from the Mid-Columbia Housing Authority but haven’t been able to find a rental home for them to use them in.”
“At the end of the day, the shelter is a band-aid. It keeps people alive, which is the goal. But it’s not the long-term solution. The long-term solution isn’t to build more shelters. The long-term solution is to build affordable housing so that you don’t need shelters anymore,” said LaPoint.
“This is a systemic problem, picking up trash in a camp is not the end-game solution,” said LaPoint. “The dumpsters that are being filled now will need to be filled again and again until we have affordable housing options - people are going to continue to experience homelessness because there is no place for them to not experience homelessness right now.”
LaPoint also said that even at the shelter, trash was still a difficult thing to manage. Unlike in a home where you can use a glass and put it in the sink to wash later, the shelter must currently rely on single-use plastic water bottles for COVID safety reasons.
“We don’t have big facilities to provide water, so we’re having to use single-use plastic water bottles, and that produces a lot of trash,” said LaPoint. “We go through hundreds of single-use plastic water bottles on a weekly basis. Fortunately, we have dumpsters, and we can recycle, but folks living in camps don’t have that ability. So, the trash tends to build up. And they need to drink water too. It’s a part of survival. I would highlight that behavioral health conditions also contribute to an inability to maintain sanitation.”
Sanitation is not always the top priority of those experiencing houselessness.
“The top priority is survival on a day-to-day basis,” said LaPoint.
“The trash is definitely an issue that is impacting the community at large, but the issue is lack of available housing to put people in. The longer people are experiencing homelessness, the more likely they are to encounter behavioral health issues and lack of access to proper sanitation, so it’s a compounding issue,” said LaPoint. “In addition, we need more behavioral health services. Oregon needs to do a better job addressing behavioral health issues in general.”
Things are being done to address the root causes but in the meantime - trash is still piling up.
On Sept. 13th and 14th, North Wasco County Parks and Recreation District sent five employees to the task of cleaning up lower Mill Creek. It took five NWPRD employees a full day to clean up the area that runs along Thompson Park. The clean-up resulted in one dump truck load of trash being removed from the banks of the creek and the creek itself.
Trash taken from the area surrounding Mill Creek filled an entire dump truck.
"It's something that's taking up more and more of our staff time," said Scott Baker, Executive Director at NWPRD. "It's almost daily that we are cleaning up huge piles of litter and trash and abandoned and entrenched camps from people experiencing homelessness."
However, Baker also pointed out that it wasn't just those experiencing houselessness that are the cause of all the trash that finds its way into Mill Creek.
"I don't want to make it seem like the problem is totally on people experiencing houselessness. The trash problem is complicated by the wind in The Dalles. If you walk out of Safeway and you drop a receipt, it ends up in Mill Creek. If you walk out of Mama Janes and you drop a napkin, it ends up in Mill Creek. The wind just carries it until it hits the fence of trees and ravine that is the creek, and it just becomes a collector for trash. It's just the nature of those trees and creek to act as a fence and catch all the debris blowing by from the west."
Baker said that at least three individuals experiencing houselessness were camped along Mill Creek during the clean-up. NWPRD asked The Dalles City Police to help as NWPRD employees are not trained in dealing with people experiencing mental health issues or engaging with houseless individuals.
To assist, MCCAC has formed a partnership with City Police to send their Street Outreach Team out with police when approaching camps or during camp clean-ups. The City and MCCAC’s mutual goal is to connect houseless individuals with housing and behavioral health services. However, the Street Outreach team was not called in for this particular clean-up, and the individuals involved in this particular clean-up were not interested in the services offered to them by City Police, Baker said.
"We like to say, ‘hey, you can't be here- but there is some other place for you to go.’ And there was actually room at the pallet shelters. So, knowing there was space, we were hoping to assist those folks into getting in there, but they just weren't having it. So, they chose to pack up their stuff and go elsewhere,” said Baker. "One of the people in the camps had been a guest of the MCACC’s shelter but found the rules there were untenable. She knew about it. She chose to move out of there."
LaPoint said MCCAC has worked hard to ensure that The Dalles Homeless Shelter has standard rules but also low barriers to getting access.
“We have pretty standard rules that you’d expect for the protection of other shelter guests, as well as staff and the community at large,” said LaPoint.
Rules include: guests must
be looking for permanent housing,
must engage in proper sanitation,
take care to keep their units clean and in operating order,
no substance use (including alcohol) on-site,
no fighting, and general good behavior that ensures a safe environment for staff and guests.
In addition, MCCAC staff do daily inspections of shelter units to ensure that they are being properly maintained and cared for by guests and that no substance use is taking place on-site. Daily inspection reports are filed by staff with MCCAC management to ensure compliance.
“We do work with people. If they’re struggling to keep their unit clean for instance, we will help teach folks how to clean up,” said LaPoint. “At the end of the day, this is to ensure the health of every one of our shelter guests.”
Fire safety is another issue associated with houseless camps on public property.
As the nights get colder, with survival as a top priority, some houseless may be more inclined to start fires to warm themselves despite fire bans still being in place.
"One of the reasons this was especially troubling to me was that there were fire pits, and although we have gotten some rain, it is still incredibly dry at Thompson Park," said Baker. "I had serious concerns about those campers with the fire pits catching the park and the surrounding area on fire. Where they were located, just six feet from tall dry grass, they essentially could have trapped themselves in the event the fire were to spread."
NWPRD is also working to address short-term and long-term solutions to trash in public parks.
NWPRD’s short-term strategy to keep campers and trash out of the creek has been to install no trespassing signs near the creek, although this hasn’t changed behaviors so much as given NWPRD a legal precedent to ask campers to relocate.
"In the medium term, maybe we could build a strategically placed chain link fence that would catch a lot of trash before it goes into the creek," said Baker.
NWPRD’s long-term strategy to address litter and camping by individuals experiencing houselessness along the creek is to install a walking path along the creek. The walking path project, called the Mill Creek Greenway will cost $2.62 million dollars. The funding for the project has already been secured by NWPRD, and a contract is currently being created and reviewed by the Oregon Department of Transportation. Once the project is approved, ODOT will have 3 years to complete the project.
"Our long-term strategy for that area is putting in the Mill Creek Greenway, and we hope that when we have a steady stream of walkers and joggers and people with baby strollers going up and down and using the greenway, that it becomes less attractive to camp or do illicit activities. We want to replace those negative behaviors with positive behaviors," said Baker.
"In the meantime, we're going to continue to do cleanups as often as we can," said Baker.
How You Can Help
MCCAC urged the community to join them in addressing the impact of trash build-up from those experiencing houselessness by acknowledging both the short-term problem and the long-term root causes.
“People in the community are upset because this is an issue that is very visible and is impacting the community at large,” said LaPoint. “One thing we want to avoid is pointing the finger at an individual rather than pointing the finger at the broken state and national systems that have caused a significant lack of affordable housing overall.”
“It’s easy to single out a person you can see right in front of you, such as a homeless person with trash around them. But that homeless person has trash around them because the system failed them. That person didn’t get access to services when they were at a critical point in their life. The social safety net didn’t support them at that time like it was supposed to do. And that failure of our systems has resulted in many people experiencing houselessness, having trauma, long-term behavioral health, and substance abuse issues.”
“I don’t know if you’ve been to some of Oregon’s other communities recently but there is trash everywhere. That is not what we want for our community,” said LaPoint. “Our mission is to build a better future for our community, which involves getting ahead of these issues as much as we possibly can. But for now, we’ve kind of been forced to come in behind it, and as a result, we’re having to address the urgent need of survival while also trying to fix the systemic issue of lack of available housing and services. And tackling it all at one time is not super simple. And the strategies that get you there don’t get completed overnight. I’m not asking for the community to have more patience on this, but I am asking for more help. I’m a big believer in self-sufficiency in some aspects, but I’m a bigger believer in interdependency and creating a community that knows how to rely on its community when support is needed.”
To donate to MCCAC click here.
To submit public comment to the City of The Dalles Unhoused Task Force, click here.
