(Readers: I have the greatest news to report: Mark from the Old Crow Book Club found housing in a tiny home Safe Rest Village in Southeast Portland. What follows in a series of installments, is this story of how it happened. Please pass it on. More people need to learn about this success.)
Mark, charter member of the Old Crow Book Club, sat across from me at the same picnic table in the park where I'd staged the launch for the book nine months ago in what turned out to be the greatest experience of my literary life. I didn't sell a single book that afternoon, (gave away 50!) but that hardly mattered. What mattered how that event created a special community for the neighborhood's homeless community.
If only I could have followed up on that special moment by building more camaraderie between the homeless and the housed in the neighborhood, but I did not.
It was a bright sunny morning and the creek ran swift behind us. Mark and I conversed as a filmmaker shot footage for an upcoming documentary about the book club, Mark, and my unsuccessful efforts to obtain housing for one Oregon-born homeless man in his late 50s who had suffered two heart attacks ten months ago.
It had been a long time since Mark and I had really talked about books, history, politics, Oregon, his plight, and the fate of other members of the club. Winter rain, wind and snow was part of that, but also, Elmer the husky had taken up a lot of time and pulled me into other stories about the homeless. Funny, how a dog can change your editorial mission!
Mark was drinking a can of malt liquor and smoking a cigarette. I was wearing my beloved corduroy car coat because it felt like spring, real corduroy weather! Both of us were in voluble mood and we riffed away on the book, his homelessness, books, mutual friends, and frustrations with the city, county and non profits' chronic and farcical indifference and incompetence when it came to housing him. For almost three years, Mark, with help from me and other residents of the neighborhood, had been trying and failing to secure housing.
But today, this very day (!) the City had launched a new outreach program through something called the Street Services Coordination Center to assist the homeless find housing based on referral from a concerned member of the community. The program was chronicled in various media outlets, including the Oregonian:
“An outreach worker will respond to where the person is living outside within three days, though ideally they'll be able to respond within one day, according to Hank Smith, Mayor Ted Wheeler's policy advisor who led the effort...
“This gives us the ability to be more responsive,” Smith said. “We heard a lot from the community that this is needed and I agree.”
Smith said he has heard from concerned neighbors asking how they can help unhoused individuals obtain services...”
In fact, Smith heard repeatedly from a resident in my neighborhood who complained about the multiple problems of helping homeless people, namely Mark, into housing. The resident had read The Old Crow Book Club and sent Smith a copy. Maybe it played some small part in having the City establish this outreach program. Clearly, the conventional methods for housing someone like Mark and other members of the club were not working and this newfangled outreach program offered a new direction, at least in my mind. A paid City employee was going into the field and try the one-on-one approach and meet a homeless person who wanted off the streets where that person lived or hung out.
We had to give the program a try. So we did. As we told the filmmaker, we weren't going to quit.
Thank you, Matt, for continual care, voice-giving, and love for folks facing homelessness.
Great story! This body of work that you've created is something special to behold.
Bless you for your perseverance and continued efforts on Mark's behalf. Excited to hear the details in coming posts.