Sometimes raising hell works.
I now live at the Multnomah Safe Rest Village, in a plastic shack that's actually big enough for me to not just sleep in but also park my bike in and even cook simple meals in with my hot plate and rice cooker. I raised a lot of hell getting here, some of which was straight up me being ineffectually mental on the phone … but a (♥️ OMFG super gorgeous!) KGW news reporter decided to help me after I emailed her; she even put me on TV! Which, by the way, I found utterly terrifying. Resulting from that, some street social worker-ish chick and a weirdly eager fire fighter met with me and offered me a berth here, and then whisked me out of Northwest Portland in a cab (this safe rest village is way out in the hills in Southwest Portland).
I didn't know what to expect, but all in all I'm pleased with the change. I can lock the door, I can turn the heat up, and I can stay up and sleep in; I can shower, I can even cook stuff on a nice propane grill if I feel like it. A couple of my neighbors even watched a football game earlier in a covered common area with a projector. I even have a cute little Chinese crab apple tree in front of my shack, along with a little emergency rain shelter I cobbled together for my neighbors' cats out of a chair, collapsible poles, Gorilla™ tape, a garbage bag and a couple shirts. Sometimes it gets kinda noisy at odd times here, but for the most part it's peaceful and drama-free … which is significant because we all engage in some form of substance use.
This is so much better than those crappy HAP housing projects (I've "lived" in three of them, also a Central City Concern housing building — I know whereof I speak)! I'd rather stay here than move into a fucking welfare silo full of shithead neighbors and mismanaged by villainous slumlords. More facilities such as these should be erected, specifically by community gardens adjacent to city parks, perhaps also incorporating feral cat colonies to give us opportunities to be purposeful and busy. Far's I'm concerned subsidized housing's just a taxpayer boondoggle that harms the physical and mental well-being of the poor while benefiting career bureaucrats and corporate grifters.
