Fwd: Kerns Neighborhood Association homelessness

[Jay Harris]

Hi all,

Please give a read at your earliest convenience and send me any feedback you might have.

Thanks!

Jay 

Greg came to KNA meeting last winter to talk about these issues, FYI. 

Begin forwarded message:

From: greg bourget <gregb...@hotmail.com>

Subject: Re: Kerns Neighborhood Association homelessness

Date: April 18, 2025 at 7:47:54 PM PDT

To: Jay Harris <rhyt...@mindspring.com>

Jay,

I appreciate your consideration of these endorsements from Kerns Neighborhood Association for each of these papers, unless you have any disagreements, then I would love to hear hear your written concerns so I can pass it on to the writers.

- Greg

Cascadia Action

503 995-5453

---

From: Jay Harris <rhyt...@mindspring.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 8, 2025 4:55 PM
To: greg bourget <gregb...@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kerns Neighborhood Association homelessness

 

Hi Greg,

I have had a chance to read these and am personally in agreement with most of what I read.

I’ll pass this on to our board and ask folks to read them and share their comments with me ..and I’ll then share with your group.

Thanks for this important work!

Jay for KNA

On Apr 8, 2025, at 3:05 PM, greg bourget <gregb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear Jay,

 

Have you had a chance to read the materials I sent to you? If not, do you have an ETA on when you might have time to do so? I am very interested in Kerns Neighborhood Association board’s opinion on endorsement or any questions or concerns they have with these reports. I think the first step is for you to read the high priority reports.

 

Here is the recently updated prioritized reading list:

1. 4pgs:   Portland homelessness.pdf
2. 8pgs:   Shelter Portland summary.pdf
3. 5pgs:   micro village prospectus.doc 
4. 3pgs:   ending homelessness requires good data.pdf 
5. 21pgs: Shelter Portland.pdf      
6. 35pgs: Portland homelessness timeline.pdf

Thank you,

 

Greg Bourget

Executive Director

Cascadia Action

(503) 995-5453

[Dave Weaver]

Wow - these are amazing materials on microvillages and houselessness. Thanks Jay!

And thanks Greg!

Each of these documents is rich in information and content.

I want to share some more information relating to these: I've been on the SE Uplift Houselessness Action Committee since 2020 - as the Kerns Liaison to SE Uplift.

In 2021 I met Jan McManus - from Laurelhurst NA - on the committee and we began the process that became WeShinePDX.org . WeShine has just opened its 3rd microvillage in North Portland. They also have a village in outer NE and in SE near Division and 19th.

In the early days of WeShine we envisioned the concept of every neighborhood in Portland sponsoring at least one transitional village to provide onramps for people in the neighborhood to get to housing. Attached is a conceptual document put together in 2021 by planner JD Heffernan of Sullivans Gulch neighborhood (a good friend of KNS board member Jim Kautz) - listing all the neighborhoods in Portland and providing a target for each one to meet in order to provide transitional housing for all people who need it. Now we are seeing that the numbers have grown quite a bit - but the concept remains. If every neighborhood would provide just one or two microvillages then we would essentially have resolved this crisis and no one would have to live in squalor on the streets and we will have built a large community network of support.

While Kerns is the home to at least one shelter: Jean's Place - we don't have any microvillages for transitional housing.

Therefore - I would propose that the Kerns Neighborhood Association set up an Action Team or committee to consider if Kerns NA wants to sponsor a transitional microvillage. 

I propose this team would make a database of all potential microvillage sites in the Kerns neighborhood and work together to find one that we can begin the process of setting up a Kerns Microvillage.

So far there are two models for WeShine village locations: 1) On a church property 2) on PBOT land

We can explore both.

The WeShine Avalon Village  is on PBOT land for example - and we can look for street stubs in Kerns that could fit this criteria. And we can look into Church properties as well.

But before all of that we can vote to endorse any documents that would be helpful.

-Dave Weaver

Kerns NA Vice Chair

WeShine co-founder

SEUL Houselessness Action Committee member

503.522.7409

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Kerns NA 2024-2025 Board of Directors" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to kernsna-2024-25-...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/kernsna-2024-25-board/59DE6EF3-4054-4E3A-B051-E50E6557CE0F%40mindspring.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Andrea H]

Greg, Dave, Jay, this is fantastic. I really think there are a lot of opportunities for housing and support. I was inspired to hear other Neighborhood Associations having ‘free shower’ or ‘free lunch’ days each month for their homeless and housing insecure neighbors. Not sure what next steps are, but this is all wonderful to read about and support. There are a lot of empty parking lots too that might be able to have an agreement with. 

Maybe a small next step is that we can highlight these items to City Councilor Tiffany Koyama-Lane when she visits us on May 5th? I like Dave’s proposal of an action team as well. 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/kernsna-2024-25-board/CAOF4zJ_6M2hMrV0k70YbUZ9M5%2BQWPxZi-Dxt1cJQoR%3DnsN5ioA%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

<Houseless Distribution Targets-090321.pdf>