This comment came in early last week, in response to the first of two BikePortland posts about a man killed by a driver on Southeast Belmont and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The posts caused a whiplash of reaction as the details of the story emerged over several days. What had begun as another dangerous infrastructure story morphed into an intentional-act-of-violence story. Between them, they managed to touch upon all of our frustrations and hot-button issues. The constant was that people living on the streets are vulnerable.
This thoughtful comment by SD remained relevant even as the story changed. SD stepped back from the immediate incident to notice the cityscape that car infrastructure creates, specifically “dead zones,” and why those locations might appeal to someone living outside. It got me thinking about how a city takes its form, and how it forms the people who live in it.
Here’s what SD had to say:
An important point that may be missed here is that the interviews with the residents of this camp show that they are aware of how dangerous it is because of speeding cars, yet they choose to be here. Relative to other dangers or difficulties they face, the risk of cars, noise and exhaust are acceptable. I hope that people who read this story take a moment to consider how hard it is to be homeless. Homeless people are in many cases trying their best to be out of the way of society, but at the same time need to be close enough to meet basic needs and have the safety of being in a place where someone might hear you if you scream for help.
The other point is that car infrastructure creates dead zones in cities that most people avoid because it is harsh and repulsive. These dead zones are tolerable to homeless people because they meet other needs. If you laid out a map of Portland and gave someone that task of finding outdoor places for homeless people to sleep and camp that balanced the needs of the homeless with the desires of the housed population, I imagine that most people would choose these car infrastructure dead spaces as prime spots. I know that some people think we can sweep and starve the homeless problem out of existence, but the continued reemergence of these camps argues that this type of passive aggression is not a solution.
I keep thinking about Williams talking on OPB about pedestrian deaths in Portland and how she essentially said in a coded way that pedestrian deaths in Portland were due to homeless people and rhetorically minimized and shrugged off the problem.
Thank you SD for sharing your insights. You can read SD’s comment, and some other good ones too, under the original post.
