Houseless at dusk

“Houseless but not homeless. This is their home”—Ashanti Hall, during his Livestream this morning.

The lovely park Sue and I blipped on the morning we heard the news is surrounded by tents where houseless people have set up homes. Some houseless people prefer this to living in a shelter—often a huge dormitory full of fleas, lice, perhaps bedbugs; where couples cannot stay together, queer and transgender people are endangered, pets are not permitted, and there are infantilizing rules (most shelters require people to exit soon after dawn and not return until dark).

Living in a community on a sidewalk next to a park means living near a public toilet, and it is safer (especially for women) than living alone in a doorway or under a freeway, as the owner of this yellow tent has chosen to do. I went for a long walk at 3:30 this afternoon, enjoying the lavender sky at dusk, marveling at the many ways houseless people are coping.

It isn’t easy to live in a tent in a city, and the police, protecting the propertied class, often perform “sweeps” of the camps, forcing people to leave their tent homes, confiscating (and often destroying) their property, and fragmenting their community—without offering any alternative other than a bed in one of the shelters. This morning the police were scheduled to “sweep” the tents around Laurelhurst Park, and I am proud to say that 240 activists showed up to protect the tent village, and for today, the police stayed away. The police are being paid well (a rookie cop in Portland makes nearly twice my salary as a professor of theatre with a PhD)—and they can afford to wait till the activists give up. I watched the protest on Livestream and heard my friend Benji say on megaphone, “Houselessness is not the problem. It’s a symptom of capitalism.”

I wanted to be with them. They were all masked and outside, but not practicing physical distancing. I would have been nervous if I had gone. I knew most of the people I saw on the Livestream, but for now I’m sidelined by Covid-19, observing.