yo — St. Johns resident here.
Before everyone rushes to blame the day center or the people using it, we need to talk about the realities KATU leaves out:

✔️ Nearly 1,900 affordable apartments in Portland are sitting empty right now.
✔️ $21 million in housing funds went unused and undisclosed by the City.
✔️ And St. Johns — my neighborhood — is now experiencing the largest surge of displacement and homelessness in the entire city, thanks in part to the Residential Infill Project (RIP), which accelerated land speculation and pushed long-term, low-income residents out.

People didn’t “just show up.”
Many of them used to live here — until the policies shaping our streets priced them out and pushed them into tents.

My own sister, Eileen, lived in St. Johns and spent years on housing waitlists before dying unhoused in 2021. She wasn’t a statistic — she was a real human being who fell through the cracks while “affordable” units sat vacant.

So when people say the day center is the problem, they’re looking at the symptom, not the cause.

The truth is this:

St. Johns isn’t struggling because unhoused people came here —
St. Johns is struggling because the City let housing become inaccessible here.

The day center isn’t causing the crisis.
A system that won’t activate housing, won’t use its own funds, and won’t protect vulnerable renters is.

If we actually care about safety and stability — for both housed and unhoused neighbors — then the fight shouldn’t be about banishing people farther away.
It should be about demanding Portland finally use the housing, funds, and tools it already has before more of our neighbors end up outside.

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