Mary’s Place

[November 7th, 2007]

Pastor Mary Overstreet Smith won nationwide recognition when she found housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina and set up a free health clinic on North Williams Avenue, near her church, Powerhouse Temple.

But this summer, she angered some North Portland neighbors by putting a bright blue double-wide mobile home on one of her other properties at Blandena Street and Kerby Avenue. She intended the roughly 20-by-50-foot double-wide to serve as a temporary shelter for hard-up families.

Her plan went on hold, however, after neighborhood residents flooded city officials with complaints and took their case to a state appeals board. As a result, the city found in October that the mobile home was too old to meet code and does not belong in the neighborhood, though inspectors had already given Smith the go-ahead in May.

“I think it was an oversight,” says Sterling Bennett, land use manager with Portland’s Bureau of Development Services.

Now, Commissioner Randy Leonard has proposed a novel checkbook fix: The city will buy the mobile home from Smith and help her build a new shelter at the site.

Leonard is asking the City Council for $150,000. About $27,000 of that will go to buy Smith’s mobile home. The rest will cover the cost of transporting it 30 miles to Portland Water Bureau property at Dodge Park near Sandy, where it will house a park caretaker; and the cost of building Smith’s new duplex for the homeless at Blandena and Kerby.

“I don’t want to just leave her hanging,” Leonard says. “I want to help her do the good work she’s doing.”

Leonard says his plan—which the council will have a final vote on Dec. 5—saves money, because the city needed housing at Dodge Park anyway. A new mobile home recently bought by the Water Bureau for Powell Butte Nature Park cost over $100,000, Leonard says.

Either way, Leonard’s plan would provide a generous subsidy to Powerhouse Temple Church. Smith won’t say how much she paid for the mobile home.

Smith says she’s sheltered the needy, free of charge, for years without anyone complaining—and, usually, without anyone knowing. Her son lives in an existing house on the same lot as the mobile home. Smith says she lets out the spare bedroom of the house. The vibe outside is not exactly “Love thy neighbor.” A sticker on the door of the house warns that “trespassers will be shot…survivors will be prosecuted.”

Molly Hershey, whose home is across Kerby Avenue from Smith’s trailer, began making inquiries to the city about permits for the planned shelter in mid-June. She says she wanted to ensure that the city was following its own guidelines.

Other neighbors had various concerns about the shelter—from its effect on property values to the poor notification they’d received.

“I’m not against a homeless shelter,” says Jason Allen, a carpenter who lives one house north of the trailer on Kerby Avenue. He does, however, express fears that the property could become a “crack house.” And he wishes Smith had been more forthcoming. “The main thing about community is communication,” Allen says.

The pastor isn’t apologizing for the reaction to her plan.

“Who’s to say they’re not crackheads?” she says. “Who are they to point a finger at anybody?”

When neighbors called to ask about her plans for the mobile home, Smith dismissed them as newcomers and busybodies. “I said, ‘That’s none of your business. I have a right to put a house there if I want to,’” Smith says.

“I cannot see them complaining,” she adds, “except that they’re evil and they’re vicious.”

“No matter what they do,” Smith says, “they will not be able to stop me.”