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As WW reported last week, a motel shelter in Northeast Portland housing more than 40 people will return in December to its previous use as a COVID-19 isolation space.
Denis Theriault, spokesman for the Joint Office of Homeless Services, says COVID outbreaks at shelters have limited capacity across the entire system. The Joint Office did not offer specifics about the drop in capacity but said there have been 23 outbreaks across the shelter system since May.
But changing the Portland Value Inn at 1707 NE 82nd Ave. back to an isolation motel will uproot 40 tenants from rooms they’ve called home for a year.
The Joint Office says it will find everyone a placement. “No one will be forced to the streets as part of this transition,” Theriault says. “Staff are working to offer spots for current shelter guests in other shelters (motel or congregate) or in housing.”
As of last week, two people had been transferred to new living spaces and 39 were still working with staff to find placements either at an emergency shelter or in permanent housing.
But the shuffle showcases the precarity people face who are one step away from homelessness.
WW spoke with three motel residents two weeks prior to the move-out date. They were filled with anxiety and fear about the impending move. They’ve each lived at the Portland Value Inn for almost exactly a year—and are on multiple waiting lists for affordable housing but haven’t yet been placed.
Patrick Tillery and his longtime partner Vera, 53 and 55, moved into the Portland Value Inn last summer.
On a recent Thursday morning, Tillery is lying on the brown comforter of the motel bed. Orange medicine bottles lie on every piece of furniture in the room: dresser, nightstand, the table where the two eat. Vera sits next to him in a patterned dress.
Tillery calls this room “a blessing from God.” The couple was placed here a year ago after living first in their van and then in a shelter after traveling down from Camas, Wash. They came to Portland because they heard the services here were better.
Both suffer from PTSD and severe depression. Vera has a fractured back and schizophrenia, and Tillery has had five heart attacks and is wheelchair-bound. Neither abuse substances.
The two have been on a Section 8 voucher waiting list for a year. They haven’t heard anything yet.
“Once this is closed down, all it’s going to do is add to the homeless population,” Tillery says.
Vera, who walks slowly because of her back pain, rifles through a folder of wrinkled papers. She arrives at a piece of white paper that lists 13 nonprofit agencies that she says motel staff told residents to contact if they didn’t want to accept rooms at the almost-built Emmons Place apartment building in Northwest Portland.
Vera’s called all of them but hasn’t found a place yet. The apartments at Emmons are too small for the two of them and Tillery’s medical equipment, and Vera’s PTSD is triggered by loud sounds—a fear they have about moving to Northwest.
“It makes you want to break down and cry,” Tillery says. “Humor can only go so far.”
Inga, 63, has lived in a carpeted room at the Portland Value Inn for over a year with her adult son, whom she takes care of because he has a rare neurological disorder. She suffers from a mental illness that makes it impossible to keep a steady job. She’s been shuffled between various shelters and motels since 2018 while working on and off at nursing homes and retail stores.
“It’s just this awful vagabond fight of instability,” Inga says. “You don’t know where you’re going to sleep the next night.”
She asks that only her first name be used for privacy reasons.
Inga says her room at the Portland Value Inn offered her the first sense of permanence she’d felt in years.
In some respects, Inga is lucky: She’s accepted a room at Emmons and will stay at a shelter motel in Southwest Portland until the apartment complex opens up for her and her son. She hasn’t yet told him they have to move.