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Here's one immediate effect of new city bureau assignments: Chinatown homeless camp Right 2 Dream Too has called off its very public feud with Commissioner Dan Saltzman.
Mayor Charlie Hales announced on Monday that Amanda Fritz will be taking over Bureau of Development Services from Saltzman.
A sign at the homeless camp at Northwest 4th Avenue and Burnside Street reading "COMMISSIONER DAN SALTZMAN IS EFFECTIVELY TAKING THE FOOD OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF THE HOMELESS" was taken down on Tuesday, and replaced with a hand-painted sign displaying the camp's name.
Michael Wright, Right 2 Dream Too's landlord, first put up the sign in May 2012 after beginning to receive daily citations and fines for being an illegal recreational campground. In April, The Portland Mercury reported the camp's unpaid fines had topped $17,000.
The sign shaming Saltzman followed another sign, "Stop Randy Leonard's Hit Squad," after the former city commissioner's code-enforcement team condemned Wright's building on the site—Cindy's Adult Bookstore.
Right 2 Dream Too President Ibrahim Mubarak says the camp harbored a grudge toward Saltzman—who now oversees the Housing bureau.
"Was it personal?" Mubarak asks. "Well, of course. Fining us when we're doing the work the city should be doing, when we're trying to take people off the streets. But it served a purpose. It was getting the message out that we're getting fined and we don't have that money."
Mubarak says the sign was taken down because of bureau reassignments, but also to allow for a new fence to be put up and painted.
He says the camp has no plans yet to put up a new sign calling out Fritz.
WWeek 2015