If there’s anything you might learn from reading our local media, it’s this:
Always start at the bottom of the story, stupid.
Case in point: today’s story in the Oregonian/OregonLive web tossed salad:
Portland man living in group home for people with mental illness charged in three random killings
Cop-shop reporter Maxine Bernstein reported…
A Multnomah County grand jury on Monday returned a new 15-count indictment charging Joseph Kelly Banks, 49, with the murders of three men killed within the first three months of this year.
It detailed, rather in the nature of a pathologist’s report that there is an ugly mass on your biopsy, that Banks was officially recognized as really, truly dangerous with a long rap-sheet dating to 2007, time in a federal insane asylum, and that shrinks were united in saying that he should always be under permanent supervision.
As events seem to have proved.
And then, in the last few grafs, Bernstein dropped in the following afterthought:
He was last living at a residential group home run by Cameron Care Inc. in the 3600 block of Northeast Garfield Avenue, according to the home’s director and court records. Cameron Care provides a transitional residential care and treatment for adults with mental illness.
He had been under federal supervision since his release.
After Banks’ arrest in the homicide near Dawson Park, Corey Cameron, the owner and program director of Cameron Care Inc., said the transitional center was cooperating with police.
Does anyone wonder what sort of “supervision” this group home was supplying to the feds—and at what cost? Might be interesting to wonder about “supervision” that failed to detect Mr. Banks’s gun. Might even be interesting for Ms. Bernstein to wonder past the “home,” and give it a once-over.
Their web site offers a hint about the kind of care Mr. Banks was given…
At Cameron Care, we believe that mental health treatment should be provided with the same level of respect and compassion you’d find when visiting a medical provider. Our residential program is tailored to the individual.
Our mission is to provide compassionate care and treatment to residents in the least restrictive setting so the individual may regain their stability, and obtain the skills necessary to live as independently as possible.
If there’s a follow-up (don’t hold your breath), it will probably be some victim’s family suing the pants off the “home” and the city. One’s probably in the works already.
Also in OregonLive, you’ll find reporter Nicole Hayden’s turgid rewrite of the reaction to People for Portland’s proposed ballot measure to guarantee that 75% of the soak-the-rich Metro tax to solve homelessness will do something now—as opposed to whenever the area’s construction industry gets paid off for building affordable apartments…sometime. In the sweet bye-n-bye.
Deep in bowels of the story it reveals that, yes…kinda…sorta…Mayor Whatshisname is kinda-sorta-maybe on board…
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler on Monday told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he largely supports the call to direct more of the money available to help people experiencing homelessness into creating and operating emergency shelters.
Add, a few grafs later…
He said there are aspects of the proposed measure that he would like to learn more about before supporting it. For example, he said, the proposal mentions enforcing anti-camping rules and allowing any Metro resident to sue local governments if they believe the measure is not being enforced. Wheeler said he is not yet sure if he supports those.
But Hayden was quick as a fox in assuring readers that it won’t work…
Andy Miller, director of local housing organization Human Solutions, said enforced shelter does not work.
“Housing works and we can provide it with much greater urgency to people living unsheltered using the strategies in the (3,000 challenge),” Miller twitter [sic]. That recently issued challenge proposes that Multnomah County, the city of Portland and private-sector landlords find innovative ways to quickly move 3,000 people into housing.
Hayden doesn’t really want to talk about into the major part of the People for People measure: banning street camping. Nor do any of the folks from Homeless, Inc. Which leaves the question unanswered: What happens when a homeless person is offered a apartment or one of Commissioner Dan Ryan’s 9-foot boxes or a dingy motel room full of other tweekers and says, No.
That question won’t be answered very soon. Advocates for signing up landlords to give homeless people a vacant apartment are rolling right along. They’ve got commitments from landlords for eight.
Do the math. Hayden won’t.
Over at the Tribune, reporter Joseph Gallivan continues his “Street Lives” series. It’s a must-read for anyone wondering about the actual people who are the focus of so many money-grubbing non-profits and government bureaucrats and care-bear journos. Under the headline…
Waiting for a meal, a job, a court case
…Gallivan (normally a business reporter) tells the story of one Andy Ling, whose current overnight residence is the Union Gospel Mission in Old Town. He gets kicked out at seven AM, gets a free meal at Blanchet House and then…
During the day he likes to soak up the sun and wait for the next meal.
…and…
Before the mission, he said, "I was out in Southeast (Portland) somewhere, at a recovery place." Asked if it worked, he replied, "Unfortunately no, I regret it. Just goes to show what I need to brush up on. I'm kind of reactive. I need to slow down sometimes." Apart from weed, he said, "I choose no drug now, except the breath of God."
Gallivan is old school; he won’t tell the reader what to think. And he doesn’t fall for the standard homeless sob-story. But read the series and you’ll see why anyone who thinks like Andy Miller, above, is living in a world of fantasy. And living off it, too.
It’s not easy to give these homes a once-over from the inside. You can look at them on the outside, of course. But much of what they do – and who resides there – may not be readily available to the public, not even the neighbors.
About four years ago, at one of City Hall’s interminable community conversations where the public is invited to offer input into various subjects, a Portland resident named Jack Peek, Sr. attended and raised objections to a group home in his neighborhood. The moderator at this meeting, Judith Mowry, of Portland’s Office of Equity and Human Rights, immediately shut him down and would not let him continue.
It turned out that Peek had a reputation for being an activist – but not on the progressive side. Consequently, no freedom of speech for him.
I visited him at his home and saw the place he was concerned about. It almost abutted his back yard. He had every reason to want details about the occupants. You can’t just knock on the door, though, and say “I’d like to come in and have a look around.”
These homes and the workings of the state’s Psychiatric Security Review Board don’t invite public participation. The hearings are open to the public and conducted like court proceedings, but the deliberations are in private.
You might recall some of the enthusiastic coverage from the 2021 legislative session when $350 million was budgeted for the mental health system to hire more staff, provide more housing, etc.
State Rep. Rob Nosse, (D-Portland) told OPB “We’ll all hopefully look back four to six years from now and go, ‘2021 was the year things started to turn around.’”
He and state Sen. Kate Lieber (D-Beaverton) were featured in a flattering piece in The Portland Tribune regarding this mental health package. Lieber has served on the Psychiatric Security Review Board, but given that she also turned up in Willamette Week’s “Water Hogs” with a photo of her lavish spread, it’s not likely she will ever have to worry about sharing her neighborhood with a group home for the criminally insane.