Tents in the Tent Village That Has Developed on City Land Behind Trader Joe’s, Portland, Housing Homeless People.

A Section of the Tent Village Behnd Trader Joe’s, 87 Marginal Way, Portland.

The Tent Village Behind Trader Joe’s Has Become a Health and Safety Issue for the City of Portland.

“We don’t know where we will go,” said Cam, one of the homeless occupants of a tent village that has sprung up and grown expotentially on city land behind Trader’s Joe, 87 Marginal Way, in Portland.  “If only the city would give us some trash cans, we could keep this place clean.  There is only one trash can in the area,”   he said as he pointed up a slight incline to a trash can overflowing with garbage. “It gets emptied once a week.  It gets very cold at night,” he added.

A woman who did not give her name to this blogger said that the city wants us out of here because they don’t want to be bothered with us.  “If we are out of sight, they don’t have to deal with us,” she said repeatedly.

Both occupants  were referring to the recent rumors that tenters behind Trader’s Joe must vacate this city land within a week or two or the Portland Police will come in and remove them.

Inside the popular store that is always busy on Sunday afternoons, shoppers and store employees alike were extremely conscious of the health and safety issues that this tent village created by the homeless has raised.

A store employee told this blogger the Portland Police have been called multiple times about the situation, but the tenters are still  there.  Another store employee said no one in the city seems to be taking responsibility for the situation.  “It shifts from city office to city office to city office,” she said.  Lots of customers ask questions about what is going on back there and what is being done to clean up the area said an employee.  Many customers are very concerned about the lack of housing in Portland for the homeless another employee said. According to a source with first-hand knowledge, city hall is short about 25 employees. He said that the city overal is  about 200 employees short.

This blogger emailed the Portland Police department this afternoon for confirmatin and details on the effort to disband this group.  The spokesman for the Portland Police emailed this blogger in return to contact the city about the matter.  This blogger emailed the city spokeswoman, Jessica Grondin, for information.  However, an automated response said that Grondin is out of the office until Monday, April 24th.

Who’s running city hall?  Maybe the Fire Department knows something about this.