This Week in the Mercury
Thursday, August 20, 2009
News / Politics Homeless Commissioner Nick Fish: No "son of sit/lie." "This is America."
Posted by Matt Davis on Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 12:37 PM
I hung out at city hall yesterday for a while, in the hopes of talking with the city's homeless commissioner, Nick Fish, about the controversial effort to come up with a replacement for the sit/lie law. Fish is up for reelection next year and I've been interested to follow his progress on this issue since he took office. After a bit of (presumably constitutional) loitering on my part, Fish eventually emerged from his office and had to walk out to his car. Fish had to fend off the conversational advances of Water Bureau boss David Schaff for a good two blocks, but eventually I got a minute alone with him on the sidewalk at SW 5th and Taylor:
"There will be no new sit/lie law proposed," said Fish. "The judge, I think, has closed the door on a son of sit/lie." Fish says he is working with Mayor Sam Adams on a "comprehensive, constitutional plan for sharing the sidewalks." He added that to find ideas for it, the city might have to go "back to the future," to look at some of the sidewalk regulation measures in operation before the sit/lie law was introduced in 2007. "This is not about the homeless, or targeting anyone," said Fish. "This is no longer a question of sit/lie, but of ensuring that everyone's rights are protected."
Fish then gave some "previews" of what he thought the law might look like, which I have tried to communicate graphically, Perez Hilton-style, by drawing all over the photograph above. To summarize for those of you not used to Davis's spacko-kineticTM style of public policy communication:
1.Pointing to the portion of the sidewalk immediately next to the cross-walk, Fish said federal mobility law protects that area. Referring, I think, to law protecting the rights of wheelchair users.
2.Pointing to the area near the doorway of the Qdoba restuarant, Fish said fire code protects safe egress and ingress from the building.
3.Pointing to the narrow path between the Qdoba tables and the two feet next to the curb, Fish said state law protects citizens from having that path blocked—referring, I think, to state disorderly conduct law.
4.Pointing to the spots marked with green check marks that are out of the way of most people walking, Fish said, simply, "This is America."
It's difficult to see what Fish meant by that statement, because evidently we all have different ideas about what "America" is. One just needs to look at the recent town halls on health care. But perhaps there is encouragement in his words for those, like me, who suspect that the city is simply trying to reinstate the sit/lie, taking a gamble that it won't be found unconstitutional for another 18 months, so that in the mean time, the cops can go ahead and use it to harass people.
Deputy city attorneys have been charged with coming up with the new law, but it is still very much in draft form at this point in time. City Commissioner Randy Leonard has also asked them to research requiring people to have licenses to solicit "anything of value" on the sidewalk. Leonard, who has voted against successive iterations of the sit/lie law citing constitutional concerns, says he feels the onus is on the rest of council to come up with a new sit/lie law that meets constitutional muster. "l don't think they want to get into another 4-1 vote where I've been upheld by judges," he says.
A Facebook group entitled "The Sit/Lie Law is Unconstitutional. Really. Stop Trying to Fix It," now has 175 members. Group members are also planning sidewalk picnics to draw attention to the issue next Monday, downtown, between noon and 1 o'clock.
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Solution: allow unlicensed soliciting on sidewalks, but *only* for one's own personal benefit. No commercial soliciting without a license, which would also allow BOLI to investigate the employers of the professional panhandlers working for Greenpeace, MercyCorps, Children International, etc.
Aggressively ticket business owners with unlicensed A-boards or sidewalk cafes. That's where the money is. I doubt panhandlers have fine money, but the Goodmans or Ted Papas do.
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A completely ineffectual way of vaguely showing displeasure with something.
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That lawerly wisdom aside, the statement "This is not about the homeless, or targeting anyone" does not exactly tell me our officials have anything near a clue.
It is PRECISELY EXACTLY OBVIOUSLY about targeting the homeless and aggressive panhandlers.
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Nasty. I don't think that corrects for those who have exhausted their unemployment or the homeless.
Also I remember reading a few years ago that Portland is a homeless youth mecca (can't remember where, maybe the Merc or WW?) with people from all over the US migrating to the city during the summer. A lot of the homeless youth are runaways from abusive or absent homes.
Last point (tangential still): most entry level jobs require an address or at least some id which reminds me of my favorite quote, "why do I need ID to get ID, if I had ID I wouldn't need ID."
It is hard as it is to get a job when you have experience, education, work ethics, skills. The 7 people competing for the one job are people who have worked before (hence the unemployment), I can't even fathom getting a job without those traits!
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What, doesn't the city pay him enough for him to afford to buy or rent or something? I mean, it is good that we've got a man of the street in city hall, but seriously, you'd think he could at least get a basement like Jason Wurster.
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looks similar to the one they had before this one... the one that they stopped enforcing because the judge ruled it to vague... (IIRC)
the best answers are affordable housing and jobs...
and enough with the tripe about the homeless guy out front causing the lack of jobs in Portland. the fact that someone in Gresham has to drive all the way downtown and then pay for expensive, hardly existent parking to shop in a mall that is more expensive than the one near his house is the problem... every business in the Downtown core of Portland pays a mandated tax, collected by the city for the PBA... get rid of the PBA and its extra tax for services that the city already provides and businesses would have more money to hire more people...
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as for "Facebook Organizing" it allows a few things.
first, it lets people who don't have time or effort to be part of a major effort to be part of the campaign... and have access to low impact actions like eating lunch outside (which I am going to do with some friends!)
second, it reaches people through a new media, which people tend to respond to (for instance, about 500 people attended various Netroots Nation functions this year using the online game Second Life)
third, its low cost. I am not sure how much time Chris as put in to the facebook group but outside of quick responses it seems to be a one man show... one man that got 175 voices (so far) in to the conversation that wouldn't normally be there.
"Tech Organizing" is really interesting to me, Twitter was huge in the recent events in Iran, SMS has been popular with different organizing groups, Text messages, Instant Messages, Emails, all have been used as a "key ingredient" in the last few years for one organizing effort or another.
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I also think that Facebook is a shitty platform for organizing because almost all events and groups on Facebook require outside users to login or create an account to see the content. That is a really crappy methodology for getting your message out there. I refuse to have a Facebook account, so I can't see that group's message. Really it's all #facebookfail
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But Graham is right in one important way: The Facebook group is not an end in and of itself. The goal is to educate people about the status of the law and Mayor Adams' dubious efforts to revive an ordinance that should stay dead. The other goal is to let the council know that people are paying attention. I hope the group is helpful in getting the message to the policy makers. In part it's being able to go to city council and say that X number of people think this law is a bad idea. It's also helpful to encourage people to individually contact the city council and tell them to knock it off. The wall on the Facebook group lets people discuss the issues and track the news stories. The picnic is just for fun and hopefully people who wouldn't normally spend an hour sitting on the sidewalk or bench in downtown will get out and get a new perspective on downtown.
(I do have to wonder though whether Graham feels that leaving comments on the Mercury blog counts as civic involvement? Or is it just 'A completely ineffectual way of vaguely showing displeasure with something' )
The group is just a means to an end, not the end itself. I hope others can join us and support ending this very poorly thought out public policy.
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Except those aren't commercial solicitations.
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If you're the admin for that Facebook group, you would be well served by changing the settings so that the group's page is visible to people who aren't logged into Facebook. One of my biggest pet-peeves are people who attempt to market their event or group through Facebook, but make their group opaque through the ass-backwards default privacy settings.
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Pencil tool!
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