The below article appeared in the Portland Tribune in April of 2024.
The future of Portland’s least expensive homeless shelter is safe for the next few months after a major fundraising campaign, but the long-term plan is less clear.
Right 2 Dream Too is a self-managed camp tucked into a small city-owned property in the Lloyd neighborhood. Around 18 “members” live in tiny homes on the lot and take on shifts managing the drop-in aspect of the rest area, where visitors can borrow sleeping bags to rest in big tents on the property. The three tarp-and-wood tents house single adults and couples for up to a 12-hour stay.
Between overnight visitors seeking a safe place to sleep and long-term members, the rest area typically provides shelter for around 60 people per day. All of that comes at the cost of $63,000 per year — pennies, compared to the amount spent on most shelter operations — yet Right 2 Dream Too’s financial future is still in jeopardy.
“The bottom line is if Right 2 Dream disappears, that’s 60 to 80 people that are going to be back out on the streets, and then the city and county have to do something,” volunteer Danielle Klock said. The camp doesn’t receive ongoing funding from the city or county.
In late March, R2DToo had less than two months of operating revenue left. Klock launched a GoFundMe. As of April 11, the fundraiser had brought in $15,408, plus another $17,500 from two anonymous matching donations.
R2DToo is a low-barrier shelter, which means there are few requirements for admission. Many shelters require referrals from other nonprofits, but “overnighters” can show up at R2DToo’s gate at any time.
Overnighters don’t have to show identification or fill out any forms — something organizers say makes it an appealing option to many on the street. Some people just stay at R2DToo for a single night; others are frequent guests or even become members, which requires a probationary period in the tent before moving into a tiny home. “The people here all have lived experience and all come from sidewalks or shelters that they didn’t like,” member Vince Masiello said. “When people are working the desk, there’s a trust and ease of communication that I find exists here,” that doesn’t exist in more traditional shelter operations, Masiello said. Members take on shifts staffing the front desk; set policy, like consequences for violating the rest area’s code of conduct; and have weekly meetings to go over any incidents or updates.
R2DToo’s annual expenses are roughly the same as the cost to operate two pods at one of the city’s Temporary Alternative Shelter Sites. But those sites, designed for longer-term residents, do offer more services and resources than R2DToo.
R2DToo doesn’t directly provide food for guests. There’s a free fridge outside, and various nonprofits and churches often drop off boxed meals for R2DToo to pass out, but that doesn’t cut into R2DToo’s budget. R2DToo doesn’t offer on-site case management, showers or laundry. The space is a far cry from the $16,000 pods at the city’s temporary alternative shelters, which have heating and cooling.
The areas for overnighters at R2DToo have roofs and there are a few propane-fueled heaters for use outside of the tents, but little else to offer relief from heat or cold. There’s no running water and only limited electricity.
“It’s a bare-bones operation,” R2DToo board treasurer Grant Swanson said. Prior to the pandemic, Right 2 Dream Too’s operating expenses were closer to $30,000 per year. Porta-potty servicing is the single largest expense for the camp and has more than doubled in price in the past five years, Swanson said. Garbage, laundry and propane for heat in the winters have all gone up in cost.
In the past, a couple of grants and annual fundraising efforts could cover the expenses each year. But those revenue sources haven’t kept up with rising costs, and other temporary pools of money are drying up.
In 2020, R2DToo operated the C(3)PO camps, which were created in response to the pandemic. R2DToo received $1.2 million to manage those camps and was able to keep an administrative cut from that funding, which is standard practice for fiscal sponsors. “That’s what they’ve largely been operating off since then, because the money lasted them a long time,” Klock said. But those funds have finally run out. “We’ve run into this thing where after we get our small infusions of funds from this fundraiser or that one, then we’re running out of money again — even though a lot of people consider what we do a very valuable service at very little cost,” Swanson said.
An accessible option R2DToo is “that last-resort option for some people that don’t have anywhere else, especially late at night,” Masiello said. “We have people that are really fresh to the city, get dropped off, come in with a partner and their partner leaves, that kind of thing. They have no resources, no clue where to go. We offer that shelter for folks at that level.” Hospital workers, police or other emergency responders sometimes drop off overnighters.
“If we want to get people off the streets, we have to provide solutions that actually work for those people,” Klock said. “We’re not saying that Right 2 Dream Too is the answer to everything for everyone. It’s not. It’s not the best solution for a lot of people. But for the people who do come here and who do want to come here, it is.”
R2DToo’s self-governed model “is built on being on the same page and understanding each other’s experiences. That’s what I fell in love with and why I want to live here and be a part of this,” Masiello said. Many of the members also have training in de-escalation and trauma-informed crisis intervention.
Lloyd EcoDistrict, a nonprofit that has supported R2DToo since the rest area moved to the neighborhood in 2017, is focused on sustainability, including “creating a resilient, sustainable community,” said Lloyd EcoDistrict outreach program manager Joshua Baker. R2DToo is one piece of that puzzle, meeting “a real critical need (for) some of our neighborhoods’ most at-risk community members on a regular basis,” Baker said.
Klock has only been directly involved with R2DToo for a few months, but they’ve spent years working with other nonprofits that serve homeless Portlanders. Their son, Jettero, was on the streets for years before dying in 2023. Jettero, or Jet, would come to R2DToo when he was on the streets, struggling with mental health issues and addiction. “This was one of the only places where he didn’t burn bridges, where he was still welcome, where he felt safe and would actually show up,” Klock said.
R2DToo was a valuable resource for Jet, but it wasn’t everything he needed. To Klock, Jet’s struggle shows how difficult it is to navigate the maze of waitlists and referrals to get services.
“If I, with all my resources and connections, could not find the support that he needed, how is the average person on the street supposed to find it?”
Right 2 Dream Too started in 2011 with tents on a vacant lot at Northwest 4th and Burnside. A decade ago, Portland city leaders pledged $846,000 to fund a new site for R2DToo, after years of pushback from Old Town neighbors. The city picked a spot in Southeast and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in preparation for R2DToo’s move, only to hit zoning roadblocks. “The City incurred site acquisition costs, permit fees, site preparation costs, (and) other property related expenses. The lawsuit happened and in 2017, the City assisted R2DToo in its relocation to N. Thunderbird Way,” which cost the city more for “site preparation and operational subsidy,” Cody Bowman, a spokesperson for Mayor Ted Wheeler, said.
R2DToo’s current home on Thunderbird Way is a small parcel near the Moda Center, tucked further from public view. The property doesn’t have running water*(see correction below), adequate electricity or much space at all. Swanson said the city put up around $70,000 to get the current site ready for R2DToo, but volunteers did the majority of the labor. Most of the sleeping pods were built by Benson High School students. The city of Portland was under contract to sell the Southeast property in 2020, pending the conclusion of a lawsuit filed by a business next door. The sale could have freed up funds for a more-permanent home for R2DToo. The lawsuit has since ended, but the city still owns the property. Bowman did not directly respond to questions about if money from a future sale of the property would be used for R2DToo. Bowman said the city does not have any legal agreement to provide more funding for R2DToo. The $846,000 pledge was led by then-Mayor Charlie Hales and then-Commissioner Amanda Fritz, neither of whom remain in office.
R2DToo doesn’t pay for the current property, but has a site use agreement with PBOT that is renewed annually. A longer-term agreement would give R2DToo more certainty, Klock said. In the upcoming renewal process, R2DToo is hoping the city will agree to take on more expenses, like toilets or garbage, or do site improvements like hooking the property up to the sewer line so that the rest area could eliminate the need for porta-potty service. More funding could also go toward more relatively small repairs or purchases. “There’s definitely room to upgrade,” Masiello said. The tarps for the tent structures “get wear and tear. Especially the cold snaps end up damaging our tarps, so we do have to replace them pretty much every year … I definitely think if we were successful in raising more money, we could definitely do some more improvements” like making the tents safer and replacing rotting or damaged wood.
R2DToo hasn’t received on-going city or county funding for services. The program hasn’t applied for funding, but leaders say that’s because none of the funding pools have been open to a program like R2DToo. The Portland and Multnomah County Joint Office of Homeless Services puts out requests for proposals, asking service providers to submit applications for specific program categories. “None of what they put out there is what we do,” Swanson said. The unique model of R2DToo, with residents managing day-to-day operations and no paid employees, isn’t something the city or county have much experience dealing with.
R2DToo also doesn’t do data collection, which is typically required for government funding contracts. For various reasons, like immigration status or safety when fleeing a domestic violence situation, some people on the streets don’t want their name in a database. The Joint Office has prioritized building a “by-name list” of homeless people in Multnomah County, in an effort to better understand the scope of the crisis and improve coordination between the jumble of outreach workers and service providers working with those people. “I think for some people that works,” Klock said. But “for some unhoused folks, there’s a lack of trust. Like, why should they give their personal information to a city that has been criminalizing their existence, literally for years?”
Read more at: https://portlandtribune.com/2024/04/12/long-term-future-of-right-2-dream-too-up-in-the-air/
*Right 2 Dream Too does have running water
