Portland's "neighborhoods" aren't neighborhoods

As a Portland resident, I’m told I live in a neighborhood.

The map tells me mine is Hillsdale here in Southwest Portland. Wilson High School and the Hillsdale Town Center are at its core.

But with a population of 7800 and boundaries that separate Hillsdale “neighbors” by as much as three miles, we are living a “neighborhood” fantasy.

Worse, the designation of Portland’s 99 as “neighborhoods” is beyond fantastical, confusing and inexact. It is leaving us grossly unprepared for major natural disasters such as a massive earthquake.

My real neighbors are the folks who live near my house up and down the street. They are people I occasionally chat with and whom I frequently see. I know many of their names, but I should know more.

This is my neighborhood. If it is like yours, it consists of the 20 to 35 people living in roughly 10 to 15 dwellings. If you do the math, the Hillsdale community comprises approximately 300 such neighborhoods.

So where does that leave Hillsdale and Hayhurst, Sunnyside, Belmont, Woodstock, The Pearl and Hawthorne? They are COMMUNITIES, and we should call them exactly that.

The change would free the term “neighborhood” to be used accurately and effectively.

When it gets right down to the nitty gritty of organizing for crime watches, emergency preparedness and, yes, block parties, we do it with our neighbors in our true neighborhoods. We do it with people we know well enough to care about as neighbors.

The distinction is vitally important.

Recently I met with one of the co-chairs of Hillsdale’s “Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET).” The team has only 14 members, out of those Hillsdale 7800 residents. The co-chair recently told the Hillsdale Neighborhood Association that Hillsdale NET’s tiny numbers and our large “neighborhood” make “neighborhood-wide” preparedness impossible.

Note the repeated use of the term “neighborhood” above. He and I agreed that the pervasive misuse of the word stands in the way of grassroots organizing in true neighborhoods.

We agreed that if Hillsdale were instead conceived of as “a community” consisting of small, coherent and intra- and inter-connected neighborhoods, organizing for emergencies would be much easier.

Each neighborhood, with its own distinctive place name, would have its own local emergency cache of supplies stored in a centrally located shed. It would provide storage food, medical supplies and an emergency generator. Neighbors would pay for the shed and the supplies. The whole pocket emergency center might come to a couple hundred dollars for each household and would be a visual symbol of the bonds uniting neighbors and their neighborhood.

In January, Portland will have a new mayor. I urge Mayor Hales to put the words “neighborhood” and “neighbors” to proper use for the health and safety of our citizens and our city.

Accordingly, the “Office of Neighborhood Involvement,” which answers to the Mayor, would find that it is suddenly working with real neighborhoods through community organizations called “community associations.” The job of the former “neighborhood associations” would not change, but they would become much more at effective working with and involving a community organized by small, efficient, caring neighborhoods.

Hillsdale's dilemma: No power, no leadership

It was all a bit embarrassing. About 25 for us sat, searched and scanned each other’s faces in the meeting room last night and couldn’t find a leader among us.

The result: for the indefinite future, the Hillsdale Neighborhood Association will be leaderless. It will have a vacant president’s seat. Instead, the association, which largely consists of the 25 or so people who show up to its monthly meetings, will be run by a reluctant, rag-tag triumvirate of officers, none of whom is willing to take charge.

What’s going on here?

Hillsdale is known to be one of the most active neighborhoods in Portland. A big reason for its reputation is the outgoing, decisive, outspoken president, Don Baack. In his nearly seven-years with the gavel, he made it known that we weren’t going to be rolled by City Hall— at least not without a fight.

Sure, he’s bent several people the wrong way, including a few neighbors. He was actually feared in some quarters of City Hall. Occasionally he’d impulsively speak for the neighborhood without consulting anyone.

But he always had our best interests at heart. And he was not above admitting when he’d been wrong.

There was only one Don Baack in the room last night, and he was stepping down.

And so we searched the faces.

“I have health problems in the family,” said one prospective candidate. No one suspected him of lying.

“My teaching demands don’t allow it,” said another, who was telling the truth.

“I’m traveling too much. I couldn’t be here much of the time,” said another and he was right.

One clearly qualified candidate was a former president, but he said, “I’ve done the job for 10 years. That’s enough.” Who could disagree?

There was no reason to question any of them. And even if there was, who would?

There were also the unspoken problems with the position and even with the association.

There are hardly any enticements to take the post. It doesn’t pay a dime. It carries no benefits. Delegating tasks to others isn’t easy (for the reasons cited above). And seeing what Don has gone through, is hardly inviting. People often show up in force at neighborhood association meeting only when they are pissed off.

Who wants that?

Then there’s the little problem that Portland neighborhood associations have neither money nor power. Ultimately they just meet. Sure, developers and city engineers are required to lay plans before the associations, but the outcome of such meetings carries no weight in law.

If there is any power at all, it’s in the ability to embarrass as a way of forcing action from public officials, property owners, developers or city engineers. The embarrassment can be amplified because we have an active community press to publicize the foibles of all of the above. (Three of us were at last night's meeting.)

And occasionally, just occasionally, the embarrassment — or threat of it — works.

In a way, my hope is that this blog post will do its small part to embarrass the neighborhood into producing a leader for the neighborhood association.

The next president has to be someone sort of, but not exactly. like, Don. A person with a dollop of righteous indignation. A person willing to jump up and down and yell, “You can’t do that! We live here! Who do you think you are!”

Recently I’ve concluded that Hillsdale needs some autonomy from the City of Portland. (Actually, I think it should secede, but one step at a time.) Give us, with no strings attached, some of the tax money we pay to the city. Say $200,000 per year. Let us decide what to do with it. Let us hire our own “city manager” to work with property owners and the City for change.

After last night’s meeting, I began to doubt my proposal. If no one would step forward to lead the neighborhood association, who would manage a semi-autonomous Hillsdale community?

But the more I’ve thought about it, our very lack of power is the problem. If Hillsdale had resources and authority to take control of more of its destiny, all kinds of folks might be willing to step up and lead.

For now, what we need most is leadership and a neighborhood association board that insist the City give us the power and resources to determine our own future.

Game for a Neighborhood

A week ago when I posted the modest announcement sign at the bottom of the hill, I had my doubts it would produce results.

It read:

“Neighborhood Board Games … Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. … Here”

“Here” was under a tree on the fringe of our curbless street.

The idea was inspired by Jay Walljasper’s “The Great Neighborhood Book,” published by the Project for Public Spaces.

By 7:45, lured by neighborly competition and the novelty of it all, 14 neighbors—our ages ranged from 10 or 12 to more than 60 — gathered bearing assorted games.

Scrabble, chess and a few games I had never seen.

Laughing and kibitzing, we played past dusk and into the darkness until we could no longer see tile or card.

Finally, reluctantly, we surrendered; we lost only to the night.

Some of us met for the first time, even though we live within a block or two.

Now we feel like neighbors. We know each others’ names — and our opening moves.

We vowed to bring a lantern next week and, if it looks like rain, a canopy.

The sign I made was roughly lettered with a chunky, chisel-tip permanent marker.

Today I spent time at the computer making a formal looking sign. I had it laminated and mounted.

The words are the same but more emphatic:


The new sign, unlike the old, is one of affirmation.

It takes a neighborhood ...

We decided to hold our "National Night Out" neighborhood block party a little late. Most were on the 7th of this month. Ours was yesterday, Sunday, the 12th, at the corner of SW 18th and Martha Street. The pavement of the site had been marked in chalk in the month prior to the event (see photo above)

The photos pretty much tell the story. But the story, as you can see from the photos, was full of stories. How long folks have been here. Where they came from. What they do. Where the kids (or grand-kids) are in school. What changes we've seen in the area.

We connected faces with names, and names with houses. In short, many of us became neighbors for the first time.

The trick is to continue the connections. With that in mind, earlier in the week I took a page out of "The Great Neighborhood Book," which I wrote about in my Connection column this month. Inspired by the book, I posted a sign next to a vacant lot. "Neighborhood Board Games, Thursday, 7:30 p.m."

Several people at the block party had seen the sign and vowed to be there. I hope it is the beginning of a neighborhood institution. I'm now thinking that the part of the vacant lot along the street might serve as a neighborhood horseshoe pit.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. For now I'm still assimilating all those great stories, names and faces from Sunday's street potluck.

Charter commission's composition pre-determined revisions

One big reason the recommendations of the 25-member Mayor’s Charter Review Commission ignored the interests of neighborhoods may be that only two members were identified with neighborhoods.

Here are the two, as they were listed the official résumés accompanying the press announcement of commission members:

Jillian Detweiler. Employed by TriMet, she has served as an assistant to former City Commissioner Charlie Hales, and is a past board member of the Southeast Uplift and Brooklyn Neighborhood Association.

Robin Plance. A maintenance supervisor, he has served with the Gresham Optimist Club; St. Johns Neighborhood Association Board and Portland Harbor Community Advisory Group.

And that’s it.

The other 23 commissioners were seemingly appointed for their trade or labor affiliations, ethic group, non-profit work etc.

All well and good, but when it came time to offer some form of representation for neighborhoods in a new charter, the overwhelming majority had little reason to speak up. And they didn’t.

This is why jury selection is so important in determining verdicts.

It should have come as no surprise that the verdict of the charter commission would exclude neighborhood (and neighborhood coalition) representation and power from a new city council.

More Portland neighborhoods going on line

Last Thursday evening nearly 40 neighborhood activists jammed into the Lovejoy conference room in Portland City Hall.

We weren’t there to lobby or petition, but to learn.

The lessons were about the Internet, and our teachers were experienced neighborhood web masters and web mistresses.

From the numbers in the room, it’s clear a lot more neighborhoods are going to be on line soon, adding to the growing glut of information—all of it competing for your attention.

Whether the content qualifies as “news” is another question.

The sites will certainly will be part of what has been awkwardly called “hyper-local” journalism.

The audiences, accordingly, will be relatively minuscule. And the journalists are bound to be amateurs, if for no other reason that there is no money in this. Minuscule markets mean minuscule advertising revenues.

But, like teachers, few journalists enter the field for the money. And a few of us who are semi-retired are willing to work for nothing or next to nothing. The rewards are a job well done, not big bank accounts.

On Thursday we were shown several neighborhood web offerings, some obviously better than others, but each had a lesson for would-be hyper-local journalists like me.

Links to several neighborhood sites follow. Check them out. They are a mixed bag. I’ll leave it to you to sort them out. Feel free to comment. As someone about to launch two neighborhood-oriented sites, I'd like to know your likes and dislikes.

Sullivan’s Gulch
Mt. Tabor
Woodstock
Eastmoreland
Bridlemile
Laurelhurst
Hillsdale

Charter review omits neighborhoods, vision

I can't attend Thursday's Portland City Council deliberations on the Charter Review Commission's recommendations at 2 p.m. at City Hall, so I've sent my comments.

I have serious concerns about both the commission's process and its recommendations. Here's what I've written the City Council...

Commissioners:

I'm writing because I have concerns that the process followed by the Charter Review Commission suffers from serious disconnects.

Specifically, the commission makes no recommendations regarding the role the City wants neighborhoods to play. As the mayor has said many times, the City can't do its job alone. It needs the energy found in the neighborhoods. The neighborhoods should be partners in the business of the city, and yet the Commission's recommendations utterly fail to acknowledge or formalize that partnership.

Moreover, there seems to be an inexplicable disconnect between visionPDX and the Commission's deliberations. As one who has read hundreds of visionPDX responses, I believe ignoring the concerns expressed in the responses is a travesty.

Consider just one area, education. Respondents were nearly unanimous about the need to bring equity to our schools, and yet their concerns were being directed to the City, NOT the School District. There is obvious need to tear down the walls between these two governments, if not actually combine them. The commission is silent on the question of consolidation or structures for improved communications.

I urge you to slow down the Charter Review process so that neighborhoods and visionPDX become part of the commission's deliberations and recommendations.

Sincerely,

Rick Seifert
Hillsdale Neighborhood