PORTLAND, Ore. — Oregon Department of Transportation crews and their cranes were parked alongside Portland’s Highway 99 just south of the Ross Island Bridge Thursday, in an effort to clear out a large homeless camp under the road.
A spokesman for the agency says an inspector will follow up in the coming days to see if the camp has done any damage.
In the past, said Lou Torres, similar camps have.
“They're digging down and around underneath and near the foundation,” he said of other camps. “People are trying to create a confine or some kind of a habitat so they're digging a lot. We don't want to see that happening at all, and you know then also too we see sometimes we see warming fires under the bridges, and those fires are not good for the bridges.”
Torres, who spoke via phone from Salem, couldn’t provide exact figures but said past repairs of this type have been covered by the agency’s general maintenance funds.
The crane, he said, was to help crews clear the piles of belongings and trash along the hillside, going down to the Springwater Corridor.
A representative for the Joint Office of Homeless Services said the Clackamas Service Center had been on hand in the days leading up to the clearing to advise campers on accessing social services.
Tom Brown owns commercial property nearby and has seen people inside that gap for years.
To him, it looks like a series of caves.
“I just don't understand how we let it get that bad, especially underneath a freeway,” he said. “Maybe it's time we provide dumpsters and outhouses just to at least to keep the areas cleaned up and give them a little responsibility for their own well being. Just to allow trash to build up along the river is ridiculous.”
Torres pointed out the clean-up is the last one ODOT will execute on its own.
The property, which has been cleared multiple times before, is days away from becoming the city’s responsibility.
It’s one of a few, designated under “Phase 2” of Portland’s Intergovernmental Agreement with ODOT, which lets city crews clear homeless camps from state land.
City crews started clearing properties designated as “Phase 1” at the beginning of the year, speeding up the clean-up cycle by several days.
Phase 2 begins April 1st.