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'More needs to be done': City puts up barriers along sections of SE Powell to deter homeless camps, traffic

The additions mark Portland's latest attempt to deter traffic and stop homeless camping along high-crash corridors that are particularly hazardous.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The frontage roads along Southeast Powell Boulevard are often filled with tents, vehicles and RVs. On Tuesday morning there was a different structure: barriers blocking traffic along three of the inlets.

It’s the City of Portland's latest attempt to deter traffic and homeless camping along high-crash corridors that are particularly hazardous.

The city worked with the Portland Bureau of Transportation and the Oregon Department of Transportation to temporarily close portions of Southeast 60th to 61st, 56th to 57th and 54th to 55th streets.

Lee Ellen lives off one of the blocked-off frontage roads and said that so far, the barriers have stopped camping but are causing confusion for drivers.

“I was just kind of annoyed since this is kind of a one-way exit out of my neighborhood," Ellen said. "They just like go out the one-way which is kind of dangerous.”

On the next block, Dan Sprauer was out gardening in front of the apartment building he owns. It’s located right off one of the blocked frontage roads, which used to be filled with homeless camps that he described as chaotic.

“Screaming, defecation, public defecation where you can see it — not even in the bushes — needles,” he said.

The camp he described was cleared prior to the barriers being placed. They have since been pushed over.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction. A lot more needs to be done,” Sprauer said.

A few streets away is another frontage road along Southeast 74th, where there are no barriers. Instead, there are several RVs, trailers and tents. A memorial of flowers marks where a homeless person was shot and killed earlier this month.

“A lot of the people that are here cannot control their situation,” said Kai Romeo Santos, who is homeless in Southeast and struggles with an addiction to fentanyl. He sees the frontage roads as an invitation to set up camp, regardless of the safety concerns.

When a KGW crew was on-site, they witnessed open-air drug use. One homeless woman came up to them asking where she could find fentanyl pills. 

As for the city's traffic barriers, Santos said they’re anything but a solution.

“If they want to be efficient about it and they want to do it in a way that helps both sides, then they need to find an alternative location that is safe for people that are going there, and they need to give something to them that is clean and orderly,” Santos said.

KGW reporter Blair Best told him about Mayor Ted Wheeler’s Temporary Alternative Shelter Sites, the first of which is set to open this summer in the Central Eastside district.

“That would be awesome. That would be really awesome. That’s a very intelligent idea,” said Santos.

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