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| Richard Ober, residing at the Gateway Residential Care Facility on Northeast 102nd Avenue and East Burnside Street in Gateway. He is afflicted with diabetes, sores on his legs, cysts on his kidneys and occasional grand mal seizures. Ober was due to be evicted on February 20th, he is still in the hearing process and he is “safe” until March 20th.
Mid-county MEMO photo by Tim Curran |
Already behind the city norm, East Portland will be hardest hit by additional cuts in services to the young, the infirm, the addicted and the elderly
Lee Perlman
The Mid-county MEMO
Songwriter Richard Farina titled his autobiography, “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me.”
In some ways this could be applied to East Portland in the aftermath of budget cuts and the defeat of the last-chance tax levy, Measure 28. What other areas of Multnomah County view as nightmare scenarios are business as usual for this chronically underserved community.
In other ways, loss of service will be felt even harder here. Multnomah County commissioner Lonnie Roberts says he understands the first point “pretty well. There’s been an equity problem in Mid-County for some years. In other areas they’re cutting health clinics in schools - and we never had any to cut.”
Meanwhile, the need is rising faster in this area. Roberts and aide Chuck Martin cite these statistics: in the last 10 years the area’s Latino population has risen 370 percent. Its senior population has doubled and gone from eight percent of the area’s total population to 14 percent. Local school districts east of 122nd Avenue now contain 45 percent of the county’s school age population, yet receive only 22 percent of the funds. “There’s an effort to get back to equity,” Martin says. “That doesn’t mean bringing in more money, but lessening future cuts by taking from areas that have been given more.”
Nowhere to go but down
Be that as it may, for the time being the news will only get worse. Countywide, social services were cut by $35 million in the last two reductions, according to Martin. That there will be further cuts in the next fiscal year is beyond question; what remains to be seen is whether budget shortfalls will force another interim reduction first. Moreover, he says, “We’re into a terrible, vicious circle. We’re not doing enough to support our local businesses, so they’re leaving. That lessens our tax base and means even less money comes in.”
A grim thought for the future, but the present is bad enough. Cuts about to go into effect would reduce or curtail social services to nearly 29,000 people in Multnomah County. Of these 3,088 will lose assistance they depend on daily for “mobility, eating and toileting.” Another 1972 will lose assistance for medicines, alcohol, drug or mental health treatment, producing suffering for them and “strange behavior” in public for the public at large. Oregon Project Independence, a $1.5 million program that gave low-income senior homeowners occasional help with chores that allowed them to maintain themselves in their homes, has been eliminated; the result will be more people in care facilities, putting more demand on already scarce resources.
As Mary Shortall of the county’s senior disabilities program notes, “So many of our providers are in Mid-County, a majority of our foster care and assisted living facilities. It’s an economic issue, but also a people issue.”
A face in the crowd
People like Richard Ober, now residing at the Gateway Residential Care Facility on Northeast 102nd Avenue. He is afflicted with diabetes, sores on his legs, cysts on his kidneys and occasional grand mal seizures, as he himself will tell you. (Also, according to his caseworkers, he has “a depressive disorder, is unable to make good decisions for himself, and tends to neglect treatment of his mental health and diabetes.” Ober says only, “I’m not suicidal - yet.”)
These and other afflictions prevent him from working. He lost his house in Burlingame last year - he mortgaged it and then couldn’t sustain the payments. His family provided some support, but for two months he was living in a car. Ober stayed in various parking lots, “and I was evicted from all of them. I was even evicted from my doctor’s office.” His daughter, who lives in a state-funded facility, could provide a place to stay and bathe during the day, but not overnight lodging. As this issue went to press, he stood to lose his housing in Gateway Residential Care Facility on March 20, unless a last-minute appeal is successful. He may receive help from one of his sons when the latter musters out of the U.S. Navy. Ober may soon qualify for Social Security, but this will only provide him $550 a month for housing, food, medication and everything else; in any event neither will be available until at least mid-March. In the meantime, Ober says, “I may be sleeping under a bridge.”
According to Gateway Residential Care Facility staffer Judy Farrow, “There definitely are others who may have to leave here.” Oregon ranks above many other states in care options for the elderly and disabled “if you have money.” However, she adds, “If they come to us, it usually means they have nowhere else to go.”
Someone else’s ox
Other types of East Portland services are leaving too. The Oregon State University Extension Service facility, a fixture at 404 Southeast 80th Avenue since 1916, is shutting its doors and laying off or transferring its 27 staffers. It provides support to the Urban 4-H Program, and is a source of aid and information to students, nurseries, small farmers, gardeners, recyclers and others.
There have been cuts in available jail beds, forcing the county to release people accused of misdemeanors, petty theft and drug-related offenses. “If we don’t provide jail space for certain classes of criminals, there’s no reason for the district attorney to prosecute them,” Martin says. “Now we have these elderly people, and people with schizophrenia, out on the street, and the criminals who pray on them are out on the street too, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” he adds.
None of this is new, or shouldn’t have been. Horror stories of what could be were published before the defeat of Measure 28. Yet many, in letters to the editor and other public comments dismissed the warnings as scare tactics by a bloated government unwilling to live within its means.
“I’d ask those people, what do you think the government should fund?” Roberts says. “I think the answers would be pretty much in line with what we believe.” Sort of. “There are services they don’t take advantage of,” Martin says. “There are seniors who don’t understand about the needs of schools and children’s health services. There are families who don’t understand about the need for senior services. The 55 percent who voted against Measure 28 think there’s still fat to be cut, that there’s a big pot of money somewhere, and there just isn’t any.”
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