All quiet on the Simpson Park Trail, Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 13, 2024.
I was out of town when I wrote Monday about the latest plan to rid Simpson Park of unauthorized encampments. On Tuesday the bike took me there to look around.
The woodlands between the Willamette River on one side and First and Second lakes on the other were peaceful and quiet. I saw only two people on the trail, a bearded man walking with his dog and, later, another guy walking the opposite direction and talking on his phone.
Every few hundred feet, well-trod footpaths branched off from the wide main trail. I followed a couple of them. They led to what looked like abandoned camp sites.
The people staying there apparently had left, either on their own or because someone told them to go. The question is: Where could they go?
Simpson Park is administered by the City of Albany under a 1997 conservation easement from Seattle-based Simpson Timber Co. The easement allows the city to do the kinds of things cities do to preserve land as a park. It does not allow squatting.
As you have heard, Albany is closing the city’s designated camping site for homeless people at Ninth Avenue and Jackson Street. But the council has passed a revised camping ordinance that allows private groups to sponsor similar sites on their own property.
Someone contacted me this week with news of “Albany H.U.T.S.” This is a nonprofit that hopes to build a number of 6-by-10-foot huts as transitional shelters, with one person per hut. The huts are insulated but have no electricity or heat.
They resemble Conestoga wagons. Each would have a lockable door, a trash can outside with weekly pickup. The lot on which they are placed would have a communal water station and a portable toilet.
According to the group’s website, they have their eye on a couple of big vacant lots. One is owned by the Union Pacific Railroad across Ninth Avenue from the Helping Hands homeless shelter. The other is on the north side of Pacific Boulevard, alongside the off-ramp to Seventh Avenue.
For people chased out of remote sites along the river, this might be a temporary alternative. As I learn more about the H.U.T.S. plan, I’ll pass it on.
In the meantime, take a look at two or three places just off the main trail in Simpson Park on Tuesday. (hh)
Left-behind signs of bike repair or bike destruction.
What remained in an area cleared for a camp.
No more use for this former shopping cart.
Hasso,
Is this the same area where the City wants to spend over 3 million dollars to put in a cement trail? Since I don’t have a death wish, I don’t traipse around in the woods inviting a mugging by a drug-crazed, or just plain crazed, homeless person, so I’m asking if the last 3 (including this one) of your blog posts have all been about the same trail.
Different leg of the trail. This is downstream from the Simpson parking lot. The South Waterfront Trail, where paving is contemplated, is between Bowman and Simpson parks. But there, too, improvised camping sites have sprung up.
Those shopping carts are expensive to replace- around $200 each. The costs are passed on to shoppers in the form of higher food prices.
All I see when these carts are being pushed is these people are thieves
Hopefully this private, religious nonprofit does not become dependent on secular governments for funding, like several other nonprofits have in the Albany area.
When that happens common sense gets crippled and waste becomes the norm.
Deliver results, not services.
Seriously, why has that area the only place that the city can use for the homeless? The businesses around there have suffered 20+ years dealing with the city’s failure to aid the homeless. They need to move the homeless where they can be helped and not hidden away were they can keep causing problems. If the city put as much positive efforts in dealing with people they would reap the benefits instead of causing everyone so much grief. My kiddos used to hide all of their stuff under the bed when we told them to clean up their rooms. It took a few times but they learned that hiding stuff was not going to work. The city of Albany needs a grown up to stand up and stop hiding their problems instead of solving them.
$200 shopping carts? are they really that cheap? .
I am curious about the 1997 Simpson Park conservation easement that required the City of Albany to preserve the land as a natural area, or park, as it’s now called. It would appear now, in the fullness of time, the Simpson Timber Company traded a distressed asset to the City for tax or pension benefits? Present day $200 shopping carts notwithstanding, former Honorable Albany Mayor and City Councilor Sharon Konopa addressed the issue of Simpson Park’s homelessness in a “summary of what Albany has done in serving homeless persons” last revised: March 07, 2018. This is a story that continues to confound as well as generate opportunities for those bent on crippling common sense and normalizing waste, as Mr. Shadle writes. What has changed since Albany was a city of 10,000 people? Certainly not a person’s right to choose homelessness. The CONSQUENCES of that choice however, have changed dramatically.
Thank you for the kind intro Hasso. Albany H.U.T.S. is only in the beginning phases and would need the City to revise ordinances 7.20.035 and 7.20.045. Current code does not allow huts or their long-term placement on public or private land. The city needs to recognize homelessness as a critical problem in our community, and make the necessary amendments to address this situation in a humane and compassionate way. This is a manageable problem, that will only become more critical in time if it is not directly dealt with properly. Only if people would attend the city council meetings to voice their concerns, will the city be made to listen and make the needed changes to city codes. Many other cities have managed to make these huts work. So can Albany. We’re all in this together.
So why is it that Mr Simpson left part of his land to homeless why is that not addressed
Exactly and it’s true mr Simpson did leave it to the homeless
I’m still asking: Is the Simpson Park area where the City plans to allow the homeless people to camp? It is not near any of the shelters or food pantries. Do they want to put in the concrete path so that homeless people won’t have a muddy path to deal with in the winter?
No. Simpson Park is beiung cleared of camp sites and trash.
If the city wants to pave the park where the homeless are camping, pull all the funds and donations for helping hands and let all the homeless live in the park in the H.U.T.S. shelters. That would be killing two birds with one stone. The shelter could move their office closer to the park to manage them. If Albany wants to maintain the homeless while protecting its residents from the consciences of just maintaining the homeless, let it be on them. Hiding them in the woods will at least will offer some relief for the homeless and the residents of Albany. The city has never invested in a long term solution that would make life better for everyone at least they could use better avoidance measures than flushing tax money down the toilet torturing both the homeless and the city residents.