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'City in Crisis, Finding Solutions': Northeast neighbors see no progress on homeless camps


A homeless camp near the railroad tracks in the area of Northeast 63rd Avenue and Halsey Street still exists since KATU's visit in November, but it has been moved several feet away from the tracks.
A homeless camp near the railroad tracks in the area of Northeast 63rd Avenue and Halsey Street still exists since KATU's visit in November, but it has been moved several feet away from the tracks.
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We wanted to pay another visit to the area around Northeast 63rd Avenue and Halsey Street.

Anthony Lane didn't really expect things to get better in the nearly three months since we were last here. But he also didn't expect things to get worse.

This area has experienced numerous issues in recent years: Homelessness, drug dealing, and vandalism.

"I don't see any progress here -- there might be some other places -- but at least in this area-section, no, I don't see any,” Lane said.

Lane is the operations director at BDI. They sell tools and safety equipment. But they're minus a few of those, after someone recently smashed their two big front windows and took off with some of their merchandise.

"It's frustrating, it's frustrating. And you can also see out front they've been cooking, camping out there. It looks like burn marks -- at least the other day when we looked out there -- so it's frustrating, it's extremely frustrating,” he said.

Across the street, we find Dolph Craig, owner of Western Abrasives.

When we were last here, he complained about the frustrations of doing business with drug dealing and homelessness surrounding his building. He's not seeing the progress either.

Just over the fence behind Craig's business, a homeless camp near the railroad tracks is still there. He says he's contacted Union Pacific several times to complain.

The camp has been moved several feet away from the tracks since our last visit.

Craig tells us the drug dealing outside his business has mostly gone away. He attributes that to letting the drug dealers know he's watching.

"And then people that come down here -- turn around and park over there -- and they try to do their drugs, and you come out and look and you just get flipped off; you get flipped off, and it's like, we want to do our drugs in private. It's like, well do it somewhere else,” Craig said.

So, if you're these two businesses, what would you do? Think about moving, you say? It's not that easy. For Anthony Lane, his company still has a two-year lease on their building. Neither wants to wave the white flag, but like so many neighborhoods throughout the city, they feel like they're in it, alone.

And what about a message to city leaders? You can't help but hear the hopelessness in the voice of Lane.

"Whatever you're going to say, it's just going to be ignored anyway. So just kinda go about our business and try to make it work as best we can. I wouldn't expect the city to listen to anything we say, honestly."

We reached out to Union Pacific regarding its efforts to clear the camps from near the tracks. In a statement, it said in part, "Union Pacific teams have been working consistently to address a variety of unsafe illegal camping issues on our property across the Portland metro area. In this location, crews contacted people trespassing, removed trash and installed rock barriers to deter future encampments."

It also urged anyone who sees camping near the tracks to contact them.

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