Coming soon, to a lot near you?

In a classic late Friday news dump, yesterday the City of Portland published a list of 70 city properties that are being considered for managed homeless camps. The list (in an Excel spreadsheet) is here.

Now everyone who lives or works in town will search the list and see which sites are closest to them, and start assembling all the reasons why a homeless "village" shouldn't go there. 

Some of the addresses (with "R" numbers) are linked on the spreadsheet to city maps, and others aren't –  you wonder what that might mean – but if you click on any of links, you can enter any R number in the search box and see where each site is.

Some of them are under water storage towers, but others just seem to be empty lots here and there. Some are so far away from anything that you have to doubt they would work. And some are in the groovier neighborhoods that never have to host high-impact social services, and so history tells you they're on the list just for show.

Not on the spreadsheet is the Main Post Office site, which is sitting vacant and perfectly located from services and transit standpoints. The "Bud Clark Commons," low-income housing sometimes scorned colloquially as the Bum Bellagio, is right across the street. But sorry, the P.O. site is reserved, with taxpayer dollars, for the developer and construction weasels to slap up more of their high-priced, high-rise schlock there. We can't have the downtrodden living on that lot, even temporarily.

Speaking of which, no matter how the politicians try to sell this, we all know that once the camps are set up, they will not go away for many years, if ever. And so any site that wins this booby prize is going to be a long-term sacrifice zone.

Neighbors who don't live or work near the sites on the candidate list shouldn't breathe too easily. There will be more lots added, apparently. Other governmental units and nonproft "partners" are supposed to be submitting potential locations in the days ahead. And of course, there will be lots and lots of Portland-style "equity" kabuki.

But for now, let the NIMBY games begin! They ought to have an opening ceremony, like at the Olympics.