Highlights from Autumn 2019
Always up to something, here are a few highlights from the City Repair world this last season! For a larger picture of our work, check out our annual report for project year 2019: https://cityrepair.org/annualreport
Clackamas County Veteran’s Village
City Repair stepped back into the Clackamas County Veteran’s Village over the past month with some of our Core volunteers, Board Members, and an NCCC AmeriCorps Crew (Pacific Region, Blue 4) to support 8 new sleeping pods being brought in.
The pods were left over from a design challenge to build pods for Kenton Women’s Village, involving many of the region’s best architecture firms, produced an excess of eight pods. With the Veterans Village built with capacity for more, the Home Builders Foundation generously stepped in to find the resources and community partners to manage the move and placement.
The village is facilitated by Do Good Multnomah now has extra beds to fill as we all work together to end veteran homelessness. After the new villagers settle in and there is breathing room in the village after all the recent commotion, we’re hoping to help the village build new garden beds. One resident we spoke with was dreaming of growing enough berries to make jam!
If you’re interested in supporting the villages for the houseless, check out https://www.pdxvillagecoalition.org/ or https://www.facebook.com/pg/pdxvillagecoalition/. To support the Clackamas County Vet Village check out: https://dogoodmultnomah.org/veterans-village.
Images below thanks to Vahid Brown.
AmeriCorps, Team Blue 4
The team at the cob bench at the ReBuilding Center.
As mentioned above, we’ve been working with an AmeriCorps team (Blue 4), whom we’ve cohosted along with NE PDX affordable housing provider, Sabin CDC, for the last six weeks. We are utterly grateful for their service! They served 3000 hours, which if we value their time at $25 an hour then it is like they donated $75,000 for community benefit.
The team primarily worked on ecological landscaping projects, removing weeds and invasive species in rain water gardens, swails and urban gardens like the Malden Court Community Orchard and Jean’s Farm. They built garden beds for residents at Sabin CDC, as well as City Repair neighbors the Native American Rehabilitation Association. Besides serving City Repair community projects, team Blue 4 spent some days working for some of our partner nonprofits including the ReBuilding Center and the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Portland and Gresham.
A service-learning group, besides working and producing, we spent time discussing social and environmental issues in Portland, the issues of place, of who is denied access and how it has been systematized such as redlining in the historic Black neighborhood or how Islamophobia shapes how the Muslim community engages (or doesn’t) in public space. Big thanks to SE Uplift and Portland United Against Hate for hosting anti-bias workshops on such issues for us!
In the teams own words, here is a reflection on their time spent in Portland:
“Our team learned a great deal about becoming more socially conscious. It's been eye-opening to hear the stories of people who have experienced oppression in its many forms, particularly the horrific impacts of racist gentrification and redlining....We were also fortunate to have learned about the Indigenous tribes of the area. It was eye-opening to acknowledge whose land we were standing on before the start of the workday...Our worldview was shifted because we weren't aware that this oppression is still happening today. Now, due to this newfound awareness, we have the opportunity to take action within ourselves and within the communities we serve.”
HOWL
Now in its 17th year, HOWL is an annual Halloween dance party and fundraiser that occurs toward the end of October. An inordinate amount of friends of City Repair come together to put this event on, much gratitude to everyone that helped from setting up spooky decor to the DJs throwing down beats, and a special thank you to Eric Steindler and Manoj Matthews for being the core organizers and driving force. This event always raises thousands of dollars for us to be able to serve communities. Didn’t dance withus this year, keep an eye out for next year’s party: www.facebook.com/HowlPDX/
Special Workshops
Thanks to Bikes for Humanity PDX and SE Uplift, we hosted a couple of bike repair workshops in the neighborhood of our office. Did you miss them? Check out Bikes for Humanity’s website for more opportunities to learn and get bike support: https://www.b4hpdx.org/learn
Cohosting with SE Uplift, we brought in Portland United Against Hate (PUAH) to host workshops on Housing Discrimination and Understanding and Working Against Islamophobia. City Repair is planning on setting up more workshops with PUAH over the next few months, and there are still a few anti-bias workshops in this series working with SE Uplift: https://www.seuplift.org/puahcd/
Afro Village
We are super grateful to be collaborating with our long time friend and community activist, Laquida Landford, and a new partner, the Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative (HRAC) a center in Portland State University. Working with students from an architecture class and an urban planning class during Fall term, students researched and made concept designs for an AfroVillage, a tiny home community in the design-concept phase that will focus on Black women and femmes.
We are looking at what makes sense to as an “Opportunity Zone” an Afro Village model for a public housing alternative solution in the midst of our housing crisis and to work against the continued gentrification and displacement of the Black community and their families. More info on this project coming soon! Learn more about HRAC: www.pdx.edu/homelessness-collaborative/homelessness-research
Community activist Laquida and City Repair staff member, Kirk, in center reviewing designs from architecture students.