Local

Portland Developer Donates Space For Temporary Winter Homeless Shelter

By Kieran Hanrahan (OPB)
Oct. 28, 2016 8:11 p.m.
The temporary shelter at 333 SW Park Ave donated by Developer Tom Cody is near O'Bryant Square in downtown Portland.

The temporary shelter at 333 SW Park Ave donated by Developer Tom Cody is near O'Bryant Square in downtown Portland.

Michael Hicks

Multnomah County and the city of Portland have announced the opening of a temporary winter homeless shelter in downtown Portland.

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Developer Tom Cody is donating the use of the first floor of his building at 333 SW Park Avenue until he gets permits to develop it. The shelter is expected to open around Thanksgiving and house 100 people for six months.

Portland Mayor Charlie Hales said the temporary shelter is just what the city needs. "I've said from the beginning when we declared a state of housing emergency that we need to do three things: We need to move fast, we need to experiment and we need partners and money," said Hales.

"This is a great example of somebody stepping forward. And it’s really the third time in that year since we declared an emergency that we’ve found some very handy temporary shelter space," said Hales.

The first temporary shelter the city opened was in the city-owned Sears building in Southwest Portland. It housed 150 women and couples from Thanksgiving last year through May.

The second shelter was donated by the Menashe family, a local family of developers. They let the city use their building at Southwest 4th and Washington from January through July of this year.

The announcement about the new shelter at Park Avenue comes just days after the city scrapped plans to develop a large homeless shelter in the city-owned warehouse known as Terminal 1.

THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:
THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:
THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR: