SpringWater Trail to 405 Trail - Cycling

A cleared camp

There is a (mostly?) off road set of bike/pedestrian trails that go around a big part of Portland. The total trip is over 50 miles, and I am not quite up for that yet (probably need another battery for my eBike). In the meantime, I am trying to drive some of these paths in sections. Had some nice weather last week so I thought I would try to get out to the 405 (interstate) trail and see what it was like. As it happens, it intersects with the Spring Water Trail near Clackamas Town Center, so I thought I would give that route a try. 

I started out at Sellwood park. It is a good central location and doesn't have a parking fee. It is usually pretty empty on a work day (in the winter). Last time I road along the Spring Water Corridor I was surprised by the number of homeless encampments. The first one that I hit (last summer) was actually a encampment disaster. A set of large tents (a least 3) and all of the accompaniment of stuff that had been set up under the Sellwood bridge had burned to the ground. Just a large smelly burnt area. This time, when I went through, that area was once again occupied with a number of large tents. It looked like someone (I am assuming the City) had cleaned up the burned trash and such. 

Today, as I traveled further down the Springwater, it seemed like their were many fewer encampments than my last check. Many of the zones where there were a lot of camps were now empty and cleaned up. They looked rather desolate. Most of the trash was gone, though there was still a lot of debris. Once again I am assuming that the city came in the forced the campers to move and then collected all of the trash. There were also signs of tree and brush removal, so perhaps the city used this as a pretext. 

The Spring Water is an old railway right of way, which means it is essentially flat and about 30 feet wide (the actual trail is around 8 feet wide). After around 5 miles I came to the intersection of the Springwater with the 405 trail. As you might expect, the 405 trail is a walking/pedestrian trail that extends along the west side of the 405 as it loops around Portland. It heads North/South while the Springwater is heading East/West. A bit further East along the Springwater is another North/South trail that takes you over to the Columbia at Troutdale. This is the trail you would take if you were doing the 50 mile full city loop I mentioned earlier.  

So I got onto the 405 and I immediately started seeing even more signs of moved camps. The 405 trail is NOT an old railroad. It is not as wide and has lots of little intersections with other walking paths and roads. It also rises up to intersect with the local light rail platforms from time to time.  As I said, I am again seeing the cleared areas. I guess they are a bit more evident here because they are occurring on grassy areas along the trail. So you have these square tent sized dead grass area here and there as you move along. 

There was one large area, perhaps big enough to put a small house, that was completely wiped. It looked like there had been a big encampment there and it had been moved and the area cleaned. But cleaned is really not a very good term. There was still broken glass and small pieces of trash and the area had thant burned plastic smell that you get after a house fire. This surely wasn't an area that the neighborhood could repurpose. You couldn't just plant grass and let you kids play there. It was now a Dead Zone in the neighborhood until someone could pony up the bucks to completely reface it. This is a bad thing. This is showing that the cost of homelessness (which is now being referred to as houselessness) is incurred by everyone. Makes the problem even more essential to solve. 

I was wondering where all of the homeless people had gone but as I peddled further down the 405 trail, I found them. They were packed tightly along the trail at discrete intervals. I think they were tending to clump at short walking distances from major street intersections with the 405 trail.  When I was riding, on a Tuesday late morning, there were not very many actual campers around. They were presumably out seeking food and money. 

One encampment that I saw was right across the street from a rather nice new set of first time buyer single family homes. These were nice looking homes, but probably starting out on the less expensive side because they were just across the road from the embankment going up to an interstate. But now those startup families had drug users and crazy people camped in the nice little grass area where I am sure that they envisioned there children playing. 

As I was driving through, I saw a young couple walking across the street from the tents to the nice houses. These two were dressed nicely, like they were going to work , perhaps as waiters. At first I thought they were residents of one of the houses and had perhaps been giving a meal or something to someone in the tents. But then I saw them wash their hands in the water tap of one of the homes and then move along, presumably to work. So here are people who are trying. But at the same time, they are going onto private property and using someones water.  The other thing that I saw in some neighborhood areas was vehicles that were being used as campsites. Often these vehicles were up on blocks and had their tires removed and perhaps windows broken. But there was evidence of people sleeping in them.

This is a section of nice homes that had no encampment across the street.
I think this section of the 405 embankment was too steep for tents.
this is how the entire trail should look

I came to one part of the trail where it rose up off the ground to meet pass over a large main street. The trail now sort of hugged the 405 overpass over the same street. This made a little sheltered area under the freeway and there was a long encampment here and trash was overflowing everywhere. The path was so chocked with debris that I had to slow down and wind my way through the trash and the occasional camper. In general, the campers were polite and would make way, in this area, however,  they tended to be sort of unaware of my passage and I had to dodge around them. I am assuming drug use. 

Perhaps a list of what sorts of trash you see:

• Tents and tent components. Broken Tent poles etc.
• Water bottles (large and small)
• Clothing
• broken bicycles
• Grocery Carts (on a 5 mile stretch I counted 100 grocery carts)
• Food wrappers and containers, especially from fast food joints.
• Car tires
• mattresses
• camping chairs
• tarps
• propane bottles

One thing I do wonder about, where is all of the shit? I mean, there are no sanitary facilities anywhere along here and there is evidence of hundreds of people here. Where do they go? I don't think they just dump it locally because it really didn't smell like that. The overwhelming smell, when there was one, was of burnt rubber, plastic, and trash. 

Wow. What an uplifting blog. Didn't I see anything nice I want to write about?

No. Not really. 

I thought I had a lot more pictures to share, but I now remember that I just didn't feel right stopping and taking pictures of these peoples' plight. That and I didn't feel completely safe doing it. Such a mixed bag of emotions I am feeling. What is the right thing to do in this situation? Obviously no one with the right resources has figured out what to do about it.