From The Oregonian, September 19, 1987

Trying to preserve a delicate truce between business interests and social service agencies, Mayor Bud Clark is trying to stop Baloney Joe’s planned move to Old Town.

The Burnside Community Council, which runs the Baloney Joe’s emergency shelter at the east end of the Burnside Bridge, has purchased a building on the corner of Northwest Eighth Avenue and Flanders Street, just a few blocks from the city-owned Beaver Hotel, a major outlet for homeless services.

Clark said he learned of the purchase Sept. 18 and thought the move would upset an agreement reached earlier this year between Roger Shiels, a planner who represents several of Old Town’s largest property owners, and Donald E. Clark, executive director of Central City Concern.

That agreement was put together because Don Clark and Bud Clark feared that rapid development in what the mayor has termed “north downtown” might wipe out the city’s endangered stock of single-room-occupancy hotels. Made formal by a City Council resolution supporting it, the agreement said the business people would accept the need for downtown housing for the poor, while the social service contingent would support business expansion, including the development of Union Station and the extension of the Portland Mall.

LIMIT SET: The accords listed specific numbers of single-room-occupancy beds that must be preserved, but it also added that the number of beds in mass emergency shelters should be limited to those already existing.

“This purchase by Baloney Joe’s threatens very much that agreement, that understanding,” Bud Clark said at a hastily called news conference Friday afternoon. “It’s a point of honor. The business community is very much alarmed.”

Clark acknowledged the need for Baloney Joe’s to expand, however.

“We still have a big homeless problem,” he said. “Our homeless shelters are all full. Here it is summer, and the shelters are full. What’s going to happen in the winter?”

The new agreement, reached in extensive negotiating sessions over the last few days, calls for the Portland Development Commission to find a suitable eastside space for Baloney Joe’s at no greater cost for purchase and rehabilitation than the $382,000 paid for the westside property.

The Burnside Community Council will go ahead with its closing of the westside property Monday but has agreed to sell that building “if an acceptable eastside package can be developed.”

The development commission will be given 90 days to come up with a plan.

A resolution supporting the agreement was introduced Friday by Clark and will be voted on Wednesday by the City Council.

In spite of the agreement, Michael Stoops, chairman of the Burnside Community Council, and Richard Meyer, the organization’s executive director, said they were keeping their options open. The new building is much nicer and would nearly double the size of their present space, they said.

`POLITICAL FOOTBALL’: Stoops is annoyed that the location of Baloney Joe’s is so politically charged.

“We’re like a political football between the east side and the west side,” he said. “The business people on the east side want us to go to the west side, and the business people on the west side want us to stay on the east side.

“We need the expanded services,” Stoops said. “We’ve been looking for a new building for a long time.”

The Burnside Community Council isn’t bound by the north downtown agreement, Stoops said. “We were never a signatory to that deal. We’re a private organization. Our primary accountability is to the homeless.”

Nevertheless, the mayor’s personal pull has Stoops and Meyer willing to listen.

“We’re willing to consider any idea this mayor has because he’s been nothing but a friend to the homeless,” Meyer said. “We’ll listen to anything he comes up with.”

From The Oregonian – September 17, 1987. Not available elsewhere online.

The normal bustle was gone from the wards at Dammasch State Hospital on Wednesday, replaced by the hustle of administrators filling in as psychiatric aides and food service workers.

As the first day of the Oregon Public Employees Union strike got under way, line workers traded their uniforms for picket signs and took their places at the entrance of the institution, while administrators left their formal clothes at home to work with patients.

REASONABLE CARE: “We’re covered,” said Dr. Victor M. Holm, Dammasch superintendent. “I can’t say we can make it business as usual, but reasonable care in a humane environment is being provided.”

About 450 people work at the mental hospital, three-quarters of whom are represented by the union. Administrators and doctors are not represented by a union; nurses are represented by their own union.

“We feel we can meet the health and safety needs” of patients and residents in the four institutions, said Peggy Sand, communications manager for the Mental Health Division.

Most patients are getting basic care instead of the usual therapy, she said. The mental health institutions affected by the strike Wednesday were Oregon State Hospital and the Eastern Oregon Training and Psychiatric centers, as well as Dammasch .

Fairview Training Center workers in Salem are represented by a different union.

Holm said administrators from other Human Resources Department agencies have been brought in to help. Managers from Fairview, the Mental Health Division and the Health Division have been assigned to work with patients on the wards.

Janice Yaden, assistant to the governor for human resources, was working a 12-hour shift at the hospital’s switchboard and on the wards as a psychiatric aide, Holm said.

TOOK OVER AT MIDNIGHT: The hospital’s staff director was working as a psychiatric aide; the manager of occupational therapy was working with patients.

Holm said the managers began working about 6 p.m. Tuesday in anticipation of the strike and when workers went out at midnight they took over. The administrators are working 12-hour shifts.

“As it goes on a while more, we would definitely be very tired and have problems,” Holm said. He added, however, that help from other administrators was coming.

The institution had 362 patients, who have some “apprehension” about new people working in the institution, Holm said. Most of the staff had been able to answer questions by patients about the strike.

A maximum security ward in the hospital that houses 30 patients is staffed by psychiatric security aides, who are barred from striking.

He said most of the patients would have more time on their hands because a number of activities would not be available.

One of the crucial areas hit in the hospital is placement service, which finds patients places to work and stay when released, Holm said. He said discharges at the hospital probably would slow down, resulting in more patients in the institution.

24 OF 190 AT WORK: Holm said there were 190 Oregon Public Employees Union members on the graveyard and day shifts, of whom about 24 had reported for work. He said about 100 union workers come in on the swing shift and very few crossed the picket lines Wednesday.

Glen Hartley, a psychiatric aide and picket line captain, said the union knew of only 11 workers who had crossed the picket lines.

Holm, whose office window has a view of strikers about 70 yards away, said there had been two or three minor incidents of name-calling and of delivery truck drivers not wanting to cross the picket lines.

“I really don’t think strikes benefit anybody,” he said. “The wounds heal slowly.”

Meanwhile, 30 strikers at the hospital entrance waved at passers-by and tried to discourage deliverers and others from entering the grounds. Pickets also manned a side entrance and a back road that led to the hospital.

“We’ve had a real good turnout,” Hartley said. He added that he thought morale inside the institution would be poor because of the stress of working with patients.

“It takes experience and a gut feeling to know how to handle people,” he said. “Some people you can confront; others, they’re going to sock you one.”