All quiet on the Simpson Park Trail, Tuesday afternoon, August 13, 2024.
I was out of town when I wrote about the latest plan to clear Simpson Park of unlicensed encampments on Monday. On Tuesday, I biked there to check out the park.
The woods between the Willamette River on one side and First and Second Lake on the other were peaceful and quiet. I only saw two people on the trail, a bearded man walking his dog and later another guy walking in the opposite direction talking on his phone.
Every few hundred meters a well-trodden path branched off from the wide main path. I followed a few of them. They led to apparently abandoned campsites.
The people housed there had apparently left, either of their own accord or because someone had told them to leave. The question is: where could they go?
Simpson Park is managed by the City of Albany under a 1997 conservation easement from Seattle-based Simpson Timber Co. The easement allows the city to take the same actions that cities take to maintain land as parkland. Squatting is not permitted.
As you’ve heard, Albany is closing the city-designated campground for the homeless at Ninth Avenue and Jackson Street. However, the City Council has passed a revised camping ordinance that allows private groups to sponsor similar sites on their own property.
Someone contacted me this week with news about Albany HUTS. This is a non-profit organization that wants to build a number of 6′ x 10′ huts as temporary housing, with one person per hut. The huts are insulated but have no electricity or heat.
They are similar to the covered wagons of Conestoga. Each would have a lockable door and a garbage can outside that would be picked up weekly. There would be a communal water station and a portable toilet on the property where they would be placed.
According to the group’s website, they have their eye on a couple of large vacant lots. One is owned by the Union Pacific Railroad and is across from the Helping Hands homeless shelter on Ninth Avenue. The other is on the north side of Pacific Boulevard, next to the Seventh Avenue exit ramp.
For people displaced from remote locations along the river, this could be a temporary alternative. As soon as I learn more about the HUTS plan, I will share it.
In the meantime, check out two or three locations right off the main trail in Simpson Park on Tuesday. (hh)
Remaining traces of bicycle repair or destruction.
What was left in an area cleared for a camp.
There is no longer any use for this former shopping cart.
