Portland Village History

ORIGIN OF THE VILLAGE MODEL

The Village Model began in the minds of unhoused people who, by the turn of the century, were fed up with the lack of affordable housing, inhumane shelters, and being criminalized. On October 12, 2000, a few unhoused activists from Homeless Front and Street Roots vendors held their first meeting as Out of the Doorways. They hatched a plan to pitch a tent encampment, using civil disobedience to bring attention to their struggle. December 12, 2000, they set up Camp Dignity, setting in motion a course of events that would transform their lives and alter the national discourse on homelessness.

People walking on sidewalk with shopping carts and their belongings

The newly formed group’s campaign was a near instant sensation. Though they were swept 6 times, they maintained a cohesive organization and effective campaign. Their formula was to conduct a showy shopping cart parade on moving day and hold press conferences at each new location. This encouraged the public to keep tabs on their locations and keep support coming. This also enabled them to stick together. From the beginning, they managed everything through democratic decision-making from sanitation to strategy. Which ensured a resilient bond that would become the root of the Village Model.

Feeling empowered and inspired, villagers began thinking bigger and looking to build a future together. The City challenged them to design a program model, compose a five year plan, and form a nonprofit in order to be recognized. They spent months articulating and crafting the vision for the Village Model and formed a 501c3 nonprofit in 2001 under the name Dignity Village. Armed with official recognition, they demanded land to pursue their vision. 

After the long battle with City Hall, the City granted them land using a Great Depression era statute allowing a nonprofit to operate up to 2 temporary campgrounds in economic emergencies (the other would later become Right 2 Dream Too). Although this land was controversial for being outside of the City Center and caused some initial splintering into factions, Dignity Village prevailed and has been refining the model and inspiring movements around the world for nearly 25 years.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZED UNSANCTIONED CAMPS AND CAMPS AS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 

Although Dignity Village was the first to formalize and articulate the Village Model, its inspiration came from many previous movements and the lived experiences of the Villagers themselves. A good example of this is Jack Tafari (one of the original 8 authors of the model), who grew up in Brixton (South London, UK) where poor people lived in squatted apartment buildings democratically organized by the London Black Panther Party.

While living in the US, Jack became unhoused. Like many unhoused Americans, Jack started sleeping in doorways, then formed a street family and an unsanctioned organized encampment to survive. Inspired by the movements he grew up around, he and other encampments formed together into a civil disobedience campaign: Camp Dignity.

Evolution of the Village Model: From Doorways to Camps to Villages

After organizing and creating Dignity Village, Jack returned home and continued setting up Village Model shelters in the form of squatted hotels in Bloomsbury (Central London), work that he continued doing until he passed away in 2016. This convergence of influences exemplifies the evolution of villages as shelter.

For decades in the US, as the safety nets of the welfare state have been dismantled, people have turned to forming organized systems of sharing scarce access to survival resources. For unhoused people, this looks like camping together in groups, forming tight friendship bonds, and community behavioral norms and/or formalized agreements on responsibilities. Usually, each individual has some resource, value, or skill to share with the group. They protect each other and socially support one another. The Village Model took what impoverished people do and made it into a shelter model which builds on the strengths, resilience, and healthy aspects of what comes naturally.

  • Each village is inherently customizable and culturally responsive to the villagers. Therefore each one is designed and refined to suit the needs and desires of the population living in it.

    As a larger village (40-70), Dignity Village is more structured with defined democratic processes and roles/responsibilities. The Board of Directors and Council are democratically elected from and by the Members of the village. Membership of the nonprofit is earned through remaining in good standing, and keeping up on monthly dues (program fees). This ensures the rules are made by people sincerely invested in the community. The Board and Council manage the day-to-day administration of the nonprofit. The Membership votes on the processes, rules, and any major decisions for the village (like shareholders of a corporation, their vote is legally significant).

    Rules are enforced by all villagers via grievance procedure. This means the community agreements always stand, not just when a small number of people are watching. It also helps prevent selective enforcement. Grievance procedures are voted on by Council, but can be overturned and new proposals voted on by Membership. All aspects of operations are managed by Department Coordinators appointed by Council. Intake is managed by the Village Intake Committee

  • After several years of Dignity’s success, in 2009, a group of former villagers and other organizers created Right 2 Survive to continue movement building with unhoused people around the City. In Spring of 2011, they hatched a plan to camp along the Rose Festival Parade route (as many housed people do to beat the crowds for the best parade view) in order to raise awareness of homeless issues.

    Organizers built relationships with a disgruntled landowner in the area and struck an agreement to set up a shelter downtown. This became the next village and first micro village, Right 2 Dream Too. In 2016, the City of Portland mandated R2DToo move. The Village Coalition, an organization of villagers and community activists and Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design worked with the Lloyd neighborhood and Eco District to move R2DToo to the Lloyd neighborhood where it has remained and continued its strong relationships with the community.

    R2DToo consists of members, who live on site in tiny houses and operate all aspects of the facilities, including the movement of up to 60 people day and night into and out of its shelter. The board of R2DToo does not interfere in the site's operation. The members use a democratic system for decisions: one person, one vote. They have a weekly meeting, the first part of which is open to the public, at which all decisions are voted on, including admitting new members after their probationary term has concluded. New people interested in becoming members also introduce themselves at this meeting to begin their probationary period. R2DToo has always aimed to be as low-barrier as possible in both its shelter operations and its membership, meaning there are no background checks on anyone at the site.

  • Right on the heels of R2DToo came Hazelnut Grove. The Grove originated from a combination of people living in organized unsanctioned camps and organizers from the Occupy Portland movement. After the Occupy movement, they stayed in front of City Hall for two more years until the City threatened removal. Beginning as a democratically organized encampment, Hazelnut Grove formalized and settled into its current location in early 2012, forming the second micro village. In 2015 the City declared a state of emergency on housing and homelessness.

    Meanwhile, the Oregon Department of Transportation was threatening to clear the settlement. This galvanized villagers and community activists to fight back and reach an agreement with the City of Portland to establish a village in the same inspiration as Dignity Village and Opportunity Village in Eugene, Oregon. The City of Portland agreed and provided portable toilets, installed a perimeter fence, trash cans, and a shipping container. Over the years, villagers have invested their own money and sweat equity in building community structures, small houses, a community garden, and are working on hillside stabilization and rehabilitation projects. Along with community partnerships to support the village, Hazelnut Grove has also provided site security and adjacent property maintenance including maintaining the pedestrian and bike path. 

    Hazelnut Grove is self-governed and operated by consensus. The community agreement and 501(c)3 bylaws were created by villagers and are updated by villagers. These were most recently updated in 2022 or 2023 and updates have been a unanimous consensus every time. The guidelines allow the community to hold each other accountable. Requirements for village work shifts are tailored to each villager’s ability, health, and safety. Villagers are responsible for managing all aspects of the operations. The community agreement helps villagers solve problems. Villagers are treated with respect as adults. Only if personal business becomes everybody’s business does the village get involved. 

    Hazelnut Grove was a catalyst for two new villages. Through their role as advisors on the then Village Coalition, Grovers advised on efforts that later became new villages. 

    When the City sanctioned Hazelnut Grove, the City excluded a number of people who were camping nearby and gave them 30 days to move. About a dozen out this group moved to another city owned property. This village, Forgotten Realms, functioned democratically and with community support from Sisters of the Road, Street Books, and local Churches. The City provided fencing with a locking gate. Forgotten Realms had an informal agreement with the police to allow them to walk the perimeter as long as they didn’t open tents. Forgotten Realms provided community services, primarily feeding people, and offered a safe resting place for up to 2 days. This village was disbanded after about a year and half following an out of state move by the original leaders.

Micro Villages Inspired by the Village Movement

The heart of the Village Model is its movement building, community, and mutual aid. However, as Dignity Village, Right 2 Dream Too, and Hazelnut Grove settled into stability and faded from the media, public perceptions of the model have shifted from its original design.

The public came to see the humble shacks that villagers had built to protect themselves in the face of extreme resource scarcity as the model instead of the model focusing on the community of people. At the same time, the “tiny home” movement was spreading across the United States. In response, government agencies began to partially apply the village movement to shelter.

Regulatory barriers like zoning regulations around density, land use procedure complexity and expense, and scarce funding led to the adoption of tiny detached sleeping units and other temporary structures in order to build shelters quickly and inexpensively. In Portland, this eventually became the “Outdoor Shelter” model in the reformed zoning codes implemented under the Shelter to Housing Continuum in April 2021.

The term “village” became synonymous with the new outdoor shelter model. However, the use of the terms “tiny home ” and “village” movement became a misnomer on both accounts. These types have become referred to as “Alternative Shelter” by Multnomah County in that they are not congregate or motel shelters.

  • The first of the agency managed alternative shelters to emerge is Kenton Women’s Village. This was a project initiated by the Village Coalition and community groups attempting an agency-managed hybrid. It is a result of the 2016-17 Partners on Dwelling (POD) Initiative between the Village Coalition, Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design. The effort brought the City of Portland into closer relationships with village efforts and brought more business partnerships into the process. They kept the Village small, with no more than 20 individual sleeping structures. They also gave the early participants some ability to provide feedback to the agency on policies and operations.

    Over time, most of the operations came to be managed by staff from the service provider. Today, villager autonomy in governance and operations is not part of this village’s program, however, participants are able to foster some sense of community and peer support through their shared experiences and identity. Their indoor central gathering space and communal kitchen house regular meetings and participants often share meals with each other.

    The evolution of Kenton Women’s Village has led public agencies to focus on the built structures within the Village Model instead of villager-led governance where villagers are eligible to be voting members and/or board officers of the nonprofit.

  • The second of this kind, Agape Village, began the planning process in 2016 through the Central Church of the Nazarene in SE Portland near I-205. The congregation worked with community partners, Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design and unhoused community members to plan, design, and construct the village. They created a non-profit organization to manage it, including unhoused individuals on the board of directors and opened the village in 2019. Three Hazelnut Grove villagers were hired as construction trainees by Cascadia Clusters to build Agape Village.

    The village is clean and sober transitional housing and not funded by Multnomah County’s Alternative Shelter program. The village host is a person with lived experience in being unhoused. Agape Village also partners with Union Gospel Mission to manage an emergency and winter shelter within the Church building and host weekly showers. Agape Village also serves as an essential supply hub including lunch service on Sundays.

  • The third provider managed alternative shelter to emerge is the St. John’s Village. Planning began just prior to the Covid 19 pandemic. It is another example of partnership between a nonprofit service provider and faith institution. St. John’s Church leases the space to Do Good Multnomah, the service provider and shelter manager.

    Village site planning and design was a community effort between the Church, Do Good Multnomah, St. John’s Welcomes the Village Coalition, a local architecture firm, the Home Builder’s Foundation, engineers, and landscape architects. Villagers from Hazelnut Grove moved into the St. John’s Village and were involved with early recommendations for the program. St. John’s Village is provider managed and governed. Villagers have house chores and there are required biweekly community meetings in which villagers are updated by management on policy changes and events. Staff encourage villagers to resolve conflicts internally but if no agreement can be made, then staff will get involved in conflict resolution. Villagers sign a community agreement and enforcement is by the service provider.  

  • Another hybrid model was the Creating Conscious Communities with People Outside (C(3)PO) Villages, created at the beginning of the lockdown in response to a call out from Street Roots. It was administered by leaders from Dignity Village and Right 2 Dream Too, served by JOIN’s housing services, Equi Institute’s medical program, and Street Roots, using emergency government funding and grants from a coalition of supporters. There were 3 villages serving 25-50 people each, with 2 sites being culturally-specific (Queer Affinity and BIPOC). The focus in this hybrid was to utilize the resource advantages of the agency-managed model while maintaining villager’s self-governance and control of operations. All decisions were made using a direct democracy model. Being a temporarily emergency-funded project, the goal was to get the villagers ready to start their own nonprofit agencies and take over administration from Right 2 Dream Too’s nonprofit.

    Unfortunately, without enough administrative pay, R2DToo was unable to sustain administrative capacity for their own organization and C(3)PO for long enough to get villagers through the legal process. The shelter agency that took over the contract eliminated the village structure and programming and replaced it with a fully agency-managed model. 

    The C(3)PO shelter sites were dismantled and relocated as part of the City of Portland’s Safe Rest Village (SRV) program that was established in 2021. The SRV program is an outdoor shelter model more closely related to congregate shelter in the provider managed governance and administration, and in scale of the shelter sites. An emerging term for this is the campus model, although much like “alternative shelter,” the term “campus model” is not currently well defined. 

    Land availability with larger villages became a challenge and more neighborhood organizations and housed community members began to consider options for serving their unhoused neighbors within the neighborhood. At the same time, unhoused communities were continuing to band together for safety and support in encampments near their service needs and communities. These next micro villages continued the convergence of the hyper local needs of unhoused and housed neighbors.

  • Beacon Village grew out of another neighborhood effort. In 2019 and 2020, the Metanoia Faith Community with members of the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association were dreaming of a village to care for their unhoused neighbors, especially those in Laurelhurst Park. The groups helped establish Beacon Village as a non-profit and applied for a grant from the Joint Office of Homeless Services for the construction and operations of the village, one of the first funded through Metro’s Supportive Housing Services funds.

    The village leases land from the Bridgeport United Church of Christ and the Church’s fellowship hall for offices, a full kitchen, and community space.

  • The WeShine Initiative, formed in 2021, is a nonprofit organization that builds and operates micro villages with neighborhood engagement and partnerships. It was formed by grassroots efforts from several neighborhoods in Northeast and Southeast Portland. Parkrose Community Village, its first village, serves LGBTQ2SIA+ adults, and prioritizes BIPOC adults and unhoused people nearby. WeShine leases the land from the Parkrose United Church of Christ. 

    All WeShine-operated villages use a supported self-management approach, where villagers have a voice in governance and policies, through a Village Council, Village Safety Committee, and Village Advisory Committee. Villagers have played, and will continue to play, a strong role in developing and revising policies and procedures for village operations including the Village Handbook. Guests also develop life skills by co-facilitating Village Council meetings and serving on the Village Advisory Committee. Villagers sign a Good Guest Agreement, and the village has a Good Neighbor Agreement with the neighborhood. 

    WeShine prioritizes hiring staff who are representative of the unhoused underserved communities we serve in our villages. All staff have lived experience in some way that is relevant to villagers' life experience. For example staff may have lived experience of being unhoused, living with mental illness, being in recovery from substance abuse, having experienced domestic violence, and/or poverty; others have experienced marginalization and stigmatization due to their neurodivergence, their racial or gender non-conforming identities, and/or sexual orientation.

  • Cascadia Clusters, a non profit construction training program for sober unhoused adults, partnered with the Arabic Life Church to establish a sober living micro village on the Church’s property in 2023. The Arabic Life Church is an Assemblies of God congregation and their values include sobriety. This provided a good opportunity for a non profit to partner with a faith based organization to address a service gap for the unhoused community. The village is managed by a village manager with lived experience in substance abuse recovery and being unhoused. The villagers live in detached structures with a roommate for accountability and have access to shared restrooms, kitchens, and outdoor communal space in addition to daytime access to the Church building. The initial village managers and villagers helped create the villager handbook based on policies and handbooks from existing sober living non profits.  Villagers helped form the handbooks rules. 

    The 12&12 Village on Glisan is a community-based agency-operated example of a sober living micro village. Villager community responsibilities include chores for maintenance, two AA/NA meetings per week, and random urine testing based on suspicion of use.  Maintenance is paid by a $350 monthly program fee.  This amount was recommended by the unhoused community as a fee easily met by a month of canning (collecting cans and bottles to return to bottle drop sites for the bottle deposit). The program fee includes utilities, wifi, garbage service, and membership.

    The capital costs were funded as a workforce training program for unhoused sober adults. The capital costs were minimal because the micro village is permitted as a temporary alternative shelter through the City of Portland. This reduced land use complexity and expense through permit fee waivers and reduced building permit complexity and cost by utilizing structures on wheels for shared service spaces and temporary structures exempt from building permitting for the sleeping units. The operational costs are funded through program fees paid by villagers.

In Progress and Future Micro Villages

PRIORITY FOR BIPOC, SENIOR, DISABILITY, AND FEMALE-IDENTIFYING COMMUNITIES

WeShine was awarded funding in 2024 to develop two new micro villages. Avalon Village, on public land owned by PBOT in the Hosford Abernathy neighborhood, is under construction and will serve women and female-identifying adults, with priority for people who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color, older adults, people with chronic illnesses or disabilities, and people who are living unsheltered in the area. 

A third site is in development on land owned by St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in North Portland. This micro village will host older adults and people with disabilities with priority for BIPOC adults and people who have lived in North Portland.

  • The AfroVillage is a movement rooted in the vision of Portland community member and activist Laquida “Q” Landford. The movement focuses on addressing the needs of our most vulnerable population–low income and unhoused individuals–with a focus on racial disparities and inequalities. The Movement centers Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty. 

    AfroVillage uses a care-centered approach to heal historical and current traumas and focuses on home and land ownership to advance self-determination, independence and power. The AfroVillage will also provide transitional housing and basic services to its residents. The AfroVillage Movement is currently working to secure a site for the Hub (village). It will be designed with attention toward cultural expression, creating a safe space to heal, restore, and rejuvenate by providing care-based services, such as laundry, gardens, and massage therapy, to its residents. The Hub will serve low-income and houseless community members, focusing on BIPOC individuals and women. The vision is to operate through sustainable net-zero, clean energy, and solar-powered solutions.

    While working toward the AfroVillage Hub to become a reality, the AfroVillage Movement team has been working to create an AfroVillage Homebase. The Homebase is planned to be installed on property owned by the City of Portland in NE Portland near the Broadway bridge (just north of N Broadway St. and west of N Larrabee Ave.). The Homebase will be home to the AfroVillage office, a gallery space, tiny home prototypes, and become an incubator to test ideas. Depending on the resources available the Homebase may provide services with a focus on serving low-income and houseless community members, focusing on BIPOC individuals and women.

  • Barbie’s Village will be the first micro village that is located on Land Back, land given back to the Indigenous Community, and will serve houseless Native families with small children. It is located in the former Laurelhurst Presbyterian Church in NE Portland where the Future Generations Collaborative operates services such as early childhood programming, public health work, meetings, trainings, and community events. 

    The planning and work to achieve this Land Back effort included the collaborative efforts of the Future Generations Collaborative, Leaven Land and Housing Coalition, the Westminster Presbyterian team. The Presbytery of the Cascades voted to sell the Church and its property to the Future Generations Collaborative for $1 in 2023. The property transfer was completed on March 15, 2024. 

    Barbie’s Village was named after Barbie Jackson Shields (Atwai), a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Natural Helper with FGC.  Barbie and her husband Kenny Shields, Anishinaabe and Sioux, dreamed of creating a safe place for Native families with young children experiencing housing insecurity. She passed away in 2018 from a brain aneurysm. Her namesake village will have 6-10 tiny houses for Native families with a resource center to provide wraparound services.

  • Dead Folx Farm will be a palliative care and hospice tiny home village on an active farm with plans in progress for a drop in community clinic. The farm produces food for village residents, neighbors, and supporters. It will be a community resource center with gathering space, a kitchen, dining area, meeting hall, laundry, and showers. The clinic will provide drop-in care for basic medical needs including wound care, foot care, and medication prescriptions for treating opioid use disorder.

    Dead Folx Farm describes its mission and vision on their website, “Mission: We exist to expand the choices our unhoused and under-resourced neighbors have when they are sick and when it is time for them to die by providing a community clinic, tiny hospice homes, and street-based Palliative and Hospice Care. Vision: We envision a Portland in which all people have choice in where they heal and where they die, regardless of their resources, and a model of care rooted in community and harm reduction that is limited only by our imagination.” 

  • There is a service gap for sober living shelter and transitional housing. For some, living in a low-barrier shelter is a threat to their sobriety even when substance use is not allowed on site. Others prefer a sober communal living environment to benefit from peer support and accountability. Very low cost housing is beneficial because it allows people in recovery to focus on their intensive outpatient therapy instead of returning to full time work after leaving rehabilitation.

    The Oxford House model is one example of transitional housing to apply to micro villages. This model’s democratic and self-supporting structure with peer accountability is an evidence-based cornerstone of recovery programs, making the micro village model a natural complement.