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.

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.

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.