A portable toilet in Portland that was placed by the city's Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program. (Office of Management and Finance)

Heather Hafer didn’t expect porta-potties to be such a big deal.

In April, the city of Portland began putting portable toilets near parks and churches and in high-use areas to help people experiencing homelessness meet their basic needs. In early September, the pilot program by the city’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program expanded to include 123 porta-potties.

“I thought our community would be proud of how we are helping our neighbors experiencing homelessness,” said Hafer, a spokeswoman for the city office that oversees the homelessness aid program.

But that’s not what happened.

It turns out the porta-potties made some community members angry. According to Rapid Response BioClean, the company that owns and manages the units, which each include a toilet and hand-washing station, every single unit has been damaged in some way.

Sinks and toilet paper dispensers have been stolen; units have been spray-painted, burned and tipped on their sides; and objects have been thrown in toilets, making them unusable.

Hafer said around 30 of the units had been declared a total loss.

Employees who manage the program were subjected to vitriolic phone calls, Hafer said.

Hafer herself has changed both her work and personal cell phone numbers in recent months, she said, due to the angry and incessant calls. Someone even showed up outside of her house in the middle of the night at one point, she said.

“I wish more of (the callers) would take a minute to think about what it would be like to not have working plumbing in their homes,” Hafer said, “and practice some empathy before sending profanity-laden threats to senior management and elected officials.”

In one particularly troubling string of incidents, residents of Southeast Portland’s Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood so vociferously opposed having a portable toilet near their homes that they got into faceoffs with workers trying to install it. The porta-potty at the location was stolen three times, and neighbors vandalized a truck that was reinstalling one.

According to records obtained through a public records request, contractor Rapid Response BioClean installed a porta-potty just south of Foster Road, near the intersection of Southeast 49th Avenue and Rhone Street, on Sept. 16.

An incident report from Rapid Response employee Ken Reilly details some of what happened next.

That day, the report said, a homeowner approached the team, “and said to us, ‘What are you doing with that? I don’t want that around here. If that gets placed here I will throw it in the back of my van and you will never see it again. That is the only place for the girls that live next door to park their cars.’”

The team placed the unit in the street in front of a house, the report said, and left.

On Sept. 21, the team came back to service the portable toilet and it was gone. Then, on Sept. 24, they replaced it.

On Sept. 25, when they returned to service the new one, it too was gone.

An email from a coordinator of the program, Katie Lindsay, also obtained under a public records request, detailed what happened when Rapid Response attempted to replace the toilet for a second time on Sept. 26. Lindsey arrived after police had gotten to the scene and most of her account is based on what she learned from others who were present.

This incident was first reported by Street Roots in early November.

Residents of a nearby house, identified in Lindsay’s write-up as Patti and Ira Stone, “came out to the truck and physically would not let the unit off of the vehicle,” Lindsay wrote. “Patti Stone also commented, ‘You can put another one here, but it is just going to get taken again.’”

In an email Tuesday, Patti Stone said she did not say what Lindsay quoted her as saying. She also said that her husband was not present during the encounter but other neighbors were.

Then, Lindsay wrote, “the male pulled out a knife and cut the switch off of the truck so that the unit could not be lowered to the ground.”

At that point, a Rapid Response employee on the scene called the police.

Stone said she did not see a knife and noted that police did not file a report, as she would expect if a person had brandished a weapon.

After police arrived, a Rapid Response employee placed the unit, according to Lindsay.

“Prior to my arrival, city vendors reported PPB Officer Kevin Tully was advising community members that if they locked the unit it could not be used for its intended purpose,” Lindsay said in her email about the incident.

According to the account Lindsay said she received, it didn’t stop there.

The officer referred to Lindsay as “a ‘yahoo,’” she wrote, “and told community members that PPB would not follow up on the incidents of theft as it relates to the city property or in regards to the threats towards city vendors, city staff, or damage to vendor’s property.”

“City vendors mentioned to the officer, “Hey, you may not encourage them to do things that prevent this from being used for its purpose,’” Lindsay added.

Portland police said it appeared that no one was charged in the incident.

An email from Lucas Hillier, program manager for the Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program, indicates that an internal investigation has been opened regarding Tully’s conduct. A police bureau spokesperson did not directly respond to a question emailed on Tuesday about whether such an investigation is in fact underway.

The program costs the city an average of $75,000 per month, according to invoices obtained through records requests. It is funded through federal crisis money.

Rapid Response pays $825 per unit and then the city pays maintenance fees to keep the units in usable condition. Each service visit and dropoff of a new unit is $35. Repeat visits begin to add up.

In one instance, when a portable toilet at Northeast 122nd Avenue and Siskiyou Street was tipped down a hill, documents show the clean-up cost the city $524.

Records show that two days after the Rhone Street incident, Patti Stone wrote an email to Portland city officials, including Linsday, Mayor Ted Wheeler and several commissioners.

“I am writing to formally and respectfully request that the red portable toilet be removed from in front of my family’s home at SE 49th & Rhone St.,” she wrote.

“We and our neighbors are concerned that these toilets will entice campers into our vulnerable middle class neighborhoods,” the letter said. “These toilets do not belong in residential areas. It is an open secret that homeless camps tend to attract criminal activity.”

In her response to Stone on Oct. 1, Lindsay wrote, “Access to water and appropriate toilet options are recognized by the UN General Assembly as a human right.”

“Almost 90% of the complaints our program has received regarding these units are related to stigma connected to the homeless population and complaints about things that ‘could happen,’ but have not happened,” Lindsay wrote to Stone.

“Data that we have on units placed in March does not support these assertions,” she added. “On the contrary, most of the calls for police service for the units have been related to housed community members unhappy with their placement.”

The same day Stone sent her email, the portable toilet at Southeast 49th and Rhone was again missing.

However, this time, things went a little differently. Emails show that officials installed a GPS locator on the portable toilet.

In an email, Hillier said the toilet was found padlocked. Shortly after it was replaced, Hillier said, it was knocked on its side.

According to Hafer, all three missing units were found in the same backyard of an abandoned house.

As of Tuesday, there is a portable toilet available for use at 49th and Rhone.

Even with the attacks on the portable toilets, the city is undeterred in its mission to provide for the basic needs of people who don’t have access to toilets or water.

“We are in the middle of a global pandemic,” Hafer wrote in a blog post earlier this month. “Access to restrooms and proper hygiene is a human right at all times. During a health crisis, it is a life-saving necessity.”

Hafer is hoping to make this message more clear. On Tuesday, the city began installing signs 3 feet by 5 feet tall on all the sanitation units that read: “This is more than a bathroom. It’s also a human right.”

503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker

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