Dignity Village
Dignity Village is a city-recognized encampment of an estimated 60 homeless people in Portland, Oregon, United States.
In the days before Christmas of 2000, a group of homeless people in Portland succeeded in establishing a tent city which garnered a great deal of both opposition and support, and quickly evolved from a group of self-described "outsiders" who practiced civil disobedience, to a self-regulating, city-recognized "campground" as defined by Portland city code.
The Village now features dedicated land near Portland International Airport, elected community officials and crude but functional cooking, social, electric, and sanitary facilities, Dignity Village got its start as a collection of tents and campers "squatting" illegally on unused public land near Downtown Portland.
Initially confronted by police for their unlicensed use of public land, the initial group of eight men and women had the benefit of a forceful voice in the person of homeless activist Jack Tafari, and the early support of a few local politicians and associated coverage in the local media. The Portland police department eventually realized that the group, then calling themselves Camp Dignity, was engaged in complicated Constitutional issues of redress of grievance, and deferred the political issue to the local political authority: The Portland City Council and Mayor.
Once established in the gray area of political speech, the fortunes of Dignity Village increased and picked up significant media coverage and popular support, but at the same time, they faced a compromise that the group found hard to swallow, having initially fought against.
After well publicized convoys of homeless people pushing shopping carts migrated from one place to another to accommodate legal technicalities, the Portland City Council agreed on August 22, 2001 to let the group camp at a city lot called Sunderland Yard, some seven miles from downtown in the Sunderland neighborhood at 45°35′29″N 122°38′11″W / 45.591398°N 122.636312°WCoordinates: 45°35′29″N 122°38′11″W / 45.591398°N 122.636312°W. While Jack Tafari and the group vehemently resisted the location on grounds that it was too far from downtown, they eventually accepted the compromise as an acknowledgment of their legitimacy as a community.
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