Tape and 2 hours to transform Oregon Convention Center into coronavirus homeless shelter

At 2 p.m., they badly needed supplies.

In the last few days, calls had gone out around the state for any and all medical masks, gloves and gowns to be donated to hospitals to help with coronavirus response. A week earlier, people panic-purchased aisle after aisle of toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

But in the Oregon Convention Center on Friday, they needed blue masking tape.

The tape was essential to making sure the homeless shelter opening there in just a few hours properly spaced residents far enough apart to maintain social distancing protocols. The Oregon Convention Center will hold 130 people in a northeast corner of the building.

It’s the second temporary homeless shelter set up by Friday after local officials realized that existing shelters would not be able to protect residents if someone inside had contracted coronavirus.

Early Friday afternoon, about 20 volunteers had started to set up green Army cots in the nearly empty hall usually used for car shows, career fairs and forklift competitions.

Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran sat on the floor and tried to use her leg as leverage to pop crossbars into place that stretch the canvas taut.

“It’s like reducing a dislocation,” said Meieran, who is also an emergency room doctor.

Meieran has spent the pandemic juggling Kaiser ER shifts with her duties as an elected official. She had volunteered to be a medical worker in the shelter that night, but showed up to find that everyone first was tasked with building the shelter infrastructure.

Eventually, she got an assist and wrestled the crossbar into place.

“There’s a satisfying clunk, which you also get with a dislocation,” she said, and then laughed. “Sorry.”

Her colleague, Chair Deborah Kafoury had announced Tuesday the intent to open hundreds of shelter beds by the end of the week. On Thursday night, the North Portland Charles Jordan Community Center welcomed the first batch of people who were moved out of existing homeless shelters that were too crowded to keep everyone a safe distance apart.

The convention center, owned by the Metro regional government, caught the public’s attention for the role it plays in the community.

Metro officials have gone to great pains to say that the center will return to normal hosting activities once the governor’s ban on large gatherings is lifted, and that it won’t remain a homeless shelter.

For now, the space fits the need near perfectly.

Trucks repurposed from the Multnomah County Library -- of which all locations are closed -- and animal control entered through the loading doors and parked under the sign that said “food court” carrying hundreds of cots, blankets and other supplies.

The bathrooms are built for large numbers of people, and the rooms are built to be easily cleaned.

As they waited for more tape, Jenny Carver stood in the hall and examined a map of what the shelter should look like. She had worked for the Oregon Red Cross doing exactly this type of work before joining the county. Setting up homeless shelters in just a few hours was no longer her job, but once the shelter push started in earnest, she again took on the role.

Finally, the tape appeared, carried by her coworker Malachi Hindle, who also had joined the county from the Red Cross.

Hindle spread the tape on the floor and the volunteers rejoiced.

Most had been teleworking earlier in the week when an email went out Wednesday asking for anyone who wanted to switch to emergency shelter staffing.

Alex Nevison volunteered.

“I’ve got tape, let’s go,” he said, cheering on his taping buddy.

Nevison spent 14 years of his life in a shelter similar to the one he was helping create. He grew up during civil war on the Ivory Coast of Africa, and moved onto one of the Army surplus cots when he was 11.

The act of constructing this shelter brought those memories back.

“Every human deserves better -- a place to be, get warm, sleep in peace,” Nevison said as he unspooled tape and tried to keep it from twisting before sticking to the concrete floor.

They were marking large rectangles that were then subdivided into 5-foot-by-7-foot boxes that held a cot and a blanket, which had come in heavy bales off one the library truck.

Grant Swanson, wearing a yellow public health vest, moved through the room, slicing the yellow plastic binding with a boxcutter. In the cavernous hall, the bindings breaking sounded like small gunshots, signaling that the next phase of the set-up could start.

Carver explained that the blankets should be placed on the cots to show guests which direction to sleep. That night, each person would face the opposite direction to maximize space but distance the chance of coughing on each other.

“You know, keeping people’s heads apart,” Carver told the group. “A normal part of our life now.”

About 50 people were set to arrive late Friday afternoon, Carver said. They would be signed in with their name and what shelter they came from before the convention center.

Then, they would be fed and allowed to roam as they pleased.

Coronavirus questions abound in homeless camps. Multnomah County launches effort to prevent outbreak there.

Multnomah County has at least 4,000 people living in shelters, cars and on the street on any given night. Health officials say they are among the most vulnerable in a pandemic like the one sweeping through Oregon.

Carver was upbeat and jokey with the newbies. She seemed undaunted that at 3 p.m. -- an hour before people were supposed to arrive -- bars holding the privacy curtains enclosing each rectangle fell over with a clatter.

The group simply closed the loading door to stop the breeze and requested sandbags from the convention center staff to hold the scaffolds.

This was not the real work of creating a shelter, Carver said as the county employees got the screens hung again. She liked walking into an empty space and imagining how it would look in a few hours.

She had put up temporary shelters in schools. She helped create one in Mt. Hood Community College during the Eagle Creek wildfire. She was pleased at how different the convention center hall already looked from that morning.

But the real heavy lifting still came later.

“The biggest part of working in a shelter is just talking to people. Seeing how they’re doing, how their day is,” Carver said, trailing off as she surveyed the work. “Providing a hospitable space.”

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com | 503-294-5923 | @MollyHarbarger

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