The late-winter sun pierces through morning fog as Jay steers Brutus through the streets of East Portland. His crew – Jen, Chris and Miranda – are in the back, ready to finish their work cleaning up a vacant lot where a large encampment had previously stretched for over a block. Brutus is a 2006 International Durastar 4400 truck – an old U.S. Forest Service vehicle with a trailer for hauling the heavy loads of garbage that the crew removes each day.
The crew arrives at the site, a grassy lot framed by tall trees and enclosed by an ivy-covered fence. They jump out and immediately get to work, exchanging few words as they ball up tarps, dismantle awnings and pass boards over the fence and into the truck bed.
Jay and Jen break down a discarded appliance at a vacant lot in East Portland.
Jay and his crew are part of Cultivate Initiatives’ Community Beautification team, a workforce development program for people experiencing homelessness. Cultivate Initiatives – an East Portland-based nonprofit founded in 2018 – offers a range of support to unhoused neighbors. Its programming includes mobile hygiene stations where people living outside can shower, mobile health services, encampment outreach, and transitional housing and shelter, in addition to workforce development.
Cultivate Initiatives workforce development program is paid for in part by Metro’s supportive housing services fund. Voters passed the measure that established the fund in 2020 to provide services for people at-risk of or experiencing homelessness. These services include street outreach, shelter operations, housing placement, rent assistance, case management and workforce programs that provide training and opportunities for people to connect with long-term employment.
Cultivate Initiatives also purchased their trash-removal truck, Brutus, with Metro funds, awarded to the organization from $10 million in funding the Oregon Legislature set aside for trash removal in greater Portland.
The team's two crews head out each week to pick up trash throughout East Portland and East Multnomah County. This includes large items like mattresses and couches, bags of trash, household appliances, demolition waste and smaller piles of discarded items. Each crew can clean four or five large sites or even more small sites in a typical workday. They also coordinate with several encampments and transitional housing sites to pick up their garbage on a regular basis. Jay estimates that close to half of what they pick up is from housed people who drive by and dump unwanted items. This is similar to data collected by Metro’s RID Patrol.
Chris bundles a tarp filled with trash on an East Portland lot.
In addition to full-time team members, paid interns join the crews Tuesday through Thursday. They make $105 a day for five days of work and gain not only work experience, but the confidence to take the next steps in their journey to stability. As Jay explained, some people have been out of work for so long that it’s difficult for them to imagine themselves having a job. Just doing those five days of work “changed their whole outlook,” he said, “just let them know that they can still do it.”
Jay can relate to this experience: Two years ago, he started as an intern after hearing about the program from a friend’s girlfriend. At the time, he had been living on the streets for 16 years, struggling with substance use disorder. “I hadn't had a job for a long time,” he recalled. Though he couldn’t picture himself being a part of the workforce again after so many years, he quickly grew to love the job. “It just makes you want to come to work,” he said. “I don’t use an alarm clock to get up in the morning.”
Cultivate Initiatives also helped Jay and his girlfriend move into the apartment they’ve called home for the past two years. She works near their home at the Menlo Park Safe Rest Village, which is managed by the organization.
Cultivate Initiatives’ headquarters is located in a spacious building in East Portland. The nonprofit has intentionally created a welcoming environment where visitors can drop in anytime during the day to help themselves to free coffee, clothing, supplies and snacks. Many of its staff have lived experience with homelessness.
Staff offer each intern the support they need for their individual journey to full-time employment and general well-being. This might be a connection to services like substance use disorder treatment, or resources for finding housing and help paying rent. Staff also assist interns in preparing for the job search with resume and cover letter guidance, and by helping them get the necessary identification documents.
Doll – the organization’s new Employment Retention Specialist – supports the workforce development program by maintaining a list of employers who may have appropriate job openings for interns. She also continues to support interns after they're hired, helping them be successful in their new positions. Some interns have been hired for positions at Cultivate Initiatives, including Doll herself.
What Jay enjoys most about the job is knowing he’s doing something positive for the community, and the “instant gratification” of seeing a place transform dramatically thanks to his crew’s hard work. He said community members often thank the crew – offering beverages or beeping their car horns in support.
Jay loads a board into the truck trailer in East Portland.
After the crew completes their morning work at the vacant lot, Brutus barrels down I-205 to the Metro transfer station in Oregon City. At the transfer station Jay weighs their load; 3,400 pounds of waste bound for the pit. The day is just beginning and the trailer will be full again by the end of it. On the way to their next site the crew stops to pick up a mattress on the sidewalk, which Jay had noticed while driving around his neighborhood after work. He always keeps an eye out on his off hours for items to pick up with the crew.
"It changed my life, absolutely,” Jay said, of Cultivate Initiatives and the Community Beautification team. Two years he started working with them, “they just got me to where I want to get up in the morning. I’m clean now, and just...happy.”
Last year the Community Beautification team removed 1,113,206 pounds of trash from the streets of Portland. Jay has worked with over 300 interns since he started his fulltime employment with the program about two years ago.