Homeless Stay in Mall That Shares Hard Times

A downtown mall once touted as an engine of economic rebirth now houses a band of homeless people whose plight symbolizes this city’s hard times.

Up to 50 homeless people live in underground tunnels and walkways that connect the abandoned Portside Festival Marketplace with a hotel and office buildings. Some have ventured into the mall itself, which once housed specialty shops and restaurants.

“When you’re out on the street, you’re always looking over your shoulder. You never know if somebody’s going to come by and kick you, knife you,” said Jamie Moore, 32, a former mental patient who said he could not find an empty bed in the city’s homeless shelters.

“You sleep with one eye open, if you know what I mean,” he said.

City officials decided to let homeless people stay in Portside this fall after a woman living in the streets was struck and killed by a city salt truck a block from the mall. Friends of the woman say private guards had chased her and others out of the mall.

“The city could have thrown them out in the cold, but didn’t,” said Ken Leslie of the Homeless Awareness Project, a nonprofit group that helps the homeless find housing. “Instead, the city has chosen to work with us to work and find solutions.”

Toledo’s homeless population has grown as the industrial city has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs in recent years. About 25 shelters provide beds for an estimated 350 people, but advocates for the homeless say another 500 are living on the streets.

Portside was supposed to be a catalyst for downtown redevelopment when it opened in 1984. Instead, it lost millions of dollars and businesses gradually left. The two-story mall closed in September, 1990.

Mayor John McHugh opposed letting the homeless stay at the mall, saying it was “just not safe for them to spend the night in that building.”

City Safety Director John Alexander said the encampment is only a temporary solution until more beds are available at city shelters.