S tr e e t R o o t s • Aug. 28-Sept. 3. 2Û15
E d it o r ia l
City should create safe drug injection site
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his past year there were 122 heroin-related
deaths in Oregon, with 80 in Portland’s tri-county
area. According to county officials, heroin use in
our city has increased steadily over the past few years.
Heroin-related deaths have gone from double digits in
the 1980s and early 1990s to more than 100 annually
during the past two decades.
It appears Portland’s long love
affair with heroin has grown
F Ik IV A III S W
more intense “ and more
X
deadly - over the years.
h h m h h m m h h h m h h
And the homeless population
is hit hardest. While people
experiencing homelessness make up less than 1 percent
of Multnomah County’s total population, they accounted
for 25 percent of heroin-related deaths in the county in
2014.
In recent months, public drug injection has been on a
list of complaints citizen and business groups cite when
applying pressure to City Hall to find solutions for
Portland’s highly visible homeless population. The
abundance of improperly discarded needles dotting our
downtown landscape have also drawn criticism and been
the subject of several TV news reports this year.
Multnomah County has acted as a national leader in
harm reduction, adopting various policies over the years,
from syringe exchange to wide distribution of naloxone, an
overdose reversing drug that has helped save lives.
These programs place compassion above
criminalization and serve as long-term solutions to
reducing recidivism and addiction.
As local government struggles to balance the demands
of social service agencies and downtown businesses,
Street Roots urges both the city and the Multnomah
S
h
m
Courfty Health Department to allocate additional
resources toward implementing next-level harm reduction
strategies when thinking about how to get a handle on
widespread heroin use in downtown Portland.
While it wouldn’t be a fix-all, Street Roots believes one
approach would address many problems associated with
intravenous drug use in our city’s center: establishing a
supervised injection site.
Numerous peer-reviewed studies have shown
supervised injection sites significantly reduce public drug
use and deaths from overdose, while increasing
enrollment in drug treatment programs among
intravenous drug users. Injection sites also reduce the
number of improperly discarded needles.
Operating in Europe, Canada and Australia, these sites
generally offer a dedicated space where intravenous drug
users can inject previously obtained drugs out of public
view and under the supervision of medical professionals.
Staff is there to intervene with life-saving measures in the
event of an overdose and to provide further education.
Most importantly, staff also provides counseling and a
connection to resources when users are ready to quit -
and quit they do. One study of Vancouver B.C.’s injection
facility, Iiisite, found that before the study period ended,
23 percent of respondents had stopped injecting drugs,
and another 57 percent had entered treatment.
Portland can continue to lead the nation in effective
harm reduction policies by establishing the first
supervised Injection site in the United States. It’s not a
question of whether an injection site will help reduce
heroin’s impact on our city - it’s a question of whether or
not our city and county leaders and local law enforcement
agencies have the courage to invest in and support a
solution that works, even if it’s controversial.
Housing crisis: The writing is on the wall
V eo p le experiencing homelessness having sex in
■
a doorway in downtown Portland. A camp full of
bicycle parts. A group of people getting high or
-A. shooting up in public. Another group with an
abundance of trash overflowing from their shopping cart
or thé car they sleep in. Feces in the park. These are the
images being posted by residents on social media to
inspire government to create the political will to do
something about the homeless problem in Portland.
Shocking to some, unfortanate to others.
This comes after a public campaign by the Portland
Business Alliance asking the city
°f Portland to support people
experiencing homelessness with
B 1 B E C f O S t S more resources. '
Last week, Mayor Charlie
Hales countered with a package
By Israel Bayer
to support people on the streets.
Two of the biggest components
0£
initiative are creating day
storage spaces for people on the
streets and investing nearly à million dollars to support
some of our most vulnerable residents to get off the
streets. Both are great things.
The other is to create a centralized point of contact so
people can report aggressive behavior throughout the city.
Anyone that has read this Column knows that I’m not
afraid to criticize bad policy around homelessness and
poverty, nor am I shy about saying when elected leaders
are doing the right thing. The mayor’s package was a good
one and the city should be grateful. Saying that, it’s still
only applying a bandaid to a gaping wound. We hope next
year’s budget cycle is kinder than the last
Here’s the thing.
We all know that Portland is facing a housing crisis. The
writing has been on the wall for sometime. What was once
a conversation about the gentrification of people of color
and people sleeping on our streets has now turned to,
“How are middle-class Portlanders, many of whom are
white ironically, going to afford to live in the city?” With
rising housing costs and low-wages, it’s very likely that
social service workers, teachers and others will no longer
V
Israel Bayer is the
executive director o f
Street Roots. You can
reach h im a t
israel@streetroots. org
o r follow him on
Twitter @israelbayer.
be able to afford to live in the city in the decade to come.
In fact, San Francisco announced just this week that there
is now a teacher shortage in the city due to the cost of
living. We aren’t far behind.
The black community and homeless advocates have
been warning of this crisis for the past three decades.
They were experiencing it. .
How Portland can be praised for being one of the best
planned urban environments in America with no
affordable housing requirements is one of biggest myths of
our time. Meanwhile, displacement and homelessness
continue to occur at alarming rates within our community.
There are a lot of people getting rich. That’s what
happens in a free market that doesn’t have any kind of
regulations for rents, housing and wages. When one stops
and think about the foreclosure crisis and the amount of
residents that lost their homes, during the recession
coupled with the amount of people being displaced post
recession as the rental market has skyrocketed — you’re
talking about some vey dire circumstances for people.
Beneath all of the new business, condos and shine is an
entire class of people surviving on the streets and living in
extreme poverty. It’s not pretty.
In fact, worlds are colliding. For every Twitter group
organizing and posting photos of people experiencing
homelessness having sex in a public park or reporting
bike thefts, there is a Facebook group or coalition being
formed out of fear of losing their housing.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle of the debate we
find both a bustling city aiid a city filled with human
suffering.
There are no easy answers to the problems that lie
ahead. Whatever it may be will require great leadership,
political risk by all and an enormous lift by our community
to address the problem.
Regardless of where you fall on the complex subject,
one thing is for sure, Portland wants elected leaders to
prioritize housing. I mean, after all, it isn’t homeless
people having sex or doing drugs that’s the problem. It’s
the lack of housing that’s the problem. Imagine having
your behavior viewed 24/7. I’m sure it wouldn’t be pretty.
to t o o
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like to get involved as a
member of our reporting staff,
contact Managing Editor Joanne Zuhl at
503-228-5657, joanne@streetroots.org.
We ask that ail submissions include the
author’s-name and contact information,
if available.
Street Roots
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