Street Roots • May 19-25, 2017
O p in io n
Page 3
Aggressive sweeps undercut good intentions
eople tell me all the time, Israel - all my
friends, even the liberal ones are tired of it. The
homeless. The trash. Something has to be done
to clear these camps out.
I have to pause and ask out loud, “So what you are
telling me is that you’re disgusted with Donald
Trump’s politics, proud that we are a sanctuary city,
that you’re trying to be intentional about racism and
equity, that you’re proud that you only buy organic
meat and/or veggies, but that
homeless people and trash are
ruining our beautiful city. You
lÄJhlU I t iS?
kind of support the police
lìIW iÌ
sweeping the homeless out of
the city, a city that has little to
By Israel Bayer
no housing for the poor.”
Sorry, but that’s simply
unacceptable.
Everyone is quick to blame
former Mayor Charlie Hales for a liberal camping
policy on homelessness that allowed people to erect
tents throughout the city.
It’s not that simple.
I’ve written many times about the changing
demographics in Portland — why city parks,
neighborhoods and freeway underpasses have become
a last refuge for people on the streets. In short,
there’s simply no physical space in Portland for
people experiencing homelessness.
The current mayor is saying that every homeless
person in Portland should have an emergency shelter
bed. That’s a nice aspiration, but one that is both
expensive and time consuming. We shall see.
In the meantime, the city is posturing with more
investments in the upcoming budget to clean up the
streets. It’s a noble aspiration and one I agree with
wholeheartedly — if that means helping people on the
streets maintain trash-free camps.
If that means sweeping homeless people, it’s
doomed to fail and become a public relations
nightmare down the road.
Mayor Tom Potter worked to create a workgroup
that brought opposing sides together. It went
sideways when both Street Roots and other advocates
and the Portland Business Alliance got locked in a
public relations battle over policies targeting people
on the streets on sidewalks and in camps. Plus, the
courts eventually ruled that sidewalk ordinances
banning people from sitting or lying on a sidewalk are
unconstitutional.
Mayor Sam Adams also worked to bring opposing
sides of the issue together, but instead of making it a
big process he basically told both advocates and the
business community that either side wasn’t going to
be happy. We weren’t going to spend our time fighting
over 12 by 12 feet of sidewalk. It wasn’t perfect, but
under Adams’ leadership he worked to begin the
process of decriminalizing people on the streets. The
goal was to message that camping wasn’t ideal, but
that people had to have a place to be and worked to
create low-barrier approaches to people camping
outside.
Mayor Charlie Hales came into office and swept a
homeless camp in front of City Hall, signaling a harsh
approach to how the city was going to deal with
campers. By the end of his tenure, he had more or
less legalized camping in Portland, understanding that
it was a humanitarian crisis and that Portland had no
answer to rising rents and a nearly zero vacancy rate.
Mayor Ted Wheeler has told Street Roots time and
again that he’s not going to criminalize the homeless.
I want to believe him and have no reason not to.
Saying that, camp sweeps have increased
dramatically. It’s unclear what the plan is moving
P
Israel Bayer is the
executive director o f
Street Roots. You can
reach him at
israel@streetroots. org
or follow him on
Twitter @israelbayer.
forward.
Here’s a prediction of what will unfold if the city
starts to move towards a more aggressive approach on
people experiencing homelessness in public spaces.
City officials will ask the city attorney to advise
them on what is possible and what is not. What laws
exist to confront large camps, people experiencing
homelessness on sidewalks and any other tools police
can use to move people out of target locations?
The city attorney will advise city officials on current
legislation, past lawsuits and their findings and what’s
been effective in the past. They will come up with a
new path forward.
There will be a two-fold strategy — one involving
multiple government jurisdictions and one involving
private security agencies. People experiencing
homelessness will begin to get moved around.
Government agencies will begin to target specific
locations downtown and around the city. Homeless
people will begin to be displaced from one location to
another.
At the same time this is going on, a public relations
campaign will be broadcast to the general public
saying that there’s a public health and safety crisis
and the streets have to be cleaned up.
Never mind the fact that being homelessness itself
is actually a public health and safety crisis for people
on the streets.
Angry neighbors and the business community will
cheer at first, but then realize that the strategy
doesn’t actually work. They will ask for more when
they don’t see a visible change in street homelessness
citywide.
Any negative interaction between the homeless and
the general public will be highlighted as an example of
why it’s necessary to have law and order.
Partnerships will be tested. Organizations and
homeless advocates defending the rights of people on
the streets will be forced to choose between trying to
thread the needle and working with groups to
continue to maintain political will to end people’s
homelessness and be actively protesting and speaking
out against the criminalization of the homeless.
Lawsuit after lawsuit will be presented by civil
rights attorneys claiming that people experiencing
homelessness don’t have an alternative to sleeping on
the streets - which is true. Attorneys will have a good
case.
The media will have a field day with all of the
activity. People experiencing homelessness will have a
field day.
It’s a cycle of madness that has been repeated over
and over for the past 40 years in American cities —
especially on the West Coast.
Here’s the thing, Portland. This city is full of good
intentions around homelessness. I don’t think for a
moment that city officials or the general public
doesn’t want to see people find housing.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to scale up
to solve the problem.
Saying that, I like to remind people that the climate
today has the potential to be much worse. We shall
see where we stand after state and federal cuts to
important safety-net programs for people in poverty.
What to do?
In the short-term, civil rights groups are already
working on a possibly ordinance that more or less
says there shouldn’t be any kind of displacement in
camps or on the streets without guaranteed housing.
Civil rights attorneys are perking their heads up -
hoping that we don’t return to an era when suing the
city for criminalizing the homeless was commonplace.
Street Roots and other advocates are waiting to see
what the strategy is going to be.
We are still cautiously optimistic that we aren’t
headed back to sweeping homeless people without
any alternative to housing. It’s an approach that was
created in Reagan’s era of crime and punishment and
lasted now for 40 years. It’s time to turn the page.
Executive Director Israel Bayer
Vendor Program Director Cole Merkel
cole@streetroots.org
Operations Director Sarah Beecroft
Development Director Sarah Cloud
Program Assistant Meghann Van Pelt,
Jesuit Volunteer
Board of Directors
Chairman Brad Taylor
Vice-Chairman Rachel Langford
Treasurer Heather Stadick
Secretary Dan Jones
Directors Rich Rodgers, Michael Anderson,
Sandra Hahn, John Brown, Mels Johnson and
Alison Hallett
Volunteers
Jan Bayer, John Barker, Stacey Heath, Anjali Rathore,
Zoe Kiingmann, Dan Jones, Dennis Hogan, Monica
McKune, Susan Wolfe, Lucas Hawthorne, Thomas
Buell Jr., Jeanie Lunsford, Yasmin Amirsoleymani,
Jason Cohen, Tom Ray, Doug Spangle, Susannah
Kamala, Jon Raymond, Diana Richardson, Cherie
Manning, Paul and Madeline Gefroh, Mary Anne
Joyce, Del Shawn Davidson, Gillian Floren, Mark
OIDani, Bridget Brown, Cody Travels, Bianca Butler,
Robb Hengerer, Alex Cherin, Jenny Farres, Evan
Firsick, Camber Hansen-Karr, Miranda Woods, Henry
Brannan, Megan Smith, Luke Scheuermann and
Helen Hill. If you're interested in volunteering with
Street Roots, please submit a volunteer application at
streetroots.org/volunteer. Or you can call for more
information at 503-228-5657.