Street Roots • July 6-12, 2018
Opinion
Portland has criminalized poverty, mental illness
ow we know: More than half of the
people arrested in Portland last year
were homeless.
Rebecca Woolington and Melissa Lewis
reported in The Oregonian on June 27 that
unhoused people comprised 52 percent of
arrests last year.
While it was clear
that people struggling
D I R E C T O R ’S
with homelessness
face too many arrests,
D ESK
I was stunned to read
By Kaia Sand
that these arrests
account for the
majority.
The fact that the
poor are policed is, unfortunately, a defining
characteristic of this city. It’s dystopic, and it has
to change.
Some people will interpret the high rate of
arrests among houseless folks to mean that
people on the streets are criminals, and that’s
that, but consider how homelessness itself is
criminalized.
The ACLU of Oregon issued a report last year
documenting 224 laws around the state that
target people who are homeless. It identified
laws that target people for sleeping in public
places, for begging for mopey and for loitering.
In other words, ACLU of Oregon researchers
identified laws that matter only if you are
homeless.
The largest number of arrests The Oregonian
reco rd ed was connected to property; drugs and
other low-level crimes. z '
And importantly, more than a quarter of all
arrests were based on missed court dates,
probation and parole violations - procedural
crimes. When people are without an address or
a stable place to sleep, receiving correspondence
about court dates is nearly impossible.
You can imagine how the arrests would simply
compound. Say a person is arrested for
trespassing because they are homeless. With no
property to legally sleep on, it is easy for people
to be caught trespassing.
Then they miss a court date because they
don’t have an address to receive information
about a court date. One arrest leads to another.
The mess grows. It’s stressful and
overwhelming and expensive. People feel "
powerless.
Across the nation, people of color and poor
folks are profiled and incarcerated at
disproportionate rates. The justice system, in
B
Kaia Sand is the
executive director o f
Street Roots. You can
reach her at
kaia@strdetroots. org.
Follow her on
Twitter @mkaiasand
fact, structures injustice. While The Oregonian
report does not show how these statistics break
out according to race - something we need to
find out next - African Americans and Native
Americans are disproportionately homeless.
The ACLU of Oregon has called on Portland
Mayor Ted Wheeler and Police Chief Danielle
Outlaw to investigate reports of police profiling
and harassing of homeless individuals in
downtown Portland. I urge them to pursue this.
And how are housed Portlanders contributing
to this problem? Do you have friends and
neighbors who make demonizing remarks about
homeless Portlanders, and who are quick to
report camps as nuisances?
Please do not give up trying to undo these
stigmas. People who are poor are dehumanized,
and it is up to all of us to honor their humanity
and insist that a city that rewards the rich and
punishes the poor is not a just city.
People need to think twice before calling to
report camps. Call the city, and you could be
initiating a traumatic camp sweep. Call the
police, and you could be initiating arrest
The city of Portland increased the police force
in its new budget. Until massive changes are
made, this fact makes me shudder. Too large a
portion of our police budget pays to make life
harder for the poorest of Portlanders.
What it we took a portion of Portland Police
Bureau’s $276.8 million budget for this coming
year and applied it to housing and supportive
services for those w h o are frequently arrested ■
in s te a d ?
.
a
.
While it’s easy' to get fired up over individual
circumstances, let’s work on a systemic level,
striving for more harm reduction, such as safe
injection sites - not drug arrests. Let’s work for
more mental health support - not abandon
people to their turmoil.
And let’s fight and fight and fight to have
more places where people can sleep and eat and
flourish. One constructive approach right now is
to pass the Metro Housing Bond this November,
which would put $652.8 million into affordable
housing
Instead of making a call to report a camp,
make a call to support the Yes for Affordable
Housing campaign.
It is absurd to pour money into policing
homeless folks, rather than striving to bouse
more people. There’s good work to be done, but
policing the poor just means there’s so much
more work to do .
Page 3
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111
Executive Director Kaia Sand
■
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«■i
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Portland police stand near the perimeter o f Village o f Hope camp after sweeping it in February.