Oregon's housing woes have been great at attracting attention to the plight of renters, but that hasnât always translated to compassion for the folks whoâve already lost their homes.
Consider: As the state was in the teeth of a widely acknowledged housing crisis last year, the city of Roseburg adopted a new âexclusion zoneâ policy that critics say allows officials to ban people cited for homelessness-related crimes from setting foot downtown.
And in the Central Oregon town of Prineville, leaders took steps in September to more easily exclude homeless campers and others from city parks.
Of course, similar lawsâPortlandâs camping ban comes to mindâhave been on the books for decades. Now, with legislators in Salem promising to drill down into the housing crisis during this yearâs new legislative session, advocates for the homeless see an uncommon opportunity to give those policies the boot.
âSitting down, sleepingâthese are minor fucking crimes,â says Paul Boden, executive director of the San Francisco-based Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP). âThe history of local governments using and criminalizing the presence of people they donât like and discriminatorily enforcing laws against people is as old as this country is.â
For the second time, WRAP this year has convinced Oregon legislators to consider the Oregon Right to Rest Act, a multi-pronged piece of legislation that would bolster protections for homeless Oregonians and effectively roll back local laws that can criminalize people for not having homes.
If passed as currently written, the bill would explicitly allow homeless people to rest in public spacesâincluding in vehicles on city streetsâso long as theyâre not closed off to the public in general. It would make clear that campers have a âreasonable expectation of privacyâ even if theyâre living outside, meaning police would need search warrants to look through tents in many instances. And if authorities breach those and other rights set forth in the bill, the act says they can be sued, or fined by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.
The legislation, House Bill 2215, is WRAPâs latest attempt at getting lawmakers to take up what Boden calls his organizationâs âlist of demands.â In 2015, a nearly identical bill died in committee after being opposed by the law enforcement lobby, the League of Oregon Cities, the Portland Business Alliance (PBA), and others.
âWe believe instead we should be increasing shelters, transitional housing, and services,â the PBAâs Marion Haynes told lawmakers at the time.
But weâre a long way from 2015. Since the earlier bill was allowed to perish, Portland formally declared a housing and homelessness emergency, and state leaders have begun talking seriously about Oregonâs housing problems.
In last yearâs short legislative session, lawmakers passed new, incremental protections for Portland renters. This year, under direction from House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) the legislature will consider allowing rent control in Oregonâa controversial step Kotek and others see as necessary for stemming displacement in a tight, unforgiving housing market.
âAddressing the housing crisis is a priority for House Democrats,â says Scott Moore, a spokesman for House Democratic leaders. Still, Moore canât say that the Right to Rest Act has his bossesâ supportâa necessity if the law has a prayer of making it to the Senate, let alone passing.
âItâs still early on in the session, so there are still discussions about this bill to come,â Moore says.
Those discussions are playing out as Portland is on the verge of getting a firmer grasp on how dire its homelessness issues are. On February 22, officials are slated to begin the cityâs biennial point-in-time homeless count. Used throughout the country, these counts are an imperfect means of estimating the severity of homelessness. Nonetheless, they are the best measure that exists, and 2015âs point-in-time count found nearly 2,000 people living without shelter in Multnomah County.
Given the Portland regionâs recent focus on homelessnessâwhich has brought hundreds of new shelter beds, stepped up placements in affordable housing, and more assistance to renters in danger of being tossed on the streetsâyou might expect the city to be better off. Local leaders certainly did. In 2015, the homelessness task force A Home for Everyone crafted a plan for cutting homelessness in half in Portland by doing the very things elected officials have carried out.
Despite those efforts, many people suspect homelessness has increased.
âWe can expand capacity, but the housing market right now presents an enormous challenge for our ability to actually see that... lead to an actual decrease in point-in-time homelessness,â Marc Jolin, director of the countyâs Joint Office of Homeless Services, told city and county officials in a briefing on February 14. âRight now weâre seeing a lot of new people in our systems.â
In other words, the steps the PBA argued for in 2015 have been carried out, and itâs possible there are more people living on the streets.
Which isnât to say the Right to Rest Act will fix the homelessness crisis. Supporters say itâs a way to ensure people arenât criminalized merely for living in difficult circumstances. To the extent that it helps anyone escape homelessness, it might be by easing the fines or court dates hanging over their heads.
But the law faces skepticism, tooâand not only from the usual suspects. Some homeless advocates the Mercury spoke with expressed concern that some parts of the billâfor instance, how it defines ârestâ and âpublic spaceââcould lead to difficult legal questions.
Meanwhile, HB 2215 has the support of the ACLU of Oregon. The Bureau of Labor and Industries, which would have new enforcement duties under the legislation, says itâs neutral on the law.
One of the billâs chief sponsors, state Rep. Carla Piluso (D-Gresham), brings an interesting history to her support. Over her career as a Gresham police officer and police chief, she often dealt with homeless people living along the Springwater Corridor.
âYou bet I made those arrests,â says Piluso, referring to times when someone was brandishing a weapon or thereâd been an assault. But she adds that the idea of peopleâs fundamental right to live was driven home for her recently in a presentation from homeless advocates.
âIt just reinforced that some people make a choice to live outside... and should have every right to do so as long as theyâre not really breaking laws or causing grief to others,â she tells the Mercury.
Whether or not other lawmakers agree remains to be seen. HB 2215 is currently before the House Judiciary Committee, with no hearing date set. Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland) is the lone sponsor of the bill to sit on that committee, and says heâll push its chair, retired Portland police Lt. Jeff Barker, to give the bill consideration.
âI think itâs tragic to have people sleeping on the street,â says Greenlick, whose district office sits in Old Town. âOn the other hand, I donât think you should be arresting them when they sleep in the street. The problem is that theyâre homeless, not that theyâre sleeping on the street.â