Art Rios has never seen the sidewalks of Portland‘s Old Town neighborhood this empty.
“Yesterday, there were nine tents on this block,” said Rios Thursday morning, looking out from Do Good Multnomah’s Downtown Shelter onto NW 6th Ave by NW Hoyt. “Now there’s just one. The rest—gone.”
Rios is a program manager of the downtown shelter, which operates inside a former Greyhound Station in Old Town. In his past year working for the nonprofit, Rios has observed the city’s changing approach to clearing homeless encampments on Old Town sidewalks, as sweep restrictions tied to COVID-19 have loosened. That change includes an accelerated pace of campsite sweeps in the past several months, conducted by employees of Rapid Response Bio Clean on behalf of the city.
According to Mayor Ted Wheeler, this acceleration was a trial run of the type of homeless sweeps he’d like to see across the city in the wake of the pandemic.
“I’m proud to say we are turning the tide,” said Wheeler at a Tuesday press conference with the Old Town Community Association, a group of neighbors and property owners who challenged the city to “reopen” Old Town through graffiti clean-ups, tent sweeps, and increased cop patrols over the past three months.
“This neighborhood is our incubator,” he continued. “I think we have a very good formula here and I look forward to using it across the city.”
Business owners cheered the erasure of homeless campers from their neighborhood Tuesday. The update came after months of property owners and business groups pressing City Hall to make their neighborhood more appealing to tourists, customers, and renters in the wake of the pandemic’s economic downturn.
“The mayor’s office showed up for us,” said Jessie Burke, owner of The Society Hotel in Old Town. “They are navigating this process together with us and have gone to great lengths to try and make meaningful change using creative methods to help our community.”
But the celebration Tuesday was paired with an eerie layer of silence across the surrounding blocks left in the wake of the mass eviction.
A total of 343 tents have been cleared from Old Town blocks in April and May, according to the city. Eighty-seven of the people living in those tents were referred to a shelter bed—but it’s unknown how many of those individuals actually moved into shelter. To accommodate this influx, the Joint Office of Homeless Services made sure 92 additional shelter beds across county shelters were made available.
“I think we have a very good formula here and I look forward to using it across the city.” – Mayor Ted Wheeler
Rios has witnessed the toll this process has had on unhoused Portlanders first hand in recent weeks, as he rushes out to help people hurriedly pack up their belongings when the Rapid Response clean-up trucks arrive or when he processes intake applications for new shelter guests who’ve just had their campsite swept.
“It’s a lot of crying,” Rios recalls. “A lot of people who say they had just started over again after being swept a few weeks ago, people asking, ‘Why can’t the city leave me alone?’”
Rios said he’s also encountered many people who’ve only become homeless recently, due to job loss or loss of an income-making family member during the COVID-19 pandemic. “People are traumatized, and they don’t understand the system,” said Rios. “They don’t know why everything they own has been taken by the city, or how to retrieve it. The learning curve is difficult.”
Lauren Armony, a community organizer with Sisters of the Road, said that a camp sweep often stokes violence in groups of unhoused people.
“After a sweep, people are amped up to 12 out of 10,” said Armony. “People are out trying to steal sleeping bags and blankets from other people since theirs were just taken by Rapid [Response]. It puts people in a really vulnerable situation, where they can be preyed upon. I once saw someone come out with a machete trying to defend themself after a sweep.”
Armony said she noticed a number of tents swept along the parade route in Old Town for the Starlight Parade shortly before the June 4 event.
In some instances, property owners see camp sweeps as an opportunity to put something on the sidewalk previously inhabited by tents to prevent them from returning. Earlier this month, a row of 22 bike racks appeared on an Old Town sidewalk along NW Broadway after a camp sweep.
On Wednesday, Armony pointed to a new row of planters lining the sidewalk on the west side of NW 6th Ave between NW Everett and NW Davis, in front of a building owned by Pendleton. “Those are all brand new,” Armony said. “They went up right after a sweep.”
Later that afternoon, a 53-year-old man who asked to be identified as “J” said he had been forced to move four times in the past two weeks in Old Town. J lost his job as a car salesman at the start of the pandemic, and his teenage criminal record has made it difficult for him to get work or an apartment since. That challenge has been exacerbated by the fact that someone recently stole his driver’s license from his tent. J said he feels safer sleeping in Old Town compared to other parts of the city due to the increased police presence. But it’s the constant uprooting due to campsite sweeps that have kept him from getting his footing.
“If I was stable for just one week, with access to a shower, I could get a new license, I could start applying to jobs, I could find a way to pay rent,” said J. “But they won’t let us be.”
Before clearing an Old Town encampment, the city said it sent outreach workers to meet with the camp’s residents to connect people with shelter beds or other needed social services.
J said he has declined invitations to stay at a shelter—his experience in jail at 16 made him averse to confined spaces with many other people. He’d prefer to find a steady income source that would allow him to move into his own apartment.
The new pace of encampment clearings is the result of the city’s investment in a program dubbed the Street Services Coordination Center (SSCC), which addresses homelessness “like we would any other large-scale emergency,” according to Skyler Brocker-Knapp, a senior policy advisor in Wheeler’s office.
That means creating a new structure of command, where offices involved in homelessness solutions can better coordinate their efforts. Wheeler fast-tracked the creation of the SSCC through an emergency order in March, which places the efforts under his office’s control.
“From shelter coordinators and outreach workers to certified paramedics and law enforcement officers, we have staff to meet all the needs that might arise,” said Brocker-Knapp. “This level of partnership and coordination hasn’t been utilized in Portland before.”
Brocker-Knapp said the biggest need outreach staff have observed is access to substance abuse treatment facilities and addiction counselors, due to the high rate of people living outside with a substance abuse disorder. While she said the city can send people to low barrier shelters—or, shelters that don’t require resident sobriety—”It’s not nearly enough to meet the demand.”
Chris Barnes, 39, has been living on Old Town sidewalks with his girlfriend for about a year. Because of the increased sweeps, Barnes has had to move their tent three times in the past two weeks. While he’d like to move outside of where the city is focusing its cleanup efforts, he has a hard time getting very far.
“I have a broken foot,” said Barnes, sitting in a camp chair outside of his tent Wednesday. “And, because shopping carts aren’t allowed on the MAX, I don’t have any way to move our stuff.”
Gregory Pierce, 61, has similar limitations. Pierce has been in a wheelchair for the past year while living outside. He’s been told to move no less than five times in the past month. Before the last sweep, Pierce said an employee of Portland Fire and Rescue came by and told him he could get Pierce into a shelter if he just waited a few hours. The man never returned.
“I’m out here by myself, and moving isn’t easy,” said Pierce. “I’d love to go somewhere where I don’t have to move every couple days. It’s tearing me up.”
Pierce said other outreach workers have visited him and promised help, but according to Pierce, “They call numbers and no one answers their calls and that’s it.” It’s led him to lose trust in anyone from the city who says they can help him move out of a tent.
“I’d love to go somewhere where I don’t have to move every couple days. It’s tearing me up.” – Gregory Pierce, unhoused Portlander
While some of those living in Old Town tents may have moved into a shelter after a sweep, many of them just relocated to areas outside the neighborhood boundaries.
After a May sweep of their Old Town camp left Timothy Davis and his partner Tammy with nearly half of their possessions gone, the couple and their small dog Peso relocated to an empty lot in the Lloyd District. It’s city policy to hold onto all possessions taken during a campsite sweep and store them for up to 30 days in a city-owned warehouse. While Tammy and Timothy have collected a few pieces of property, they say that much of what was taken from their Old Town camp isn’t at the warehouse.
“We’re missing a huge tub of clothing, including some sentimental items,” said Tammy. “We’re missing comforters, a grill, and a bunch of other things. It makes starting over that much harder.”
Tammy and Timothy have tried to move into couples shelters run by the county, but said they’re told there’s never enough room. They’ve also been turned away at shelters for having a dog. These hurdles have kept them living outside far longer than they’d like. Sweeps only worsen the situation.
“People ask us why we haven’t found work, why we haven’t found a job,” said Timothy. “But how does anyone expect that if the city asks us to move every other day?”
Tammy said that the stress of a looming sweep is so stressful that it makes her “just want to crawl under a rock.”
“And it puts a strain on our relationship,” Timothy added.
Timothy said he used to believe that Mayor Wheeler genuinely wanted to help homeless Portlanders. But his office’s actions don’t seem in alignment with the campaign promises Timothy heard from Wheeler in the past. He said that if the city was interested in genuinely helping people living outside, they would pause the sweeps to give people the stability needed to meet with a case worker, apply for a job, or seek housing assistance without the fear of their home being confiscated while they’re away.
“It’s psychological warfare, that’s what Ted Wheeler is doing with these sweeps,” Timothy said.
Rios, at the Do Good Multnomah shelter, believes the best solution to abate Portland’s homeless encampments is to offer their tenants immediate housing. He said he hears a lot of unhoused people saying that they have been promised housing through different service providers, but that it won’t be available for another month, or two months, or a year.
“I’d like to see outreach teams asking people, ‘What if I can get you into housing no later than tomorrow evening?'” said Rios. “And then once they’re in housing, make sure they have peer support for what’s next. Help them get furniture, get settled, get their IDs—whatever. It would go a long way.”
This idea of supportive housing is already somewhat underway in Portland, through Metro’s Supportive Housing Services tax fund. Yet the program operates through grants to different nonprofits that do outreach with homeless Portlanders, and isn’t yet offering the kind of immediate reprieve Rios suggests.
The city will soon be leaning more on another housing alternative for Portlanders threatened with sweeps: Safe Rest Villages. These villages, dispersed across the city, offer a legal place for unhoused people to rest—in small sleeping pods—and store their property, with the intention of connecting visitors with more permanent housing supports in the process. Three of those villages, which offer 30 to 40 pods, are currently up and running, including two villages that previously operated as emergency outdoor shelters at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four more are expected to open later this year.
Brocker-Knapp with the mayor’s office said Portlanders can expect this level of camp clearings if the SSCC continues to be renewed under Wheeler’s emergency order.
“Through the continued coordination of services under the leadership of Mayor Wheeler,” she said, “we will be able to keep the momentum to address the homeless crisis with compassion across the city of Portland.”
This will continue to be the situation for years to come as long as we place 95% of our focus on “housing first”. And, the real kicker is that years down the road, even if we had a nice apartment for everyone, a good % of these folks would be destined to fail (and ruin the living experience in a dangerous way for fellow tenants) if they were just shoved into an apartment without first receiving intensive drug and mental health services. This isn’t rocket science.
In any case, I’d like to see an investigative article on where all the $ is going, because we certainly aren’t lacking $ or local resources in the homeless industry. Last I heard there were over 200 local homeless-related charities that receive taxpayer funds in the Portland area.
Alex – Portland has to make some hard decisions to deal with the houseless. Is it wrong that there’s an “eerie silence” where laws are enforced? Is it wrong not to want drug addicts, mentally unstable, violent unhoused tents blocking sidewalks and making old town unsafe? Let’s be honest and admit there are a lot of “houseless” that like living on the streets that don’t want to live in a shelter or have a job there’s been plenty of recent articles where some houseless in old town ere interviewed. Let’s also admit there will not be apartments for every unhoused person living on the streets that drug addiction has a very low recovery rate. I hope future sweeps can use some finessing, but at least this is progress.
I for one will be happy to cause some chaos in this newly christened ‘People’s Downtown for Hygiene and Justice’, just to remind you of how sweeps are at best short-term solutions.
@mediumspacerock
In some peoples Blue Sky World capitalism is the problem for everything and doing nothing is the solution. Sweeps are effective to clean up the feces, tents that block sidewalks so elderly and those with disabilities can use the sidewalk and crime. I know businesses leaving the area because employees are harmed or don’t feel safe is something you don’t care about but luckily everyone doesn’t agree with you.Yeah causing chaos that’s the solution. Maybe break some small business windows that will solve things my friend. Your past comments say a lot
https://www.portlandmercury.com/users/27545474/mediumspacerock
The human cost of doing nothing, which is what Alex consistently advocates is far worse than the targeted disruption of street camping. Alex apparently has never met any of the thousands who call Old Town home – the housed residents of the neighborhood. The issues are always presented as big property owners vs the disadvantaged. The reality is so much different. Do the people who call Old Town home, the housed, not deserve passable sidewalks? Are they not entitled to enter their buildings without having to negotiate a gauntlet of meth smokers?
For Ms Zielinski, who apparently has never seen a school bus picking up children in Old Town, next to a cadre of meth smokers in the vestibule adjacent to their stop, the virtue signaling is the thing. Talk to a few junkies, to some advocates who profit from people on the street, done and done. No mention of societal costs, the destruction of the public commons, and the common weal.
The Mercury point of view is tiresome. People deserve to be able to walk (or god forbid, to negotiate a wheelchair) to a grocery store on sidewalks that are passable. They deserve safe entry to their homes. Enough with parachuting into Old Town, ignoring the residents, and acting as though unsheltered tent campers are the only endangered residents. We get it Mercury, you think the status quo of people sleeping on the streets is fine.
@PDX_Pints Yes yes yes and the people will be back to roost with their tents because it’s a downtown area and that’s what a city is known for suffering endemically from. But I’m sure having the police disband everyone in their generally heavy handed ways won’t create any resentment whatsoever, trauma, or dislocation.
The article is a lazy op-ed piece IMHO. Even the title “It’s psychological warfare” is such clickbait we see over and over. “The cops are bad.”..”Everyone is picking on the unhoused”..here’s a couple people interviewed that are down on their luck..covid..high rent!
Does Art Rios suggest it’s a bad thing that there’s less tents? Old town has a long history of crime so is it a bad thing that business owners..no not big corporations small business owners want to be able to..well stay open and also be safe. I won’t get into how many business have left because of this but lots.
So what is the solution if not sweeps? The unhoused are given a heads up of what is coming and provided places to stay. If this was article was more balanced it would describe one of the unhoused not having access to showers and then clarify there’s available hot showers – 6th and Irving, Union Gospel Mission and Hygiene4All under Morrison Bridge to name a few. Additionally shelters are available but there’s refusal to say at them.
It’s naive to pretend things will improve if we just let the unhoused residents stay in old town. That they will get jobs and apartments…if only the police wouldn’t sweep if only they didn’t have to move their tents for a little bit. Let’s remember there hasn’t been sweeps for years but more and more unhoused keep going into old town.
There’s a lot too unpack for the Portland homeless crisis..the impact of measure 110, fentanyl and meth..houseless from other states coming to Portland (Old Town) for this. Things need to change so how about this if there’s going to be conversations let’s admit there’s a problem for residents both the housed and unhoused. Let’s think what we can do to help the sweeps for the future. Is mental health along with the police for the sweeps? I’m not sure as the article was very light on actual reporting. I’m going to Old Town in the next few days..I heard the Chinese Garden is beautiful.
I’d suggest anyone who wants to read something much more unbiased; this is a good read. Alex, this would be especially good for you to read 😊https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-06-21/portland-liberal-support-lags-homeless-services-drugs