Updated November 13 at 12:52 pm

City Council found themselves in a tense standoff with Mayor Keith Wilson and angry Portland residents over a councilor’s failed plan to reallocate a portion of city dollars that have been used to sweep homeless encampments. At times, those defending Wilson’s plan sat side-by-side with community members who countered that the city should be spending its money on long term solutions to confront the city’s homelessness crisis and its impacts on neighborhoods.

While the comparatively long meeting on November 12 covered various issues, seven out of 10 hours of the session were particularly heated, partially because the mayor had spent the prior weekend imploring supporters of his homelessness plan to stop Councilor Angelita Morillo’s proposal in its tracks. That included what some characterized as thinly-veiled threats from the mayor to homeless providers.

Morillo’s proposal failed with 5 councilors voting yes, 3 voting no, and 4 absent.

A central theme of the often tense discussion, part of an annual budget adjustment process, was whether the city should prioritize encampment removals—commonly called “sweeps”—or instead allocate the city’s limited resources toward rent assistance and other support for vulnerable Portlanders. The meeting brought an unprecedented conversation about how Portlanders believe the city should respond to the homelessness crisis.

“We are funneling money into a system that is not helping people get connected to services, despite what the administration has argued,” Morillo said, referring to the city’s budget. 

For hours, the public and city councilors discussed Wilson’s proposed budget tweaks to address a shortfall in revenues in this fiscal year’s general fund. The council will vote on the final version of the mayor’s Technical Adjustment Ordinance (TAO) on November 19.

Wilson was elected largely on his campaign promise to end unsheltered homelessness by December 1. One month before that deadline, the city resumed civil and criminal penalties for those who violate rules governing when, where, and how homeless Portlanders can live on public property. Sweeps are an integral part of Wilson’s approach to compelling people off the streets and into congregate overnight shelters, where he says people can connect with services and get into housing.

The discussion over sweeps is due to an amendment to Wilson’s TAO that City Councilor Angelita Morillo proposed, seeking to remove $4.3 million from the city’s Impact Reduction Program (IRP) to make up a part of the budget shortfall. That program responds to community complaints, removes garbage, cleans encampments, and tracks data about its work. Sweeps are not all the program does, but its process is the main tool Portlanders have if they want to file a complaint requesting the city evict homeless residents from public spaces.

But Wilson told smaller organizations—like the day center and workforce development internship organization PDX Saints Love and the peer-led environmental recovery and waste reduction program GLITTER—that they too were at risk of losing funding, according to public records obtained by the Mercury.

Morillo’s move generated a barrage of opposition. Wilson sent an email November 9 framing the change as putting “neighborhood livability at risk.” City Councilors Eric Zimmerman and Olivia Clark, along with some business organizations, sent similar emails prior to Wednesday’s meeting, and nearly 200 people joined a Northwest Neighborhood District Association (NWDA) emergency meeting with Wilson, Zimmerman, and City Councilor Olivia Clark, and others the night before.

“This is the first time I've felt like we were actually under attack," Todd Zarnitz, the NWDA board president said.

Clark told attendees that she had “jokingly” mentioned to Zimmerman that “if they do decide to cut the money…then I want the rest of the IRP money just to come to District 4.” 

“We’ll take it all, and you can have the tents in your district, but we don't want that in this district,” she said.

Over 1,100 people submitted written testimony for the agenda item, with those opposed vastly outnumbering those in support. But roughly half of Wednesday's verbal testimony came from supporters of Morillo’s plan, who said sweeps cause further harm to people who may be on their way into housing.

Diana Rempe, of the nonprofit mobile library Portland Street Books, encouraged the Council to approve the amendment. She said the Council should further invest in services provided by organizations like Ground Score, saying years of working with homeless Portlanders has given her a unique perspective.

“This vantage point has given our organization a close up view of the suffering and displacement caused by sweeps,” Rempe said. “In our daily work on the streets, we see Rapid Response workers moving from place to place all day long, indiscriminately throwing things into garbage bags, as people struggle to gather what they can. We hear stories of the things people have lost—IDs, medications, the last picture of their dead child.”

Morillo’s amendment could have been a win for local organizations which have long argued that sweeping homeless people exacerbates the challenges they face, particularly as compounding state and federal disinvestments continue to harm the most vulnerable. But some organizations were hesitant in supporting the initial amendment, saying they were concerned even effective programs that do not engage in sweeps could be cut. They said they did not have enough time to give input on the amendment, and potentially avoid confusion, before Morillo proposed it.

In an email to supporters of a petition it circulated, Welcome Home Coalition, a broad group of nonprofit organizations that has advocated for housing justice in Portland since 2014, said it supported the amendment pending changes that could ensure effective programs would not be cut.

“We support defunding sweeps and funding solutions we know work, like peer support, rent assistance, and workforce development,” the email said.

However, Welcome Home said its concerns could have been addressed if they had been brought into the process earlier.

“We hope that what is learned from this experience is that communication about policy ideas should happen as early as possible and include expertise from those working closely on an issue,” the email said.

After Wilson’s emailed his rallying cry, Morillo updated the amendment on November 10 to clarify its intent: to halt the IRP from displacing people. It explicitly noted the idea was not to remove funding from specific programs and partnerships with local nonprofits that hire people with lived experience with homelessness to collect trash, explicitly naming GLITTER in the language.

“This definition does not include general cleanup, sanitation work, or other social services,” the amendment said. “Examples include cleaning services and trash pickup that do not entail the removal of campsites, such as Groundscore Association’s GLITTER Program, [Public Environment Management Office]’s Basic Sidewalk Cleaning initiative, or other workforce development programming.”

Wilson’s office did not respond to the Mercury’s questions asking if he would keep the GLITTER program intact even if the amendment passed, or if his office spoke with the organization after Morillo updated to the amendment to clarify the cuts could not legally impact them.

In public testimony, Katie Lindsay—development and data manager at Ground Score Association, which manages the program—said she supported a late amendment proposed by Councilor Mitch Green seeking to move the GLITTER program to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to cushion it from political moves in the future.

“This program is vulnerable to political shifts and budget cuts,” Lindsay said. “Our workers do not have the same advocacy power or voice as other organizations. They are some of the most displaced from our community, and certainly from government. Because of our position in the IRP, our program has been used as a tool, even weaponized debates to discuss budget shifts.”

Green’s amendment passed to bring the GLITTER program into a different bureau, but Morillo’s amendment moving the funding failed in a 7-5 vote. Councilors Morillo, Green, Kanal, Dunphy, Koyama-Lane voted yes, while Pirtle-Guiney, Novick, and Smith voted no. Zimmerman, Ryan, Clark, and Avalos were absent.

Mercury reporter Taylor Griggs contributed to this reporting.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the vote tally. The Mercury regrets the error.