- Adam Wickham
Here’s a little secret, Portland: Nobody wants to see the homeless people who’ve shown up in increasing numbers over the last year or so.
The police and city leaders don’t want to see them. Neighbors don’t want to see them. Their stoutest advocates don’t want to see them. And the vast, vast majority of the homeless themselves—56 of who died on the streets last year, for a variety of reasons—would prefer not being homeless.
No one thinks the increasing presence of homeless people in the North Park Blocks, for instance, is a good thing. Or that it’s awesome that people are living in tents on state and city property up on North Greeley Avenue.
It is homelessness. It is a problem by definition. We all agree!
The big question facing Portland, then, is what we do about this problem. And if you’re a faithful reader of the Portland Tribune, you’ve just been treated to the gob-smacking conclusion that a big part of the solution is police being given more leeway to cite and arrest homeless people.
In its latest issue, the paper spends 1,800-words offering a sympathetic ear to police union officials upset they don’t have “clear direction and support in dealing with the growing number of homeless people who violate city ordinances.” Ordinances like Portland’s camping ban. The Trib finds that officers are taking less initiative when rousting homeless people, and bemoans the fact that police are now hesitant to force people to get up from the sidewalk. From the story:
Now, Turner says, a police encounter with a homeless squatter who may be illegally camping or blocking a sidewalk can too easily become a major incident. Take a situation where a police officer asks a squatter to move from his or her sidewalk position, Turner says. Most squatters will comply. But when one doesn’t, an officer might reach down and pull them up.
Until two years ago, that sort of encounter rarely posed a problem for police, according to Turner. Now, he says, it usually requires the officer to write up a “use of force” report, which will lead to a conversation with a superior in which the officer must justify his or her actions.
The piece reaches a hysterical crescendo when it suggests Portland’s homeless might clean up their act and find decent places to stay if police only reliably wrote them tickets or arrested them (yep, police arrest people for camping).
The unpredictable policing of the homeless flies in the face of current criminal justice thinking, which is known as the Swift, Certain and Fair approach. Research has shown that quality-of-life offenders especially are less likely to re-offend if they receive consequences that are swift and certain.
This is a flat out bizarre thing to say—particularly because the paper explicitly lumps in camping and erecting structures offenses with what might be more pressing “quality of life” offenses. (“Yet throughout this year, tent campers on the North Park Blocks and in areas like the Springwater Corridor for the most part were allowed to remain,” the article says. “And they can still be found throughout the city.”) You can’t arrest or ticket someone out of homelessness, because homelessness isn’t a choice. That’s especially true in Portland, where officials readily acknowledge that we don’t have anywhere near the shelter space or affordable housing options to get people off of the streets.
Even the US Department of Justice says it’s unconstitutional to enforce camping laws in situations like Portland’s facing. In an August filing in Boise, DOJ attorneys wrote:
When adequate shelter space does not exist, there is no meaningful distinction between the status of being homeless and the conduct of sleeping in public. Sleeping is a life-sustaining activity — i.e., it must occur at some time in some place. If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless.
That same case has been made in Multnomah County again and again. It’s even found favor in the past, though the ruling didn’t stick.
There’s a strong argument that by citing people for sleeping outside, you’re just digging the majority of them deeper into a hole, potentially making it harder to find housing or escape legal debts down the road. (On the other hand, officials sometimes see an expediency to tickets. Portland Police have suggested in the past that if mounting tickets and the threat of arrest send homeless people packing for another town, then maybe that’s not the worst thing.)
I’ll repeat my earlier sentiment: Homelessness is bad. It can involve ugly and sometimes serious public safety problems that should be dealt with “swiftly and certainly.” More often, homelessness is unsightly. Just the other day I took this bad picture of a full-sized bed, complete with boxspring, underneath the Burnside Bridge.
No one’s arguing it’s unreasonable to expect your city to clean up its messes.
But camping and homelessness can’t be solved with police, as the police will readily tell you; it can only be pushed around. As we reported this week, the large encampment that took root on Greeley in the last few months was the direct result of sweeps in the Central Eastside. There’s also speculation that Portland’s homelessness is more visible than its ever been, in part, because of development that’s nudged people out of parts of town people formerly paid little mind to.
The Trib‘s article makes it seem like nothing’s being done about homeless campers. That’s wrong.
The Oregon Department of Transportation sweeps people from its many Portland properties literally all the time (it’s planning to sweep the Greeley camp any day). So do city entities like the Bureau of Environmental Services, Portland Bureau of Transportation, and Water Bureau. The Portland Police Bureau spent weeks doing intensive clean ups just a few months ago. We even have a special agreement for cleaning up the property people leave behind in these sweeps.
So the things Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner is pressing for in the Tribune story are occurring. More importantly, though, there’s some hope in the fact that institutional barriers to easing homelessness are getting fresh attention.
Portland Mayor Charlie Hales—at the outset of what promises to be a tough re-election fight—just shepherded forward an emergency declaration he says will allow Portland to dodge zoning codes and more easily create homeless shelters. There’s more momentum than we’ve seen in years toward creating affordable and transitional housing, and the city and county have pledged $30 million to a group dedicated to sketching a plan that will end homelessness (most of that money won’t be available until next July).
Is it enough? No. Is it even a viable strategy? The people who think hardest about the problem of homelessness in this community think so.
At any rate, it’s better than trying to ticket people into homes.
The Trib article was actually pretty good. Contrary to your hysterical interpretation, it was really just talking about enforcing the law on crimes such as drug use/selling, screwing and defecating in public, harassing others who have every bit as much right to use public space as homeless people do.
People like you think that talking a lot about how much you care will do something. It does nothing. Taking the right progressive stance in front of others, and then just going about your life, does nothing. Saying “someone should really do something for them” does nothing. Mumbling more about how much you care is not a solution.
The central city has become a shithole and everyone knows it. Liberals know it, conservatives know it, residents know it, employees know it, tourists know it. It is a fucking shithole that has gotten worse year in and year out going back decades now. And no the city does not enforce jack shit.
The cops should stop crimes when they see them. It isn’t okay to shoot heroin sitting on the grass in a park. My kid wants to walk there. Get the fuck out of the way. I pay for it and you are fucking leech who hasn’t paid for a damn thing in this city. It isn’t okay to fuck buck naked in a door way in the middle of the day. Pull your life together, you bucket of shit. It isn’t okay to turn a public walkway into a shanty town and menace people walking by. Fuck off. Get out of my city.
If you think that normal everyday Portlanders are not sick of this shit you are in for a surprise. The first politician to really acknowledge it and promise to address it will walk into office, even here in progressive Portland. It has gotten that bad.
I agree with the Tribunes suggestion that police should have clear guidance as to how to handle these sort of encounters. I strongly disagree that increasing ticketing and/or arresting homeless people for homeless behaviors is a good idea.
Thanks to the Merc for this post.
It should be edited to tighten the middle.
Then propose measurable results for City, County and nonprofits. Merc coverage must also incorporate the experiences of social service agencies who work with homeless one on one. Explain solutions and challenges.
Many to most Portlanders are sympathetic to homeless individuals. But we would be even more sympathetic if homeless individuals had a place to dispose of refuse and did so. Today refuse disposal is an expensive to use business, licensed by our government leaders. What would the streets and parks look like spotless of litter? What jobs could be created from homeless to make that?
Homeless individuals are individual people. What are there stories? Who is recording them? Again an opportunity for the Merc.
Working downtown, at this point, I’d just be happy if I didn’t see poop on the sidewalk on a daily basis.
Blabby: “normal, everyday Portlanders” isn’t actually a thing. There are all sorts of Portlanders. Some are houseless. Some are on the verge of it. And some are reactionary types who rant anonymously on comment boards. My hope is that what Portlanders share in common is (1) empathy, (2) an understanding that sending the police to cite and jail the houseless is generally a violent, dangerous, expensive, and ultimately ineffective strategy (even Utah has figured this out), and (3) a willingness to work together to create a politics that struggles for a livable city for all residents, not just the affluent.
@Nick Caleb For the love of Portland, please don’t cite the Utah case as some sort of solution to Portlands homelessness problem. I don’t see the federal government and LDS Church paying for a bunch of free houses here any time soon, so there is no point in talking about it.
Like @R said, if we can figure out ways for the homeless to clean up after themselves and dispose of waste, it will be much easier to get community empathy and buy in for other potential solutions.
My mind always runs to some New Deal-esque program–let’s call it Orgeon Works–where people can sign up for work crews in exchange for dormitory living, 3 squares a day, and a small wage. They would do basic labor and maintenance work around Portland and Oregon in cooperation with various DOTs, Public Works bureaus, parks depts and even BLM or forest service. Ideally, counseling and drug/alcohol treatment would be available, possibly through OHP or something. Kaiser or Moda could sponsor the program for great publicity and provide some free services.
30 million pledged and not until July 2016 ! Maybe a million dollars up front to get the homeless in to a tent city,
a warming station,churches rotate fixing soup and bread,a clinic in a large tent. The help would come from volunteer Doctors and Nurses that would be so kind as to help.
Separate the families from the single people until the children are protected from those with evil intentions. Large clothing center with volunteers helping sort through lots of needed clothing. No drugs or alcohol,oh Boo Hoo if you can’t deal with it.
Police protection so they aren’t getting harmed. Pay the police well,a couple of shifts a day. The money comes from the million dollars fronted until next summer. Toilets, showers and the rules are to be grateful and not trash where you live.
The other options are to raid their tents, give citations to homeless people. That is so damn stupid. There here,and in every city. Volunteers would be protected, and maybe we can get these poor souls into shelters. It would be like the Peace Corp; only this time they will be our own.
Most may not like what I think, it is just an idea. We need to look out for the poor and forgotten. I agree they should not be ruining others’ way of life. In most people, there is love.
Blabby, all I can say is ‘wow’ !!
I wholeheartedly agree with your take on this — and you put it down articulately better than I ever could.
Thanks man!
Thank you for this article, Dirk.
In what I’m sure is no coincidence, former Police Chief and would-be Mayor Mike Reese peddles essentially the same arrest-the-homeless tripe in today’s Oregonian. (http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ss…)
His bizarre version of a “solution” is to complain that the homeless are able to “exploit gaps” in enforcement and assert that campers must “be held accountable” in criminal court.
Clearly the police are making a full-court press to be unleashed on the most vulnerable victims of Portland’s housing emergency –legalities and humanity be damned.
I’d love to hear whether our two Mayoral candidates support this brutal and ignorant line of thinking.
@Blabby– You’re not even speaking to my points, which have nothing to do with emotional responses like “I care.”
And you’re glossing completely over the fact that I’m all for things like open-air drug use and flagrant sex being dealt with by cops. There is absolutely a role for police in this problem, but it’s not to solve things like camping.
You’re right that downtown looks worse today than it did last year, or even six months ago. But take a step beyond “write the fuckers up” to think about what happens next. Because nothing happens next. They are arrested, or ticketed, or fined. Many of them won’t show up for court. They move on to another part of the city.
Nothing is accomplished.
Don’t believe me? Will you believe Mike Reese?
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ss…
Wasn’t there an article in the WW about a year or so ago that interviewed a number of homeless people in Portland and pointed to the fact that many of them actually were homeless by choice? So I have to disagree with Dirk’s statement that homelessness isn’t a choice. From what I see, for many street people–the seriously mentally ill ones–it probably isn’t. For many others–the drug addicts, freedom loving anarchist-idealists, and perfectly healthy kids just out for sport and adventure–it absolutely is a choice. Life is challenging for everyone, but resources are plentiful to help with the challenges, if you really want to face them. Sometimes I’ll look at one street person and think, “Wow, we’ve got to do better as a society.” Other times I’ll look at another and think, “Wow, in ten or twenty years you’re really going to regret wasting your life away.”
Just a note to say that many Portlanders (like me) rarely go downtown, at least during the week, not because we’re avoiding it but because we have no reason to go there. When I read Blabby’s description (where have you been Blabby?) I think really? is that how things are down there now?
It’s very easy to fall into knee-jerk liberal attitudes (or knee-jerk conservative attitudes, for that matter) if you’re never confronted with the problem in real life. The Trib’s argument would be a lot more effective if they simply sent a photographer to roam around downtown for a few weeks.
I agree with Blabby wholeheartedly. The downtown has become an shithole with multiple homeless tent mini-cities.
I want to care about the homeless, but as someone who lives within 1.5 miles of the city center and works downtown, it’s tough to give a shit. There’s generally no way to distinguish between street rats, drug addicts, straight-up lazy good for nothings, and the mentally ill.
What is most amusing/confounding/disturbing/inexplicable is how one of the worst areas is right by City Hall and the Court House. Either the cops don’t care, or they’re explicitly instructed to ignore the human refuse wandering/soliciting/harassing people throughout the city.
I know I’ll get shit on for being so harsh, but what has the bleeding-heart liberal approach done to fix a damn thing? Absolutely nothing. When I arrived in Portland 8 years ago, there was only a fraction of this bullshit going on. 8 years later and the city has been overwhelmed by homelessness and trashiness.
Expensive, trashy and quasi-bohemian… We truly are becoming San Francisco.
Motherfuckers.
There is a grievous lack of “there but for the grace etcetera” going down right now. Do you think “HEY YOU, DON’T BE HOMELESS” is particularly effective? Fuck you.
Rick,
it isn’t illegal to wander or solicit. You piece of shit.
We need to distinguish between the young junkies who partied in the squat on SE Hawthorne next to a dead friend from the broken down older alcoholic who doesn’t hurt anyone.
I am tired of the lifestyle homeless on Hawthorne and SE.
The young homeless by choice don’t deserve our help, and giving the police permission to arrest them for shooting smack on the street is fine by me.
Our funds are limited, and should be concentrated on the most vulnerable homeless, you know, the ones that are victimized by the young junkies. The clueless efforts of some churches (St. Francis) are not helpful.
Housing … that’s the magic mantra that reveals just how ignorant so many people are, especially policy makers and legislators, of the rather complex and protean thing homelessness is. Do you really think that kid with three rotten teeth left, who’s digging holes in his face, on his eighth day without sleep, is house-able? I’m in my second subsidized housing building, and I can tell you from experience that a LOT of the people who live outside are simply too willfully feral or too far gone to last long in housing. Also, the longer you’re outside the more difficult it will be to assimilate into domesticated human society.
Besides, homelessness is a systemic problem, symptomatic of a society that’s economically and culturally dysfunctional. Ticket the homeless, throw eggs at their tents while driving down the freeway, give each of them a cabin in the woods, whatever … until the merchant princes are reined in and made to serve the commonwealth of humanity rather than vise versa, and parents raise their children lovingly and responsibly, and social institutions become more forgiving of errancy and eccentricity … we’ll keep reading articles like this after even the youngest current reader is dead. It’s like talking about relapse prevention in a bar, far’s I’m concerned.
Open the public restrooms at night with a janitor on site, install more showers, allow camping in the parks, provided that tents are taken down during the day. Provide vouchers for small storage space at various currently available commercial locations and call it good. With the $29.75M saved, pay me to go away. Hell, I’m not greedy. Give everybody a one way bus ticket to Salt Lake City, on me.
The thirty million dollars will most likely be pissed away, and I hope I am wrong. What about city hall looking over some of the comments here? It seems like they need ideas, or are afraid to do anything. The police department needs a break on this job, since no one will be back them up when the shit hits the fan.
Pay me $29M to quit Spamming the Merc, and I’ll pay the Mayor and City Coucil their same, usual kickback. As for the police, why reward them for bad behavior? The Nuremburg Trials set the precedent of Command Responsibility holds, even while subordinates, “Just following Orders,” are equally culpable when committing crimes against humanity. Let the Mayor pay them off out of his cut.
So are we supposed to listen to a guy who defends a rapist instead?