THE KEY to cleaning up prostitution in Portland isn’t making
more arrests or slapping streetwalkers with steeper fines.
Instead, reducing prostitution in the Rose City will rely on finding
safe, affordable housing for prostitutes—so says the draft of a
report the city’s Prostitution Advisory Council spent a year
researching and will present to Portland City Council next week.
The 21-person Prostitution Advisory Council, a group of police,
citizens, and sex worker counselors, came together last year at a time
when many Portland residents were demanding the city take swift
enforcement action against prostitution along 82nd Avenue [“Red Light,”
News, Sept 18, 2008]. A citizen petition gathered 1,500 signatures to
reinstate the 82nd Avenue Prostitution-Free Zone (PFZ)—a
controversial policy that the city let expire in 2007 after complaints
from the American Civil Liberties Union.
In addition to the petition, last fall neighbors were impatient for
the city to take a more aggressive enforcement approach. One
neighborhood activist, Liz Sullivan, even hijacked a press conference
from then Mayor Tom Potter, stepping up to his podium to demand the
reinstatement of the PFZs [“Neighbors Slam Potter’s Prostitution Plan,”
Blogtown, Sept 11, 2008]. Instead, Potter convened the advisory
council.
Since last fall, citizen reports of prostitution have dropped 43
percent in the Montavilla neighborhood that stretches along 82nd
Avenue, according to the report. But an FBI sting in February picked up
seven underage girls in Portland in just four hours, ranking our fair
city second in the nation for underage prostitution after Seattle
[“Confessions of a Teenage Prostitute,” News, Sept 3]. Still, it seems
neighbors on the advisory council have been won over to a more
compassionate approach.
“I really wanted to go after the pimps and johns,” says Brian Wong,
a Montavilla resident who led neighborhood anti-crime patrols and
signed on to co-chair the Prostitution Advisory Council. Wong’s view of
how Portland should conquer sex crime changed during the year of
meeting with former prostitutes and police.
“When you start to talk to these women, you realize pimps are
essentially domestic batterers,” says Wong. “A jail is nothing but a
temporary house for a woman in prostitution. You can’t get these women
off the street if they have nowhere to go.”
The report says meeting the housing needs of prostitutes is
“imperative” to curbing sex crimes in the city: “Housing is a basic
need, and for prostituted persons, it is controlled by their pimp,
boyfriend, manager, partners, or ‘guardian’ figures charging rent,”
reads the document.
Studies the advisory council examined show 90 percent of female
prostitutes have been homeless, especially juveniles. The US Department
of Justice finds the average age at which girls first become victims of
prostitution is just 13.
The report also recommends establishing a “john school” to reform
people charged with paying for sex, and renewing funding for LifeWorks
Northwest’s New Options for Women program—which counsels women
arrested for prostitution. With 2008’s one-year $250,000 grant from the
city, LifeWorks counseled 64 female prostitutes. But only eight have
been assisted into housing, according to the report.
If a woman on the street wants to get into Portland’s rent-assisted
public housing, first she will have to wait for the waitlist to even
open—a roughly once-a-year event. After that, she would have to
wait between one and three years to get to the top of the waitlist,
according to the Housing Authority of Portland. Meanwhile, the city has
spent $4.98 million on treatment and housing for the city’s worst crack
addicts over the last two years [“The Secrets Behind the Secret List,”
News, Nov 5].
Nevertheless, funding safe housing for prostitutes could be cheaper
than the current reality: paying for their jail cells. The per-day,
per-inmate cost of jailing someone in Multnomah County is $70, and jail
lands 92 percent of prostitutes back in illegal activity after their
release, according to the report. The council estimates that $10-15 per
person per day would cover the cost of transitional housing.
“I welcome any recommendations by this group, and if their
conclusion is that a housing-first model would be more beneficial to
people in the sex industry than jail then I’m inclined to agree with
them,” says Housing Commissioner Nick Fish. “But the challenge we’re
facing as a council is that we’re doing triage for 8,000 people in need
of stable housing.
“The challenge is [that] today it may be prostitutes, tomorrow it
may be 150 people turned away from the women’s shelter run by the
Salvation Army,” Fish continues. “We could probably come up with 8,000
compelling stories on this issue—and each of them are important
to me.”
A council? A TWENTY-ONE person advisory COUNCIL on PROSTITUTION? Dear baby Jesus: please guide me to the path that leads to being EMPLOYED on an advisory council for whores. Amen.
@Miss Amazon: I don’t think they got paid. They may have gotten lunch or dinner but more likely some carrot sticks and coffee. It varies of course; the best food that I’ve found is at the sewage treatment plant meetings.
@amazonfemme: “whores”? show some compassion and class, fer crissakes. there but for the grace, etc, go you and i.
Miss Mirk –
I have spoken with you on numerous occasions and it is unfortunate that you continually portray myself and my neighbors in such a negative light.
I also expect a retraction of your claim in this article that I “hijacked” a press conference. As I discussed with you that very day at that very press conference, myself, Brian Wong & a few other neighbors were all personally invited by the Mayor’s office & by Commander Crebbs. We were asked to speak just like representatives of Madison South did. I did respectfully say to then Mayor Potter that the City needs to holistically address the issues of prostitution in Portland. Not only did they take away the Prostitution Free Zone and there was a blatant increase in the crime, but at the time there were NO services for the women involved.
Of course there was a crisis in our City that led us to draw attention to the City’s neglect of the issue and that this press conference happening 1 year after lifting the PFZ & doing nothing to support the women – our City leaders failed on this issue.
At the time it was also documented by the Portland Vice Squad & the FBI – that since the PFZ was lifted, out of state pimps were trafficking in women to Portland – some as young as 11 to work our neighborhoods since our laws against pimps & johns were so laxed. In that same summer of 2008, a young prostitute stabbed her pimp to death right off the Ave of Roses since the pimps were turning the Avenue into a turf war.
Yes, our neighbors had to get loud & be the squeaky wheel & because of it 1 year later the City allocated 250k for services for these women. We did not think that the PFZ would solve the many issues surrounding this crime. We saw a blatant cause & effect after the PFZ was lifted and the lack of NO services. We wanted the City to react and be proactive – that press conference was held 1 year after the PFZ was lifted & no services were put in place. Here we are 1 year later 250k invested in this issue and we have seen some results all in the right direction. The support & services need to continue and evolve.
Please don’t portrait myself or my neighbors wanting the women involved locked up – we wanted the City to truly address this issue at the time & this past year with the funding that we were able to acquire was the start of this.
Thank you, Liz Sullivan
This seems like the perfect opportunity for advisory council members, neighborhood residents, law enforcement officers and sex worker counselors to join our work to secure an affordable housing levy in Portland.
We’re ready when you are!
Julie Massa
Portland Policy Coordinator
Oregon Opportunity Network (trade association for nonprofit affordable housing providers)
Let’s write an article that claims to be anti prostitution along with an illustration that is anything but. Huh? First of all these women are not wearing expensive heels and fishnets walking into someone’s house, complete with a welcome mat. Try drugged up trysts behind some shady business on 82nd. The attire is more likely some well worn fake uggs and cutoffs while shivering in the freezing cold.
How about an accurate illustration? Draw some disgusting slob pulling up in a $200 dollar car while some skinny drug addicted teenager climbs in. Not as fun to illustrate but wholly a more accurate representation.
I am not entirly sure what the solution is, housing sounds like an okay start. Another good place to start: STOP GLAMORIZING PROSTITUTION TO YOUNG GIRLS.
Bottom line, okay article, really friken stupid illustration.
What’s the difference between a child “laborer” who is enslaved and a “prostitute” who is enslaved? Nothing yet we call one a victim and the other a criminal. It is time we use correct terminology in order to guide appropriate societal response. We can probably all agree that an underage “prostitute” in the U.S. or Cambodia or where ever is a trafficked child. And many adult “prostitutes” started as trafficked children.
The trafficking of sex workers in the U.S. is exactly the same as the trafficking of sex workers in Asia or Eastern Europe. Let’s define and name the issue accurately. For most sex workers, prostitution is not a career choice.
Sex slaves typically begin their “career” while as young as 7 by being abducted or sold. Then they are systematically raped, sometimes by a group, beaten, starved and finally put to “work”. This is the way of prostitution today. This is the way in Asia, Europe AND in the U.S. For most sex workers, prostitution is not a career choice. They are trafficked humans, many are children. This is the correct definition
Frank van Waardenburg
Wait, you mean to tell me that class division and capitalism breed anti-social, and self-endangering behaviour? Duh! But, if you think this council is going to change much though, think again. The problem is much deeper than just a few houses. People need food, shelter, health and comfort, all of which could be provided for everyone but is reserved for those above a certain class. As long as capitalism exists people will be forced to find harmful means of sustaining themselves.