Portland’s Camping Ban is Effectively Suspended Until February 3

• Photo by Adam Wickham

Camp at your leisure, Portland! Until Tuesday at least.

The city’s anti-camping ordinance—currently under challenge in court—is on ice for the next week, courtesy of Commissioner Dan Saltzman.

Saltzman, the city’s housing commissioner (for now), penned an email to 16 local entities last week, asking them to hold off on enforcing anti-camping laws or conducting sweeps, the Mercury has learned.

It’s not a warm-hearted détente in Portland’s ongoing struggles dealing with homelessness. Instead, Saltzman and Portland Housing Bureau officials want to make sure the county’s homeless aren’t going into hiding as an important effort begins: the every-other-year count of homeless people sleeping on the streets.

The count officially began last night, and continues until Tuesday. In that time, outreach workers and volunteers are combing alcoves, overpasses, and popular camp spots to get a picture of how many people in the county are sleeping outside. (Because the study is technically a one-night snapshot, they’re now asking people if they slept outside last night, January 28). The 2013 count found 2,869 people were “literally homeless” up almost 140 from 2011.

The effort is made more difficult if police and other public employees are rousting encampments, making arrests for camping, and taking people’s things. So Saltzman’s asked city bureaus, county law enforcement, Metro, the Port of Portland, and Union Pacific to lay off. Only Union Pacific, which has its own security force, didn’t affirm the requests, according to the housing bureau’s Shannon Singleton.

“It’s really important to us to get an accurate count,” says Brendan Finn, Saltzman’s chief of staff. “We don’t know who schedules what, when.”

Portland Police Bureau chief spokesperson Sgt. Pete Simpson confirms the bureau’s on board.

“We’ll still obviously respond to incidents,” he notes. “We’re going to protect the public and respond to crime.”

Here’s Saltzman’s “URGENT REMINDER”:

From: Commissioner Saltzman
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 11:03 AM
To: Singleton, Shannon
Subject: URGENT REMINDER: Suspension of enforcement for Homeless Street Count

As you know, the Homeless Street Count is an effort to capture a snapshot of the numbers, characteristics, and needs of people experiencing homelessness in Multnomah County. This is an additional reminder that the next biannual Homeless Street Count is scheduled for the week of January 28-February 3, 2015. To ensure that the count is as accurate as possible, we are requesting that all entities in Multnomah County that enforce the anti-camping ordinance or conduct homeless camp clean-ups suspend enforcement beginning tomorrow, January 21, to cover the week prior to and during the count (January 21 – February 3, 2015).

I believe most of you have already been in touch with Shannon Singleton of the Portland Housing Bureau to confirm your participation. If you have any questions please contact her at Shannon.Singleton@portlandoregon.gov or by phone at (503) 823-4978.

Again, we appreciate your support for this important effort.

Sincerely,

Dan Saltzman

Update, February 4: The Housing Bureau has asked us to stress that Shannon Singleton, named in Saltzman’s e-mail, is not the best contact if you have questions about this. You can contact bureau spokesperson Martha Calhoon at Martha.Calhoon@portlandoregon.gov, or 503.823.3239.