AT 9:30 LAST WEDNESDAY morning, June 11, homeless people
filled every seat around the edge of the city council chambers.
One woman wore an “I’m Homeless and I Vote!” pin and everyone held
small black-and-white postcards. As part of the continuing protest
against the city’s controversial anti-camping and sit-lie ordinances
(which make it illegal to sit or sleep on downtown streets at night),
homeless advocacy groups Sisters of the Road and Street Roots asked Portlanders to write cards demanding the city repeal the two
homeless-targeting laws. Two weeks after they began collecting, the
groups arrived at city hall during the open council meeting to present
their supportive bounty: 1,950 cards.
“Our city’s council—you, the guidepost of our
community—admits that we do not have enough low-income housing
units or shelter beds to house everyone who sleeps outside,” said
Sisters of the Road community organizer Patrick Nolen, as supporters
unfurled long chains of postcards around the council chambers and
through the audience. “Yet we continue to criminalize people for merely
meeting basic human needs: sleep and rest.”
The months-long sit-lie protest has created a feeling of solidarity
among Portland’s homeless community and turned some homeless people
into political activists. Laura Brown traveled across town to represent
the members of homeless encampment Dignity Village, saying she would
never forget the hardship of sleeping on downtown streets. “[The
police] come and nudge you with their feet and say, ‘Get up or we’ll
ticket you.’ So you get up but there is nowhere to go, so you wander
around the streets with your bedroll,” she said.
A homeless man named Randy noted dryly that the police allowed
“normal people” to camp out on the street for the Rose Parade “but they
never let the homeless sleep on the streets. They want downtown
Portland to look like Lake Oswego.”
As the homeless advocacy groups meet with city council members this
month to discuss repealing the ordinances, the council is split in
opinion. Two members, Sam Adams and Dan Saltzman, support the
ordinances, meanwhile Randy Leonard does not support the sit-lie
ordinance and Nick Fish is undecided. “I won’t take a position on this
until I have met with all the stakeholders,” Fish says.
Both Amanda Fritz and Charles Lewis, the two candidates in
November’s city commissioner election run-off, oppose the measure, so
the council could be facing a tight vote in the fall.