Between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025, the city hired city contractor Rapid Response Bio Clean to conduct at least 8,764 sweeps, where workers confiscate the belongings of people living outside and make them move elsewhere. On a rainy day in November, Portlanders shared their experiences with sweeps.
Don
On the day before Thanksgiving, city workers removed the encampment where Don and four other people were staying.
He said they took everything. Homeless since 2019, it’s not the first time Don has lost all his stuff.
“Every piece of my clothing,” he said. “Repeatedly.”
Often, he said, he has only enough time to grab a backpack and his playful one-year-old pitbull, King.
Losing everyday objects makes living outside even more challenging, but Don added that he doesn’t mind losing “just stuff.” But it’s a different story when workers hired by the city to clear away encampments take meaningful belongings.
“There’s some things — they don’t know what it is,” said Don, 46. “They couldn’t possibly know what it is. Something that could possibly be somebody’s last memento of what they have from somebody — that’s the stuff that’s hurtful.”
A week after Thanksgiving, Don had some of his belongings back. He was able to recover the belongings city workers hadn’t tossed out and set up his shelter again in a dry spot under an overpass. By the next day, city workers had posted a notice in his new spot, warning of another sweep.
“They’re coming,” he said. “They’re going to come tear our shit apart again.”
Yeshua
Yeshua has been swept five times. During three of them, he said he was in the middle of moving in an attempt to comply with posted notices of sweeps. City workers took his belongings anyway.
“It’s not fun, but I understand — for the most part,” he said.
Family heirlooms were among the things he most regrets losing in sweeps.
“Getting it back is not really feasible,” Yeshua said. “I don’t have a car or anything.”
Above his tent was a posting warning of another imminent sweep. Yeshua said he could move ahead of that happening, “maybe.”
“I’m sick right now,” he said. “I’m trying to lay down so I can get better.”
Ron
Ron was homeless in Northern California for 20 years before moving to Portland.
He used to do odd jobs, cleaning windows and was able to keep an apartment briefly, but he’s no longer able to work.
“I’ve only got one hand now,” he said, gesturing with his arm while standing under a Southeast Portland bridge in the pouring rain.
He’s on disability, but hasn’t been able to access those payments because he doesn’t have identification.
The most recent sweep Ron experienced was two days earlier. He didn’t lose any belongings because he already had them in a rolling garbage can, to keep them dry.
“I’m so used to being swept,” he said. “I ain’t into making crimes and breaking into cars and all that. It’s just that I’ve got no place to go. I’m just trying to hang out and stay alive.”
Robbie
Robbie, 40, has been living outside on and off since he was 16, ranging between Portland and Seattle. But he didn’t start hearing about sweeps until he was 32.
“Back when I was growing up, you never had a sweep,” he said. “The homeless took care of the homeless. They looked after each other.”
He stood on a sidewalk in a Portland downpour. Inside a tent next to him was his street daughter, 20, who was working to pack up her belongings. Workers with Rapid Response stood nearby, while a Rapid Response truck idled.
“She just recently adopted me as her dad,” he said.
Robbie said the sweeps derail people’s efforts to gain stability.
“That’s not helping them,” he said, gesturing to several tents along the sidewalk. “Say, for instance, they just got their ID, they just got their paperwork, everything they need. And then here comes Rapid Response sweeping them up and then they lose their stuff in storage. And then where are they? Right back where they began.”
Michael
Michael has experienced dozens of sweeps during the decade he’s lived outside.
The first one displaced him from a spot where he’d lived for over a year.
“I kept it clean,” he said. “My neighbors liked me. It was way out of the way.”
Michael was able to gather some of his belongings, but he lost most of what he had.
“Everyone thinks we’re homeless, but we’re not really homeless until we lose our tent,” he said, peeking out from under a tarp in a steady rain. “Now we’re homeless. Because I can’t go anywhere to dry off or lay down. I’m constantly in the elements now.”
Mama Kat and her husband, Bill
Mama Kat estimated that she’s lost all her belongings in sweeps about 20 times.
“Everything,” she said. “Even my security puppies. They were six months old.”
During one, she said, workers took her brother-in-law’s ashes.
“They refused to give them back,” she said. “He was closer to me than my own brother was.”
Mama Kat just celebrated her 50th birthday. She and her husband, Bill, each sat in a wheelchair rolled into a doorway to stay out of the rain.
She said there was a stretch of time when she was living on the streets downtown that workers swept her “daily.”
“It’s like shaking the rug out from under you,” she said. “When you’re still sitting on it.”
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This article appears in January 7, 2026.