Portland’s ban on sleeping in public took effect last Nov. 1. Since then, the city’s Impact Reduction Program swept over 6,000 encampments. Police assist in 16% of sweeps, according to Portland Police Bureau data.
Some city officials say the ban, which criminalizes unsheltered homelessness by imposing fines up to $100 or up to a week in jail on people for sleeping in public, connects homeless Portlanders to shelter. But many homeless Portlanders, advocates and the city’s own data indicate the shelter system — and associated attempts to coerce people into it — act as a barrier to stabilization, not an aid.
Mayor Keith Wilson’s spokesperson, Cody Bowman, previously issued a statement to Street Roots on the ban.
“Our public camping ordinance is a compassionate tool that saves lives and restores Portland’s values as a compassionate, livable city,” Bowman said. “And has helped hundreds accept shelter, many for the first time.”
Impact Reduction Program weekly reports show that only 308 out of 1,362 people accepted shelter when it was offered. That’s roughly 23%.
The Portland Police Bureau’s data shows 539 of the 1,397 people — less than 40% — accepted shelter offered by the PPB.
In total, around 31% of people actually accept shelter offered by city sweep staff and contractors or PPB.
Essential services — at what cost?
While there are critiques and concerns, most agree shelters provide some benefits, like providing people with essentials to take care of their basic needs, such as access to a bed, shower, laundry and food.
Thomas Pangburn, a homeless Portlander who has utilized shelters before, said having access to the bare necessities is important.
“I have the basic amenities that we should have,” Pangburn said. “Being able to clean yourself, being able to eat and you’re able to have somewhere safe to sleep.”
Pangburn, however, said shelters aren’t without their drawbacks. Theft in shelters is a particular concern for Pangburn — one that made it hard for him to ever feel completely safe during his stays at shelters.
“You just put your stuff in a garbage bag, put it underneath the bed, and you just hope that nobody wants your things,” Pangburn said. “Especially if you have nicer stuff, electronics or something, you have no way to really secure anything. And then if something disappears, oh well, it’s gone.”
Theft is an issue prevalent for people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness, Pangburn said. But the issue when it comes to shelters stems from theft often going unaddressed despite the security shelters are meant to provide.
“I had a couple buddies who actually did have some nicer things taken from them and they brought it to the staff’s attention,” Pangburn said. “They said, ‘Oh, okay, well, we’ll watch the cameras, and we’ll see what’s going on.’ But they never tell them who it was or what happened.”
Then, there’s the issue of restrictions and curfews, Pangburn points out. Despite the difficulties of life outside, the independence aspect is something Pangburn greatly values.
Dodger, another homeless Portlander who previously stayed at a tiny home village for a month, said the restrictions outweigh the benefits.
“I like having a hot shower and my own space,” Dodger said. “But they do room checks every day, and it felt intrusive.”
Going against the rules at shelters can result in people being banned without recourse. In some cases, past friction with shelter staff can create ongoing issues, homeless Portlanders told Street Roots. There can also be instances of favoritism or cliquiness.
“You’re not gonna have to make me go there because whoever it is that doesn’t like me, they’re not gonna expect me to be there,” Pangburn said. “I’m not gonna have to be there.”
Derek is a homeless Portlander who has been kicked out of a shelter before. He told Street Roots that he thinks the meticulous rules are pushing away the people who need the resources most.
“If it wasn’t for me being there, I’d be dead,” Derek said. “I mean, I had a hell of a thing going on — I was thankful and grateful — but then you kick me out? Come on, that’s why I’m still alive right now. Did that ever occur to you? You told it to me a hundred times — drilled into my head. Why can’t you figure that out too?”
The city of Portland claims it utilizes the shelter system alongside the Housing First approach to manage the homelessness crisis. The Housing First method prioritizes housing people before anything else and has shown to be the most effective response to homelessness, especially amongst people with co-occurring disorders.
But Sam Tsemberis said the city isn’t truly implementing Housing First by having shelter act as a stepping stone to stability. He would know, considering he is the creator of the model.
Tsemberis, Pathways to Housing founder, said barriers described by homeless Portlanders make stabilization even more difficult to achieve — especially for those with co-occurring disorders.
Tsemberis is Los Angeles-based but visited Portland a few months back, where he spoke with Wilson on how factors such as privacy, storage availability, relaxed rules, flexibility on curfews and shelter size all contribute to improving the experience of people utilizing these facilities.
He also suggested that considering the specifics of the populations you are serving — such as gender, age and family status — and focusing on having smaller shelters tailored to those individual groups may also improve things.
But, ultimately, Tsemberis said for some people, shelters simply aren’t a viable option.
“People don’t want to go to a shelter because they don’t want to leave all their stuff, they might have a pet with them, they might be a couple, they’ve been to shelters before and they were scary, it’s crowded situations, they are sometimes unsafe,” Tsemberis said. “Some shelters have all kinds of requirements and curfews. So there’s many different ways that a shelter is not a desirable option, and people would prefer to be taking their chances on the street (rather) than going to a shelter.”
Brandi Tuck is the executive director of Path Home, a shelter and organization that utilizes the Housing First model with homeless families with children. She agrees that standard congregate shelters can put additional stress on people with mental health disorders.
“Because they’re in these shared congregate settings, they have to create rules about ‘You can or cannot be here,’” Tuck said. “There’s lots of rules, and there’s lots of requirements, and there’s curfews, and there’s just a lot of things.
“The trauma brain — a brain that is in distress mode, in survival mode — can’t even understand the rules.”
An alternative vision to shelters
The family shelter at Path Home takes these factors into account and addresses them by utilizing a trauma-informed care approach.
“Trauma-informed care is basically the understanding of what’s going on in the brain when someone experiences something as stressful as homelessness,” Tuck said.
Path Home is the first shelter in Oregon planned with intentional trauma-informed design and architecture, Tuck said.
Things like the materials used in the architecture and the quality of the furniture all play a role.
“So, it’s things like a big connection to nature,” Tuck said. “We have real plants, indoors and outdoors, everywhere. It’s about natural materials — we use real wood floors. Lots of natural light. We have stone and water features.”
Privacy and comfort are also important factors that Path Home takes into account.
“All the families have their own individual private bedrooms with doors that lock, so they have true privacy,” Tuck said. “And they have real beds and real furniture and tables and chairs. They’re not sleeping on mats or cots.”
What do the people want? Permanent housing, obviously
“Ultimately, the challenge to any homeless issue is going to be access to affordable housing,” Tsemberis said.
Tuck agrees the focus right now should be on how to secure this resource permanently for people.
“And instead, we focus on ‘How many shelter beds do we have?’” Tuck said. “‘How many new shelter beds do we have? How many outreach workers do we have? How many street cleaners do we have?’ And those are not changing the lives of anyone. Those are allowing people to exist in a state of homelessness, but we’re not ending homelessness for people.”
As creator of the Housing First model, Tsemberis believes that being able to skip the shelter process altogether and transition into permanent housing as quickly as possible is especially important for people with co-occurring disorders.
“If we’ve learned anything from Housing First, (it) is that people don’t actually need to go to a shelter before they go into housing; they could just go right into housing,” Tsemberis said.
That is exactly why Housing First is designed to meet their needs.
“What it does is it takes a view that the best way to succeed with this group, in terms of helping them to improve their lives, is to operate the program without an agenda by the program, but have the program designed to follow the preferences and priorities of the people that we’re serving,” Tsemberis said.
The Housing First model works by providing people with housing and having them pay 30% of their income toward rent. The two primary requirements for people are adhering to the standard terms and conditions of the lease and agreeing to routine visits with program staff, Tsemberis said.
Studies conducted on the Housing First model have shown the program has particularly high housing retention rates, around 80%.
“All of this kind of attention to encampment and shelter and ‘what do we do,’ it’s really a bit of a distraction,” Tsemberis said. “Because the real plan to end homelessness needs to include access to housing.”
Dodger sees the city’s use of the camping ban and shelters as means for a quick clean up, rather than a stepping stone towards stabilization. Seeing multiple people end up back on the streets after months living in shelters has eroded his hope in the current system.
“Getting us off the street right now, immediately, is the only issue,” Dodger said. “Getting us permanent housing … I haven’t seen anything like that.”
Where to go from here
For Portland to succeed, Tsemberis believes the solution is using local taxes to fund housing vouchers and rent subsidies rather than emergency shelters.
“Because if you build emergency programs, you put money into emergency programs, you’re going to be running emergency services,” Tsemberis said.
Tuck and Tsemberis understand that ending homelessness will require investment no matter what, but that investment could be put towards resources that not only could address the homelessness crisis but also the affordable housing crisis that has been affecting Portland residents at large.
“Solving homelessness, even though you think it’s a big number, it’s nowhere near the actual number of people who need affordable housing,” Tsemberis said.
While the issues may seem too substantial to overcome, the solution is clear to Tuck.
“It is true that Portland does not have enough affordable housing, but it’s not true that Portland doesn’t have enough housing,” Tuck said. “There are 6,000 available apartments tonight in Portland, Oregon. They’re just not affordable to people who make very low incomes. The average shelter costs about $4,000 per person, per month. And you know what’s cheaper than that? Rent.”