“Under my strategy, working with states, we will BAN urban camping wherever possible,” Donald Trump said on his campaign website, Agenda 47. “Violators of these bans will be arrested, but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services if they are willing to be rehabilitated. Many of them don’t want that, but we will give them the option.
“We will then open up large parcels of inexpensive land, bring in doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and drug rehab specialists, and create tent cities where the homeless can be relocated and their problems identified. We will open up our cities again, make them livable and make them beautiful.”
U.S. congressional Democrats, led by several from Oregon, are already pushing the current presidential administration to chart a different course eschewing legal penalties and large sanctioned encampments. They say the solutions to homelessness are found in housing, services and compassion. However, Democrats and nonpartisan electeds with a progressive veneer who stay closer to Portland and Salem don’t seem to toe the same party line.
While the tone is decidedly different, Portlanders may notice some striking similarities between Trump’s and the city of Portland’s respective plans to address homelessness. In recent years, the city made numerous attempts to create laws criminalizing sleeping in public while encouraging diversion and connection to treatment. It also began working to build large encampments to centralize homeless populations, with the stated goal of connecting homeless people with services and improving livability throughout the city.
In a video explaining his Temporary Alternative Shelter Sites, or TASS, on March 8, 2023, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s approach to removing visible homelessness and centralizing people is nearly indistinguishable from his more antagonistic heel.
“Currently, there are hundreds of unsanctioned camps spread out across virtually every neighborhood of our city, over a massive 146 square mile area,” Wheeler said. “This makes it impossible to hire enough outreach workers to meaningfully connect people to services, including shelter.
“Far too many in our city are living in dangerous and squalid conditions. We need a workable, and compassionate, means to connect people to whatever services they need to get off and stay off the streets.”
Despite the rhetoric, the centralized sites are not simply places for homeless residents to go due to local leaders’ benevolence. The Portland City Council unanimously passed an ordinance in May banning sleeping on public property under threat of $100 civil penalties and up to seven days in jail.
The city also began sweeping more than 3,000 homeless encampments per year coming out of the pandemic. The city sustained its sweep-centric approach by launching the Street Services Coordination Center in 2022 during its “90-day reset” in Old Town, an intensive sweep campaign the city has since replicated elsewhere. The coordination center and its outreach workers relocate homeless residents to other temporary shelters, including the TASS and Safe Rest Village, or SRV, sites.
Similar to Trump’s “large parcels of land” to “identify problems,” the city of Portland opened outdoor shelters in neighborhoods distant from the downtown core, saying people can be connected to social workers and substance use supports at the sites, particularly those City Commissioner Dan Ryan often refers to as “service resistant.” If a person refuses shelter for any reason when offered twice, the city enforces the penalties, as of July 1. (The Multnomah County Sheriff ordered deputies not to book people arrested under the city ordinance on July 30, saying, “arresting and booking our way out of the housing crisis is not a constructive solution.”)
While some federal Democrats from Oregon diverge substantially from Wheeler and Trump’s ideas, Wheeler isn’t the only ostensibly Democratic local or state leader in Oregon finding himself adjacent to Trump’s approach.
Just two days after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson — which determined it is constitutional for cities to issue penalties against homeless residents for sleeping in public even when they don’t have an alternative — local mayoral candidate and current City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez called on the Oregon legislature to “remove the barriers created by HB 3115 and its progeny,” on June 30. The Oregon Legislature codified HB 3115, now ORS 195.530, in 2021, which dictates any local laws regulating sitting, lying, sleeping or keeping warm and dry outdoors on public property “must be objectively reasonable with regards to people experiencing homelessness.”
“If the state and courts continue to interfere with cities ability to govern their streets, we will continue to be overrun by migratory homeless and encampments, especially as cities in other states are allowed to push it out of their communities,” Gonzalez said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Trump’s comments offer a harmony to Gonzalez’s refrain.
“Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares, surrendered to the homeless, the drug addicted, and the violent and dangerously deranged,” Trump said. “We are making the many suffer for the whims of a deeply unwell few.”
In a post days after the court’s decision, Gonzalez doubled down, echoing Trump’s sentiment — almost exactly.
“Our once beautiful cities/state are overwhelmed by encampments,” Gonzalez said. “HB 3115 not only interferes with cities’ ability to keep their sidewalks and parks clean, but is part of a broader legislative trend that sends a terrible national message about Oregon and Portland — anything goes on city, state and federal land.”
Ryan joined Wheeler in the initial proposal to construct large, controversial compulsory encampments for homeless Portlanders in October 2022.
“It’s time to build, it’s time to innovate and it’s time to take some risk to get our city out of this ditch,” Ryan said at the time.
Ryan was also the only commissioner to vote in favor of Gonzalez’s failed draft amendment to the city’s anti-sleeping ordinance in April — a trigger clause that would immediately make it unlawful for any person to sleep on any public property or rights of way in the event the Supreme Court overturned Grants Pass v. Johnson and the state Legislature repealed ORS 195.530.
“The big challenge we will continue to face is convincing those who refuse services to say ‘yes’ and stop harming themselves and others in our city,” Ryan told KOIN on June 28.
While Ryan focuses on “service resistance” as a substantial factor in the rise of homelessness — something Trump also argued — federal officials from Oregon and Gov. Tina Kotek are more zeroed in on the severe lack of affordable housing Portland and the state suffer from.
Per 100 rental households, Oregon has just 44 available and affordable homes for people living below 50% median income, and just 26 for extremely low households, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In Portland, even a program intended to create affordable housing allows landlords to rent nearly 30% of its units within $6 of fair market rate, as Street Roots reported Aug. 7.
Building solutions
The municipal rhetoric and policy sit at ideological odds with Oregon’s U.S. Congressional Democrats. Elected federal officials who spoke to Street Roots were not eager to criticize local leaders, but to hear Oregon’s U.S. congressional Democrats tell it, the U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to solve the nation’s homelessness crisis. Further, encampment sweeps and using the criminal justice system against those with nowhere else to go are equally unlikely to solve it.
Led by Oregon Rep. Suzanne Bonamici and Sen. Ron Wyden, congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Joe Biden on July 12, urging his administration to advance evidence-based solutions and increase affordable housing availability to prevent and reduce homelessness in light of the Grants Pass v. Johnson decision.
“The United States Supreme Court, after this decision that I disagree with profoundly, isn’t going to fly out to Grants Pass or some part of Oregon and work on building the housing that’s needed,” Wyden told Street Roots.
The letter asks the Biden Administration to declare unsheltered homelessness a public health priority, defend the civil rights of homeless residents and those who serve them, and streamline processes providing resources to local governments to expedite moving people into stable housing.
Federal leaders’ approach to homelessness stands in stark contrast to local elected officials, who remain focused on passing ordinances removing people from public spaces and into temporary shelters — or clearing the boundaries to doing so, in the case of state officials. Oregon law gives some guidelines for cities enacting anti-sleeping ordinances, but local and state Republicans and Democrats called to tweak or repeal ORS 195.530 in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court’s decision.
Oregon is not alone in its public space race. The letter noted at least 17 states introduced legislation making homelessness a crime since 2021, adding that punitive measures do not solve homelessness or address its causes.
“What the Grants Pass decision does is it basically says it’s just fine to push a big challenge, a significant problem, off to another corner of the community,” Wyden said.
With the exception of Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-Oregon), Wyden and Bonamici were joined by all Oregon congressional Democrats, including Sen. Jeff Merkley, Rep. Val Hoyle and Rep. Earl Blumenaur. Another 70 congressional Democrats from across the country joined in signing the letter. Salinas’ office said she was unable to review the letter before it was sent, but she will continue advocating for more resources to help end homelessness and ensure every Oregonian can find a safe, affordable place to live, according to Samuel Forbes, Salinas’ communications director.
The letter asked Biden to support effective and humane solutions to the homelessness crisis. It outlined how the lack of affordable housing, emergency rental assistance and tenant protections intersected with expiring pandemic relief measures and a persistent gap between income and housing costs. These factors led to a 12% increase in homelessness in 2023. That follows a 22% increase from 2020 to 2022, according to the national Point-in-Time count.
“Your Administration can make a difference by taking immediate action to give communities the resources and support they need to end homelessness,” the letter said. “Our priority must be on effective and humane solutions.”
The letter is endorsed by American Civil Liberties Union, National Alliance to End Homelessness, National Coalition for the Homeless, National Housing Law Project, National Low-Income Housing Coalition, Oregon Food Bank, Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, the National Homelessness Law Center, or NHLC, and others.
Wyden suggests working to provide resources through federal programs. He continues to implement parts of his 2021 Decent, Affordable, Safe Housing For All, or DASH Act, which provides rental assistance, housing vouchers and tax credits for renters.
“The homeless have civil rights as well, and to just be incarcerated for
homelessness just seems so inhumane and wrong to me.”— Oregon Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
“Research shows that Housing First policies are the best methods for transitioning people experiencing homelessness to stable, permanent housing and improving their overall quality of life,” the letter said.
Bonamici, who recently introduced the Turnkey Act seeking to fast-track converting underutilized buildings into shelters, told Street Roots her concerns only increased since the Grants Pass decision came down, and she remains focused on upholding the civil rights of homeless individuals. She sees putting people in jail as counterproductive.
“It’s not what they need,” Bonamici said. “It’s not going to help them. It’s going to create additional barriers, and it’s not going to help lift them out of poverty and get them the help they need.”
Acknowledging the immense challenges, Bonamici said investing in more shelters, affordable housing and treatment options are the keys to materially resolving homelessness.
“We all acknowledge that the challenge is there, but let’s do this in a way that is realistic and evidence-based and humane, rather than incarceration,” she said. “The solution to ending homelessness is more housing. That’s just pretty simple.”
Wyden, who is on the Senate Finance Committee, said his job is to marshal federal resources to local communities so the communities can do their job and increase the housing supply.
“The time is now, after the court decision, to produce a fresh start and a fresh blueprint for affordable housing,” Wyden said.
‘The homeless have civil rights as well’
While Oregon is one of few states with a law protecting homeless residents, analysis from the NHLC shows a national, coordinated push to criminalize homelessness at the state and local levels. Led in part by the Cicero Institute, a think tank founded in 2016 by surveillance technology billionaire Joe Lonsdale, cities and states across the country continue to pass laws criminalizing homelessness.
Alongside Peter Thiel, a major donor to Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, Lonsdale founded the surveillance technology company Palantir — which is used by the Department of Defense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and several police departments, according to a 2023 Vice feature.
In an amicus brief filed March 4 in support of Grants Pass, the Cicero Institute said it “has been at the forefront of homelessness reform, helping twenty states craft and pass legislation to compassionately and effectively address homelessness.”
After passing a statewide ban on encampments in Texas, the company crafted model legislation for cities and states to adopt, leveling civil and criminal penalties against homeless residents who violate anti-sleeping ordinances. The Cicero Institute template diverts funding from Housing First programs and reallocates the money to temporary state-run encampments and outreach teams to compel people into those encampments, according to the NHLC analysis.
While there is no evidence the Cicero Institute is actively lobbying in Oregon or Portland, Wheeler also justifies anti-sleeping ordinances by investing significant resources into ever-changing outreach teams meant to compel homeless residents into TASS, SRVs or other shelters — under threat of fines and jail time.
Bonamici said the concerns of people who live, work or have business downtown cannot be ignored. Still, the issue of homelessness can be solved in a humane, evidence-based way to offer more support, shelters, behavioral healthcare and treatment options without putting people in jail, Bonamici said.
“The homeless have civil rights as well, and to just be incarcerated for homelessness just seems so inhumane and wrong to me,” Bonamici said. “So let’s work together and find options that actually are going to help people, rather than make it harder for them to overcome the challenges that they’re facing.”
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2024 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 40
This article appears in August 14, 2024.