Art Rios will be honored at the National Health Care for the Homeless Council's national conference in Portland
Art Rios has long been a visible member of downtown Portland’s homeless population and an outspoken advocate for people experiencing homelessness.
In 2008, he was one of the leaders of the Homeless Liberation Front, a group of homeless people who camped, in protest, outside of City Hall for weeks, asking then-Mayor Tom Potter and the City Council to suspend the city’s sit-lie and camping ordinances until homeless people could find housing. He is part of Right 2 Dream Too’s leadership. During the 2012 Grand Floral Parade, he sat down in the middle of the parade route, holding a sign that said, “Housing Now, Homes have Hearts.”
Previously, he said, his activism had been antagonistic toward the city, the Police Bureau and the bureaucratic forces that affect homeless people.
Now, he is working within the system.
Rios, 45, serves on numerous boards and committees, including on A Home for Everyone’s coordinating board and Central City Concern’s board of directors and its Health Services Advisory Council, which he chairs. He is also a member of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council’s National Consumer Advisory Board.
He says his point of view and desire to see radical change in homeless and housing policy has not softened.
“I’m still radical in those meetings,” he said.
In recognition of the transformative changes in his life and community service, Rios will be awarded the council’s Ellen Dailey Award on June 1 during the council’s national conference in Portland.
Dailey lived in the Boston area and spent part of her life homeless. She suffered from numerous health problems and was passed from doctor to doctor. Her experiences caused Dailey to become an outspoken activist for better health care for homeless people, and she helped found the council’s National Consumer Advisory Board. She was known for having a formidable, charismatic presence and is considered instrumental in helping to create programs that ensured homeless people could have continuity of care and timely health care.
Rios met her twice at the council’s annual conferences.
“She was real,” he said. “She told you how it was. But she also gave you the tools to fight your own demons and told you, ‘You can get through this. You can get through your homelessness.’ She was a very inspirational woman.”
Rios, who spent 25 years of his life homeless and has overcome drug and alcohol addictions, shares Dailey’s belief that the best way for policymakers and elected officials to learn about homelessness – and craft better programs and public policy – is to listen to homeless people.
“We have the chance to educate people about homelessness and health care … and teach people about drug addiction and mental illness,” Rios said. “We deal with it on a daily basis.”
