Portland City Council last week unanimously passed an ordinance on homelessness put forward by Commissioner Dan Ryan. While the ordinance instructs the city to create six Safe Rest Villages, the majority of the ordinance is focused on how the city conducts sweeps. These are my takeaways:
• The most important audience for these refined guidelines is unhoused people, so City Council needs to communicate the guidelines as clearly as possible to unhoused people.
• While the ordinance more clearly defines how the city decides where to sweep, plenty is still ambiguous. Again, the most important audience is unhoused people who need to know what is fuzzy and what is clear.
• The ordinance defines areas where camps are less likely — and not more likely — to be swept. That said, we all need to be watchful that it’s not misapplied.
• There are two very important points in the ordinance: that people will not be forced into Safe Rest Villages, and that the city has to exhaust efforts to improve conditions at a particular camp before a sweep is instigated. Keep these in your back pocket.
I’ll delve in.
Ryan’s policy director, Mark Bond, brought staff from all five City Council offices together to create the ordinance as one link in a necklace of policies and court decisions. Those include the Shelter to Housing Continuum the City Council passed in the spring that, among other things, set out land where villages can be sited and a vague bill passed by the Oregon Legislature that orders cities to adopt reasonable laws regarding sleeping outside. Hovering behind all this is the important appellate court decision, Martin v. Boise, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court: If a city does not provide enough adequate shelter to accomodate everyone who is houseless, it is cruel and inhumane punishment to criminalize activities that sustain human live, such as sleeping and resting in outdoor spaces.
The new city ordinance defines the land where sweeps will be “deprioritized.” I should note that I use the term “sweep” because that’s the parlance most commonly used among unhoused people that experience the removal of their camps by the city. The city uses the term “clean-ups.”
Clearly communicating the rules around sweeps to unhoused people is important because people have the right to know what policies they are dealing with. When people don’t know when, where or why they are getting swept, that arbitrariness creates stress. The 2008 Anderson Agreement set up the rules for how far in advance people need to be notified that their camp is going to be swept, and what happens to their possessions. The Oregon Law Center pursued this lawsuit on behalf of a number of plaintiffs (including Street Roots’ board member and vendor Leo Rhodes) to force more clarity on sweeps. The Anderson Agreement declares that the city post written notification that it intends to sweep a camp anywhere from 48 hours to 10 days, and photograph and store all items for 30 days. While the city does store belongings at a warehouse, I have yet to meet someone who retrieved their things.
There’s less teeth in the new city policy because it is still ambiguous; a person can be swept — it’s just less likely. One can guess that this means that there’s some kind of formula and that camps in these deprioritized areas have a lower score — but it’s opaque to the people for whom this matters the most, the campers.
City Council must make a statement directly to unhoused people. A communique. What do unhoused people need to know? Is the message that they are safer to live in this space? How much safer?
And here is a dollop of unfortunate truth: While clear guidelines are absolutely important, too many people in our region weaponize information against unhoused people. The office that conducts sweeps manages upward of a thousand complaints every week. (It’s worth pausing to note that while the city structures this antagonism, there’s a lot of goodwill that the city and county should uplift. Throughout the pandemic and also recent heat waves, mutual aid effort fanned out across the city to support unhoused neighbors). Will people use the criteria to push further, in particular, pushing for sweeps outside the areas that have been “deprioritized.”
The policy, of course, isn’t written that way — in fact, Bond, of Ryan’s office, made clear that they painstakingly wrote "deprioritizated” and not “prioritized.” But painters know that white space lends meaning to the painting. What is defined also reveals what’s not defined.
In other words, we need to watch that camp sweeps don’t increase in the areas that aren’t listed as deprioritized — in particular, parks, natural areas and door stoops. Likewise, once supported by the city, Safe Rest Villages must not be used to round people up, criminalizing all the people outside the walls, so to speak. Thankfully, this ordinance makes that clear: “Referral to a Safe Rest Village is voluntary for the referred person and the referral decision is not a factor in the determination of the Impact Reduction Program under directive of this ordinance.”
That is an important gain.
Likewise, there’s another gain with which to hold the city accountable: “The Impact Reduction Program will conduct removals of high-impact encampments only after exhausting other attempts to reduce impacts.”
This is strong language. The city must exhaust all other attempts. That must include providing adequate waste removal services to everyone. Let’s hold the city accountable.
Any policy is only as good as it is implemented, so it’s important that we understand how this policy can be used for the good of unhoused people, and remain vigilant toward misapplications.
Details of the city’s new policy on sweeps
These are the areas that the new city ordinance declares “de-prioritized” for city sweeps. It leaves a lot of ambiguity around areas that are not part of the concrete jungle:
- At least 150 feet away from any preschool, elementary or secondary school, and any other child care facility as defined in ORS 329A.250.
- At least 100 feet away from a high school.
- Outside a designated environmental overlay zone, natural area, scenic overlay zone, or flood hazard area as adopted by the city.
- Outside a wildfire hazard area as designated by the city and other government partners.
- At least 50 feet away from the property lines of a developed park.
- At least 10 feet away from the entrance to a residential structure.
- At least 10 feet away from the primary entrance or emergency exit of any business or commercial property.