Portland city government has no plans to relax sweep criteria in safer areas following emergency order
Mayor Ted Wheeler announced an emergency order prohibiting homeless encampments along an identified list of dangerous roadways on Feb. 4, drawing immediate criticism from homeless advocates.
The order came on the heels of a Portland Bureau of Transportation report finding that 70% of all traffic deaths in 2021 — 19 people in total — were unhoused. Enacted Feb. 4, the order prohibits camping along high-speed roads and prioritizes removal of homeless encampments in these areas.
Advocates, other local leaders and people set to be swept from camps along high-traffic corridors throughout the city said they were not consulted by the mayor.
Rich Chatman, the mayor’s interim director of communications who responded to questions via email, did not rule out involvement from the business community in the emergency order via “Action Tables” hosted by Wheeler’s “Strategic Innovation Group.” The group is led by mayoral aide and former mayor Sam Adams. Adams recently faced criticism for a leaked proposal suggesting the city build several mass shelters and staff them with unarmed Oregon National Guard personnel.
“The Mayor and his team have facilitated stakeholder engagement activities through the use of action table meetings and community engagement opportunities,” Chatman said. “While the emergency declaration is not typically seen as a collaborative initiative, the work to (sic) finding solutions to the emergency will involve all of the City and County stakeholders who know this work the best. The Mayor and his team are very aware that collaboration with these stakeholders will give us the very best chance at successfully finding safe sheltering options for all of those living on our streets.”
Street Roots obtained emails promoting recent Action Tables showing many who receive invitations to the Action Tables are members of the business community, including Portland Business Alliance staff.
“If Mayor Wheeler wanted to solve these safety issues at the root he would use his emergency declarations to, at the very least, fund PBOT’s High Crash Network projects and create a rental cap for the City.”
— Stop the Sweeps
Portland Homeless Advocacy Group
Chatman said while there is “extensive engagement” with unhoused Portlanders on new shelter models, unhoused Portlanders living in high-traffic corridors — those most affected by the order — were not consulted when the policy was in development.
Unhoused Portlanders living in high-traffic corridors told Street Roots they selected the areas for a variety of reasons, though a lack of alternative was a common thread. A May 2021 policy targeting high-impact areas (residential areas, sidewalks, near business entrances or schools, etc.) strengthened existing impact assessment criteria used by the city’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program, or HUCIRP, when determining if an encampment should be swept.
Chatman said the city will not reduce enforcement in high-impact areas to accommodate those displaced from high-traffic corridors, areas less likely to be swept by the city prior to Wheeler’s Feb. 4 order. Instead, Chatman said city and county leaders will pursue a “wide variety of shelter options to accommodate what is certainly not a ‘one size fits all’ problem/solution.”
Chatman did not directly answer a question asking if the mayor factored in the unpopularity of congregate shelters among unhoused Portlanders when listing them as an alternative housing option during the press conference, but said the city wants to meet people “where they are at.”
“The (Multnomah County) Joint Office of Homeless Services has committed to providing a consistent inventory of shelter beds for residents who’s (sic) campsites have been, for safety reasons, deemed critical for removal,” Chatman said. “It is our expectation that future relaxation of COVID distancing restrictions will free up several hundred shelter beds by returning the shelter capacities to pre-COVID limits. Additionally, at the state level, mayors across the state recently asked the Governor and the State Legislature to provide additional resources to expand shelters and supportive services.”
When asked what other options are available aside from existing congregate shelter beds, which have uncertain availability, Chatman referred Street Roots to the answer quoted above, and added the mayor instructed staff to “leave no stone unturned.”
At the time of publication, COVID-19 restrictions had not been relaxed in congregate shelter settings, and the city had identified only three of six new Safe Rest Village sites, though one identified site on Northwest Naito Parkway is slated to be filled almost entirely by people from an existing tiny home village the city is closing.
Other comments provided to Street Roots by Chatman echoed Wheeler’s statements during the press conference introducing the order on Feb. 4.
“Our most vulnerable Portlanders are disproportionately affected by traffic-related injuries and death,” Wheeler said during the press conference. “These are devastating losses of life, these aren’t just statistics, these are our neighbors, our sons, our daughters — they’re members of our community.”
Council involvement, advocate criticism
Wheeler said the order, a response to the PBOT report, was intended to bolster the safety of vulnerable Portlanders, though he also said during the press conference that his office had been planning the ordinance prior to the report’s Feb. 4 release.
Despite Wheeler saying the order was in the works for weeks, Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who oversees PBOT, said she learned about the emergency order via media reports on Feb. 4. PBOT separately told Street Roots their office was not consulted for the mayor’s order.
The announcement was met with criticism by homeless advocates, who say the emergency declaration, despite statements linking it to traffic deaths, is still bypassing established strategies for alleviating homelessness and also fails to address systemic causes contributing to a rise in unhoused populations, such as rising rent, lack of affordable housing and poverty.
“The root of the problem is lack of accessible housing and underfunded transportation infrastructure,” homeless advocacy group Stop the Sweeps told Street Roots in an email. “If Mayor Wheeler wanted to solve these safety issues at the root he would use his emergency declarations to, at the very least, fund PBOT’s High Crash Network projects and create a rental cap for the City.”
The announcement comes when homelessness, an ongoing crisis in Portland, has reached an unprecedented level. According to the 2019 Multnomah County Point-In-Time count, 2,037 people were unsheltered and living outdoors, a number that was likely below actual numbers by a wide margin at the time, and is expected to rise substantially when the 2022 count is completed. The 2021 count was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The increase in homelessness has come with an increase in complaints from the business community, who contend unhoused people are negatively affecting business by hassling passers-by and contributing to a potentially unsafe environment.
While homelessness has become a pressing issue, advocates say measures like sweeps still fail to take into account the experience of unhoused people.
“Current research, anecdotes, and personal experiences observe that sweeps can be highly traumatic events, during which, people being swept lose stability along with their personal and survival items,” Stop the Sweeps said. “There are multiple cases in the Portland area of people losing vital medication and subsequently dying.”
Wheeler said efforts would be made to ensure those being removed from camps would be connected with shelter beds, though the ability of shelters to absorb individuals from sweeps is still in question.
The strategy of displacing camps with the intention of putting people in a shelter is often not successful.
“Many times when people are offered shelter they either do not qualify, or there isn’t room, or they won’t be guaranteed shelter after that night,” Stop the Sweeps said. “Many people have animal companions and partners that wouldn’t be able to stay with them if they went to a shelter. It’s obviously a more viable option to pick up what you can and move a half mile away than to try your luck.”
Wheeler said the emergency declaration was not crafted in response to recent polls commissioned by special interest groups People for Portland and the Portland Business Alliance, but said that the polls indicated support for the effort. The surveys, which did not include data for the housing status of respondents, found voters polled favored more extreme measures for addressing homelessness like forcing unhoused Portlanders into shelters.
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