Opinion | Republican-led legislatures roll out bans and government-sanctioned camps that look eerily similar to Wheeler’s plan
The policy bans camping, citing homeless people with misdemeanors and ordering them to go to newly built public camps — or jail. Funding is redirected from permanently supportive housing to these public camps.
Sound like Portland?
It's actually policy drafted by the Austin-based Cicero Institute and pushed by a number of states with Republican governors and Republican-led legislatures. While legislators in some states are proposing this legislation in an upcoming session, Texas, Missouri and Tennessee all now have such laws on the books.
Tennessee pushes the ban to a draconian extreme, making it a felony for people to set up camps while homeless, adding additional barriers to achieving housing and employment. This also disenfranchises people experiencing homelessness from voting.
An additional angle of this Cicero Institute policy is to withdraw funding from local governments that refuse cooperation with the state legislation on bans, camps and more. Portland doesn’t need that push from the outside, willingly imposing this policy locally, pushing to garner funding from the county that would usually be used for rent assistance and other supportive housing strategies to keep people housed or house them from the streets.
While what’s happening in Portland is still vague (“bans” are not defined in terms of enforcement and citation level, for example) this simply allows City Council the wiggle room to claim this is not the criminalization of homelessness. The Cicero Institute defines “outreach” in the policy it pushes out as involving a police officer.
Jerry Jones, national field director for the National Alliance to End Homelessness, explained to me that “frankly, Portland shocked us that there would be a citywide camping ban.” While blue cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and Portland might be influencing each other more than drawing from the Cicero Institute, they are rolling out similar policies as the ones pushed in red states.
I urge you to track this rightward tilt with me. It’s reactive, dangerous and clearly reckless too. Commissioner-elect Rene Gonzalez is spreading false connections between shootings and camps via his social media, and as of press time, he still hadn't removed the falsehood, despite adding a “clarification” invalidating his initial point.
Angered by what he called “so-called experts” describing him as “inhumane,” Mayor Ted Wheeler told a Portland Business Alliance crowd, “at some point for me, I’ll take common sense over expertise.” This was reminiscent of then-President Donald Trump's statement when explaining why he would eschew expert advice.
“They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me,” Trump said.
In the new year, I will keep writing about effective strategies around the state while also tracking these national trends.
It’s easy to feel trapped in the fog of the Northwest as if what happens here is our own isolated situation. Instead, we need to see clearly how Portland influences and is influenced by policy that has a sharp rightward tilt.
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