Editor's note: This story originally appeared in the Jan. 25 edition of Street Roots. Since publishing, Multnomah County opened severe weather shelters an additional time, on Jan. 29, and closed them Jan. 30. This instance is not discussed in the article.
As temperatures drop, homeless Portlanders struggle to stay dry and warm, while Multnomah County’s severe weather shelters have remained largely closed.
Over a month into a cold Portland winter — nighttime temperatures were at or below freezing nine times in December and two times in the first three weeks of January — Multnomah County’s severe weather shelters have opened for only two nights, Dec. 22 and Dec. 23.
According to the county, as of Dec. 24, severe weather shelters open when any of the following conditions are forecasted to persist for four or more hours between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m.: temperatures of 25 degrees or below, snow accumulation of an inch or more, or temperatures at or below 32 degrees with an inch or more of “driving rain.”
The county updated guidelines Dec. 24 at 8 a.m. to remove “severe wind chills or extreme temperature fluctuations” as a reason to open emergency shelters.
In practice, the guidelines mean even temperatures at or below freezing for an entire night won’t trigger severe weather shelters alone, nor would a forecasted nighttime low of 26 degrees without precipitation, nor would wind chills below 25 degrees.
The county maintains the guidelines for when emergency shelters open are adequate, while advocates say the county’s restrictions are arbitrary at best and negligent at worst.
“On the last night of the most recent severe weather activation, Dec. 23 through the morning of Dec. 24, more than 1,000 people found warmth at the shelters,” Denis Theriault, Multnomah County deputy communications director, said.
In line with county guidelines, those 1,000 people were left to make due during the cold holiday when the National Weather Service recorded temperatures as low as 33 degrees in Portland on Dec. 25.
Policy meets impact
When overnight temperatures are expected to drop below 32 degrees for four hours or longer, the Joint Office of Homeless Services may issue a “cold weather alert,” which does prompt officials to make some limited additional resources available.
"When a cold weather advisory is issued, some limited additional sheltering resources become available,” Theriault said. “The advisory prompts an alert issued by 211 that includes all available sheltering resources on a night when a cold weather advisory is issued. In addition, the Joint Office coordinates with outreach providers and other groups to distribute life-saving cold weather gear, just as is done during a severe winter weather event."
A “cold weather alert,” however, does not mean officials activate all available emergency resources for homeless Portlanders.
“Ultimately, City of Portland and Multnomah County officials meet together to discuss those weather conditions — consulting with Emergency Management, Health Department, County Human Services and Joint Office experts — and then the City and County jointly decide on shelter plans as needed,” Theriault explained.
To advocates and homeless Portlanders, the high threshold officials use to determine when to open emergency shelters is inhumane — and dangerous.
“I experienced frostbite, superficial frostbite, on my hands and my feet,” Daniel Smoker, a homeless Portlander with visibly frostbitten hands, said. “You feel like you’re okay, ‘I’ll just stick it out and warm up here in a minute.’ But you’re not okay. It’s just barely below freezing and that’s where you can still get tissue damage.”
To prevent death due to hypothermia and cold-related injuries, Smoker supports more availability of cold weather shelters.
“The (Oregon) Convention Center was open for extreme weather, and I think that’s good,” Smoker said. “More stuff like that. Just like a warming area, like a place where you can maybe (go), just for a couple days, while the weather is at its worst.”
Amanda Jensen, Portland Street Medicine physician assistant and medical care coordinator, said cold-related illnesses and injuries can be difficult for homeless Portlanders to avoid in extreme cold.
“Hypothermia is really just a balance of heat created versus heat lost,” Jensen said. “So if we think about what our bodies can do to create heat, it’s pretty limited.”
Jensen said it’s especially difficult to help people with disabilities given the restrictions on shelter and needed resources.
“There still isn’t a resource that I, as a medical professional, can tap and be like ‘Oh, for my 72-year-old guy, can I please get him into a warming shelter that would suit his needs now?’” Jensen said. “And I think that that’s just a little bit of a deficit in terms of, like, are we actually considering people’s health? Because if so, we can use science to really justify an intervention.”
Life or death
Theriault said there were no hypothermia-related deaths on record during the time the severe weather shelters were open. However, he was not able to confirm if any deaths occurred while severe weather shelters were closed.
Concerns about homeless Portlanders dying during severe cold are palpable for Mandi Ruscher, a nurse practitioner at Outside In Medical Clinic, who said one of their patients died last winter.
“In our last winter, unfortunately, we were notified that a patient of ours had died,” Ruscher said. “And he died within his homeless community, and the people that told us what happened, that were there when it happened, said that he was asking for a blanket and nobody had one to give him. This is not something that we should have to be discussing, but we are.
“Unfortunately, lack of access to shelter does cause death. I mean, we have many homeless deaths, and many are related to lack of shelter, lack of warmth.”
Ruscher said the county’s threshold for emergency shelters doesn’t properly account for all factors homeless Portlanders face.
“I think that in the winter months, we need to have a lower threshold to have safer spaces,” Ruscher said. “We have a threshold for what might be okay for the human body to be outside. But does this individual have a tent that they’re sleeping in? What do the winds look like? Is it wet outside?”
Sandra Comstock, cofounder of Hygiene4All Hub, or H4A, said accessibility to severe weather shelters is crucial because they allow walk-ins, while many standard shelters do not.
“You have to go through gatekeepers,” Comstock said of standard shelters, adding it took three months to get one of her friends into a standard shelter.
Rob Rutledge-Shryock, Portland Street Medicine executive director of operations, also said county guidelines aren’t in line with homeless Portlanders’ needs.
“The county has a defined line of when it’s severe weather, and something like that probably does have to exist,” Rutledge-Shryock said. “But for people that we work with, it’s hard through the whole winter.”
Sweeping priorities
Comstock also said city-ordered sweeps, which often lead to homeless Portlanders’ belongings being seized, further endanger them during severe weather. If people lose cold weather resources due to sweeps, they are at a greater risk of developing a cold weather injury or illness such as frostbite or hypothermia.
“Just this last week, I sent two people to the hospital with hypothermia because it wasn’t quite cold enough for the shelters to be open,” Comstock told Street Roots in early January. “Why did they have hypothermia? Because they had lost their tents. They were sitting around in soggy bedding and clothing and didn’t have anything dry. Every time we get tents, they are out the door immediately, and that’s a matter of life and death for some people.
“10% of the entire population that’s living outside is being displaced, swept, on a weekly basis.”
Sweeps are commonplace in Portland, though Street Roots could not independently verify Comstock’s 10% weekly estimate. City contractors or Portland police swept 246 encampments between Nov. 28 and Dec. 25, according to city records.
Rutledge-Shryock said elected leaders should reevaluate their priorities.
“What I’m seeing happening city-wide is our elected leaders are not prioritizing keeping people alive in the way they need to be doing,” Rutledge-Shryock said. “A lot of the focus seems like it’s shifted to sweeping people and building these mass campsites, and that filters down into less thought and care being put into these types of events.”
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