At the Ground Score Association warehouse in Portland’s Old Town on March 30, community members met to discuss city government actions in their neighborhoods — specifically sweeps, which the city refers to as “abatements” and “campsite removals.”
The distinctions all mean essentially the same thing to people on the streets — the contracted displacement of homeless Portlanders.
Homeless Portlanders’ conversations about sweeps commonly progress to a particular source of ire: Rapid Response Bio Clean, a private, for-profit hazardous waste removal corporation contracted by the city of Portland to carry out sweeps.
Rather than a standard budgeted amount for Rapid Response, the city’s contract with the company — which also stipulates policies and requirements regarding employees — includes a “not to exceed” amount of $38.6 million over the course of 7 years. The city paid Rapid Response over $9.6 million for its services in the 2022-23 fiscal year, according to the city.
The contract includes mandatory employee training for CPR, de-escalation and hazardous waste removal. The city also requires Rapid Response employees to post sweep notices at encampments, photograph all confiscated property, categorically record all the property collected and store the items taken from encampments.
NEWS: Homeless Portlanders report ongoing issues retrieving personal items after sweeps
Despite the stipulations in the contract, homeless Portlanders and former Rapid Response employees told Street Roots the workers don’t uniformly follow the rules or treat homeless Portlanders and their belongings with respect. Numerous lawsuits and complaints against Rapid Response level similar accusations.
Rapid Response did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
A staff member in the city's Impact Reduction Program answered basic questions about complaints but would only do so anonymously. Street Roots elected not to publish the responses in accordance with the newspaper's policy, which does not afford anonymity to public employees and officials except in extenuating circumstances like whistleblowing.
A former Rapid Response employee, identified in this story as “Y,” asked to remain anonymous out of fear of backlash from their former employer. Y observed the ins and outs of Rapid Response for a year and a half, eventually leaving the job for another position working with homeless Portlanders.
Y said Rapid Response leadership and management seem to generally have it out for people interested in doing effective and impactful outreach with the homeless community. Instead, they prioritize employees who will do anything it takes to get a campsite cleaned up in a timely manner, according to Y.
“All I want to do is help people,” Y said, becoming emotional.
Y said they couldn’t sufficiently help people while with Rapid Response, a company which they, alongside homeless Portlanders who spoke to Street Roots, said exacerbates the condition of homelessness rather than alleviating it.
Their current job is difficult. Y responds to overdoses, mental health emergencies and outbursts, doing their best to find the right resources for those who seek help. This was their goal, too, at Rapid Response.
Another former Rapid Response employee who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, identified in this story as “Z,” feels the same.
“When it came down to dealing with the houseless community, I loved doing my job,” Z said. “I’ve always tried to just do my own thing, just work with people.”
Y and Z regarded their positions as cleaning techs at Rapid Response as roles that could potentially benefit the homeless community. This isn’t an uncommon goal for Rapid Response workers; there were and still are numerous good people working at the company, according to Y.
‘Dirty deeds’
Y said Rapid Response rewards those who take shortcuts while punishing those who hold fast to their integrity.
“The people who have left or got fired (were the workers who) wouldn’t do the dirty deeds,” Y said.
These “dirty deeds” include taking belongings directly to the dump without storing them, claiming tents are contaminated with bodily fluids to justify throwing out a tent without collecting the belongings stored inside and a variety of other actions that expedite sweeps, according to Y and Z.
While it’s anecdotal that anyone in leadership or management at Rapid Response encourages or rewards behavior violating its contract stipulations, the company has been at the center of multiple employee conduct-related controversies. A court arbitrator found in favor of homeless Portlanders in two lawsuits against the company in 2023 — both stemming from accusations Rapid Response employees improperly disposed of belongings seized during the same sweep.
In another instance, local civil rights attorney Michael Fuller, who also represented the two people who won their cases last year, attached GPS tracking devices to clearly usable items before the high-profile 2021 Laurelhurst Park sweep. Fuller said GPS data showed Rapid Response workers took many of those items directly to the dump and, along with Oregon Justice Resource Center attorneys, filed a class action lawsuit against the city of Portland. The suit was later settled out of court.
“Dozens and dozens of homeless people over the course of several years can’t be wrong,” Fuller told Street Roots in 2021. “This is something that’s been common knowledge among the street camper community — not just in Portland, but across the country — and we were able to prove it using the tracker technology.”
Improper storage or disposal isn’t the only concern voiced by homeless Portlanders. Accusations that Rapid Response employees took people’s belongings for themselves during sweeps are not uncommon. Y and Z said their coworkers frequently took advantage of their intimate proximity to the belongings of homeless Portlanders during sweeps and would rifle through the piles of items before transporting them to the dump.
“(Rapid Response) gets complaints about stuff missing,” Y said. “And that’s probably because it ended up in somebody’s bag.”
The city’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program, or HUCIRP, also receives feedback via its online complaint form. Street Roots reviewed one year of complaints about sweeps — March 2023 through April 2024 — and of the 23 complaints filed in that timeframe that appear to be about Rapid Response, almost every complaint alleges improper seizure and/or disposal of property. Thirteen of those complaints specifically name Rapid Response as the contractor responsible for the complaint.
Other complaints allege employees allowed people to claim other people’s belongings from the warehouse, harassed homeless Portlanders, intentionally damaged belongings during sweeps, or even that Rapid Response workers were later seen in possession of unreturned items previously seized during a sweep.
While its contract outlines specific provisions for what is to be stored or discarded, Rapid Response workers can designate any kind of property as trash without any consequences, enabling them to discard belongings without the city-mandated storage period, according to Y.
Y said Rapid Response employees have a “rope system” in which they hold one end of a rope in the middle of a campsite, and anything outside of the circumference of the circle the rope makes when held taut is automatically considered trash.
The city has almost no presence at any Rapid Response sweeps, meaning Rapid Response performs the vast majority of sweeps without any direct city oversight that could ensure workers follow the rules.
A lawyer’s perspective
One of Fuller’s more memorable cases was that of Lynnette Snook and Joe Angel, for whom he carried out successful suits against Rapid Response.
The court arbitrator on the case found in favor of the plaintiffs, and the court directed the company to pay the couple for their lost belongings.
One big problem with Rapid Response, Fuller said, is how it trains its staff, which mostly consists of formerly homeless people and people recently leaving incarceration.
“They choose to save costs and hire people who aren’t properly trained or supervised,” Fuller said. “None of this would happen if these people were properly trained to do their jobs. They seem to view their job as just cleaning up the sites.
“That means that if (they don’t comply with) the law or if personal property is destroyed, then they seem to be okay with that.”
Y and Z agreed with Fuller’s assessment of Rapid Response’s practices, saying employee training is scant and inadequate.
Training does not cover mental health and crisis intervention, according to Z, which they said are needed in the situations Rapid Response employees encounter. Z said to get a job at Rapid Response they were only required to complete CPR, hazardous material removal and de-escalation trainings.
Accountability
Despite the litany of concerns, complaints and lawsuits, it’s nearly impossible to hold this company accountable because Rapid Response has a lot of money to spend on legal proceedings, Fuller said.
Fuller describes the typical lawsuit against Rapid Response as a person who has been swept or harassed by Rapid Response will usually approach Fuller. Fuller will file a complaint — and, effectively, a lawsuit — against Rapid Response, including a monetary claim in retribution for lost belongings.
These claims typically range from several hundred to a thousand dollars — minuscule amounts in the legal world.
What’s strange, according to Fuller, is Rapid Response hires what he calls “white shoe lawyers'' — borrowing a phrase from Mark Twain.
“White shoe lawyers are attorneys that have high billable rates who work in big towers and who are on the whole inaccessible to (the) public or low-income people,” Fuller said. “They make a very good living by representing the interests of the powerful and they are very often used by the elite and wealthy and powerful corporations. And they are often used to suppress the rights of the underrepresented.”
In Fuller’s experience, Rapid Response’s attorneys tend to bury plaintiffs in paperwork and legal fees, as well as drag out objectively low-risk lawsuits for as long as they can.
Fuller said he thinks it’s because they know the population they’re up against, and they know such tactics make it incredibly difficult for a person experiencing homelessness to follow through on a lawsuit.
Lawsuits are, especially when they stretch over long periods of time, expensive, time-consuming and strictly punctual, according to Fuller. These factors combine to create an objectively difficult process for those who are impoverished and living outside.
“They actively choose to go higher to send a message,” Fuller said of the legal costs. “‘We’re powerful. We have resources. If you ever accuse us of doing something wrong, no matter how little the harm is, we will take you to trial every time and hire the best lawyers possible.’
“They are saying, essentially, ‘We will spare no expense to prove that we didn’t do it.’”
These tactics usually result in cases being thrown out on technicalities, Fuller said, most often because the plaintiff is unable to show up to court consistently.
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