When Street Roots publishes the Jan. 7 issue, I’ll have spent the last four years, six months and two days editing Street Roots. While many things have changed since I started on July 5, 2021, some things remain essentially unchanged.
Portland still faces a homelessness crisis. The lack of affordable housing continues to fuel that crisis. Claiming drugs, mental illness or laziness — or whatever else allows officials to throw up their hands and abdicate responsibility — cause homelessness, continues to be categorically incorrect. Claiming sweeps are beneficial, humane or even efficient continues to be objectively false.
As ever, it continues to be a choice not to meaningfully address the homelessness crisis.
With Mayor Keith Wilson’s swearing-in on Dec. 19, 2024, I sensed a quiet optimism from experts, advocates and people on the streets. While Wilson’s promise to “end unsheltered homelessness” gave folks some pause, many seemed encouraged by Wilson’s apparent desire to listen. Gone were the days of a timber baron’s son openly laughing at experts (you know, people who have dedicated their lives to studying homelessness) for correctly pointing out that human Whack-a-Mole doesn’t solve anything.
Instead, we have a friendly neighborhood trucking magnate’s son, and after inheriting the family business, he’s decided to help others by becoming a politician. He’s going to finally be the guy to address homelessness in Portland. He doesn’t believe arresting people fixes anything. He admits he doesn’t know how to solve homelessness single-handedly, and says he welcomes fresh approaches and the knowledge that others may share. He really seems to mean well. He really seems to care.
Sadly, we know where this story is headed.
Wilson has ratcheted up sweeps. He imposed legal penalties on those who don’t wish to, or cannot, pack up everything they own, schlep to a (new) shelter and sleep in a room with dozens of strangers. He’s refused to reallocate sweep funding to help people find or stay in housing. Rene Gonzalez and Ted Wheeler, eat your hearts out. Wilson’s done basically everything the last guy did. And wouldn’t you know it, it isn’t working this time either.
Last June, Street Roots and ProPublica published an investigation that found West Coast cities that conduct more sweeps have a higher homeless mortality rate. Portland, which swept far more than any other West Coast city, also had, by far, the highest homeless mortality rate. As Portland exponentially increased sweeps out of the pandemic alongside the rise of fentanyl, overdose deaths, homicides and people taking their own lives on the streets skyrocketed.
Doctors, researchers, social workers, homeless Portlanders and others with a basic understanding of cause-and-effect let out a collective “no shit.”
It’s obvious that taking people’s medications, documents, walkers, sleeping bags, tents and clothes doesn’t get them any closer to housing. Destabilizing and traumatizing people while eroding what little trust they have in official services certainly doesn’t make anyone feel warm and fuzzy about being warehoused by the city and forced into a dark, cold winter morning every day.
Saying we’re going to “end unsheltered homelessness” by forcing people into overnight-only shelters is like saying I’m going to fix an engine oil leak by cleaning up the oil pooling in my driveway. It might hide it well enough to keep my landlord off my back, but, like this sweep and shelter-centric approach to homelessness, it doesn’t actually solve the problem.
It does, however, appease many people with a similar socioeconomic background to Wilson. If the issue with homelessness is that seeing it makes housed people and business owners uncomfortable, then Wilson’s approach is spot on. Out of sight, out of mind, right? “That’s progress,” I say, as I park my car around the corner and throw away key components it needs to function. The only problem is this isn’t my aging sedan. These are human beings.
If the issue with homelessness is the untold human suffering experienced by our neighbors as they scrape and claw to survive on the streets, then Wilson’s approach is largely just compounding existing problems. People know these congregate shelters don’t help them — it’s why Wilson needs the long arm of the law to coerce people into them. Of course, Wilson didn’t ask homeless people what they thought of the idea.
Fortunately for him, a recent Welcome Home Coalition survey did just that. The survey found the vast majority of respondents said they’d prefer to live in an apartment or house. Respondents listed shelter and sleeping in a tent as essentially the same thing in terms of preferred options. And, if you, like most politicians, feel you can’t trust what a homeless person tells you they need, there are decades of research showing the respondents are right.
Even county data shows that the more the city and county invest in shelter, the fewer people are able to exit shelter into housing. Now, imagine what that means when considering the city has spent hundreds of millions on sweeps and emergency shelters to hide people — sorry, I mean “end unsheltered homelessness” — in recent years. That’s a lot of “ending actual homelessness” we could have funded.
Scientifically, mathematically, historically, peer-reviewed and replicated; this approach is a failure. This is no longer a debate about whether sweeps and emergency shelter are successful tools for reducing homelessness. They are not.
The only debate left is whether the praise and support of privileged and connected people is loud enough to drown out the little voice in our leaders’ heads that tells them to do the right thing.
— K. Rambo, SR editor in chief
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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This article appears in January 7, 2026.