Jan. 29: The end of this story has been updated to reflect the recent attack and subsequent sweep near Laurelhurst park.
On Tuesday, Jan. 19, Rapid Response Bio-Clean began a city-ordered removal of houseless residents from a camp around the outskirts of Sunnyside School Park in Southeast Portland.
The removal came amid confusion among camp residents and in spite of support for the camp from housed residents in the Sunnyside neighborhood and others whose advocacy had brought services such as showers, toilets and garbage service to the camp.
Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Portland), who represents the district and lives near the encampment, called for an end to all houseless camp removals, often called sweeps, and voiced his support of city-sanctioned camps in a letter he penned to Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury and Portland City Commissioner Dan Ryan, who oversees the Joint Office of Homeless Services.
On Jan. 14, five days before the removal began, the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association had voted to endorse Nosse’s call for sanctioned camps as an alternative to sweeps.
There are already several sanctioned camps in Portland, including three camps that were temporarily erected to allow people to shelter in place during the pandemic. There are also several permanent tiny-house villages. Dignity Village, the first built, was established two decades ago. The supply, however, falls far short of meeting the space needed for all unsheltered Portlanders who don’t want to sleep in congregate shelters to camp legally.
Rapid Response, the company contracted by the city’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program (HUCIRP) to carry out sweeps, started clearing out houseless residents’ camps around 9 a.m. Workers began removal efforts on the east side of Sunnyside Environmental School, a K-8 public school, moving west along Southeast Yamhill Street. All but two of the camps surrounding the school and adjacent park were located outside the fencing and along the sidewalk.
For Scott Rupp, the camp removal meant starting the day with another cycle of displacement. Rupp has bounced between the Sunnyside encampment — which was home to around 30 camps along the north, east and west sides of Sunnyside School Park — and nearby Laurelhurst Park for years.
This time, Rupp, along with other campers, landed at Sunnyside after a highly contentious sweep at Laurelhurst, which was drawn out for weeks as protesters tried to stop the removal and residents planted their feet. A year and a half earlier, it was following a sweep at this very location that Rupp’s wife of 37 years, Debby Beaver, died, making this sweep particularly traumatic.
The brutality of the sweeps and the situation at large is not lost on housed neighbors of the camp.
“It feels terrible. It’s traumatic, it’s sad, it’s disturbing,” said Sunnyside Neighborhood Association member Matt Lembo, speaking of the sweep. Lembo said the longstanding city policy of removal is broken. “If we’re gonna ask people not to live in a park, we have to give them somewhere else to live. That just seems like common sense.”
Before and during removals, the city performs outreach to camp residents, offering shelter beds and other services. Despite this, no camp residents that Street Roots spoke with at Sunnyside on Jan. 19 and at Laurelhurst in November said they planned to move to a shelter, citing bad experiences and fear of COVID-19. Only about a quarter of campers removed from Laurelhurst “set foot in a shelter,” The Oregonian reported as part of a story about how Mayor Ted Wheeler’s mandate to move campers in shelters “isn’t working.”
FURTHER READING: After painful sweep of Laurelhurst Park, unhoused residents want a place to exist
Lembo was part of the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association’s Jan. 14 vote that resulted in what he described as unanimous support for an end to the policy of sweeps.
Though HUCIRP is responsible for ordering sweeps, the program itself has in fact made identifying and creating “lawful places for people to sleep” one of three strategic goals coming out of its 2019-2021 strategic plan.
According to a Nov. 19 post on the program’s website, in 2017-18, around 3% of city-owned land was suitable for city-sanctioned camps.
Yet amid the sweep of the Sunnyside camp — one of the approximately three weekly sweeps happening around the city since COVID-19 started, according to a November HUCIRP statement to Street Roots — Rapid Response is trying something new, described to Street Roots as a softer approach in which the agency helps people move along as opposed to forcefully moving them out. The change comes in response to an incident that occurred during the Laurelhurst sweep where a Rapid Response employee allegedly shoved and insulted a houseless non-binary person.
“That was a horrible situation,” said Louis Courneya, a supervisor with Rapid Response. “We are turning over a new leaf where it’s gonna be a more cooperative approach.”
This means, he said, “we give people time, we give them the supplies they need, we help them carry their stuff to a new location, we express overall compassion and are patient with people.”
Despite this, the policy, which Courneya said is “for (the) safety of both parties, Rapid Response and the houseless, to reduce any sort of possible hostile interactions,” doesn’t mean Rapid Response’s objectives have changed. He said the city still expects the agency to conduct camp cleanups and removals.
“Somehow we have to meet the city’s demands, but we’re also out here meeting the houseless’s demands,” he said. “Yeah, we got a job to do, everyone has got to move, but how are we going to get people to move on their own accord is what we’re navigating.”
Courneya noted that the new policy has changed the dialogue. “The city has ordered this spot to be cleared, and we are here to help (houseless residents) do that, and I’ll ask questions like: How long do you think it will take you? Do you need any help? Do you got a new spot to go? Do you need any supplies to help you? And also, do you need our people to help you pack up your belongings, store them for up to 30 days and do drop-offs?”
A camp resident and two people with mutual aid groups that were helping camp residents move contested the claim that Rapid Response, in practice, helps camp residents move — though Courneya suggested it may be a facet of their new policy.
After listening to Courneya’s conversation with Street Roots, Scott, a camp resident who lived at Laurelhurst on and off for eight years prior to the November sweep, jumped in: “But we’re on lockdown right now. We’re not supposed to be moving right now?”
Prior to this, Scott, who didn’t want to provide his last name, had been sitting in his tent, dealing with a serious infection in his leg. He was eating and preparing to clean his camp after having been told the day’s events were not a removal but a cleanup.
Like other residents, Scott was unclear about the steps demanded of campers after the day’s events. Prior to hearing Courneya, he had told Street Roots, “I’m gonna stay here. I’m gonna clean up a lot, you know, and condense it down a lot to meet the criteria,” referring to HUCIRP’s COVID-19 Phase 1 Protocol.
He also said Rapid Response’s new policy was “a new beginning; they just started to be more friendly and humane, instead of just coming through and taking your shit.”
While Rapid Response is contracted to conduct removals, it “can't force anyone to move,” said Courneya, “and we're not doing that anymore.”
But an email from a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Finance, which oversees HUCIRP, stated that if campers refuse to leave, “we will consult with other City bureaus and government entities as well as law enforcement — who we need to work with will depend on what kind of action needs to take place.”
The Portland Police Bureau did not respond to Street Roots’ request for comment on the matter.
Explaining it could affect his ability to get work, camp resident Noah, who also didn’t want to provide his last name, also made an effort to meet the protocols prior to being informed it was actually a sweep.
“I was just out there helping clean because at first, they said we just had to clean up, then after that, they started saying that we had to move,” he said.
Citing the availability of services like showers, food, longstanding relationships with mutual aid groups and the community at the camp, Noah said he “would like to stay in this neighborhood.”
Left to wonder why
For some camp residents, the community they found in Sunnyside wasn’t limited to other houseless people, but also included housed neighbors. Relationships were built from gatherings such as a listening session between housed and houseless Sunnysiders in December.
Yet despite these relationships, residents’ willingness to clean their camps and wide support from both the neighborhood association and the district’s state representative, the camp was still swept, leaving many wondering, why?
In a statement to Street Roots, HUCIRP cited alleged drug use, limited distance between camps and fire concerns, saying the camp “continues to meet the threshold for posting and removal due to its size and continued public health and safety threat.”
Some camp residents Street Roots spoke with wondered if Portland Public Schools’ plan to reopen schools as soon as Jan. 25 was in part reason for their removal. Courneya told Street Roots, “We are encouraging people to move along from this location because school is opening back up soon.” He later said he “wasn’t provided with all that many details” as to why the camp was being swept.
Neither Sunnyside Environmental School nor Portland Public Schools responded to multiple requests for comment.
In its statement to Street Roots, HUCIRP noted, “We’ve been in contact with the Sunnyside School principal and the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association and have kept everyone informed of our plans to clean and remove this encampment for health and safety reasons.”
Not without criticism
But not all housed residents living in Sunnyside were supportive of the camp, which may have contributed to its demise.
Nosse acknowledged this in his letter, writing, “Not a week goes by that I do not hear from some part of my district about the problems with homeless/houseless people camping and/or the fallout,” later adding that while many of his constituents oppose sweeps, others write that “they are tired of having parks and schools and other public areas occupied and overflowing into their streets and neighborhoods by people who clearly have needs.”
Though Sunnyside neighborhood resident Lembo continues to push for city-sanctioned camps, he also said that from the housed perspective, the status quo “is not a sustainable solution.” Citing housed residents’ perceived access to the park, perceived increases in crime and obstructed walkways and roads, Lembo said that while there is widespread support for the camp and a broader end to sweeps among housed Sunnyside residents, many of them do wish the houseless residents in their neighborhood were somewhere else. Though he added, “I don’t think there’s any cognitive dissonance in supporting a change to the policy but also recognizing having 50 people living in a pocket park is not gonna work.”
And many camp residents are sympathetic. Jennifer, who lived at the camp but is leaving due to the sweep, told Street Roots that she understood housed residents’ frustrations.
“I want to stay away from children’s places like their schools and their parks,” said Jennifer, who did not want to provide her last name. “I think that’s reasonable to not want to us there,” she said when asked where she will go next.
Unfortunately though, finding that next place is exactly the issue for the neighborhood’s houseless residents. From inside Jennifer’s tent as she spoke to Street Roots, Jay Jay, who also did not provide his last name, explained that when a sweep is impending, “you start to think in your mind of places that you’ve been around or you’ve seen and whatnot, and it’s like, usually if it’s a place you think would work … more likely, it’s been a place that’s either swept or is going to get swept.”
Despite the variety of positions and interests among interviewees, many reached similar conclusions. In the words of Nosse’s letter, “The time has come for our City and our County to allow for sanctioned camping.”
For Jennifer, this means an end to city-sponsored antagonism and a respite from the endless and life-threatening starting over that sweeps force upon her. “I’m trying to get off the streets, not stay here,” she said.
For Lembo, this means the city providing a sufficient answer to the question residents face when displaced: Where should I go?
“People in the neighborhood association meetings will often say, ‘The city should do this, the city should do that,’ and I think we have to understand that we are the city,” he said. “We need to behave in a way that is consistent with our values as people first.”
UPDATE: Jan. 29
Upon being removed, many residents of the Sunnyside encampment moved back to the former site of the Laurelhurst Park encampment along Southeast Oak Street, between César E. Chávez boulevard and 37th Avenue. This site is where many of the Sunnyside encampment residents were living prior to being removed from there.
Early Thursday, Jan. 28, less than 10 days after residents left Sunnyside, a man was assaulted and sustained life-threatening injuries, according to the Portland Police Bureau. Residents of the Laurelhurst encampment told Street Roots they were awoken between 2 and 3 a.m. to the sound of a loud fight or argument, one gun shot, and cries for help. Police arrived on scene shortly after.
The Portland Police Bureau did not specify whether the victim was houseless or a resident of the camp in its statement and did not provide the answer to Street Roots when asked.
However, Kelly, a camp resident, and others there told Street Roots the victim was not a houseless resident of the encampment but lived nearby and was a friend to some residents of the encampment.
“It makes me really sad because he was a friend,” she said, also noting the victim had given residents rides in his car and let them shower at his apartment.
Around 8 a.m. Wednesday, Rapid Response Bio-Clean arrived and, with PPB supervision, removed residents on the western half of the encampment, reportedly telling residents they had “half an hour” to leave and that the eastern part of the encampment would be removed later that day, Kelly said.
Mo, a member of the Stop the Sweeps Coalition who did not provide their last name, confirmed to Street Roots from Laurelhurst that there were still eight individual camps at the encampment as of Friday afternoon.
The encampment had notice of a sweep posted on Jan. 26 for reasons unrelated to the incident on Jan. 28. On Jan. 22, just three days after the Sunnyside sweep was swept, the Laurelhurst encampment was posted with a “24 Hour Warning Notice” telling encampment residents that the encampment had been deemed a “public health and safety hazard by the City of Portland” and would be removed unless they met the criteria.
Both Kelly and Scott, another resident of the camp, said they had been told by the neighborhood association they could have up to eight camps and that Rapid Response had told them to “go with that.”
After a stretch of heavy rain earlier in the week, many remaining encampment residents packed up yesterday to only sporadic light showers. Residents described the difficulty of moving, especially in such rapid succession.
“(The camp) was definitely helping me be stable and get something going on — until they come and make us move, and then that sets me back like a week,” said Kelly. “I could have had housing a couple of months ago if it wasn’t for them pushing me around.”
Both Scott and Kelly described chronic illness and mobility issues making moving particularly difficult. When asked where he was going next, Scott wryly offered, “I don’t know — we’re supposed to evaporate.”