Portland’s ‘daytime camping ban’ went into effect July 7, but the city has not communicated a rollout timeline, a map of allowed sleeping spots or when exactly Portland police will begin enforcing the ordinance, which includes fines and jail time.
The ordinance amended city code to place new restrictions on when, where and how homeless Portlanders can shelter, including a ban on acts construed as “establishing or maintaining a temporary place to live” between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. and prohibiting “establishing or maintaining a temporary place to live” at any time on sidewalks, in parks and other public property. The revised code allows for two warnings before police can arrest a homeless Portlander, who will then be subject to a $100 fine, 30 days in jail, or both.
The city has not communicated timelines because, according to the city, it has yet to finalize — and in some cases begin — concrete plans and procedures for outreach to homeless Portlanders, enforcement training for PPB officers, or collaboration with service providers and county partners.
Local service providers say the lack of communication poses additional challenges and has heightened the level of concern for the people they serve.
“The general sense from our community of guests here is that there is anxiety around the unknowns,” Katie O’Brien, Rose Haven executive director, said.
According to O’Brien, the day shelter serves more than 3,000 people each year, providing food, clothing, showers and community for women, children and people of marginalized genders. Organizations like Rose Haven are also the first point of contact for people who need vital information about shelter during extreme weather events, healthcare access or how to navigate city policy.
“We're where people come for information because they trust us,” O’Brien said.
Thus far, the city’s communication about the ordinance is scattershot. The ambiguity creates new anxieties for homeless Portlanders and squanders an opportunity for service providers to disseminate reliable information.
Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office stopped short of saying police will disregard the ordinance until the city completes its planned work with the Street Services Coordination Center, nonprofit providers, Joint Office of Homeless Services and other partners to educate people about the change. That initial email to Street Roots said “focused enforcement” will begin “in the fall,” but a follow-up email days later said enforcement will begin “in the coming months.” A July 6 press release offered no further specifics, but stated “enforcement will not begin immediately.”
“The Mayor's Office will be focused on a summer of education using a phased-in approach that emphasizes outreach and connection to services over criminal penalties,” Wheeler’s communications coordinator Cody Bowman said.
Joint Office communications coordinator Julia Comnes stated its leadership has had one meeting with the city of Portland about the ordinance to determine how the ban will affect their work and the people they serve.
“We also expect the impacts of the ordinance to extend beyond the Joint Office, affecting other county services like libraries and criminal justice,” Comnes said.
The Joint Office is a county-administered partnership between the city and county that provides housing, shelter and healthcare services to homeless Portlanders.
Conversations between Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson’s office and the city are ongoing, and county leadership’s response is expected to guide how the Joint Office and other county departments will respond.
“The Joint Office will continue to adapt to ensure our services are addressing the needs of people experiencing homelessness in Multnomah County,” Comnes said.
Dog catches car
House Bill 3115, which created ORS 195.530, passed in the Oregon Legislature in April 2021, but it wasn’t until June 7, two years later, Portland City Council voted on the ordinance it says brings the city into compliance with state law. ORS 195.530 requires all laws governing homeless Oregonians’ sit-lie-sleep activity to be “objectively reasonable.” Despite having two years to bring the city into compliance with ORS 195.530 and create a timeline for the phase-in process, the city is up against a policy legally in effect July 7, with no specific guidance for those who are most affected by it. The process for outreach and enforcement remains in the early stages of development across the board.
Kevin Allen, PPB’s public information officer, said PPB’s training division is still in the initial phase of working with Wheeler’s office and PPB leadership to develop and implement a training process for officers. PPB’s new training director of police education, Rebecca Rodriguez, started the day after the June 7 vote on the ordinance, giving her just 30 days between when the policy was approved and when it went into effect.
“People should expect an expansive roll-out process that includes public outreach and education before PPB officers are involved in any substantive way,” Allen said in a June 29 email.
Still, for homeless Portlanders, the vague language around the enforcement of a law that is itself vague offers little consolation.
As Street Roots reported in June, legal experts point to the “reasonability” standard established in the state statute as a clear problem for the city’s ordinance. Oregon Law Center staff attorney Becky Straus highlighted the city’s perceived lack of outreach and consultation with homeless Portlanders, as well as service providers, as a clear problem for the legal strength of the ordinance.
Legal experts also point to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 2018 ruling in Martin v. City of Boise prohibiting fining or arresting homeless people solely for sleeping or resting in public when a municipality can’t offer shelter as an alternative. That decision was again upheld last week as a federal appeals court refused to rehear a ruling that prohibited criminal punishment of homeless people in Grants Pass.
The lone “no” vote, City Commissioner Carmen Rubio voiced concern about the city’s current lack of shelter options in her remarks to City Council during the vote. She said she would have preferred to give shelter providers time to understand and adjust daytime capacity and to give time for providers and homeless Portlanders to know what is in place so when enforcement begins, there would be a shared understanding about where people would be able to go.
Currently, the city and county can offer shelter to, at most, 30% of homeless Portlanders, as Street Roots reported in June.
"To move the policy forward before all these pieces are ready to go does not make good or responsible policy sense as I see it," Rubio said at the time.
As it stands, the ordinance’s 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. time restrictions create new concerns about when and where people will be able to sleep. Many queer, trans and female-identifying people sleep during the day because they feel unsafe sleeping in public at night, and some work at night so they can sleep in relative safety during the day.
“That is definitely on the minds of folks that have that sort of lifestyle for safety reasons,” O’Brien said. “We do have some people who will come here and lay on a couch for a few hours and try and get some rest here because they feel safe here.”
The new restrictions create additional difficulties for people with disabilities who, when enforcement begins, are required to break down, pack up and haul all sleeping materials each day. If they are unable to pack up, people could face fines, jail time and the immediate seizure of their property.
Through the grapevine
Like O’Brien and Rose Haven, other service providers are concerned by the lack of communication from city officials.
Chris Gardner, Do Good Multnomah director of communications, told Street Roots the city has not communicated with the organization regarding the ban. With a focus on homeless veterans, Do Good Multnomah provides service to roughly 500 people per night through a variety of shelter programs as well as two supportive housing communities.
“We’ve heard nothing,” Gardner said. “We're a fairly large provider of homeless services in Portland, and we’ve had absolutely no communication or notifications from the city.”
In O’Brien’s case, she said she had to proactively contact the mayor’s office to be able to offer input on the ordinance.
O’Brien said she immediately initiated a conversation with the city when she first heard about the proposal from other service providers, and met with Wheeler’s senior policy advisor Skyler Brocker-Knapp the day before Wheeler introduced his proposal in a May 31 City Council meeting. O’Brien met with city officials twice, but remains frustrated by a lack of clarity around where people can sleep, keep their belongings when they want to access services and how Rose Haven should direct people who depend on them for vital information.
Jon Seibert, Blanchet House director of programs and assistant executive director, sees a similar communication trend from the city as other service providers. In recent weeks, Blanchet House, another prominent daytime service provider, has served meals to hundreds of people three times a day, six days a week.
Blanchet House staff utilize consistent meal times to communicate what they know to guests and have become a trusted source for information through 71 years in operation, Seibert said. When the information they have is unclear or has no direct answer, it can erode trust with the very people the organization seeks to serve.
Restrictions creating restrictions
A consistent concern voiced by homeless Portlanders is where they will be able to keep their belongings during the day. Seibert said Blanchet House recently started tallying how much people are bringing to its building in an effort to find creative solutions once the ban takes effect. Other services nearby, like Central City Concern’s day storage unit below the Steel Bridge, have seen a steady increase in usage since the beginning of this year. In May 2023, the unit served 882 individuals — more than double the 391 in January, and its highest usage since August of 2020, according to Central City Concern data.
“They’re at capacity before this is happening,” Seibert said. “That's a pretty bad sign.”
The requirement to carry belongings throughout the day also poses new challenges for service providers like Rose Haven. According to O’Brien, the shelter currently serves around 150 people per day, and she expects that number to rise when the ban goes into effect. An increase in carried possessions means limited space is used as storage rather than a place to offer services.
“If people have to pack up their lives and bring them in with them, it changes my capacity,” she said. “I can actually serve less people.”
Blanchet House faces similar difficulties as guests will likely have to carry more of their possessions when enforcement begins. According to Seibert, on the day he spoke with Street Roots, the organization served over 450 people for breakfast alone. But lowered capacity impacts the people who rely on Blanchet for meals, clothing, and good information about local policy.
“We have seating capacity for 60 people right now,” Seibert said. “We don't have capacity for 60 people with 60 carts of all their belongings.”
In light of the new ordinance, Rose Haven already had to pivot toward addressing more basic needs in the moment rather than focusing on stabilizing solutions like connecting people to recovery, housing and employment. Trauma-informed care means providers focus on addressing basic needs before attempting to solve long-term issues.
“This disrupts all that because now we're working on different things with people,” O’Brien said. “It works against our ability to help provide support in those ways because now we're just helping people move stuff around.”
Stress and strain
Do Good Multnomah, one of the service providers offering longer-term resources like those Rose Haven would connect guests with, has already worked at full capacity every day for the last three years, according to Gardner. Every congregate shelter and motel shelter site has a long waiting list, and over 200 people are on the waiting list for its downtown shelter program, with budgets stretched to their limits — before the ban took effect.
Gardner said among those who participate in Do Good Multnomah programs, the overall concern is for the unhoused community at large. Do Good Multnomah works with people who are in need of emergency shelter, as well as those who are housed but at risk of returning to homelessness.
“Their friends and family are out there,” Gardner said. “They’re deeply worried for the community outside.”
With homeless Portlanders potentially losing their dependable places to rest, some are concerned they won’t be able to find each other to offer help when the need arises.
“The city’s policy without a plan in place will put major strain on all service providers,” he said.
O’Brien remains optimistic about the ongoing conversations, despite slow progress.
“I hold hope that we will have some collaboration because we need it,” O’Brien said. “But what I also want to say is, we need it for what we're doing right now.”
Gardner said Do Good participants are concerned about the additional strain that will be placed on daytime resource providers who are working at their threshold.
“The already long lines are going to get even longer.”
Seibert agrees.
“Looking at a number on a dashboard versus looking at a line of people that you're about to serve — those are two very different numbers,” he said. “We're at capacity. We're asking for help.”
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