Less than two weeks before the city is set to enforce its wide-reaching public sleeping ban Nov. 13 — days after nighttime temperatures dipped below freezing for the first time since last winter — no one involved with enforcing the ban or mitigating the effects of enforcement had answers about what enforcement would look like.
Portland City Council passed the so-called daytime camping ban ordinance June 7, giving way to more than three months of confusion and concern — and litigation — on the part of legal advocates, service providers, officials and homeless Portlanders.
Mayor Ted Wheeler’s Oct. 30 announcement that enforcement would begin Nov. 13 and what followed the announcement reinforced that confusion and concern. The city is tight-lipped about how it will enforce the ban, potentially due to ongoing and future litigation.
Service providers say lack of communication and uncertainty are further traumatizing homeless Portlanders with a complex array of physical and mental health needs while also hindering efforts to help homeless Portlanders avoid breaking the law. Prominent among service providers’ concerns is the city has yet to specify where homeless Portlanders can legally sleep in public since Wheeler first proposed the ban in May.
While Wheeler’s office refused to answer a single question about enforcement in the days after his Oct. 30 announcement and did not offer an explanation for its refusal to answer questions, it had not announced plans to delay enforcement at the time of publishing.
The ordinance, a “time, place and manner” update to the city’s existing ban on public sleeping, introduced criminal and civil penalties for sleeping on nearly all public property at all times, including sidewalks, parks, plazas, near waterways, near sanctioned encampments, and anywhere else the city decides is on the list. Homeless Portlanders found in violation of the ordinance receive two warnings before police can arrest them, at which point they’re subject to a $100 fine, 30 days in jail, or both.
The city’s choice to impose such restrictions with the threat of criminal penalties is at the core of an Oregon Law Center, or OLC, lawsuit against the city, which argues the ordinance creates objectively unreasonable conditions and, therefore, violates ORS 195.530 and Article I, section 16 of the Oregon Constitution.
OLC also filed for a separate temporary restraining order, or TRO, against the city in an attempt to stop enforcement before it began, but a judge denied the order Sept. 29, noting the legal nonprofit may have a case for the TRO when the city begins enforcing the ordinance. OLC requested a temporary injunction to halt enforcement of the ordinance while litigation is ongoing, and a hearing is scheduled for Nov. 9 in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
The Oregon Legislature passed ORS 195.530 in 2021, requiring all local laws governing homeless residents’ “survival activities” to be “objectively reasonable” and take the availability of alternatives like shelter into account. The city can currently offer overnight shelter to fewer than 30% of homeless Portlanders at most, based on the county’s tally of 2,000 shelter beds and its estimates of the homeless population.
ORS 195.530 forced the city to update its previous — and legally unenforceable — blanket ban on public sleeping. It was the city’s choice, however, to impose the “time, place and manner” restrictions and criminal and civil penalties in the update.
The ordinance also banned sleeping on all public property between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. — the source of the reductive and oft-used “daytime camping ban” title. However, it remains unclear what public property is exempt from the ban even between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m.
Wheeler’s office has yet to distribute a map showing permitted sleeping spots or a list clarifying the parameters.
Who knows?
Wheeler’s office declined to answer any of Street Roots’ questions about enforcing the ban, including if police received any training to enforce it, in an unsigned Nov. 2 email from the “Mayor Wheeler Media Requests” email account.
Street Roots additionally asked for specific details regarding the city’s efforts to educate homeless Portlanders about the ordinance and if the city is encouraging compliance in hopes of avoiding increasing an already sky-high non-violent arrest rate for homeless Portlanders. The latest data shows homeless Portlanders account for half of all arrests in the city, largely for non-violent crimes, including bench warrants for fare evasion and failure to appear, despite only making up approximately 2% of Portland's population, according to a 2022 report from nonprofit news outlet Reveal.
Wheeler’s office also directed Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program, or HUCIRP, staff not to answer Street Roots’ questions, instead instructing HUCIRP staff to tell Street Roots to ask the mayor’s office. Wheeler’s office also declined to answer those questions Nov. 2. Wheeler’s office did not respond to a follow-up question asking why the mayor is declining to provide the requested information.
Portland Police Bureau also directed Street Roots’ questions about enforcement to Wheeler’s office, which, again, did not provide answers.
Commissioner Carmen Rubio’s office said someone would circle back after Rubio — the lone commissioner to vote against the ban in June — is “verbally briefed by the Mayor’s Office to determine if her original concerns have been addressed,” Nov. 2. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s office said it was “sorting through some of these issues” and could answer questions “early next week,” Nov. 2.
Deputy John Plock, Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office public information officer, said Nov. 1, to his knowledge, “no such conversations have taken place” about how county jails will respond to the potential uptick in arrests, adding he did not think the ordinance would impact jail operations. The sheriff’s office does not plan to assist PPB with enforcing the ban, according to Plock.
The county is still analyzing potential impacts of enforcement, Julie Sullivan-Springhetti, Multnomah County communications director, said in a Nov. 2 statement.
“We do not anticipate an influx in people being arrested under the ordinance,” according to a portion of the statement Sullivan-Springhetti attributed to the sheriff’s office. “However, as the ban takes effect, we will work with our agency partners to approach and manage the jail’s population while balancing the public safety needs in communities across the county.”
Gov. Tina Kotek’s office wasn’t in the loop despite the governor holding biweekly meetings with Wheeler since she was elected last November, according to Elisabeth Shepard, Kotek’s press secretary.
“Addressing Oregon’s housing and homelessness crisis has been discussed on some level in almost every meeting,” Shepard said.
Wheeler didn’t notify Kotek prior to his Oct. 30 announcement, according to Shepard.
“The Governor supports the city’s ability to pass place time and manner ordinances,” Shepard told Street Roots on Nov. 2. “Portland’s ordinance cannot be appropriately realized without a plan for where individuals are going to go, how they are going to get there and what services will be available to them that are made public.
“The Governor has been consistently frustrated by the lack of detail offered by the city.”
Daytime service providers seemed just as in the dark as everyone else. Scott Kerman, Blanchet House executive director, said the city’s communication was focused on materials for the nonprofit meal and daytime service provider to distribute to guests.
“The city provided us with some materials to hang in our Café and hand out to people, but we don’t believe these materials would be very useful for the people we serve, so we haven’t used them,” Kerman told Street Roots on Nov. 1.
Liz Starke, Rose Haven development director, said the daytime shelter for women, children and gender-diverse people has had some increased communication from the city since Wheeler announced the ban over the summer, but, to her knowledge, communication around actual enforcement has been scarce.
“The communication is never great,” Starke said. “I would say that it seems like they only reach out to us when we talk to the press.”
Starke said the city has yet to provide Rose Haven with an updated map showing where homeless Portlanders can legally sleep in public between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., adding the nonprofit would like to distribute such a map if it were provided. The only map currently available shows where people cannot sleep on public property, highlighting essentially all public property. It offers no direction regarding where people can legally sleep and stops short of highlighting private property as prohibited areas.
Wheeler’s office declined to provide an updated map as part of its wholesale refusal to comment to Street Roots.
Provider preparations, filling the gaps
Amid the lack of communication and impending enforcement, daytime providers like Rose Haven and Blanchet House are working to adjust to their clientele’s shifting needs.
The ban creates pressure on daytime service providers two-fold, as demand increases and available physical space decreases due to people needing to haul their belongings with them. Storage, much like daytime services, is scarce in Portland.
Wheeler, when announcing the ban over the summer and repeatedly since then, has referenced daytime storage facilities the city provides homeless Portlanders. However, the city only operates one openly available daytime storage facility — a single retrofitted shipping container under Steel Bridge.
Blanchet House’s Kerman said the increased prevalence of guests lugging all their belongings around complicates efforts for the organization.
“People have been bringing more belongings with them to our meal services, which presents challenges of accommodating everyone’s items,” Kerman said.
Similarly, Starke said Rose Haven experienced a boom in demand beginning over the summer when Wheeler first announced the ban and is feeling the effects of reduced available space as more guests feel compelled to haul their possessions each day.
The nonprofit is already at capacity, according to Starke, with an expected surge when enforcement begins. Rose Haven has yet to receive promised funding from the city and county after the city publicly referenced shelters like Rose Haven as one of the available resources for homeless Portlanders when they’re required to pack up and move each morning.
Despite the city not yet enforcing the ban, Starke said Rose Haven had to respond to heightened fear and anxiety from its guests since the ban was introduced. That response, however, came at a premium.
“We actually just had to renovate what was our guest storage area to accommodate private meeting spaces for the mental health team,” Starke said. “And so now we don't really have an area on site where guests can store their belongings and lock them up.”
Kerman, who said he believes the county is going to contribute some funding to Blanchet House, said the emotional toll on Blanchet House’s guests has also been noticeable, particularly due to the level of uncertainty.
“Uncertainty creates anxiety and stress in people we serve, and sometimes that comes out in ways that make it challenging to serve,” Kerman said.
Increased levels of stress and destabilization were a predictable outcome of the ban now coming to fruition, according to Molly Pringle, Portland Street Medicine’s outgoing development director and former executive director.
“When people are destabilized by sweeps, or now by daytime camping bans, it adds stress to their system, and it exacerbates the health conditions that they're living with,” Pringle said.
Portland Street Medicine, which provides free medical care to homeless Portlanders, is experiencing difficulties the ban adds to the organization’s work.
“It destabilizes them and has negative impacts on their physical health, on their mental health, and makes it more difficult for them to follow through with care plans that we create with them,” Pringle said. “It makes it more difficult for us to stay in touch so that they have continuity of care with our providers.”
Portland Street Medicine is shifting operations to better serve its patients amid an increasingly destabilized environment, including a focused effort to get carts, wagons and prepaid cell phones to patients so they can stay in touch with providers and more easily transport their belongings.
Pringle underlined the high stakes associated with patients maintaining or losing communication with health providers.
“If we've been working with someone on a health concern, like chronic disease management, and we're helping them access medications for that — or they're working with a provider on clinical advice for that condition — if we don't know where to find them day to day, and they have resources that are being taken from them, it makes it really difficult to make meaningful health improvements with those people,” Pringle said.
Those most affected
Portland Street Medicine’s focus on procuring wagons and cell phones for its patients underscores concerns about how the ban will disproportionately impact particular groups of homeless Portlanders, including those with severe health needs and disabilities.
Disability Rights Oregon, a nonprofit disability advocacy organization, publicly opposed the ban when it came before City Council over the summer, noting how not all homeless Portlanders can physically comply with a law requiring them to set up, break down and haul their sleeping materials each day.
“Disability Rights Oregon will be watching enforcement closely,” Melissa Roy-Hart, communications director, told Street Roots on Nov. 3. “It's crucial that any solutions the City proposes are fully accessible, close to services, and supportive of people with disabilities.
“We're unsurprised at the current crisis given decades of underinvestment in behavioral health services, affordable housing, and other services by the State.”
Advocates also raised questions about racial equity when City Council considered the ban, as Native American and Black Portlanders are overrepresented in the homeless population.
Urban League of Portland, a civil rights and social service organization that advocates for Black Portlanders, opposes the ordinance.
“We have concerns about the proposed camping restrictions,” Stephanie Phillips Bridges, Urban League of Portland senior policy analyst, told City Council on May 31. “Homelessness is traumatic. The proposed amendments (to existing city code) will only cause more trauma. This is more acutely felt if you are Black and homeless.”
Phillips Bridges pointed out “criminal trespass,” a charge often brought against homeless people, has been disproportionately used against Black people in other jurisdictions.
“The proposed camping restrictions will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the criminalization of Black people whose only crime is poverty, especially if they are homeless,” Phillips Bridges said at the City Council meeting. “Studies show homeless people are arrested at higher rates in Portland. Between 2016 and 2019, about 51% of all homeless people booked in Multnomah County were charged with criminal trespass, theft and disorderly conduct. It is inequitable to charge and arrest people experiencing homelessness with criminal trespass or disorderly conduct when they have nowhere else to go or are experiencing a mental health crisis.
“The criminalization of homelessness will only prolong homelessness — not solve it.”
The complete ban on public sleeping between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. is also of particular concern to advocates and service providers, as many people more prone to victimization stay awake at night and sleep during the day. The ordinance outlaws that practice.
“Women who live outside, almost all of them have experienced violence,” Katie O’Brien, Rose Haven executive director, told Street Roots in June. “It's certainly more obvious if those things are happening during the daytime. Women are safer during the daytime than they are by the dark of the night and so it's a more practical time for them to be on alert for self-protection. The physical and sexual assault rate is so high for … women living outside. It's just … a safer model.”
Editor’s note: Street Roots reporter Jeremiah Hayden contributed reporting to this story.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. 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.
© 2023 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404