Imagine being told you have between three and 10 days to move, with no way of knowing if the time will come at the 73rd hour or the 240th. Each excruciating day passes as you anticipate a small army of people in red shirts arriving at any moment. They’ll pack anything you can’t carry into clear plastic trash bags and load them on a flatbed truck already teeming with similar trash bags.
Then, on day 10, one vehicle arrives, maybe a couple of vehicles, but there’s no truck. There’s no small army of people in red shirts. One person walks to the fence near your tent, removes the existing notice giving you between three and 10 days to move, and replaces it with a new one. The countdown begins anew.
It may happen like this again, and again, and again, until one day, the truck finally arrives.
For homeless Portlanders, this is a common occurrence, according to city data analyzed by Street Roots. In the week used as the basis for Street Roots’ analysis, at least 38% of all encampments with reliable data were posted two or more times, with an additional 21% that were likely posted two or more times.
April 11-17 analysis
A trend emerges when reviewing Portland’s recently renamed “Weekly Street Services” reports — a significant number of encampments designated as “posted for removal,” will appear with the same designation in consecutive weeks. Street Roots selected a recent report at random to conduct an analysis of just how many encampments listed with that designation will remain unchanged for consecutive weeks, and how often the city will post a single encampment multiple times for a single sweep.
In the April 11-17 weekly report, compiled and released by the city’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program, or HUCIRP, 63 encampments are listed as “posted for removal.” Of those 63 encampments, 37 of them (59%), are listed in consecutive reports with the same designation prior to the city sweeping them.
Not all 37 encampments listed in consecutive reports were necessarily posted multiple times. In theory, the 10-day window given on a sweep posting leaves up to three days of overlap with the week the city sweeps a camp, providing it’s listed as “posted for removal” in exactly two consecutive reports. However, the city posts the majority of encampments from Wednesday through Friday, according to HUCIRP staff. If an encampment is posted on the Friday in the weekly report period — April 15 in this instance — three days of overlap becomes one day of overlap, increasing the likelihood the city posts that encampment twice before a sweep.
Of the 37 encampments “posted for removal” in consecutive weeks, 12 appear in exactly two consecutive reports.
Heather Hafer, spokesperson for the city’s Office of Management and Finance, which includes HUCIRP, said listing an encampment as “posted for removal” in consecutive weekly reports typically indicates the city posted the encampment within that week.
“Generally, yes,” Hafer said when asked if the same designation in consecutive weeks means the encampment was posted multiple times. “There are several locations in a given week that are posted, but we are unable to complete. Those locations get reposted.”
Hafer, while not HUCIRP staff, is the communications strategist for the Street Services Coordination Center, a collaborative effort the city and Multnomah County launched in March.
If all 12 encampments appearing in exactly two consecutive reports were posted twice, the city posted 59% of all encampments listed as “posted for removal” in the April 11-17 report multiple times — though that can’t be stated with certainty from Hafer’s answer.
Further muddying the water is inaccurate data on three of those 37 encampments, which includes one of the 12 encampments that appeared in exactly two consecutive reports. Three encampments simply disappear from weekly reports without ever being reported as “cleaned and removed,” the city’s preferred terminology for a sweep. The bad data on those three camps, according to HUCIRP staff, is attributable to the city requiring Rapid Response Bio Clean to switch to a new data management system operated by the city around the time of the April 11-17 report. Rapid Response Bio Clean, the contractor hired by the city to conduct sweeps, previously used its own data management system.
Two of the three encampments were listed with the same designation for seven weeks prior to disappearing from weekly reports. The other encampment was listed with the same designation for two weeks prior to disappearing from weekly reports.
Even after disregarding encampments that spent exactly two consecutive weeks designated as “posted for removal,” and the encampments with unreliable data, the city posted 23 encampments at least two times — or 38% of all encampments with reliable data. Of those 23 encampments, 11 were posted three or more times.
The two encampments with the longest “posted for removal” tenure were still listed with the same designation in the June 6-12 report, the latest available report at the time Street Roots’ completed its analysis. The encampments have been listed as “posted for removal” in 11 and 10 consecutive reports, respectively. The city will have posted the encampment appearing in 11 consecutive reports at least seven times.
Hafer said the different factors affecting the speed of a “camp removal” can explain the vastly different timelines, when asked why some camps are “removed” after six or more weeks of posting and reposting, while many others are posted and “removed” in a matter of days in the same time period.
“If we are unable to clean and remove a high-risk site in the legal timeframe of the posting, we will repost and return,” Hafer said. “When we know that we’ll be at a site on a certain day, we send staff to that site to talk to people living there no less than 12 hours from the removal and let them know. As I’m sure you’re aware, this work is incredibly dynamic. Sometimes we plan on a camp removal taking a couple of hours, but it ends up requiring a couple of days – and vice versa.”
The April 11-17 report Street Roots built its analysis around isn’t an outlier in terms of how many encampments listed as “posted for removal” are in other consecutive weekly reports with the same designation. Nearly 80% (86 of 108) of the encampments listed as “posted for removal” in the May 30-June 5 report are shown with the same designation the week prior, the week after, or both.
Chasing the goal posts
Advocates and those who provide aid to homeless Portlanders take issue with the city’s unwillingness, or inability, to provide a set date for a sweep and stick to it.
Gus Kroll, who operates the mutual aid project Dorothy Day Delivery Company, said the city creates an uncertain atmosphere for those trying to assist homeless Portlanders prior to sweeps.
“Everything is more difficult,” Kroll said of providing aid while accounting for the fluid nature of HUCIRP operations and sweeps. “The simplest thing is built on maintaining rapport. If I can’t connect with the same people consistently, how am I going to help them do anything?”
Kroll said he was more involved in direct assistance to people facing sweeps about six months ago before Dorothy Day Delivery Company had to scale back operations. The group now does laundry for homeless Portlanders one day a week in the St. Mark’s Church basement on Southeast 54th Avenue and Powell Blvd.
Kroll said he was present on two occasions when city contractors arrived to remove an expiring sweep posting and replace it with a new one.
The city posting and reposting an encampment can cause Portlanders facing sweeps to let their guard down, Kroll said. He has arrived to help people and found out they’ve lost sleeping gear that was paid for by the county, or irreplaceable items like family photos.
“Once people have been posted for a couple of weeks going, they let their guard down and they leave their camps unattended and then HUCIRP shows up, and suddenly their tent is gone,” Kroll said. “And their Social Security card is gone, and their medication is gone, and all their food and all their shit — it’s all gone.
“That’s devastating. To show up afterwards, run into people and (they say) ‘Everything. All of my shit. It’s all gone.’ And there’s just nothing you can say.”
Kroll said with sweeps of unattended camps, it’s not uncommon for Rapid Response Bio Clean to remove and ostensibly dispose of supplies when no name is attached to them. Many of the supplies, Kroll said, were initially provided by the Multnomah County Joint Office of Homeless Services.
“You have a tent that’s paid for by the Joint Office, you have sleeping bags that are paid for by the Joint Office … that are just taken by the city,” Kroll said. “That is just absolutely brain breaking.”
At the end of the day, Kroll said, encampment sweeps are harmful for unhoused Portlanders, regardless of when the city finally sweeps a camp. On the flip side, the postings and sweeps “boost morale” for those who Kroll refers to as “NIMBYs” — short for “not in my backyard” — a term describing mostly affluent people who oppose affordable housing and homeless encampments.
According to Kroll, the benefit and responsibility for the harm he’s witnessed both ultimately reside at Mayor Ted Wheeler’s feet, the man who oversees the Office of Management and Finance.
“The impact is the same,” Kroll said. “(Wheeler) is treating people like garbage. I think these postings have a negative impact, whether (sweeps) happen on time, or whether they happen a week later. I think there’s a negative impact and I think there’s a morale boosting impact for NIMBYs who ask for these things.”
Kat Mahoney, a local attorney and ACLU legal observer who watches sweeps to ensure people’s rights aren’t violated, said the “posted for removal” designation can indicate a camp will be cleaned, swept, or both the following week — or sometimes left entirely alone. Mahoney said the uncertainty “causes a lot of anxiety,” and logistical problems for people assisting unhoused Portlanders.
“Let’s pretend for this week, that in theory, if they could, they would sweep 12 places,” Mahoney said. “The reality tends to be that they never get to all 12, probably due to the time it takes and other things … You never quite know where the help is needed — if people need cars or assistance to move.”
Mahoney said it’s hard to predict which encampments will actually be swept within the original three to 10 day window, but that it’s clear some encampments are a higher priority than others.
“The idea of ‘let’s clean up these areas,’ as opposed to heading out to Southeast (Portland) or Northeast (Portland), where you’re not gonna have as many tourists or just people milling about,” Mahoney said. “It kind of follows that pattern, in my mind.”
Mahoney cited the recent 90-day Old Town plan which included the city sweeping hundreds of Portlanders from the neighborhood in a short period of time, while other encampments were posted repeatedly in the same time frame prior to being swept. Many encampments removed from Old Town were done by way of structure abatements carried out by the Portland Police Bureau and Rapid Response Bio Clean, rather than HUCIRP and Rapid Response Bio Clean.
Mahoney also cited the high-profile sweeps of Laurelhurst Park in recent years, noting the middle and upper-class nature of the surrounding areas.
“I’m sure some of it is the numerosity of complaints,” Mahoney said. “Some of it is also probably due to demographics, and honestly, if I was going to just make a wild assertion: tourism, traffic and economy.”
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