Pushing People Around Solves Nothing
Last Thursday, Mayor Wheeler announced proposed updates to the city’s laws around camping in public spaces. These updates are intended to bring the city into compliance with state law HB 3115 and 9th Circuit Court decision Martin v. Boise.
On Wednesday, City Council will vote on these changes to the law. They will also vote on a decision to extend the city’s agreement with the Joint Office of Homelessness Services (more on that later).
The short version: camping will be banned at all times in many places. This includes: public parks, sidewalks, and even within 250 feet of a river. In other places, camping will only be allowed between 8PM-8AM. If a tent’s still up at 8AM, it can be destroyed by the city and the resident issued a warning or citation.
Technically, people can still sleep outside, but only if they’re prepared to move every morning.
There are many reasons that we’ve heard from people over the years about the burden this creates, but here’s a few:
Many people, especially women and youth, face safety risks when sleeping outside at night. They instead choose to stay up at night and sleep during parts of the day.
Making more visible, high-traffic areas off-limits will drive people into more remote areas. These areas are less accessible by transit and more at risk for being targeted by violence or theft.
Navigating different service providers to get basic needs met and move towards housing stability is a full-time job. Add moving your home and all your possessions every day onto that already challenging burden of survival.
We know this reinstatement of the camping ban is tied directly to the City’s plan to build sanctioned encampments as alternative places to sleep.
Even if we didn’t strongly object to the use of funds to build these encampments, only one is set to be open in time for the camping ban to go into effect on July 1st.
Where does Mayor Wheeler expect the thousands of people living outside to go?
After 72 hours and three citations, people in violation of this updated camping ban can be sentenced to up to thirty days in jail or given a citation of up to $100. Citations like this can linger for years and show up as wage garnishments for those that manage to find work. Jail is the most expensive way possible to provide shelter to people.
Far less expensive and far more effective at ending homelessness long-term? Putting people into housing. As Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Director Marcia Fudge put it:
“Clearing encampments without helping people find a place to live doesn’t solve the problem, it just relocates it. We can do better than designating new areas where people can remain homeless.”
By contrast to the City, we appreciate Multnomah County’s efforts to invest resources into moving people directly into housing through programs like Move-in Multnomah. Unfortunately, Mayor Wheeler is effectively trying to extort the county for $20 million earmarked for his sanctioned encampments by threatening to withdraw city funding and participation from the Joint Office of Homelessness Services.
Sanctioned encampments, Safe Rest Villages, congregate shelters, motel rooms–all of these are meant to be temporary shelter while working to place people into permanent housing.
If we have the money to spend jailing people, enforcing camping bans, and building more places for people to be homeless, then we have the money to build or put people into permanent housing, plain and simple.
It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s the best and most cost effective way to spend our money. Just ask Houston, where 90% of people placed in housing have remained there after two years.
We urge you to join us on Wednesday at 2:30 PM in front of City Hall.
We’ll walk in together to show our opposition to throwing more money at policing, criminalization, and band-aids that do nothing to solve the actual problem: people’s need for housing.