The Portland City Council tucked $500,000 into its $44 million spending package passed Wednesday to install benches or other deterrents to stop people from setting up tents near Laurelhurst Park and other green spaces.
Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office confirmed the proposal, which was submitted by Commissioners Carmen Rubio’s and Jo Ann Hardesty’s offices.
Heather Hafer, spokesperson for the Office of Management and Finance that oversees encampment sweeps, confirmed that the program requested $6.5 million to increase clean ups at homeless campsites across the city. However, she said she couldn’t provide a breakdown of how the $500,000 would be spent.
Hafer said Rubio and Hardesty sought the money to research ways to clear the area along Southeast Oak Street at Laurelhurst Park. The funding is meant to provide something more permanent than the temporary orange fences that often are put up around evicted houseless campsites.
A joint statement released by Rubio’s and Hardesty’s offices said if parks impacted by homeless camps are addressed using deterrents, then clean up money that would typically be spent to keep that area tidy or to sweep individuals living there will be able to be spent keeping other areas of the city clean.
“In terms of Laurelhurst, specifically, we heard a desire from the community to address the right-of-way that is between the two parks spaces, and to protect access to Nathan Thomas Field, the (kid’s) soccer field that memorializes a victim of gun violence,” the two offices said in the statement. “In balancing these goals, Commissioners Rubio and Hardesty have sought this funding to explore various possible longer-term solutions to the ongoing camping in the right-of-way along Oak Street. In exploring these options, we are committed to avoiding hostile architecture and maintaining this as an assessable space to all Portlanders.”
Draft documents shared with The Oregonian/OregonLive detailed plans to spend $500,000 on installing benches just around Laurelhurst Park. Contacted Wednesday, city staff with knowledge of the proposal said the money was meant to address Portland parks more broadly, not solely Laurelhurst. And while a final decision hasn’t been agreed upon yet, officials said that benches remain the most viable solution.
Currently, a handful of tents dot a portion of Oak Street near Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard at Laurelhurst Park. At least five of the current tent residents had lived in the Laurelhurst encampment before city contractors cleared it out over the summer. They had each been displaced but came back because it’s an area they know and feel safe in – many said they feared popping tents up elsewhere in the city where crime is more rampant.
Cole White, who has been homeless for seven months, said if he gets kicked out of his tent near Laurelhurst Park, he isn’t sure where else he would go. He noted campers set up their tents as far away from their housed neighbors’ properties as possible, pushing up against Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard.
“For all the times people have come out to kick us out, no one has offered much help other than toiletry kits,” White said. “I need help filling out paperwork for housing and disability benefits.”
The benches, or other deterrents, could eliminate camping without violating the a 2018 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in an Idaho case known as Martin v. Boise. Decisions by that court set the law for nine states including Oregon.
In its ruling, the appeals court said governments cannot criminalize conduct that is unavoidable as a result of experiencing homelessness. To punish a homeless individual for sleeping outside when there aren’t enough shelter beds within city limits would be comparable to punishing that individual for the fact that they are homeless, a consequence the court described as a cruel and unusual.
While there are caveats, the ruling essentially means if officials want to sweep individuals, they must offer them an alternative place to stay whether that be other public land, a shelter bed or a home.
The row of tents was notably tidier than in the past, when tensions flared between homeowners, city officials, campers and homeless advocates over the summer. Nearly 70 residents were removed from the area at the end of July. At the time, it was called Portland’s largest homeless encampment but hasn’t matched its size since then. In the past week, the city posted the area for removal once again.
The current number of make-shift homes mirrors many other clusters of tents that can be found across the city.
Data obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive show that the city has found people camped out in clusters of tents or vehicles in more than 80 parts of the city, from Hayden Island in far North Portland to Southwest Portland’s Goose Hollow to the city’s farthest eastern stretches along Southeast Powell Boulevard. In all, the city recorded 6,869 complaints about homeless encampments logged into its online One Point of Contact reporting tool between June 26 and Aug. 1.
During that time, Laurelhurst nearly tied Foster-Powell as the neighborhood with the most number of complaints about camp sites. Since then, the number of campers near Laurelhurst Park has decreased dramatically due to constant management by the city of Portland.
The city prioritizes which camp sites are cleaned and which are removed based on what it regards as a scientific risk assessment that considers public health issues such as trash accumulation, drug paraphernalia, whether sidewalks are blocked and safety threats, among other items.
But some homeless advocates and houseless individuals question if neighborhood complaints determine where the city removes encampments more than a genuine public health threat.
