Disabled residents are suing Portland for failing to keep sidewalks clear of homeless camps in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Oregon lawyers who filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of Portland last month, alleging that city leaders are allowing homeless encampments to block sidewalks needed by people with disabilities, are now expanding the scope of the challenge to determine if county officials were responsible for providing some of the camping gear in the first place.
In a 2022 budget presentation, Portland’s Joint Office of Homeless Services noted that during the Covid-19 pandemic it had distributed homeless “survival gear” around the metro area, including 6,550 tents, 27,000 tarps, 8,550 sleeping bags, and 29,588 blankets. The Joint Office of Homeless Services is a partnership between the city and Multnomah County.
On Tuesday, John DiLorenzo, one of the lawyers behind the lawsuit, sent subpoenas to the county and the Joint Office of Homeless Services demanding records that could help determine if any of the camping supplies they provided in recent years ended up on the sidewalks.
“I strongly suspect that the county has been passing out new tents only to have the city sweep them,” wrote DiLorenzo in an email. “This totally incoherent and uncoordinated response is akin to trying to walk up a down escalator. You get nowhere and are left exhausted.”
The class-action suit, filed in September in U.S. District Court, accuses the City of Portland of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. According to the lawsuit, the city is failing to keep its sidewalks clear of debris and tent encampments, and failing to ensure the sidewalks are accessible to people with disabilities and visual impairments. The lawsuit seeks a court order to ensure the sidewalks are cleared and maintained, and to force the city to build or purchase new shelter space.
The ten plaintiffs include city residents with physical disabilities who use wheelchairs, scooters, and canes to traverse the city, as well as residents with visual impairments. Some of the plaintiffs have described being afraid to leave their homes because of the encampments and being assaulted by the homeless people who have set up tents on the sidewalks.
Multnomah County did not respond to an email from National Review on Thursday seeking comment on the subpoenas. The Joint Office of Homeless Service declined to comment on the subpoenas because of the potential for litigation, but a spokesman added in an email: “The Joint Office of Homeless Services has put half its budget this year into expanding and strengthening its shelter system, even as it builds out a rapid-response housing system that helped 4,560 people leave homelessness and move into homes of their own last fiscal year. At the same time, the homelessness services system and the Joint Office have also continued to provide safety on the streets services.”
After the lawsuit was filed, Portland City Attorney Robert Taylor emailed DiLorenzo suggesting that he “consider joining in your lawsuit the other government entities with responsibility for addressing houselessness in our community.” In the email, Taylor mentioned the roles of Multnomah County and Metro, a regional government entity, which have responsibilities for providing homeless services in the area. He also mentioned the state of Oregon, which has responsibilities around funding substance-abuse treatment and housing for Oregonians struggling with substance-abuse disorders.
“I encourage you,” Taylor wrote, “to consider whether the broad and enduring scope of relief sought by plaintiffs in your case can be practically achieved if these other government entities are not also asked to share in the responsibility to ‘construct, purchase, or otherwise provide for emergency shelters in which to house the unsheltered persons affected by the Court’s judgment.’”
DiLorenzo said Taylor’s email may have been a first in his 42 years as a litigator, primarily focused on suing governments. “I’ve never really had a government telling me to sue more governments,” he said, adding that it is in his side’s interest to get as many groups to the table as possible to finance a remedy, namely more emergency shelters.
While it will likely be difficult to identify any specific tent or tarp as one that was distributed by the county or the Joint Office, DiLorenzo said they are looking for invoices and distribution plans to see if the tents and tarps they are finding on the sidewalks are consistent with the tents and tarps those governments provided.
“Quite a few of these tents are large, brand new Coleman tents. If you’re an outdoor person, you know those are like the crème de la crème of tents,” DiLorenzo said. “I’ve always been scratching my head wondering how did homeless people end up having enough resources to acquire these ultra-super, top-of-the-line Coleman tents?” Some Coleman tents sell online for more than $600.
A January survey of the Portland metro area found that more than 5,000 residents of Multnomah County were homeless at the time, more than 3,000 of whom were unsheltered and sleeping on the street, according to the lawsuit. Homeless encampments have increasingly been popping up on busy sidewalks in prominent business corridors — Old Town, Chinatown, Downtown, the Pearl District, the Central Eastside Industrial District, the Lloyd District.
This is a particular problem for the 12.9 percent of Portlanders who live with disabilities, including 6 percent of residents with ambulatory impairments and 2.4 percent of residents with a visual impairment who rely on the city’s sidewalks to access critical public amenities, according to the lawsuit.