Portland to Crack Down on Homeless Camping following Legal Settlement

Over at least the next five years, the city of Portland will prioritize removing homeless campsites from sidewalks, will establish a system for reporting problematic camps, and will cease distributing tents and tarps to people living on the streets, according to a tentative settlement agreement that city leaders are expected to consider next week.

As part of the agreement, stemming from a lawsuit filed last year accusing the city of violating the rights of disabled residents, the city must spend at least $20 million over the next five years on an “Impact Reduction Program,” to address homeless camps in the city.

The agreement will work in tandem with an ordinance proposed by Mayor Ted Wheeler that would ban camps altogether on sidewalks, in parks, and near schools, and that would ban camping on other public spaces between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. every day. Portland is also constructing six large-scale city-sanctioned campsites, with the first slated to open this summer.

The Portland City Council is expected to consider both the settlement agreement and the proposed ordinance on May 31. If the settlement is approved by the council, it would then be presented to the federal court for approval.

“Everything is designed to work together,” said John DiLorenzo, a lawyer behind the class-action lawsuit accusing the city of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The settlement, along with Wheeler’s proposed ordinance, “will work hand-in-glove to further funnel people into these sanctioned camping areas.”

National Review first wrote about DiLorenzo’s lawsuit in September.

In recent years, homeless encampments – often rows of tents and wooden structures surrounded by garbage and drug paraphernalia — have been popping up on busy sidewalks in prominent business corridors in Portland.

According to the lawsuit, the city has failed to ensure the sidewalks are accessible to people with disabilities and visual impairments. The ten plaintiffs, along with “all persons with mobility disabilities who live or work in Portland,” have been “denied full and equal access to the City’s sidewalks and subjected to unlawful or hazardous conditions,” the lawsuit states.

According to the settlement agreement, the city must prioritize removing homeless campsites that are obstructing “all or any portion” of the sidewalk; at least 40 percent of all campsite removals each year have to be from city sidewalks, and at least 500 total each year.

The city also must implement a system where people can report campsites by phone or online, according to the agreement. ADA-related complaints will receive priority. A city employee must conduct an assessment within five days of receiving a complaint.

That may seem slow, but DiLorenzo said city staffers should be busy.

“Wait until they have that website up,” he said. “When they have that website up, they’re going to be hard pressed to respond within five days to every single report, because they’re going to have people uploading stuff all over the place.”

According to the agreement, the city must also post anti-camping signs at locations where more than three campsites have been removed in a month.

The agreement also extends the prohibition on the city distributing tents or tarps, with limited exceptions, including when the city is experiencing severe weather. During the course of the legal challenge, DiLorenzo’s team learned that local government officials provided thousands of tents, tarps, sleeping bags, and tents to homeless residents in recent years.

The agreement does not include a mandate that the city build more shelter space, and it does not note any penalties for people who keep erecting camps on sidewalks.

But DiLorenzo hopes it will send a message.

“I want the word to get around to those that are homeless that the worst place for you to camp is the sidewalk,” he said. “The thinking is that ultimately these guys will figure out that you’re just going to be constantly bothered if you’re camping on the sidewalk, and if you’re somewhere else you’re not going to be.”

DiLorenzo said he believes Portland leaders have been negotiating in good faith. “I think the current city regime … really wants to do something to address this problem.”

“I strongly believe that everyone should have access to sidewalks to navigate the city safely, and this is especially true for Portlanders with mobility challenges,” Wheeler said in an email to the Oregonian newspaper.

On Thursday, Wheeler announced details of his proposed update to the city’s camping code. His proposed “time, place, and manner” restrictions on encampments are designed to come into compliance with state law, and with a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, Martin v. City of Boise. That ruling concluded that prosecuting people for sleeping or camping on public property when they have no home or shelter to go to is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

“There are currently hundreds of unsanctioned, sometimes dangerous, and often squalid homeless camps across the 146 square miles of Portland. These homeless camps represent nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe,” Wheeler, a Democrat, said when announcing the proposed changes. “As a result, our community continues to suffer substantial public health, safety, and livability concerns. We must continue to develop workable and compassionate means to connect people to the services they need to get off and stay off the streets.”

Wheeler’s proposal would bar people from having camps on any public land during the day, and would completely prohibit camping in: parks, docks, sidewalks, areas near construction sites, schools, daycares, existing shelters, high-crash corridors, and environmental overlay zones.

It would also prohibit: camps that obstruct access to private property or businesses, starting fires or using gas heaters in or around a camp, erecting permanent structures at a camp, digging holes and damaging vegetation, and accumulating garbage at a camp.

People who violate the rules more than twice could face a $100 fine and jail time.

Homeless advocates told the Oregonian that Wheeler’s proposals and the lawsuit settlement agreement were “galling,” and that they may lead to “a lot more death this summer” as the weather warms and more people are displaced from their camps.

“We know that housing is what gets people off the street,” Tom Stenson, deputy legal director for Disability Rights Oregon, told the newspaper. “But the only real metric here is, does the city do enough to camp clearances? If you clear someone out of a camp but don’t give them a place to go, they’re just going to move down the block.”

DiLorenzo said that while the settlement agreement will not solve the Portland’s homeless problem, it should help funnel people into the city-sanctioned camping grounds.

Clearing away the tents and garbage could also help to revitalize the city, he said.

“I think more people will want to come downtown or go to restaurants if they don’t have to be intimidated by having to navigate around a tent encampment,” he said.

DiLorenzo said much of the problem is driven by deinstitutionalization of the severely mentally ill, and by drug abuse, a problem he believes was made worse by a 2020 ballot measure that decriminalized small amounts of hard drugs.

The most recent count found nearly 4,000 homeless people living unsheltered in Multnomah County, with most of them living in Portland.