Portland service providers share concerns about proposed camping ban

By Rolando Hernandez (OPB)
June 6, 2023 9:06 a.m. Updated: June 12, 2023 1:29 p.m.

Broadcast: Tuesday, May 6

Opponents of a proposed camping ban hold a sign during testimony during a Portland City Council meeting in Portland, May 31, 2023. The proposal would ban camping from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and is aimed to deter homeless encampments.

Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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Last week, Portland City Council heard testimony on a proposal that would ban daytime camping from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on public property and impose stricter rules on camping during all hours. More than a 100 city residents shared their thoughts and concerns with commissioners. The council will vote on the ordinance on Wednesday, June 7. Katie O’Brien is the executive director of Rose Haven, Portland’s only daytime shelter serving women, children and gender diverse Portlanders. Sandra Comstock is the executive director of Hygiene4All, a nonprofit providing showers, laundry service, first aid and other services to people experiencing homelessness in the city. They both join us to share their thoughts on the proposal and the potential impact it would have if passed.

Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Portland City Council is expected to pass an ordinance tomorrow that will ban camping on public property from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and impose stricter rules on camping overnight. Social service providers say that their experiences and the needs of the people they serve were not really taken into account when city leaders crafted this proposal. So we’re going to hear from two providers right now, Katie O’Brien is the executive director of Rose Haven, a day shelter. Sandra Comstock is the executive director of the nonprofit Hygiene4All. Welcome to Think Out Loud to both of you.

Sandra Comstock: Thank you.

Katie O’Brien: Appreciate you having me.

Miller: Katie O’Brien first. Can you give us a sense for the services that you provide?

O’Brien: Sure. So for 26 years, Rose Haven has served the Portland community. We are a day shelter that serves women, children and gender diverse folks. So we have a variety of services that meet immediate needs for nutritious food and bathrooms and showers and supplies. For us, the important piece of what we’re doing is that when people can come and rely on those things and not worry about them. It positions them to kind of consider other aspects of their lives. And so we have on-site social workers who help them navigate the resources available to them for all of the other needs they may have.

Miller: And Sandra Comstock, what about Hygiene4All? What do you provide?

Comstock: Yes, Hygiene4All is a homeless guided, hygiene, health, and safety hub. We provide toilets, showers, foot and wound care, connection to health services, and testing for various medical ailments. And more than anything, a place of community, togetherness, connection and belonging. And we also are mostly staffed by unsheltered workers. So we’re sort of [operating] under the principle of mutual aid.

Miller: Sandra, what have the last few years been like there?

Comstock: We’ve only been open since 2021. But prior to that, we were part of the coalition that opened and staffed and helped staff the C3PO pandemic emergency villages. But I would say in the time that we’ve been open, we’ve really been able to bring together and build a beautiful community. However, since the 90-day reset started, with the intensive sweeps of the Central Eastside, we’re finding we ask people questions about when the last time they were swept or lost their belongings and pretty much it’s on a weekly basis. We can’t keep up with what people are losing.

Miller: The reset. That was the second one of its kind in recent years where, after there was community and business backlash at what they saw as the negative effects of homeless encampments, the city leaders came together and said we’re gonna do more to push people out. That was after that happened in Old Town. Katie O’Brien, you mentioned that you’ve been around for a lot longer, 26 years or so. What kind of demand have you seen for your services from the pandemic onward?

O’Brien: Oh, wow. I think it’s been incredible. When March 2020 hit all of us, as an agency, really needed to make an important decision about whether or not we were going to be able to continue to do this work, serving thousands of people who are on the spectrum of poverty. It was serving folks who had somewhere to stay, maybe with their family, but needed additional support, to those who were outside and had been outside for a number of years. But our work really shifted during the pandemic to focus on people that really had nowhere to shelter in place. So while the quantity of people increased the intensity of the work and people’s lives became much more complicated. I’ve just seen a significant difference in the mental and physical health of the people that we’re serving over the last couple of years.

Miller: Well Katie, what went through your mind when you heard about this proposed ordinance to codify, in a different way, when camping and where camping will be allowed in Portland?

O’Brien: Well, I had lots of thoughts that ran through my head initially. At first, it just, it doesn’t seem practical. So we have about 150 people who come to us a day and we serve over 3,000 people a year. And every single person is in a different situation. But the idea that those that we serve, who are living outside, are going to pack up their belongings, tote them around, to come to places like Rose Haven and try to be productive, just seems like this ordinance is just working against what is going to actually help people. So it didn’t seem practical at that level. And it also is confusing.

What I’ve asked for from the City is to tell us where people can go. There’s this laundry list of places and distances that you can’t be from X, Y, or Z. But let’s just tell people where they can go. But nobody seems to be able to really clarify that. And that is what’s gonna be really difficult when people come to us and ask for our support in navigating the options available for them. And we, again, don’t have a clear answer for them.

Miller: Sandra, I want to go back to that first point that Katie just made about the practicality of packing up your stuff, say, at 7:45 in the morning, every day. Can you give us a sense for some of the clients who you serve and what that would mean for them?

Comstock: Well, just to give you an idea, 60% of those that are living homeless, either in or out of shelters, live with one or more disabilities. So the notion that people are going to be able to easily pack up their things and tote them around on their backs for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, is just the height of perpetuating more mental and physical distress. And that doesn’t obviously just hit houseless folks. It hits all of us frontline workers as well. And as so many people have pointed out recently, those of us on the front line, seeing people and keeping people safe during the days and nights, are already stretched to the limit. We’re at capacity or overcapacity and we’re all struggling to keep our employees because we’re paid so low.

So this is a catastrophe for both places. But I would also add [that] it’s not just the homeless that will be suffering. This heightens mental and physical distress. So, the things that people don’t enjoy now, they’re only making them worse. And this has been the case for a long time with sweeps as well. You’re creating a situation in which people cannot be well. We do have Hepatitis C testing and then we move people through weeks of Hepatitis C testing, like getting their medications and stuff. And in the last month, one of our patrons who’s going through that process has lost her medications twice to being displaced. And not only does that put her health in jeopardy and set her back steps, it meant that two different teams had to come out and find her and replace those meds on days that they weren’t out seeing people at our site. So it’s just a colossal waste of money, resources, energy, and time. And it’s really demoralizing for those of us who are sitting on the front lines.

O’Brien: I would add to the complications that if you are a marginalized gender, if you are a woman or trans, a lot of people, for safety reasons, stay awake at night and then need to get some rest in during the day. And so there’s a safety component that is super concerning to us as well.

Miller: Oh, so in other words, the premise of this ordinance, if I understand it correctly, is that, of course, you’re gonna be up between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. And so that’s a perfectly fine time to move around. You’re saying that we’re actually talking about nocturnal lives for safety reasons. So when people come to your day shelter, are they then often going just to sleep?

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O’Brien: We don’t have an area for people to sleep, but there are a portion of people who come and spend the first couple of hours here resting and laying on our couches and then, kind of collecting themselves because they have been up all night. Some people work at night. Yeah, there are people who are in the houseless community who can’t afford a place to live but do have employment as well.

Comstock: Right. A lot of them work the night shifts in places like Jackson’s, et cetera and need to be able to sleep as well. It’s really hard. And then there’s the question of these $100 fines and the fact that no one’s gonna be able to pay them. After two times being stopped for sitting or I’m not sure exactly what. That’s confusing. A $100 fine definitely means probably either no show in court or definitely not paying the ticket and then you end up with a warrant for your arrest and you end up in jail as a result. And I’ve actually seen this happen with just regular, no trespass stuff. I’ve actually helped people work through that.

And the idea that by jailing people, you’re going to make it easier for them to get into housing is absurd. Because that’s actually one of the problems that we face when we’re trying to get people into housing.

Miller: This gets to the question of enforcement which I want to turn to in just a second. Katie O’Brien, Portland has already had, on its books, a ban on camping on public land, that for the most part has often not been enforced. Are you expecting that to change? Are you expecting a major uptick in enforcement starting on July 1st, assuming that this ordinance passes?

O’Brien: I think that’s the expectation but I don’t know about the reality of that, you know. And I think regardless, it’s gonna make people super nervous and quite scared about the possibility of it happening. Even if it’s July 1st, it’s the unknown about it too.

Comstock: I’d like to speak directly to that because I was in a meeting last week at the Central Eastside Community Safety meeting for the Central Eastside businesses. And Eric Zimmerman, who is one of Mayor Wheeler’s policy advisors, promised that they would be sending out more police to the Central Eastside to try and enforce it so that people will go into the new camp that they want to set up. And he also promised that they would be sending quote unquote “tough Urban Alchemy staff” out, and that “no one would be hugging it out with the homeless.” That’s a direct quote from him.

So, in my mind, there’s no question that as soon as they can, they’re gonna be enforcing it. They’re gonna start with the Central Eastside because they have an agenda which is to fill their camp. Because, as Zimmerman pointed out, if this camp doesn’t fill up, then all the rest of the camps are gonna be hard to hard sell for other communities.

Miller: Let’s talk numbers for a second. How many people could go to that camp? And how many people, just in the Central Eastside, are we talking about who are without a home on any given night or any given day?

Comstock: So I believe the maximum number in that camp is 150 tents and pods. And, you know, we serve 80 to 100 people a week. And we don’t serve everybody in the Central Eastside. There’s also the City team there and other places. So, overall, the numbers for how many people are sleeping on the streets right now - mostly from the Point-In-Time count which, of course, is low. Katie, do you have [those numbers]?

O’Brien: I wanted to say it was 6,000 but I’m not sure if that is [right].

Comstock: I think that’s the total but the thing is, going into these tent camps is a shelter situation. And having run pandemic camps under conditions that are not unsimilar, in terms of not having services and funding, I am not optimistic that that’s gonna be a safe place for trans people, for People of Color, for same sex couples, et cetera, particularly with Urban Alchemy’s record down in California. Moreover, they only were able to house 7% of the people that they held in their camp down in LA. So this is not a solution. It’s sort of a pit stop. And it’s a very expensive pit stop.

Miller: Well, let’s turn down to the solutions that you both would be advocating or are advocating for instead. Often the true solution, the long term solution, that’s put forward is permanent supportive housing. But that really has a longer term timeline to be up and running. But what about right now? I’d love to hear both of you on this.

Katie O’Brien, first: If you were crafting a city ordinance instead of the mayor and the rest of the four members of the city council, what would you do?

O’Brien: I think that we need to address the real challenges, the human crisis we’ve got going on here. And I think that mental health has to be a focus in all of that right now. I think that if we can’t get more mental health support and more recovery support, we’re in big trouble. We had the opportunity to meet with Tina Kotek a few weeks ago and we were talking about how we can’t keep up with the number of people and the challenges and complexities of what people are dealing with. But there’s kind of this top 10% of people who are really really really struggling beyond what any of us are going to be able to support them with. And that’s where we need the government’s support, [for] people with really challenging and complex mental health issues and addiction challenges. And we need to beef up the support systems for those.

Miller: I want to make sure I understand when you say “beef up the support systems,” you mean serious inpatient help and beds for people with complex mental health and addiction disorders at the same time. But, inpatient treatment somehow and much more of it?

O’Brien: Yes, absolutely. I mean, we have people who come to us asking for recovery support. And we will spend weeks and weeks and weeks calling around trying to find places where we can send somebody who’s willing and wanting to go to recovery. And there isn’t space available.

Miller: Sandra Comstock, I wanna give you a chance to respond to it. I just wanted to get some clarification from Katie.

Comstock: Yeah, and I totally agree with that. I’ve experienced that personally myself with people that were trying to get into recovery and there’s not a lot of space. But there’s also poor coordination. But also The Welcome Home Coalition, which I’m a part of, has been advocating for some things that we can do to fasttrack people from the streets to housing more quickly and actually solve the problem with actual housing. So with the master leases that they did last year with the Move-In Multnomah [program], we were able to fasttrack 214 people to healthy housing in less than four months with $4 million.

Jessica Vega Peterson has allocated more money for that and it’s slow going. But there is the possibility of getting just as many people, if not more people quickly into housing and off the streets in a way that’s much more efficient, that doesn’t involve policing people into it. Last night I was down visiting one of my friends who’s gonna be interviewed on NBC, who’s unsheltered. Everybody in the tent was signing up for the Section 8 vouchers on their phones, at 9:30 at night. People want to be in housing and we need to provide that housing quickly. We can do that with master leases. We can do that with Project Turnkey-type projects. And that is a way more efficient use of our funds and it actually gets them to a place where they want to be.

O’Brien: We spent a lot of time yesterday helping people apply to be part of that [Section 8] voucher program. But that program hasn’t opened up in, what, seven years? That’s just an opportunity to be almost in a lottery. It isn’t even a guarantee. It’s just like, “you might have a chance within the next couple of years to get some support.”

Comstock: But I want to emphasize that that’s only one option when I’m talking about what the master leases can be done quickly, just like we did last summer where we housed 214 people in less than four months.

Miller: Sandra Comstock and Katie O’Brien, thank you.

Sandra Comstock is the executive director of Hygiene4All. Katie O’Brien is the executive director of Rose Haven. It’s a day shelter in Portland. We’ve been talking about the city ordinance that is expected to pass tomorrow at the Portland City Council. It would ban camping on public property from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

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