Dear Citizens,

The full City Council will be asked by Commissioner Nick Fish in November to consider allowing some camping in Portland.

As record numbers of homeless have already been in the rain for a month (and 4 inches of rain), a proposal to ease the camping ban will soon be heard in Council. Camping will be allowed only according to guidelines - in designated places, during designated times.

Should people be allowed to camp in plain view, rather than have to find places to hide in order to avoid being randomly roused by police or thugs at 3 a.m.? Should official shelter spaces (with services) be freed up to serve more vulnerable people, while healthier adults are allowed to pitch tents out-of-doors?

How the Council will vote is yet undetermined. We believe that they are under pressure from dull and insensitive elements within the Portland Police Bureau to oppose any easing of the camping ban. The powerful Portland Business Alliance has also been consistently opposed to any kind of visible poverty (and thus camping)  as this might tarnish the image of our nice clean city.

We want to urge you to contact Nick Fish and the rest of the City Council. We hope that you will feel moved to tell them that you want to see more effective measures taken to help the un-sheltered.

We hope that you will insist to each member of the City Council that it is in the public interest to support an easing of the camping ban. You might also ask that they support development of local work and education programs which would help those currently homeless toward self support. Contact information for our Council members are at the bottom of this Post.

At least twice that number, perhaps 20,000 more, have only temporary housing.  Local officials are constantly quoting smaller numbers (while pointing to all their successes). Portland has its boundaries and Gresham has their’s. It adds up to over 10,000 by now who are consistently without shelter.  Many of those temporarily housed are high stress, unhealthy situations.

The homeless population is different now than it was two years ago. Unemployment and under-employment have made for a huge increase. There are about a quarter million unemployed Oregonians, with more than half of these in the Metro area.

Half way through Portland/Multnomah’s so called “Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness,” the number of newly homeless citizens has quickly gotten way beyond the reach of our local Bureaucrats.

Hundreds are being turned away nightly. Many don’t even bother trying to check in any more at the shelters. Hundreds are sleeping in their cars, but among them, many are unable to renew expired tags or pay for insurance, or for gas. The streets, a last resort, is all that’s left for many.

What is left for those stuck without options in the rain? Pitching a tent or a tarp or a piece of cardboard in an out-of-the-way spot to avoid the rain and cold? Nope – sorry! Pitching a tent is illegal in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.  The same kind of anti-camping (anti-sleeping) laws are in place in cities across this country as well, especially in the ‘red’ states.

What’s especially terrible about this – is that most homeless people locally don’t know where to find food outside the City. So they feel they must stay in the City where food and other services are available. Most of these people have run out of options. They likely have friends and relatives who are barely above water or in the same boat.

Adding to their misery is the fact that the Portland Police Bureau has a serious problem with bullies in their ranks.

Oppressive sweeps can leave a person devastated, and without any possessions. It is happening daily. Some move way out to the edges of town to avoid all of this, and they eat less often.

The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) has not always been so kind to homeless campers generally, however. Reports continue to come in about abrupt 3 a.m. awakenings, and of their being forced to “move on,” even though there is no legal place for them to go within the City.

Police often seize and dispose of the property of homeless citizens. There is an established pattern of Police disposing homeless people’s property rather than offering them opportunities to reclaim their things as required by the law.

A loophole allows this in some instances, but this consistent pattern is illegal, even if the anti-camping law is found to be legal. It indicates that there is a policy of un-Constitutional discrimination against the status of homelessness.

The majority of Portland police officers are decent people, but there has been an ongoing, top-down tolerance (if not approval) of often vicious police behavior toward the homeless. This is evident in the long pattern of abuses.

Truly, we are cultivating despair and often anti-social behavior among the homeless by continuing to employ bullies to enforce our laws. A small minority of unchecked bullying officers can cause a lot of lasting harm.

Cruelties are also being carried out by private security forces, which often act as though they are police. Portland Patrol, Inc. has gained an especially bad reputation for bullying, and the illegal taking of belongings from homeless people. There has been a lack of accountability for their crimes as well, with the City Attorney’s Office generally declining to pursue complaints.

In any case, even the kindest of police officers are operating under a long outdated law — which has thousands of people among us unable to legally shield themselves from the wet and cold, even if in order to sleep.

In any case, even the kindest of police officers are operating under a long outdated law — which has thousands of people among us unable to legally shield themselves from the wet and cold, even if in order to sleep.

The CCEH Alternatives Workgroup this year placed Sisters of the Road Cafe and JOIN in charge of drafting the guidlines needed to allow camping. They were asked to draft them in July. They were delivered to Nick Fish at the end of October.

One month and three and a half inches of rain into our rainy season, all eyes are now on the City Council.

(likely mid November)

Please encourage them to think about the dangers of keeping homelessness hidden. Insist on a new policy that allows people to camp, and to stay dry every morning. Encourage them to allow ongoing camping in as many out-of-the-way places as are needed for the huge number of people outside. Encourage them to cooperate at all levels of government toward (re)building a local social safety net. Tell them you’re a registered voter.

Thanks for reading.

The G.R.O.W.S. Committee
Portland, Oregon

GROWS.committee@gmail.com

For more info. on the camping law and efforts to stop reform, visit:

http://dignityadvocate.wordpress.com/

Location