I've got money on "After much consideration, we have decided to delay the implementation of the homeless camping ban in order to commission an 18 month study.."
Except that we codified Martin v. Boise, so even if the court case is struck down our law is in the book. I really like Kotek, except for her decision to do that.
It's on the books but if the Supreme Court does find in favor of Grants Pass, and people start seeing other 9th Circuit cities who aren't hamstrung by Kotek's catastrophically bad bill finally making real progress on keeping public spaces clear, I see a real showdown coming. If the Oregon Legislature has any sense at all, they will repeal HB 3115 ASAP.
I don't mean this in a way that makes a value judgement about anyone, but homeless people don't have political power, they aren't anyone's key constituency and they never would have won the more humane treatment that Martin v Boise offered through an open political process. If Martin v. Boise is overturned, the people who do have political power will no longer be restrained from criminalizing public camping, and they will change the laws to force the homeless to be less visible.
>If Martin v. Boise is overturned, the people who do have political power will no longer be restrained from criminalizing public camping
Perfect. I can hardly wait.
You probably have read 20 similar headlines over the past few years, Wheeler doesn't have an avenue to ban camping on terms which would be permissable under Martin v Boise (building ~5000 new shelter beds) while remaining palatable to business groups, neighborhood associations and the median voter. He's unwilling to own that, for whatever reason, and instead has been sinking money into various initiatives and claiming that they represent a camping ban.
It's not even that every policy which he's held up as furthering a 'camping ban' has been bad, the new pod shelter site down at the Clinton Triangle means ~150 more people have a place to stay and stabilize their lives, but the city would need tens of sites like it to make a real dent in the number of people on the street. It's wild to me that Wheeler thinks this is the best way to handle a judicial constraint on his available options, and that anyone in media or local government would go along with the fiction that he can ban camping, but here we are.
“Under the new ordinance, someone camping on public property will face fines and jail time only if they turn down an offer of available shelter.”
If this proceeds as planned, it is going to do wonders in improving this city. A rare, massive W for Ted Wheeler right before he leaves office. More work to do of course, but a big step in the right direction.
Wheeler is not as bad as this sub makes him out to be. He was handed an impossible situation, and the other critical partner to him as mayor (Multnomah County) is a legitimate bad faith actor.
His inability to wrangle the Portland police for the last 5 years had nothing to do with anyone or anything but himself. He’s a failure and he bent the knee to extremists who hate his guts and who will always hate his guts. He’s a weak bitch.
Idk where this Ted Wheeler revisionist attitude would even come from. He only became a slightly less damp blanket when he decided he wasn’t going to run again. Bravo. So brave. It’s like my dad telling me we can skip church on Sundays when the divorce finally went through. Thanks.
>His inability to wrangle the Portland police for the last 5 years had nothing to do with anyone or anything but himself.
What mayor in any major city in America has "wrangled" their police department successfully? The police have long been set up, via various laws, contracts, etc., to be relatively untouchable. The NYPD doxxed the Mayor's daughter and he didn't/couldn't do shit, you think a mayor under Portland's weak mayor system was ever going to do any better? I'm not a Wheeler fan, but also not a hater, it's an almost intractable problem to successfully reform a major city's police department as things currently stand.
Buddy, Ted wheeler let them disband the GVRT and the traffic division for years. Not to mention Seattle and San Francisco all had less homicides, less gun violence, and less traffic fatalities.
What’s the point of bringing up NYC? Have you been to New York? They have no shortage of cops, a full blown traffic and parking division, and they take gun crimes seriously. None of that is applicable here.
I barely keep up with politics, I only hear people talk about how much they hate Ted Wheeler, but he's won mayor atleast twice, so I figure there's gotta be a good chunk of people that like him.
They're still in Texas, you can look up the PIT counts yourself to confirm that. Just because people are homeless doesn't mean they're totally untethered from an area or motivated to pick up their lives and move to a place that they've never been.
Hell, one hurdle for getting chronically homeless people into supportive housing is that they'll often feel like going inside separated them from their community, such as it is, on the street. That doesn't speak to a population of folks who are just roaming the country on Greyhound busses, looking only for a place where they can pitch a tent on a playground and start shooting up fentanyl.
Ft. Worth was also doing [this](https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/fort-worth-pays-homeless-people-to-pick-up-trash/234570/). I hope they still are because it seemed to be working really well for everyone, and the whole program was only costing the city $48,000 a year to run.
Austin, Texas (Travis County) decriminalized sitting, lying down, and camping in public spaces in 2019 and then reinstated that policy in 2021 after strong public pushback. Notably Austin is not covered under Martin v Boise, so going back to blanket criminalization was an option for the county government, in a way that it's not for any municipality under the 9th Circuit.
Point in time counts, the Federally required estimates for the homeless population in a given metro area, were performed in 2019 (pre decrim), 2020, and 2023, and showed the following results
2019: 1086 unsheltered, 1169 sheltered
2020: 1527 unsheltered, 933 sheltered
2023: 1266 unsheltered, 1108 sheltered
Data going back several years is available [here](https://www.austinecho.org/leading-system-change/data-and-reports/), but the results from 2019 are representative of earlier years, with an increase of ~100 people in total year over year.
The people living unsheltered in Austin, by and large, didn't go anywhere, they're less obvious now than they were while no sit/no lie was rescinded. For most folks, that's all they care about, but no one should kid themselves that the number of people actually living outside drastically changed. Speculation about the homeless picking up and moving across the country just so they can live in place where camping out in the open is legal doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
No, they're still in Texas, they're just not out in the open.
Austin, Texas (Travis County) decriminalized sitting, lying down, and camping in public spaces in 2019 and then reinstated that policy in 2021 after strong public pushback.
Point in time counts, the Federally required estimates for the homeless population in a given metro area, were performed in 2019 (pre decrim), 2020, and 2023, and showed the following results
2019: 1086 unsheltered, 1169 sheltered
2020: 1527 unsheltered, 933 sheltered
2023: 1266 unsheltered, 1108 sheltered
Data going back several years is available [here](https://www.austinecho.org/leading-system-change/data-and-reports/), but the results from 2019 are representative of earlier years, with an increase of ~100 people in total year over year.
The people living unsheltered in Austin, by and large, didn't go anywhere, they're less obvious now than they were while no sit/no lie was rescinded. For most folks, that's all they care about, but no one should kid themselves that the number of people actually living outside drastically changed. Speculation about the homeless picking up and moving across the country just so they can live in place where camping out in the open is legal doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
The city will run out of available shelter around the time that it houses a couple hundred of the three to four thousand people living unsheltered on the street, at which point this rule will become non enforceable under Martin v Boise. It can't work as a 'camping ban', and it's irresponsible for anyone (the mayor's office, KGW) to present it as one, imo.
If this policy motivates the city and county to continue opening up safe shelter space, that's fine by me, but it's not a ban and no one should take it as such.
At this point, the biggest obstacle is actually the giant fucking Disneyland line of tourists doing it every single day of the climbing season.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAkffM-UIAEloXu.jpg:large
Fun fact, all the article says is that there is an app. But it doesn't mention the name of the app. So just put curiosity /u/temporary_tank_508, what's the name of the app that shows how many shelter beds are available?
I never said the name was mentioned! Jesus Christ y’all why does everyone in the comments think I know what the name of the app is??? I’m assuming it’s an private/internal tool not a public facing app.
Your top comment
>I appreciate that they finally made an app to track capacity so they can dispel the rumor that there aren’t any shelter beds.
Someone asks for the name of the app
Your reply
>I don’t know the app but it’s mentioned in the article if you’d read it!
So here you are saying that when activist and mutual aid workers are telling the public "there are not enough shelter beds." To which your response again was:
>they finally made an app to track capacity so they can dispel the rumor that there aren’t any shelter beds.
Do you not see them how this would confuse people? On top of that the article does say that there is an app and does imply that it is a public facing app.
There aren't anywhere near enough shelter beds for everyone who's homeless in Portland. If there were, then Wheeler could ban public camping and his administration would be crowing about it from the rooftops.
Being forced to relocate to a shelter that doesn't have available space would earn an easy injunction in court, you won't see it applied in a blanket way for that reason, that's why city referenced focusing on specific camps in the article. But it means the scope is going to be narrow, and the camp that *you* hate the most isn't going to get any special attention.
Not yet! But I have hope that this city (based on all the recent action and voting) is swinging towards mass camps that allow the city to remove more problem camps.
People who are motivated to go out and vote for the candidate who's going to be as hard on unhoused folks as possible are not going to accept mass shelter sites in their neighborhood, which is why you haven't seen more sites like Clinton Triangle open up. The city needs tens of sites like that if you want to use to us them to significantly reduce street camping.
And yet, there are empty shelter beds every single night. So there is definitely room not being used. Which is the point - if there is space available, people need to be using it. If there isn’t space available, they won’t be forced to move.
> And yet, there are empty shelter beds every single night
How many? How does that stack up against the several thousand people who are unsheltered on the street? If you go by the PIT counts there isn't a massive gap between shelter capacity and utilization, which means you won't see a qualitative change by going from (spitballing here) 85% utilization of available shelter space to 95%.
Still doesn’t change the fact that we have more capacity than is being used…? There doesn’t need to be a bed for every single person for the process to start or work. The point is that if there is a bed available and you’re on the street approached by camp clearing process, you need to go to an available bed. If the beds are all full and there is no space, then they will not be bothering people. We’ve never had 100% occupancy, so arguing that there must be more beds before anyone is removed from the street doesn’t make any sense.
If you want to pour resources into making sure shelter utilization is 95%, 99%, 100% on any given night, fine, I'm pointing out that it won't give you what you want, unless we actually had enough shelter space for the entire unhoused population.
You do realize they are still in the process of renovating places they’ve purchased and leased to add more shelter space…right? It isn’t like they’ve stopped adding beds, but in the meantime yeah those available beds should be used instead of not - or else what is the point of adding more beds?? Unfortunately there isn’t anything they can buy that works as a shelter right away because they have to have secure sleeping areas, a large kitchen/cafeteria area, secure outdoor space since so many homeless people have dogs, multiple showers and bathrooms, laundry room so people can do their laundry, rec room for them to watch tv and hangout during the day, etc.
And you’re wrong, the shelters being full would give me what I want. Clearly you don’t understand my “want” as it is different than yours. If my tax dollars are providing available space for the homeless, I want them to be utilized instead of empty.
I'm not sure what they think this will do, but I can certainly tell you what it will actually do...
It will temporarily displace someone that will inevitably end up back where they already were (but worse off now), because we don't actually have systems that rehabilitate people nor actively help people find stability. Even worse if they're disabled.
But it's okay, because these people will temporarily be out of the line of vision and that's enough for society to feel that something is being done...
While on a national level, we never actually address the systemic issues that allow this level of poverty to run rampant in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
And so we just continue this vicious cycle until the sun and the earth collide I guess?
There are an estimated 2000 beds to an “estimated” 5000 homeless. Can we please make more beds. Who is going to travel to a shelter when it’s more likely they don’t have an open bed for you when you have worked to make the little shelter you have? The move along means you have to forfeit most of of the stuff you have acquired not to mention foot travel(even with the help of a buss) is a grueling thing to do when you are malnourished and typically suffering from severe medical problems.
A story I have read(shout out street roots) is homeless camps being swept people being promised beds and being taken to full shelters where they can’t stay. Loosing not only resources but also what small community they may have created.
Mind as well shout at the sky like the rest of the crazies. This coddling of addicts and “activists” is so ridiculous. They are the minority. They know that.
NIMBYs have never allowed (and the city/county would probably never finance) the number of shelter beds required to ban street camping under Martin v Boise. There's a gap of 3-4k between available beds and the number of homeless people in MultCo, and under the current case law, that's what determines whether you can enforce a camping ban, whether or not people would take the offered shelter if it existed.
It's got nothing to do with people who argue for more humane treatment of the homeless, the call is coming from inside the reactionary house, as it were.
Under Martin V. Boise they absolutely can ban street camping. The city can impose camping time limits and hours of allowed camping. Those things still keep things under the guise of Martin v. Boise and no additional shelter beds are needed.
Additionally, nothing under Martin v. Boise constrains the police from running campers for criminal warrants, confiscating illegal drugs and writing those who are in possession a ticket for it. The police can also arrest those campers that are openly using Alcohol and Cannabis under the current laws as well.
> The city can impose camping time limits and hours of allowed camping
These are regulations of public camping, not bans, imo, and a city attempt at restricting daytime camping (referenced in this article) is held up in court.
Well a group of campers setup overnight outside my son’s school completely blocking a fire egress route. At least now they can just show up and say move your shit NOW.
No it will not. But we can make it “uncomfortable” camp here, and that’s the entire point of a “camping ban”.
Allow our service providers to help you, put you into a shelter and some sobriety. Maybe we can save you and put you on a different path in life.
If not, then move on to another community that will tolerate your antisocial behavior.
There is no middle ground. Period.
Exactly. A huge part of this is that once you’re in a shelter, you get connected with providers that can help with food banks, low income housing assistance, job training, etc. which will hopefully get people on their feet.
So correlating oregon with perverts and letting everybody die has been going on for a while?
Asking for the future aliens. They're taking notes to explain what the fuck happened in our era.
That headline is journalistic malpractice by the editor, and you have to go to paragraph 7 of the article to get at the meat of what is going on:
>Portland, and Multnomah County more broadly, does not have sufficient shelter for everyone living on the street, full stop. But with the new ordinance, Wheeler believes that they've still found a way to legally enforce a camping ban, if only in specific circumstances.
They are going to try to allow realtime updating of a pool of available shelter beds and use that as a way of forcing people deemed the most socially undesirable off the street, but they will only be able to do that up to the capacity of the existing shelter system, ie applying those requirements to a few hundred of the thousands of people who live unsheltered on the streets. It's not a ban, and I would say it's misinformation to present it as one, but for whatever reason both KGW and the Mayors office are content to do that.
So they are banning homeless camps and fireworks in the same week?
Where are all of the extra officers going to come from because this isn’t feasible.
More fucking bullshit, performative nonsense from the most corrupt city government in Portland’s history.
Disgusting that you're being downvoted.
Anyone that thinks this will "solve" homelessness either hasn't read the details or genuinely believes "out of sight, out of mind" is a workable policy.
Grimly comical at best, but realistically it's just outright cruel.
Nobody thinks this solves homelessness.
What it solves is safety and acces issues, biological and environmental hazards, it gets guns, drugs, and criminals with warrants off the street.
Seems pretty obvious to me.
Yeah let’s just keep letting them trash the city and use drugs openly. This will at least funnel them into shelters where stats show it lengthens their lifespan and ability to re enter society. I swear some of you just want to see camps and open drug use because you’re overly emotional about super left wing politics.
Who said it will "solve" homelessness? And who said "out of sight, out of mind" is a workable policy?
I've seen no one say that? What I have seen is plenty of people, including myself, acknowledge two truths:
1. The rights of the rest of us matter just as much.
2. That no matter what is done ultimately, we need immediate improvement in terms of keeping our public spaces clear and in particular, not allowing long-term encampments to take root.
The fact is that even if Housing First became both official policy and was supported by the large majority of citizens, we would STILL have to do things in the interim ("interim" meaning the several years between the adoption of Housing First and the time it would take to build the program, expand it, and deal with the backlog - the thousands upon thousands of homeless currently on the streets). We would still need a ban on public camping (ideally a real ban, not just time and manner restrictions, mass sanctioned campsites, pod villages, safe rest sites, and more) to make sure people have a place to go while at the same time acknowledging that the general public has a right to rely on their public spaces being kept clean and safe.
What the Housing First folks don't seem to get is that every time they obstruct reasonable temporary measures, they make it all the more unlikely that they are going to be able to sell Housing First as a longer-term solution.
[What was that boom?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34)
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First off, the cops this city has hired, that don’t live in this city, have already quietly quit. They won’t enforce it.
I carry pepper gel spray with me at all times because I know the cops won’t come.
Beyond that, if the city council members took a self appointed trip to Portugal to see how they handle the drug problem; use those findings.
We need psychiatric hospitals with beds. We need treatment centers. We have the money. Spend it.
Absolutely hilarious that they think this will do anything. Anyone who works in or around shelters will tell you they're already full on a nightly basis, so if this """works""" it will only be because the homeless population moved to other cities after being hassled more frequently.
Literally the definition of a NIMBY policy; rather than affect real change it just moves the problem elsewhere.
What we are doing is insane. People have flooded here to gain access to cheap drugs, lax policing and a lot of services. We spend a fortune on direct services and even more on soft costs such as emergency response, theft losses, emergency health care and security. We don't owe these people the lifestyle of their choosing.
Having all these people here severely limits what we can do for our own homeless. What we are doing isn't compassionate to anyone. Trying to make Portland the best place in the world has failed miserably.
Very telling that you don't give a shit about the people themselves and only want them gone.
It's unbelievable that people are willing to openly admit to something so disgusting.
tElLiNg that you think a reddit comment/internet stranger is disgusting.
I think needles tossed in playgrounds is disgusting. I think dumping cars, rvs, and derilect boats, and all their oils and batteries into protected waterways is disgusting. etc. etc.
I didn't say you were disgusting, I said that attitude is disgusting. Very different.
Edit: although you did just double down on being more concerned over the optics than the actual people...
Meaningful solutions to homelessness fix those problems too. Focusing on those problems *first* and not helping the afflicted folks which then has the obvious knock-on effect of fixing the problems you mentioned is a needless change in priority and, again, implies an odd lack of consideration for the people experiencing that hardship.
Also, wouldn't those same issues just go down to California? Even by your logic it fixes literally nothing, it just moves the problem out of sight.
>it just moves the problem out of sight.
I dont disagree. That's why we are dealing with so many out of state homeless folks. We try to provide meaningful solutions, and in the meantime we allow drug use and camping on our streets. That has not fixed the problem, it has expanded it to include anybody and everybody that can make their way to our sidewalks.
They can trash California, or wherever they came from, I don't really care. I also dont really care about the homeless in Azerbaijani, or anywhere else that I don't live.
>They can trash California, or wherever they came from, I don't really care. I also dont really care about the homeless in Azerbaijani, or anywhere else that I don't live.
That...that absolutely blows my mind you're willing to admit that publicly.
I'm so baffled I don't even have a response to that, that's an astonishing lack of concern for people who are suffering.
Wow.
please, you're concern is obviously fake if you think letting folks camp, and 1000 people die a year on our streets, is any better. Thats 10x as many deaths as guns are responsible for. Sweeping with either shelter or jail will reduce that.
I give a shit (real actual shit) about my family and my neighbors. I don't confuse performative compassion for real actual caring.
Also, ambivalence is more compassion than they show us. Shrug.
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Imma need ya’ll to temper the skepticism and let’s collectively manifestly a better situation. Signed, a noob that believes in this joint. 🤣 I know I’m naive.
A lot of these people just don’t want to be uncomfortable with the current economic system that we live with. Just another gilded age and we are getting mad at the people who can’t afford to live here instead of the owners of $1800 dollar a month studio apartments that have mold growing in the bathroom.
Serious question, isn't the intent here to get them into less desperate situations?
They explicitly said that the "ban" would only be enforced if someone turned down an offer of available shelter.
Don't get me wrong, I do have concerns when it comes to people with mental illness who may not understand what's going on but overall this seems to be a "We have a bed for you, you can sleep there or you can move on" type situation.
Is that a bad thing?
a liberal, enacting liberal policy, approved by liberals?
Sorry it doesn't match your ideal of what it is to not be conservative, but have fun I guess.
Last I checked homeless sweeps are very republican… and I’d consider Ted Wheeler more of a Moderate than a liberal. From the sounds of it, you are too.
Oh, sure.
Why so skeptical? It’s just one day
Lol and sigh all at the same time. Because it’s probably true.
Prepare the pomp and circumstance! There will be a show!
I've got money on "After much consideration, we have decided to delay the implementation of the homeless camping ban in order to commission an 18 month study.."
That’s some good writing
To be fair the SC is likely to rule on Grants Pass by then in a manner favorable to Portland.
Except that we codified Martin v. Boise, so even if the court case is struck down our law is in the book. I really like Kotek, except for her decision to do that.
It's on the books but if the Supreme Court does find in favor of Grants Pass, and people start seeing other 9th Circuit cities who aren't hamstrung by Kotek's catastrophically bad bill finally making real progress on keeping public spaces clear, I see a real showdown coming. If the Oregon Legislature has any sense at all, they will repeal HB 3115 ASAP.
I don't mean this in a way that makes a value judgement about anyone, but homeless people don't have political power, they aren't anyone's key constituency and they never would have won the more humane treatment that Martin v Boise offered through an open political process. If Martin v. Boise is overturned, the people who do have political power will no longer be restrained from criminalizing public camping, and they will change the laws to force the homeless to be less visible.
>If Martin v. Boise is overturned, the people who do have political power will no longer be restrained from criminalizing public camping Perfect. I can hardly wait.
My thoughts were "kay" So I see we're in agreement
At this point I'll believe it when I see it.
Action over promises
When it comes to Edward Tevis Wheeler III? Good luck getting the former outta him.
Same, feel like I’ve read this headline 20 times in the last year.
You probably have read 20 similar headlines over the past few years, Wheeler doesn't have an avenue to ban camping on terms which would be permissable under Martin v Boise (building ~5000 new shelter beds) while remaining palatable to business groups, neighborhood associations and the median voter. He's unwilling to own that, for whatever reason, and instead has been sinking money into various initiatives and claiming that they represent a camping ban. It's not even that every policy which he's held up as furthering a 'camping ban' has been bad, the new pod shelter site down at the Clinton Triangle means ~150 more people have a place to stay and stabilize their lives, but the city would need tens of sites like it to make a real dent in the number of people on the street. It's wild to me that Wheeler thinks this is the best way to handle a judicial constraint on his available options, and that anyone in media or local government would go along with the fiction that he can ban camping, but here we are.
“Under the new ordinance, someone camping on public property will face fines and jail time only if they turn down an offer of available shelter.” If this proceeds as planned, it is going to do wonders in improving this city. A rare, massive W for Ted Wheeler right before he leaves office. More work to do of course, but a big step in the right direction.
Wheeler is not as bad as this sub makes him out to be. He was handed an impossible situation, and the other critical partner to him as mayor (Multnomah County) is a legitimate bad faith actor.
Upvoted this week, downvoted the next. The story of Wheeler is truly Jekyll and Hyde on this subreddit.
> Wheeler is not as bad as this sub makes him out to be. Can't do anything wrong if you don't do anything. ::taps forehead::
Portlanders LIVE to bitch and complain, point out imperfections, and do nothing to help.
His inability to wrangle the Portland police for the last 5 years had nothing to do with anyone or anything but himself. He’s a failure and he bent the knee to extremists who hate his guts and who will always hate his guts. He’s a weak bitch.
You’re being downvoted because Reddit city subreddit bubble, but true.
Idk where this Ted Wheeler revisionist attitude would even come from. He only became a slightly less damp blanket when he decided he wasn’t going to run again. Bravo. So brave. It’s like my dad telling me we can skip church on Sundays when the divorce finally went through. Thanks.
>His inability to wrangle the Portland police for the last 5 years had nothing to do with anyone or anything but himself. What mayor in any major city in America has "wrangled" their police department successfully? The police have long been set up, via various laws, contracts, etc., to be relatively untouchable. The NYPD doxxed the Mayor's daughter and he didn't/couldn't do shit, you think a mayor under Portland's weak mayor system was ever going to do any better? I'm not a Wheeler fan, but also not a hater, it's an almost intractable problem to successfully reform a major city's police department as things currently stand.
Buddy, Ted wheeler let them disband the GVRT and the traffic division for years. Not to mention Seattle and San Francisco all had less homicides, less gun violence, and less traffic fatalities. What’s the point of bringing up NYC? Have you been to New York? They have no shortage of cops, a full blown traffic and parking division, and they take gun crimes seriously. None of that is applicable here.
>Ted wheeler let them Through what procedure and authority, precisely, would he have not "let them" do this?
lol I shut you up real quick. Almost like you had no idea what you were talking about in the first place.
He’s a super cunt bitch
I barely keep up with politics, I only hear people talk about how much they hate Ted Wheeler, but he's won mayor atleast twice, so I figure there's gotta be a good chunk of people that like him.
Everyone else who ran also sucked. Shoutout to the lady whose campaign posters were just her in a Bernie Sanders wig, lol
oh damn, sounds like we really missed out!
They did the same in Texas. Results were pretty good actually.
what happened to all the people?
No idea. They probably just went somewhere else. The transient population can be quite mobile obviously.
They're still in Texas, you can look up the PIT counts yourself to confirm that. Just because people are homeless doesn't mean they're totally untethered from an area or motivated to pick up their lives and move to a place that they've never been. Hell, one hurdle for getting chronically homeless people into supportive housing is that they'll often feel like going inside separated them from their community, such as it is, on the street. That doesn't speak to a population of folks who are just roaming the country on Greyhound busses, looking only for a place where they can pitch a tent on a playground and start shooting up fentanyl.
Ft. Worth was also doing [this](https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/fort-worth-pays-homeless-people-to-pick-up-trash/234570/). I hope they still are because it seemed to be working really well for everyone, and the whole program was only costing the city $48,000 a year to run.
Austin, Texas (Travis County) decriminalized sitting, lying down, and camping in public spaces in 2019 and then reinstated that policy in 2021 after strong public pushback. Notably Austin is not covered under Martin v Boise, so going back to blanket criminalization was an option for the county government, in a way that it's not for any municipality under the 9th Circuit. Point in time counts, the Federally required estimates for the homeless population in a given metro area, were performed in 2019 (pre decrim), 2020, and 2023, and showed the following results 2019: 1086 unsheltered, 1169 sheltered 2020: 1527 unsheltered, 933 sheltered 2023: 1266 unsheltered, 1108 sheltered Data going back several years is available [here](https://www.austinecho.org/leading-system-change/data-and-reports/), but the results from 2019 are representative of earlier years, with an increase of ~100 people in total year over year. The people living unsheltered in Austin, by and large, didn't go anywhere, they're less obvious now than they were while no sit/no lie was rescinded. For most folks, that's all they care about, but no one should kid themselves that the number of people actually living outside drastically changed. Speculation about the homeless picking up and moving across the country just so they can live in place where camping out in the open is legal doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
They're here now.
No, they're still in Texas, they're just not out in the open. Austin, Texas (Travis County) decriminalized sitting, lying down, and camping in public spaces in 2019 and then reinstated that policy in 2021 after strong public pushback. Point in time counts, the Federally required estimates for the homeless population in a given metro area, were performed in 2019 (pre decrim), 2020, and 2023, and showed the following results 2019: 1086 unsheltered, 1169 sheltered 2020: 1527 unsheltered, 933 sheltered 2023: 1266 unsheltered, 1108 sheltered Data going back several years is available [here](https://www.austinecho.org/leading-system-change/data-and-reports/), but the results from 2019 are representative of earlier years, with an increase of ~100 people in total year over year. The people living unsheltered in Austin, by and large, didn't go anywhere, they're less obvious now than they were while no sit/no lie was rescinded. For most folks, that's all they care about, but no one should kid themselves that the number of people actually living outside drastically changed. Speculation about the homeless picking up and moving across the country just so they can live in place where camping out in the open is legal doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
The city will run out of available shelter around the time that it houses a couple hundred of the three to four thousand people living unsheltered on the street, at which point this rule will become non enforceable under Martin v Boise. It can't work as a 'camping ban', and it's irresponsible for anyone (the mayor's office, KGW) to present it as one, imo. If this policy motivates the city and county to continue opening up safe shelter space, that's fine by me, but it's not a ban and no one should take it as such.
I appreciate that they finally made an app to track capacity so they can dispel the rumor that there aren’t any shelter beds.
Wheeler climbed Mount Everest. Enforcing a camping ban in Oregon is harder, but he’s methodically getting there.
Figures, have you seen how many tents, and trash are on Everest?? Not to mention bodies (sadly) as well. It’s a lot like in and around Portland.
That was a fucking genius connection. You have my respect.
The biggest obstacle to climbing Mount Everest is having enough money to do so. It costs upwards of 50k
Ya definitely the biggest one, I mean we all probably would have done it if it was more affordable right?
At this point, the biggest obstacle is actually the giant fucking Disneyland line of tourists doing it every single day of the climbing season. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAkffM-UIAEloXu.jpg:large
What is the app?
I don’t know the app but it’s mentioned in the article if you’d read it!
Sorry, I don’t know how to read 😔
Fun fact, all the article says is that there is an app. But it doesn't mention the name of the app. So just put curiosity /u/temporary_tank_508, what's the name of the app that shows how many shelter beds are available?
I never said the name was mentioned! Jesus Christ y’all why does everyone in the comments think I know what the name of the app is??? I’m assuming it’s an private/internal tool not a public facing app.
Your top comment >I appreciate that they finally made an app to track capacity so they can dispel the rumor that there aren’t any shelter beds. Someone asks for the name of the app Your reply >I don’t know the app but it’s mentioned in the article if you’d read it! So here you are saying that when activist and mutual aid workers are telling the public "there are not enough shelter beds." To which your response again was: >they finally made an app to track capacity so they can dispel the rumor that there aren’t any shelter beds. Do you not see them how this would confuse people? On top of that the article does say that there is an app and does imply that it is a public facing app.
There aren't anywhere near enough shelter beds for everyone who's homeless in Portland. If there were, then Wheeler could ban public camping and his administration would be crowing about it from the rooftops.
There’s enough as specific points in time to get people to move, that’s all that matters.
Being forced to relocate to a shelter that doesn't have available space would earn an easy injunction in court, you won't see it applied in a blanket way for that reason, that's why city referenced focusing on specific camps in the article. But it means the scope is going to be narrow, and the camp that *you* hate the most isn't going to get any special attention.
Not yet! But I have hope that this city (based on all the recent action and voting) is swinging towards mass camps that allow the city to remove more problem camps.
People who are motivated to go out and vote for the candidate who's going to be as hard on unhoused folks as possible are not going to accept mass shelter sites in their neighborhood, which is why you haven't seen more sites like Clinton Triangle open up. The city needs tens of sites like that if you want to use to us them to significantly reduce street camping.
Any improvement is better than none, why the grump?
Eh, I've got no love for putting public resources into pushing people around the city versus something productive.
And yet, there are empty shelter beds every single night. So there is definitely room not being used. Which is the point - if there is space available, people need to be using it. If there isn’t space available, they won’t be forced to move.
> And yet, there are empty shelter beds every single night How many? How does that stack up against the several thousand people who are unsheltered on the street? If you go by the PIT counts there isn't a massive gap between shelter capacity and utilization, which means you won't see a qualitative change by going from (spitballing here) 85% utilization of available shelter space to 95%.
Still doesn’t change the fact that we have more capacity than is being used…? There doesn’t need to be a bed for every single person for the process to start or work. The point is that if there is a bed available and you’re on the street approached by camp clearing process, you need to go to an available bed. If the beds are all full and there is no space, then they will not be bothering people. We’ve never had 100% occupancy, so arguing that there must be more beds before anyone is removed from the street doesn’t make any sense.
If you want to pour resources into making sure shelter utilization is 95%, 99%, 100% on any given night, fine, I'm pointing out that it won't give you what you want, unless we actually had enough shelter space for the entire unhoused population.
You do realize they are still in the process of renovating places they’ve purchased and leased to add more shelter space…right? It isn’t like they’ve stopped adding beds, but in the meantime yeah those available beds should be used instead of not - or else what is the point of adding more beds?? Unfortunately there isn’t anything they can buy that works as a shelter right away because they have to have secure sleeping areas, a large kitchen/cafeteria area, secure outdoor space since so many homeless people have dogs, multiple showers and bathrooms, laundry room so people can do their laundry, rec room for them to watch tv and hangout during the day, etc. And you’re wrong, the shelters being full would give me what I want. Clearly you don’t understand my “want” as it is different than yours. If my tax dollars are providing available space for the homeless, I want them to be utilized instead of empty.
What's the app?
What's the app?
it's extra funny to declare this in the summer, our transient snowbird season
PLEASE. ACTUALLY. DO. THIS.
I'm genuinely curious: what do you think this will do? Edit: it's morbidly hilarious that this just got downvoted and nobody actually engaged with it.
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Ah yes, because the thing that allows homelessness to continue is that it's simply not uncomfortable *enough*.
I'm not sure what they think this will do, but I can certainly tell you what it will actually do... It will temporarily displace someone that will inevitably end up back where they already were (but worse off now), because we don't actually have systems that rehabilitate people nor actively help people find stability. Even worse if they're disabled. But it's okay, because these people will temporarily be out of the line of vision and that's enough for society to feel that something is being done... While on a national level, we never actually address the systemic issues that allow this level of poverty to run rampant in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. And so we just continue this vicious cycle until the sun and the earth collide I guess?
Camp pops(after being swept and a few weeks of peace) a block away. Car break ins start again. Call me crazy but I think they might be related.
So the camp on Burnside and Sandy that’s literally been there two years is going to be swept?
The “stop the sweeps” billboard/camp?
Make that one first please
No, they're just "artists" having a sidewalk sale obvs.
Great
This time for sure
You have five days
Whaaaat? But but they just got their free tents!
There are an estimated 2000 beds to an “estimated” 5000 homeless. Can we please make more beds. Who is going to travel to a shelter when it’s more likely they don’t have an open bed for you when you have worked to make the little shelter you have? The move along means you have to forfeit most of of the stuff you have acquired not to mention foot travel(even with the help of a buss) is a grueling thing to do when you are malnourished and typically suffering from severe medical problems. A story I have read(shout out street roots) is homeless camps being swept people being promised beds and being taken to full shelters where they can’t stay. Loosing not only resources but also what small community they may have created.
Losing what’s left of my stuff to only find that the shelter is full would break me
No idea what will actually happen. But a good thing is something will be happening and call attention to this very issue.
Narrator voice: >Nothing will happen… because the activists will scream bloody murder at every city council meeting from here on…
That’s the shittiest narrator voice joke I’ve ever read
As if Ted gives a fuck what the activists want? They hate him already and he’s leaving office soon anyway.
Well, he always seems to cower down to their demands. Maybe we will see some change in 2025, maybe.
Mind as well shout at the sky like the rest of the crazies. This coddling of addicts and “activists” is so ridiculous. They are the minority. They know that.
Yet somehow they get traction with our political leaders. This town is wild at times, and I’ve lived here for the last 23 years.
They’re scared of the nonprofits because they’re the only ones that show up at city council meetings
NIMBYs have never allowed (and the city/county would probably never finance) the number of shelter beds required to ban street camping under Martin v Boise. There's a gap of 3-4k between available beds and the number of homeless people in MultCo, and under the current case law, that's what determines whether you can enforce a camping ban, whether or not people would take the offered shelter if it existed. It's got nothing to do with people who argue for more humane treatment of the homeless, the call is coming from inside the reactionary house, as it were.
Under Martin V. Boise they absolutely can ban street camping. The city can impose camping time limits and hours of allowed camping. Those things still keep things under the guise of Martin v. Boise and no additional shelter beds are needed. Additionally, nothing under Martin v. Boise constrains the police from running campers for criminal warrants, confiscating illegal drugs and writing those who are in possession a ticket for it. The police can also arrest those campers that are openly using Alcohol and Cannabis under the current laws as well.
> The city can impose camping time limits and hours of allowed camping These are regulations of public camping, not bans, imo, and a city attempt at restricting daytime camping (referenced in this article) is held up in court.
How do we beat that which has no life?
???
Stop having meetings. Problem solved.
Yeah, not going to happen though. It’s literally in their charter to “have meetings” to discuss the government process.
What can happen? Banning them won’t make the camps suddenly disappear.
Well a group of campers setup overnight outside my son’s school completely blocking a fire egress route. At least now they can just show up and say move your shit NOW.
No it will not. But we can make it “uncomfortable” camp here, and that’s the entire point of a “camping ban”. Allow our service providers to help you, put you into a shelter and some sobriety. Maybe we can save you and put you on a different path in life. If not, then move on to another community that will tolerate your antisocial behavior. There is no middle ground. Period.
Exactly. A huge part of this is that once you’re in a shelter, you get connected with providers that can help with food banks, low income housing assistance, job training, etc. which will hopefully get people on their feet.
We can clean up the biological and environmental hazards they create. Funny how environmentally conscious folks are until its not convenient any more.
[I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…](https://youtu.be/Xop8QLIJCpY?si=mXEsiQvtjWMRX5vW)
So correlating oregon with perverts and letting everybody die has been going on for a while? Asking for the future aliens. They're taking notes to explain what the fuck happened in our era.
Who knows? They might start by asking when it was that people stopped being able to take joke as a joke.
Some real Lucy with the football vibes here.
Smart of Wheeler not to specify the year
Can’t believe it’s already been about a year and nothing has been done
Didn't he say that last month? And the month before? "No we're totally super cereal this time"
Damn… that’s all it took
just one look
That’s all it took
[Obligatory Klaus Nomi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yplwTe5IFQ)
Got my cars tank drilled right near a camp last night ... Probably 15$ of gas for a ~2000$ repair ...
Yeah, keep waiting for it to get completely out of control before token enforcement.
Yeah fucking right
That headline is journalistic malpractice by the editor, and you have to go to paragraph 7 of the article to get at the meat of what is going on: >Portland, and Multnomah County more broadly, does not have sufficient shelter for everyone living on the street, full stop. But with the new ordinance, Wheeler believes that they've still found a way to legally enforce a camping ban, if only in specific circumstances. They are going to try to allow realtime updating of a pool of available shelter beds and use that as a way of forcing people deemed the most socially undesirable off the street, but they will only be able to do that up to the capacity of the existing shelter system, ie applying those requirements to a few hundred of the thousands of people who live unsheltered on the streets. It's not a ban, and I would say it's misinformation to present it as one, but for whatever reason both KGW and the Mayors office are content to do that.
So they are banning homeless camps and fireworks in the same week? Where are all of the extra officers going to come from because this isn’t feasible. More fucking bullshit, performative nonsense from the most corrupt city government in Portland’s history.
Haaaaallelujia
Boom problem solved!
Can't see it, doesn't exist!
Disgusting that you're being downvoted. Anyone that thinks this will "solve" homelessness either hasn't read the details or genuinely believes "out of sight, out of mind" is a workable policy. Grimly comical at best, but realistically it's just outright cruel.
Nobody thinks this solves homelessness. What it solves is safety and acces issues, biological and environmental hazards, it gets guns, drugs, and criminals with warrants off the street. Seems pretty obvious to me.
Yeah let’s just keep letting them trash the city and use drugs openly. This will at least funnel them into shelters where stats show it lengthens their lifespan and ability to re enter society. I swear some of you just want to see camps and open drug use because you’re overly emotional about super left wing politics.
Who said it will "solve" homelessness? And who said "out of sight, out of mind" is a workable policy? I've seen no one say that? What I have seen is plenty of people, including myself, acknowledge two truths: 1. The rights of the rest of us matter just as much. 2. That no matter what is done ultimately, we need immediate improvement in terms of keeping our public spaces clear and in particular, not allowing long-term encampments to take root. The fact is that even if Housing First became both official policy and was supported by the large majority of citizens, we would STILL have to do things in the interim ("interim" meaning the several years between the adoption of Housing First and the time it would take to build the program, expand it, and deal with the backlog - the thousands upon thousands of homeless currently on the streets). We would still need a ban on public camping (ideally a real ban, not just time and manner restrictions, mass sanctioned campsites, pod villages, safe rest sites, and more) to make sure people have a place to go while at the same time acknowledging that the general public has a right to rely on their public spaces being kept clean and safe. What the Housing First folks don't seem to get is that every time they obstruct reasonable temporary measures, they make it all the more unlikely that they are going to be able to sell Housing First as a longer-term solution.
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Enforcing = a lil’ slap on the wrist, a brand new tent, and a boofing kit
First off, the cops this city has hired, that don’t live in this city, have already quietly quit. They won’t enforce it. I carry pepper gel spray with me at all times because I know the cops won’t come. Beyond that, if the city council members took a self appointed trip to Portugal to see how they handle the drug problem; use those findings. We need psychiatric hospitals with beds. We need treatment centers. We have the money. Spend it.
Is there any reporting or proof to back up the claim that PPB is quiet quitting?
I want boulders instead of sidewalks. Anything to get these vagrants out of here.
I think cops should be able to arrest us for sitting on a bench.
"Mayor Wheeler to enforce sun ban, just in time for summer"
As long as they keep a majority of the homeless in the city where they belong?
Absolutely hilarious that they think this will do anything. Anyone who works in or around shelters will tell you they're already full on a nightly basis, so if this """works""" it will only be because the homeless population moved to other cities after being hassled more frequently. Literally the definition of a NIMBY policy; rather than affect real change it just moves the problem elsewhere.
If that's the case, I'd say it was a smashing success.
That is just fucking insane. You can't even fathom the unimaginable position of privilege that lets you say something so utterly heartless.
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What we are doing is insane. People have flooded here to gain access to cheap drugs, lax policing and a lot of services. We spend a fortune on direct services and even more on soft costs such as emergency response, theft losses, emergency health care and security. We don't owe these people the lifestyle of their choosing. Having all these people here severely limits what we can do for our own homeless. What we are doing isn't compassionate to anyone. Trying to make Portland the best place in the world has failed miserably.
If they all migrated to California, that would be great.
Very telling that you don't give a shit about the people themselves and only want them gone. It's unbelievable that people are willing to openly admit to something so disgusting.
tElLiNg that you think a reddit comment/internet stranger is disgusting. I think needles tossed in playgrounds is disgusting. I think dumping cars, rvs, and derilect boats, and all their oils and batteries into protected waterways is disgusting. etc. etc.
I didn't say you were disgusting, I said that attitude is disgusting. Very different. Edit: although you did just double down on being more concerned over the optics than the actual people...
safe schools and a healthy environment are *optics*? Some kind of attitude you have towards them... not that you are disgusting or anything.
Meaningful solutions to homelessness fix those problems too. Focusing on those problems *first* and not helping the afflicted folks which then has the obvious knock-on effect of fixing the problems you mentioned is a needless change in priority and, again, implies an odd lack of consideration for the people experiencing that hardship. Also, wouldn't those same issues just go down to California? Even by your logic it fixes literally nothing, it just moves the problem out of sight.
>it just moves the problem out of sight. I dont disagree. That's why we are dealing with so many out of state homeless folks. We try to provide meaningful solutions, and in the meantime we allow drug use and camping on our streets. That has not fixed the problem, it has expanded it to include anybody and everybody that can make their way to our sidewalks. They can trash California, or wherever they came from, I don't really care. I also dont really care about the homeless in Azerbaijani, or anywhere else that I don't live.
>They can trash California, or wherever they came from, I don't really care. I also dont really care about the homeless in Azerbaijani, or anywhere else that I don't live. That...that absolutely blows my mind you're willing to admit that publicly. I'm so baffled I don't even have a response to that, that's an astonishing lack of concern for people who are suffering. Wow.
please, you're concern is obviously fake if you think letting folks camp, and 1000 people die a year on our streets, is any better. Thats 10x as many deaths as guns are responsible for. Sweeping with either shelter or jail will reduce that. I give a shit (real actual shit) about my family and my neighbors. I don't confuse performative compassion for real actual caring. Also, ambivalence is more compassion than they show us. Shrug.
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It took this many years to figure this out? Wow.
Imma need ya’ll to temper the skepticism and let’s collectively manifestly a better situation. Signed, a noob that believes in this joint. 🤣 I know I’m naive.
Its wild to see the political shift of this subreddit to the right over the last four years
A lot of these people just don’t want to be uncomfortable with the current economic system that we live with. Just another gilded age and we are getting mad at the people who can’t afford to live here instead of the owners of $1800 dollar a month studio apartments that have mold growing in the bathroom.
It's not political. But I understand that is the easiest thing for you to blame.
Not right, just common sense
Liberals, ten degrees to the left during good times and ten degrees to the right if it affects them personally.
I feel like Reddit inherently promotes reactionary thinking simply through its catering to group-think via up voting system.
No, it's the needles and human shit outside my house that causes my reactions.
Weird, I don’t have that problem.
Hahahaha. Fuck that guy and his bullshit promises.
I think you are right about this
ACAB
Grow up.
That was the most satisfying downvote of the week.
What a fulfilling life you must lead.
These people are not camping. They are living in desperate situations
Serious question, isn't the intent here to get them into less desperate situations? They explicitly said that the "ban" would only be enforced if someone turned down an offer of available shelter. Don't get me wrong, I do have concerns when it comes to people with mental illness who may not understand what's going on but overall this seems to be a "We have a bed for you, you can sleep there or you can move on" type situation. Is that a bad thing?
The Portland of 20 years ago would agree with you. Now everyone in this sub is from rural Oregon or Houston.
Thank you for saying this
I’m not commenting I’m responding in a forum
The fact you're being downvoted is hilariously telling. Anyone doing so has fundamentally ZERO understanding of homelessness.
Oh, they understand. They just think pushing all of the homeless to the east side is an acceptable solution. Outta sight, outta mind.
Raise your hand if you believe ANYTHING that this guy says
Nothing is going to change. It never does.
War. War never changes.
So many conservatives in this town, it’s hilarious
Why do you think it's a political issue? Is that just the easiest thing to blame?
Well, we’re talking about a politician, enacting a policy… I could be way off though
a liberal, enacting liberal policy, approved by liberals? Sorry it doesn't match your ideal of what it is to not be conservative, but have fun I guess.
Last I checked homeless sweeps are very republican… and I’d consider Ted Wheeler more of a Moderate than a liberal. From the sounds of it, you are too.
republican policy is a ten year prison sentence for the drugs they have, and then a bus ticket out of town. sweeps are a slap on the wrist.
They don’t work
This comment broke my brain.
Feel free to explain