With winter coming, the city explores where people can sleep – legally

From the Oct. 2 edition of Street Roots

Just as the city of Portland, service providers and advocates are seeking ways to allow homeless individuals without access to shelter “get a decent night’s sleep,” a group of individuals has begun camping outside of City Hall, reminiscent of a three-week protest in May 2008.

Gathering outside of Mercy Corps’ Action Center near Skidmore Fountain on Sept. 28, a group of 20 homeless individuals signed a code of conduct, agreeing to not use drugs or alcohol, pick up after themselves and to respect others. Once they were all signed, they took the MAX to City Hall and set up their camping gear to sleep there during the night.

Organized by Art Rios, who was formerly homeless and has been involved with Sisters of the Road’s Civic Action Group, the group is camping outside of City Hall during the night for the same reasons, Rio says, that homeless people protested for three weeks outside of City Hall in 2008.

“Get the anti-camping ordinance suspended,” he says. “It’s about coming to a safe place to sleep for eight hours. We just want a campsite that’s safe.”

A statement released by Rios calls for the creation of safe places for tent cities, campsites and shelter before the weather turns cold.

“They (the city) need to open up more shelters and they know that, but we can show them they need to move it a little quicker,” says Chris Shields, 47, a homeless person who was part of the group sleeping outside of City Hall.

In the last few months, the Portland Housing Bureau and members of the Coordinating Committee to End Homelessness, the committee of Portland Housing Bureau members, advocates, and nonprofit service providers that oversee and implement the City’s 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness have been considering ways that might address Rios’ and the camper’s concerns.

An informal committee calling itself the Alternative Workgroup, convened by Sally Erickson, the manager of the Portland Housing Bureau’s Ending Homelessness Initiative, has met three times during the past two months, with a narrow focus: think of ways that homeless people who camp outside, either willfully or because they cannot get into shelter, can sleep through the night safely. The work group includes representatives from Sisters of the Road, Street Roots, and several people experiencing homelessness, including Street Roots’ vendor Leo Rhodes.

“It’s in all of our interests that everyone is able to stay warm and healthy,” says Marc Jolin, the executive director of the outreach agency JOIN, who is a member of the Coordinating Committee and the Alternatives Workgroup. “If they can’t get a good night’s sleep, they can’t stay healthy, their ability to help themselves is severely compromised.”

On Sept. 16, the Alternatives Workgroup presented its 13 recommendations to the Coordinating Committee.

BREAKING NEWS: Homeless campers release statement

A group of around 20 individuals experiencing homelessness released a statement tonight about the protest in front of City Hall.

“We are here tonight to show that this is the only campsite that is safe inside the city of Portland and that we really need places that we are able to go for the night and know that we are going to be safe. By safe, we mean that we’ll be able to pitch a tent or sleep in a shelter or live in a tent city without harassment from the police.”

The statement goes on to say that individuals experiencing homelessness need more access to services, including emergency shelter year round. The group also asks the city to allow for another tent city within the city limits of Portland.

In July of last year, Street Roots’ Amanda Waldroupe explored what another tent city in Portland might look like.

In May of this year, Street Roots called for another tent city as a possible alternative in an editorial titled, Another Dignity Village? Why not?

Currently, the city is looking at several alternative proposals surrounding camping, including allowing for another tent city. The camping ordinance itself is currently being challenged in court by the Oregon Law Center. In August, a district judge gave the green light to a group of homeless people in the class action suit after the city tried to have it thrown out of court.

Read more about the protest and alternatives the city is exploring in the next edition of Street Roots this Friday.

Posted by Israel Bayer

Extra! Extra!

Journalism is the first rough draft of history, a famous publisher once said. Get a leg up on the future and buy a copy of Street Roots first thing tomorrow. Your friendly neighborhood vendor will thank you! Here’s what’s making history on our pages this week:

Living between two worlds: Mara Grunbaum reports on how African refugees battle cultural isolation as they try to adapt to their new home in Portland.

Feds extend $30 million to staunch Section 8 bleeding: The latest in a string of reports about the fallout from housing assistance cuts in Northwest Oregon and beyond. Joanne Zuhl reports.

Street papers lay foundation for stronger movement: Israel Bayer writes on the 2009 conference of the North American Street Newspaper Association and the leadership role Street Roots has taken in this remarkable movement.

Good money after bad: Seattle puts $8 million behind grassroots initiatives to stop youth violence on the streets. This is one of two stories inside this edition that looks at the state of youths on the streets in America.

Addicts Almanac: Tye Doudy continues his series on life on the streets of Portland, living through addiction and learning to survive.

And check out new columns from Leo Rhodes, our vendor in the Northeast, and the Mental Health Association of Portland. Page after page, this issue is just packed! And still just a buck.

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

Judge’s ruling advances anti-camping lawsuit

A district judge has given the green light to a group of people experiencing homelessness to go forward with their class-action lawsuit against the city of Portland’s camping ordinance.

In a decision reached Friday, District Judge Ann Aiken ruled against the city in its effort to dismiss the grounds for the lawsuit, concluding, in laymen’s terms, that the suit  – which seeks to declare the city’s no camping ordinance unconstitutional – has the muster to go forward.

The group of four homeless individuals say that the city’s enforcement of no camping and temporary structures ordinances “criminalize the status of being homeless, singles out the homeless for disparate treatment, and prevents the homeless from traveling to or residing in the city of Portland.” Three of the four plaintiffs have disabilities.

Altogether, attorneys with the Oregon Law Center argued five reasons why the lawsuit should go forward. Judge Aiken supported two – that the ordinances violated their rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eigth Amendment, and their rights to equal treatment under the law. The judge dismissed their claims to defend their rights to free travel, freedom of movement, and due process.

Monica Goracke with the Oregon Law Center says that  the judge’s ruling allows the case to proceed. “The next step is to exchange information in the discovery process,” Goracke says, which will mean several more months will pass before there is any further decision on the plaintiff’s claims.

The city prohibits camping or the construction of temporary structures on public property. However, those ordinances may be lifted by the city in “extraordinary circumstances.”

In a recent report from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, Oregon now leads the nation in the precentage of homeless people per capita. Oregon’s homeless rate is 0.54 percent, according to HUD.

Read more in Friday’s Street Roots.

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

Judge considers petition to dismiss lawsuit challenging Portland’s anti-camping ordinance

By Amanda Waldroupe
District Court Judge Ann Aiken heard oral arguments from Deputy City Attorney David Landrum and the Oregon Law Center’s Monica Goracke this morning to determine the validity of a class action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of city ordinances prohibiting camping and erecting temporary structures on public property.

The suit — Anderson et al. vs. the City of Portland — claims that for people who are homeless, the city’s ordinances violate their constitutional rights, such as freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and the right to travel.

Landrum is asking the court to dismiss the case because the legal merits of Goracke’s arguments were not well-founded. Landrum also argued that overturning the anti-camping ordinance would create a legal precedent for providing certain groups immunity from being criminally convicted.

“Irrespective of the Plaintiff’s relative efforts one way or another to alleviate or not alleviate the condition that they find themselves, which is indigency, it really turns the idea of equal protection on its head,” Landrum said.

Camping ordinance being challenged

The Oregon Law Center’s class action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Portland’s camping ordinance follows in a long line of similar lawsuits filed across the country to vindicate the Constitutional rights of homeless individuals.

And because of prior lawsuits and the precedents they established, the lawsuit, Anderson v. Portland, has a strong chance of being successful. That would add Portland to a small list of cities whose camping ordinances have been declared unconstitutional.

“There is a solid basis for this lawsuit,” says Adam Arms, the civil rights lawyer who successfully challenged an unconstitutional version of the city’s sidewalk obstructions ordinance in 2004.

Tulin Ozdeger, the National Law Center on Homeless and Poverty’s civil rights program director agrees. “As shown by other successful cases across the country… there are a lot of Constitutional problems with these kinds of measures,” says Ozdeger.

Anderson v. Portland, filed in federal court on December 12, argues that the camping ordinance is unconstitutional in two respects.

First, the illegalization of outdoor sleeping when there are not enough shelter beds for homeless individuals cruelly and unusually punishes homeless people, violating the 8th Amendment of the Constitution.

“The Defendants’ [the City of Portland and the Police Bureau] pattern of citing and threatening to arrest involuntarily homeless individuals such as Plaintiffs for illegal camping and other offenses when they are sleeping outdoors… based on their status as homeless persons… is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the lawsuit reads.

A 2006 case, Jones v. Los Angeles, challenged Los Angeles’ camping ordinance, which made it illegal to camp in public spaces at any time of the day.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the city of Los Angeles could not legally punish homeless individuals for sleeping outside when not enough shelter beds exist to provide night shelter to all the city’s homeless.

“It was a huge victory,” says Becky Dennison, co-director of the Los Angeles

Community Action Network, which pursues community organizing efforts in Skid Row.

The precedent set by that case recognized that people have a right to sleep and perform other activities necessary to survive and live.

“There’s no right more fundamental than the right to survive, the right to perform life sustaining activities,” Arms says.

Lawyers for homeless to sue city over camping ordinance

Posted Dec. 11, 2008

Portland’s anti-camping ordinance is facing a legal challenge by lawyers with the Oregon Law Center who say the ordinance violates the constitutional rights of people experiencing homelessness.

The lawsuit, which is expected to be filed Friday, calls for the city to stop the ban on homeless people sleeping outside in Portland.

The lawyers say that the defendants — four homeless people who were cited for camping in Portland parks. — were subjected to cruel and unusual punishment as a result of the city’s ordinance. The ordinance prohibits people from camping on most public and private property.

For more on the camping ordinance, including changes in notice procedures that break it wide open for clearing camps, read Amanda Waldroupe’s story from Nov. 28.

The lawsuit says the city’s pattern of “citing and threatening to arrest involuntarily homeless individuals” for illegal camping is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. The ordinance and the procedures surrounding it also violates their plaintiffs Fourteenth Amendment right to personal liberty and due process.

The lawsuit cites the realities facing people on the street with regard to sleep and shelter:
“Punishing homeless people for sleeping outside is placing the burden of the lack of sufficient housing squarely on the shoulders of those who can do the least to remedy this problem. It exacerbates the misery and suffering of homeless people and pointlessly prolongs their homelessness by enmeshing them in the criminal justice system’s maze of court dates, fines, community service, and jail time. It also fails to provide alternative options. Many homeless people are shut out of the private housing market because of their eviction history, criminal background or lack of income. Shelters rae difficult if not impossible to access for people who are disabled, mentally ill, seeking drug or alcohol treatment, part of a couple, or who have pets. Rather than address these problems directly, the City of Portland has chosen in effect to criminalize the status of being homeless.”

And that about sums it up. But there’s much more to come as the story develops. Look for more in tomorrow’s blog and upcoming editions of Street Roots.

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

City’s new anti-camping policy drawing fire

Posted Dec. 3, 2008

Word is getting around about the city’s new camping ordinance guidelines as reported in the latest Street Roots. Reporter Amanda Waldroupe sheds light on new procedures that slipped under the radar as the city touted shelters, warming centers and assorted good-n-fuzzies. But the truth is, the city is expanding its opportunities to roust and displace, without notice, the growing number of our neighbors trying to stay warm, dry and safe at night. This, even as the city says shelter providers report about a 50 percent increase in the numbers of families seeking shelter.

Loaded Orygun adds great commentary to the subject. Read it here, and lend your voice to the discussion.

Read “New guidelines waive 24-hour notices to homeless campers” after the jump

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

Group marches against sit-lie, camping ordinances

(July 9) A group of what appears to be around 200 individuals – mostly young college kids and individuals on the streets marched from the North Park Blocks to the Clean & Safe (Portland Patrol Inc.) headquarters chanting, “Stop police brutality, stop the war against the poor.”

The group is apparently protesting the sit-lie and camping ordinances while trying to raise awareness about the Portland Patrol Inc. (PPI) overseen by the Portland Business Alliance via the City of Portland. The controversial private security company has the capacity to enforce public policy (park exclusions) with no government oversight.

The group gathered to give a round of speeches across the street from the downtown Clean & Safe offices. After one speaker told the crowd that PPI has the authority to carry weapons, one onlooker asked who gives them that authority?  There was no answer.

After a few speeches the group moved from the Clean & Safe offices down 1st Avenue in route to the police station and the Portland Business Alliance headquarters.

One individual was ticketed by police for interfering with traffic at NW 1st & Davis.

A Portland Coalition Against Poverty pamphlet handed out during the rally says they are “dedicated to ending poverty through community empowerment and the dismantling of institutions that perpetuate inequality and oppression.” 

posted by Israel Bayer

We’re waiting.

Street Roots editorial, June 27.

After more than three weeks of protests by individuals experiencing homelessness, countless actions (including actions by Street Roots and Sisters Of The Road), weekly testimonials from individuals in front of City Council and the realization for many that we are indeed dealing with a housing crisis, Portland finds itself at a crossroads.

City Hall has sent a clear and consistent message that both the camping ordinance and the sit-lie ordinance will not be repealed, at least not in the near future.

First and foremost, the outrage on the streets is in direct response to a lack of housing and the realities that come with not having a home. For many, those realities come in the form of the enforcement of obscene laws, meant to keep order and maintain business as usual.

Both the camping and sit-lie laws, coupled with park exclusions (overseen by a private security agency that continues to go unchecked) and programs like the Service Coordination Team, are intended to maintain order downtown and to ultimately help individuals. But it’s time our politicians faced the cold, hard facts that these laws are breaking people’s spirits.

Beyond facing the great wilderness of being homeless, individuals on the streets are being constantly harassed by law enforcement and private security agencies that have no clear solutions other than to push them out of sight.

In the past six weeks, many of those individuals have refused to remain invisible.