A recent set of polling recently conducted by Oregon Public Broadcasting revealed some bad news for Democrats in the state, in a gubernatorial election year: voters are not happy, and many are blaming the party in power (which is, and has been for a long time, Democrats). Republicans have not held the governor’s mansion since 1987, when (now disgraced) Neil Goldschmidt succeeded moderate Republican Victor Atiyeh in Salem. Unlike other states where Dems may be facing political headwinds, the issue in the Beaver State isn’t the state’s response to Covid (Oregon had far better health outcomes than many states, and masking was more accepted here than elsewhere), or any sort of anti-LGBT backlash.
Rather, it’s the homeless crisis. While the city’s homeless population overall isn’t as large as reported, it has close to 2000 “unsheltered homeless”, people living in the streets, which IS a large number for a city of this size (a metro population of 2.5M). A lot of this is due to the shelters and other infrastructure being overwhelmed. The result of this is that instead of only being found in “skid row” (neighborhoods such as the “old town” part of downtown), many of Portland’s unsheltered homeless are now living in “nice” residential neighborhoods, camping in vehicles or tents pitched on the street, or in public parks. And the squalor that comes with this—human waste, drug paraphernalia (including dangerous articles like needles), and a subset of homeless who are aggressive or threatening to neighbors—is making many longtime residents, many of whom identify as liberals, VERY unhappy. (A friend of mine, an openly gay man and staunch liberal, was punched in the face by a homeless camper who called him a faggot; despite being white, he also has been called the N-word to his face by the junkies camped across the street. Lots of similar stories abound of unpleasant interactions between residents and campers with a fuck-you-and-the-world attitude and nothing else to lose).
(Aside: in the specific context of the governor’s race, there is the confounding factor of a well-financed independent running in the political center, former Democrat Betsy Johnson. Despite her prior party affiliation—she was a Democratic state senator in good standing until she resigned her Senate seat and announced her independent bid--her stated policy positions seem mainly oriented towards attacking the political left, in particular organized labor. She is almost certain to not win the race herself, but it seems the entire purpose of her campaign is to keep any left-wing candidates from winning; I don’t see her stealing many GOP votes in the current political climate. Since only a plurality is needed to win the election, she could be a major threat to Democratic chances even in a normal political environment).
Even the phrase “homeless crisis” can be misleading. To me, and many on the left, it is a crisis that in a wealthy country like this one, people are being forced into such conditions. Even if some of them are partially to blame (having made poor choices in their lives), we should do better. To many others, however, it is a crisis of personal morality, and only a crisis insomuch as they have to put up with stepping over shit and needles, being panhandled, or having to deal with unwashed persons in public spaces, they otherwise don’t care. At the fascist end of the scale, eliminationist rhetoric such as comparing the homeless to rats (who are in need of “extermination” of some sort) is not unheard of, especially on the GOP side.
So what to do about it? If there’s a positive note in the OPB polling, its that ameliorative policies (improved shelters, etc) still enjoy a fair bit of popular support—“toss ‘em in prison” (or other ways of making them go away—forcing them to leave town, or worse) probably isn’t a political winner, yet. But one thing is clear: Oregon voters are likely to demand that the state’s parks and residential neighborhoods be purged of campers, especially long-term campers living in tents or vehicles. Which may be harder than it seems, for reasons discussed in the next section.
How did we get here?
Why Portland seems to be particularly notorious for homelessness, particularly the unsheltered variety, isn’t entirely clear, but lots of things contribute:
- Housing in the city (and its suburbs) has generally gotten expensive, due to a pre-pandemic population boom. Rents (and home prices) have risen, even before the current housing bubble, and in quite a few cases “old housing” (which provided many low-income residents with home) have been torn down and replaced with upscale new development. The usual process of “filtering”, in which new construction attracts the highest prices and older buildings, becoming functionally obsolete, offer lower rents, has been disrupted. Likewise, many suburban trailer parks have been closed down (and the residents evicted), replaced with new construction. The state’s land use laws make one form of cheap new construction (greenfield development on the edge of town) difficult.
- The weather in the city is moderate; and (usually) won’t kill people forced to live outside. It is very difficult for someone without shelter to survive a Phoenix summer or Minnesota winter, but the temperature extremes found in those places are rare in Portland (and when they do occur, temporary shelters can often meet the need).
- The state, and particular the city, have long been generous with social services; and the state has long had liberal drug laws. It was among the first to decriminalize marijuana long ago, and was among the first to legalize it altogether. And recently, voters passed an initiative decriminalizing possession of many “hard” drugs (it still is an offense to have small quantities, but an “infraction”—similar to a traffic ticket—rather than a crime. Dealing and such remains a crime).
- There are longstanding rumors, difficult to confirm, of other cities “busing” homeless residents to Oregon. (Many social service agencies will bus homeless people to cities where they may have family or friends or other support structures).
- One thing that is often overlooked—the law in Oregon and other Ninth Circuit states. The Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals issued a ruling in the case Martin v. Boise that prohibits local governments from banning public camping by unhoused people, unless sufficient shelter is provided to accommodate them. (I will discuss the issue of shelters below). And Oregon passed a law last summer essentially mandating the same thing; while this law has not yet gone into effect, was sponsored by Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, who is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for governor. (Incumbent governor Kate Brown is barred from running again due to term limits; though her polling is in the toilet). And in 2009, the Ninth Circuit (in the case Anderson v. Portland, held that Portland’s “sit-lie ordnance” (broadly banning camping, sleeping, or loitering in public rights-of-way) was also unconstitutional, as it essentially criminalized homelessness. I should also note that the SCOTUS in 2019 refused to grant certiorari to an appeal of the decision in Boise, which means that the decision remains binding precedent in the West Coast and nowhere else in the country.
- And finally, since the 2020 protests the Portland police have been allegedly staging a “blue flu”. Some officers have retired or sought employment elsewhere, and in general response times to calls have gone up, with many “minor” calls going unanswered. How much of this is a deliberate work slowdown (organized or otherwise) is hard to ascertain, but antifas marching on the police union headquarters (an office building that is unoccupied outside of normal business hours) draw a far sharper and swifter police response than do antifas marching through downtown smashing windows. The police do show up for the latter, but tend to be late to the party, after the damage has been done. (Since the antifas generally organize on social media, it’s not like the police don’t know what’s coming). And like many police forces, they tend to treat Proud Boys and other right-wing troublemakers with kid gloves, if not regarding them as unofficial deputies.
While many homeless advocates have blasted the city for its numerous attempts, over the past years, to ban camping (and many residents now wishing to take a far sterner position, despite the legal restraints on doing so), the city does have a lot of support infrastructure for its homeless population, with quite a few shelters, ranging from traditional soup kitchens and stuff in the downtown core (where the homeless long congregated, back when the local homeless population was far smaller), to “Dignity Village”, a city-sanctioned homeless camp near the airport (with on-site toilet and cooking facilities, access to public transit, and located away from residential neighborhoods). But the current numbers have overtaxed the local infrastructure, which is one reason we have large number of homeless people camping in residential neighborhoods.
The shelter problem
When any sensible discussion of how to solve the homeless problem occurs, shelters are an obvious tool in the public policy toolbox. A “shelter” is any short-term/temporary housing for an unhoused person (including people forced out of their homes for reasons such as avoiding domestic violence, some of whom might not otherwise meet the definition of “homeless”). And the aforementioned court ruling in Martin v. Boise does permit municipalities to ban camping if shelter can be provided. Recently in New York (where 9th Circuit holdings do not apply), new mayor Eric Adams pissed off a whole bunch of people with a campaign to clear homeless encampments in the city, encouraging the displaced campers to move to shelters. Even though Adams has claimed that there is sufficient shelter space for every camper removed from the streets, this has been blasted by homeless advocates, and many (if not most) displaced campers have refused relocation to the city’s shelters.
What’s the problem?
In a nutshell, a shelter is not a home. It’s temporary housing, and designed to be temporary housing. If you are someone fleeing an abusive boyfriend or kicked out of your apartment, who need a safe and warm place to stay while you make other arrangements, a shelter can be a godsend. But shelters are not intended to be long-term housing. Many will let you only stay the night, and kick you out the next morning. Most have limited space for personal possessions, many have little privacy, and strict restrictions on conduct while there, such as prohibitions on drug use.
A tent pitched on a city street, even if providing little protection from the elements and no real security, is at least, in some sense, a “home”. Homeless persons generally won’t disturb the campsites of other homeless people, you can enjoy some privacy and have a place to keep your stuff dry, and if you want to get high, nobody is going to stop you. And many places where the homeless are encouraged to stay are kept well away from residential neighborhoods, which might be a problem for homeless people who earn money from panhandling and such.
Shelters, then, are not permanent (or even long-term) housing. Long-term housing for the homeless quickly gets more expensive and a harder political sell, for various reasons. And even many long-term housing solutions that have been proposed (approved campgrounds, such as the Dignity Village program mentioned above, or group homes) get attacked as “warehousing” the homeless or otherwise violating their dignity, especially if such places come with conditions such as interactions with social workers or listening to sermons. Virtually all such places come with no-drugs policies, making them a nonstarter for active drug users with untreated addictions. And any visible facility for housing the homeless will also attract opposition from neighbors if located close to residential neighborhoods.
The so-called “homeless by choice”
Any discussion of the homeless problem invariably runs into the age-old question: are the homeless victims of society in some sense, persons suffering due to forces and circumstances outside their control? Or are they architects of their own misery, if not outright parasites, who should be slapped upside the head with Adam Smith’s hidden hand? The answer, in many cases, is “it’s complicated”, but a lot of right-wing rhetoric on the subject, both historically and of late, alleges the latter, and focused on a particular subset of homeless, which is often alleged to be the majority of the unhoused: the so-called “homeless by choice”. This alleged cohort consists of persons who could, if they wanted, be “productive” members of society (working for a living and being able to rent a place to live, even if not a nice one) but instead choose to live on the streets, taking unfair advantages of social services, refusing to work, pooping on the sidewalk and otherwise despoiling the neighborhoods they set up camp in, and spending all their time either panhandling to buy drugs and alcohol, or getting high once they’ve scraped enough money to do so. Homelessness is thus portrayed as an act of moral depravity, something which should be punished. In many ways, this group and the mythology around it is not unlike just-so stories about “welfare queens” and such—that systems intended for temporary assistance are being unfairly exploited. That unlike the “mentally ill” (another bin that homeless get lumped into), who may lack moral agency due to possibly-undiagnosed mental illness that makes them unemployable, the “homeless by choice” are simply lazy moochers who deserve nothing more than a kick in the ass, and that eliminating these alleged free-riders from the system must be a necessary component (and precondition) of any long-term solution. While such persons do seem to exist (I’ve heard many stories about people overhearing homeless persons discussing ways to game the system, and every local TV report about the homeless includes the interview with the guy who says he loves living on the streets and doesn’t see what the fuss is all about), my general presumption is that if you are so dedicated to your drug habit that you are willing to live on the streets in this fashion—you are an addict, even if a high-functioning one. Of course, the high-functioning addicts, the ones who view life as a party and haven’t hit rock bottom, are often the hardest to treat.
Regardless of the severity of their addictions and any comorbidities, homeless who are drug addicts are often the most difficult to get off the streets, if for no other reason than shelter and transitional housing generally come with no-drugs rules. While I am generally a supporter of drug decriminalization, if for no other reason than punitive drug policies give rise to black markets and organized crime, tar people with criminal records for conduct that is mainly self-harming, and further burdens the criminal justice system, not having mandatory rehabilitation as part of the policy toolkit makes ending homelessness harder. And while prison isn’t an appropriate place for an addict (who has done nothing other than use drugs), rehab often is.
The burden on the public
The homeless, it shouldn’t need to be said, are people, and as such are deserving of basic human dignity. Any discourse that treats them as vermin or pestilence is offensive, and conservative solutions to homelessness regard the homeless as a problem to be solved, not a constituency to be helped. The policies of “ship ‘em out”, “let em starve”, or “lock ‘em up” (and corresponding attempts to e.g. ban social services to the homeless, making it a crime to donate to panhandlers, or other ways of exacerbating the misery of the homeless in order to encourage them to move elsewhere, die from exposure, or somehow pull it together and get a job) are all morally outrageous.
That said—living near a homeless camp can be unpleasant as hell, and it is entirely understandable that even liberal Portlanders are sick of it. This is a far different thing that racist complaints about the dark-skinned family down the street who are allegedly driving down property values, but keep to themselves and mind their own business. And the suggestion that this is something that people must endure Until Society Solves The Problem (or that the housed have no right to complain about their unhoused neighbors, as there but for the grace of God go they) is obtuse—that may be a valid moral judgment, but it’s a poor political one; at some point people might decide to give fascism a try if the fascists are the ones promising to clean up the streets. (Similar arguments unfortunately have long been found in other civil rights debates, as every advance produces a backlash). Unfortunately, the homeless, to survive, have to live near social services, sources of food (and even of employment should they get there), and for those who beg, near people to be panhandled—many ways of “cleaning up the streets” will place a tremendous burden on the homeless.
What does seem to be the case is that it’s the sort of collective-action problem that is best handled by a comprehensive, nationwide solution; that asking municipalities to solve it on their own will lead to them seeing their local problems grow, as other places that defect in this prisoners dilemma (taking punitive approaches) will successfully export their homeless populations to the places that try to do the right thing. No good deed goes unpunished, as the old saying goes.
