Portland leaders appear poised to drop the city’s ban on daytime camping amid a legal challenge that has put the ordinance on hold for months.
A new proposed ordinance, created at the behest of Mayor Ted Wheeler and released Thursday morning, would outlaw camping on public land only when individuals have access to alternate shelter. It would also scale back criminal consequences for violators.
The proposal comes months after a Multnomah County judge barred the city from enforcing its more restrictive daytime camping ban while the courts considered its constitutionality.
The lawsuit alleged the city’s camping restrictions, which the City Council approved last June, violate current Oregon law and the state Constitution because they subject people who are involuntarily homeless to unreasonable punishments – including potential fines and jail time – for engaging in unavoidable activities such as sleeping and staying warm and dry.
Instead of waiting on the courts to rule, the city is largely abandoning its original ban.
The new ordinance would:
- Ban camping in or upon any public property or public right-of-way if the person has access to reasonable alternate shelter or has been offered and rejected reasonable alternate shelter.
- Ban camping in or upon any public property or public right-of-way that recklessly obstructs pedestrians or access to private property or businesses. It also makes it illegal to start a fire or use a gas heater around a campsite or erect a permanent or temporary structure. The ordinance makes it clear that tents are not considered structures.
- Violators could face fine of no more than $100 and up to a week in jail. However, the ordinance encourages the district attorney to consider diversion instead. The city’s previous camping ban included penalties of up to 30 days in jail.
Wheeler said he believes the new ordinance fits within legal confines.
“Our strategy still leads with efforts to remove people from the streets, connect them to navigators who can connect them to services … and eventually connect them to housing,” Wheeler said. “But we also have an obligation to maintain public rights of ways.”
Under the current ban, unsheltered campers would have had to pack up their belongings each morning to find someplace else to exist in the city other than where they were sleeping.
“That was one major objection we heard in the court case,” said City Attorney Robert Taylor, “that it is too onerous to make people pack up every day and find someplace to go.”
The new language focuses on requiring people who are offered shelter to accept it or face penalties, and advising people they must keep their camping area neat and tidy if they can’t access shelter.
Those who decline shelter or services will likely be arrested, said Portland’s director of community services, Stephanie Howard. But instead of a 30-day stint in jail, it would now be seven days or a fine up to $100.
“We are fully supportive of the district attorney and courts using diversion strategies so neither option would be imposed, but those pieces of the justice system are up to (the courts),” Howard said.
Skyler Brocker-Knapp, Wheeler’s lead policy adviser, said enforcement would only happen after multiple outreach attempts. And offers of shelter will be as individualized as possible, she said. A person with a physical disability could be offered an ADA accessible tiny home with a wheelchair ramp, someone with a pet would be offered a spot that is animal friendly and workers would try to find shelters that people would feel most comfortable and safe in.
There are more than 6,000 people experiencing homelessness in Multnomah County, according to this year’s federally required tally of unhoused people. Of those, nearly 4,000 are unsheltered. The number of people experiencing homelessness in the county has jumped an alarming 57% since the 2019 count that occurred just before the start of the pandemic.
The county has around 2,000 shelter beds, according to county data.
During this year’s unprecedented ice storm, the county temporarily opened an additional 12 overnight shelters and more than 1,350 people utilized those between Jan. 12 to Jan. 17, on top of the area’s year round beds.
The new regulations are expected to come before City Council for a hearing on April 18 to collect public feedback and would likely go into effect 30 days after a second hearing.
Portland’s plans to begin enforcing its daytime camping ban in November were scuttled after Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Rima Ghandour issued a temporary injunction until a class action lawsuit brought by the Oregon Law Center on behalf of a group of Portlanders experiencing homelessness was resolved.
Federal judges in the 9th Circuit, which covers Oregon and eight other nearby states, have previously ruled, using cases out of Grants Pass and Boise, that cities can’t cite people for sleeping or existing on all public property if there are not enough shelter beds to accommodate them all.
The Grants Pass case, brought on behalf of all unhoused individuals in the southern Oregon city, claimed that it constituted unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment to cite and fine people for camping or sleeping outside if they had nowhere else to go. That case will go before the U.S. Supreme Court later this month.
Portland’s current ordinance limits where unhoused Portlanders can place their belongings, sit or sleep. The rules forbid camping 24 hours a day in public parks or near schools. And between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., unhoused Portlanders are restricted from camping in any public place.
Nicole Hayden reports on homelessness for The Oregonian/OregonLive. She can be reached at nhayden@oregonian.com.