Portland, cited in the article, announced it's beginning yet another sweep of homeless encampments yesterday. At the press conference announcing it, the mayor - who's been ordering sweeps his entire tenure - admits they don't and haven't ever helped the people being swept.
He's also still pushing his plan to establish city-run outdoor camps for homeless people, and to criminalize rejecting those city-run camps when swept - but the city-run camps' locations haven't even been announced, much less started.
From a NIMBY perspective, a city-run homeless camp sounds even worse than a normal homeless camp. At least in the latter case you can hope that the city will get rid of the camp soon, but if the camp is made by the city itself then what hope can you have?
So I think this plan of his will never be implemented. Politically, talking about it makes more sense than actually implementing it.
Don't these permanent "homeless camps" already exist though? When I was in Portland last January I saw a large grouping of what I can only describe as very-tiny homes - essentially glorified shacks on rollers and stilts - which were obviously city-sanctioned homeless encampments next to a bypass.
The camps that last the longest seem to be the ones furthest from neighborhoods where rich people might complain about it. Near or under highways is a "good" place for the camps since highways are noisy/stinky and properties next to highways generally aren't very desirable. Homeless camps in nicer neighborhoods might last for a few weeks/months but seem a lot less permanent than those under highways.
> Near or under highways is a “good” place for the camps since highways are noisy/stinky and properties next to highways generally aren’t very desirable.
Under highways, particularly, also have the political advantage of reduced visibility.
As a bonus (for the people who don’t want the homeless around), these locations (near and under highways) are also extremely unhealthy, particularly for people with respiratory conditions (and staying in them is a good way to develop such conditions in the first place), so it helps reduce the population served.
Nope. Those were unenforced camps. The mayor is proposing reserving city-owned or -leased property, setting up on-site services, and requiring swept homeless people to move to those city-run outdoor camps or single-night shelters or be charged.
The liability alone that Wheeler's proposing is incredible. It'll cost tens of millions to set up (by his estimate) and there'll be lawsuits against the city within days, guaranteed. Nobody will be helped, hundreds will be harmed, and people who aren't chronically homeless will wind up in jail. The camps won't have enough capacity, so nothing fundamentally changes on the ground. Nobody wins.
Actually there is a huge amount of local support for these camps politically. Both in issue polling [1] and in terms of which candidates won election to city council, etc.
Part of this has to do with the fact that there have been persistent homeless camps directly in some of the richest neighborhoods, and the city is proposing that the sanctioned camps won't be in residential neighborhoods.[2] If they happen, it will more likely be in a parking lot on the edges of the city or in industrial/commercial zones. Combine the site selection criteria and the obvious advantages of having a centralized set of camps with waste collection, fire code enforcement, and 24/7 onsite security, and it's no-brainer to most people. The real barrier is the question of where the money comes from and who will be in charge, because Portland has an extremely dysfunctional, fractured local government where funding for homeless services is run by an office jointly administered by the city and the county.
The difference is that in practice, impromptu camps are often set up in city centers and dense residential neighborhoods. Officially sanctioned sites can be farther removed from those areas.
There's a Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode about government run homelessness camps on the US West Coast in 2024. I see we're working on making this happen.
He's also still pushing his plan to establish city-run outdoor camps for homeless people, and to criminalize rejecting those city-run camps when swept - but the city-run camps' locations haven't even been announced, much less started.
https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2023/01/27/46321180/cit...