First let us say that we commend Mayor Sam Adams and Commissioner Amanda Fritz for their efforts to create an ordinance that has split the issue of sidewalk management right down the middle. All parties involved are not completely satisfied.
Regardless of the rhetoric being slung, the business community is not happy with this ordinance — it doesn’t go far enough. From some homeless and civil-rights activists’ perspective, it goes to far. It doesn’t help that both weekly newspapers have handpicked what homeless advocates they would like to give voice to, while ignoring others who have had a voice in this fight over several incarnations — giving the general public little context to decipher the complexity of this issue.
Like it or not, the use of our public sidewalks and how it relates to people experiencing homelessness, public safety and business downtown, has devolved into a decade-long quagmire that some of the smartest minds in our city have yet to figure out.
We’ve heard the whispers — Street Roots is sitting this one out. Must be political. Not so. Anyone who reads SR knows we work to present and dissect ways for the region to improve its systems and approaches to fighting poverty. We’re neither naïve nor entrenched in blind ideology. We know the streets. We live them.
In March, SR gave recommendations for the ordinance, saying we supported the stalemate with the following suggestions: to fund two or three homeless outreach workers, to dedicate funding for a neighborhood non-uniformed police officer to work with outreach workers and organizations working with people experiencing homelessness, and to organize a response team made up of homeless outreach workers who respond to calls regarding people experiencing homelessness and poverty and mental health issues in non-emergency situations on sidewalks during peak hours. We also ask for a six-month review of the ordinance to determine its effectiveness.
And while some of these recommendations have been considered, and even implemented (police working with mental health and homeless outreach workers), the language used around the ordinance by the city is once again drifting off onto a slippery slope of blatantly targeting people on the streets with law-enforcement instead of harm-reductions models like those outlined in our recommendations.
For one, aggressive panhandling is not a crime on the books, but it is regularly described in that context. Saying that, assault is against the law, and should be met with zero-tolerance. SR doesn’t want anyone, regardless of their housing status, verbally and physically assaulting anyone on Portland’s sidewalks. It’s everything we’re not.
We are disappointed that we haven’t evolved enough as a city that we can’t get beyond the simple notion of framing policy that will ultimately mean not targeting poor people. When this kind of language is used, it usually means it’s being used for a reason. If that reason is to target people on the streets, then history tells us that this ordinance, if passed, will end up right back in the courts and be ruled unconstitutional, and we’ll all be having this conversation again (and again). And honestly, it doesn’t matter much what SR thinks anymore, that’s just the way it is.
Read the ordinance and the FAQ here.