Last year, to settle a lawsuit filed by disabled residents, Portland leaders agreed to prioritize removing homeless camps from its sidewalks.
Multnomah County, Oregon will continue to provide free tents to homeless people despite opposition from residents and Portland leaders who are spending millions of dollars to remove tent encampments from their city’s sidewalks as part of a legal settlement.
Multnomah’s County’s interim tent-distribution policy, which was discussed at a work session this week and quietly adopted, says tents and tarps are “life-saving supplies” for homeless people, and they “mitigate the poor health outcomes associated with unsheltered homelessness and provide a limited level of safety, security, and privacy.” Tents also “serve as relationship-building resources” for outreach providers.
Adopting the policy didn’t require a public hearing or a vote from county commissioners, according to the Oregonian newspaper, which first reported on the new rules.
Critics of the policy, which was first unveiled in October, say it is stymieing the city’s legally required efforts to keep its sidewalks clear of tents. Most of the city of Portland is in Multnomah County.
Last year, to settle a lawsuit filed by disabled residents, Portland leaders agreed to prioritize removing homeless camps from its sidewalks, to create a system for reporting problematic campsites, and to cease distributing tents and tarps to people on the streets. But the county and its Joint Office of Homeless Services aren’t part of that settlement, even though the city pays millions of dollars to the Joint Office every year through an intergovernmental agreement. County leaders largely direct the Joint Office’s operations.
“What we have is the county buying tents, distributing them in the community so the city can spend $15 million [annually] to clean them up,” John DiLorenzo, the lawyer who sued the city, told National Review.
As part of the legal settlement, neither the city nor its contractors are allowed to distribute tents and tarps to the homeless. DiLorenzo contends that the city is out of compliance with the agreement because the Joint Office should be considered a city contractor. He is aiming to enter into mediation with the city in January.
DiLorenzo contends that the county’s new policy just formalizes what it was already doing.
Portland leaders previously discussed withdrawing from the Joint Office, though that looks unlikely after the council expanded and moved to the left during this month’s elections.
Mayor-elect Keith Wilson, who campaigned on ending unsheltered homelessness in Portland, told the Oregonian that his administration will oppose handing out camping gear to the homeless.
“My view,” he said, “is that handing out tents and tarps to address unsheltered homelessness is like putting Band-Aids on gangrene.”
He said he’ll “collaborate with the county as quickly as possible to phase out this practice.”
There were 3,944 unsheltered homeless people living in Multnomah County according to its 2023 point-in-time count.
Since July of 2023, the city of Portland had cleared more than 8,000 campsites, according to reports produced as part of it legal settlement. With an average of three to five tents per campsite, that equates to the removal of between 24,000 and 40,000 tents, DiLorenzo said.
According to county data, between May 2, 2023, and May 31, 2024, the Joint Office distributed loads of camping gear from its warehouse, mostly to dozens of nonprofits and religious organizations who provide aid to the region’s homeless. Those supplies included: 6,492 tents, 6,635 sleeping bags, 23,928 tarps, 16,980 rain ponchos, and 35,283 blankets.
In June, amid growing opposition from residents and pressure from city leaders, county chairwoman Jessica Vega Pederson directed the Joint Office to put a freeze on new tent and tarp purchases and to “compile data and information related to purchase and distribution” of the gear. She later clarified the county would continue distributing gear it already had.
According to the county’s policy, the Joint Office will continue to distribute “high quality tents” and camping gear to the homeless until there is “sufficient shelter and affordable housing capacity to make the distribution of tents and tarps unnecessary.”
“All the county is doing is enabling people to stay outdoors,” DiLorenzo said. “There is enough shelter. It’s just that people living outdoors who are addicted to drugs don’t want to come indoors. The county thinks it should honor their wishes, and therefore provide them tents.”