Housing In Brief: Portland & Sacramento Propose Citywide Camping Bans

Portland Mayor Plans Citywide Camping Ban

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler unveiled a proposal last Friday that would ban street homelessness and force any unsheltered person to stay at city-run encampments. People sleeping on the street would be subject to arrest or citation, with those citations eligible for dismissal if they accept services, according to the Associated Press. It’s one of give resolutions he introduced on Wednesday, and it calls on the city council to implement a camping ban coupled with “alternate camping sites” within 18 months of funding being secured. The resolution also calls for increased shelter capacity and says 100% of shelter spaces would be filled. The three proposed new sanctioned camping sites would only have capacity for around 1,500 people total — short of the city’s 3,000 unsheltered residents. The remaining people would presumably be forced into shelter.

Other resolutions call for building 20,000 units in the next 10 years and increasing work opportunities for people experiencing homelessness. Oregon Live reports that the city council supports the resolutions, but getting them passed would not automatically lead to a camping ban or new shelter space, as resolutions are non-binding and the funding details would have to be worked out in the next budget cycle.

Cities often roll out sanctioned spaces for unhoused people, including legal camping grounds and tiny homes, prior to widened encampment sweeps and criminalization. The mayor has already banned camping on walking routes to schools through an emergency declaration. The debate over the homelessness crisis in Portland has spilled over into the Oregon governor’s race, where Wheeler withheld an endorsement until he could hear candidates’ plans to deal with the crisis.

Sacramento Puts Criminalization Of Homelessness On The Ballot

On Nov. 8, Sacramento residents will vote on a measure banning street homelessness in public places, according to Bolts. Measure 0, which was introduced last April, would make it a misdemeanor to camp in public space. The measure also allows “any resident harmed” by a violation of the measure to begin proceedings with the city to have someone removed. According to Bolts, while the measure seems likely to pass, it may not go into effect due to a clause that requires agreement with the county outlining each party’s responsibilities.

As Bolts points out, many cities rush to roll out shelter space prior to camping bans in order to comply with the 2019 decision in Martin vs. Boise, which barred jurisdictions from issuing public sleeping bans when there was not sufficient shelter space. As journalist Piper French notes in the article, “Many cities instead have conceived of shelter availability as a pretext for criminalization and engaged in legal gymnastics to technically comply with that requirement.”

NYC’s Right To Counsel Program Is Seriously Understaffed

Since New York’s eviction moratorium elapsed in January, advocates and tenants have been sounding the alarm over a shortage of attorneys to address evictions held over during the pandemic. The city’s Right To Counsel coalition raised concern last spring, asking the court to delay cases when no attorney was available, but ultimately was rebuffed. A similar request by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine earlier this month was also unsuccessful.

The news outlet Hell Gate reveals some of the other reasons the program has been dramatically understaffed. Among them are waves of resignations of tenant attorneys during the pandemic, the expansion of the program to all of the city’s zip codes in June and the city’s failure to raise pay for tenant attorneys. According to Hell Gate, 14% of the Legal Aid Society’s civil court attorneys, which handle immigration and housing, resigned over the pandemic. Many Right To Counsel attorneys are now handling 50-60 cases at once. In 2019, the city council and former Mayor Bill de Blasio had agreed on pay raises, phased in over four years, to bring compensation for Right To Counsel attorneys — who work for contracted public defender nonprofits — up to that of attorneys working directly for the city. But those raises have been delayed, according to Hell Gate.

When the former mayor announced a city-wide expansion of the 2017 Right To Counsel law last year, he touted the program’s success rate, stating that “100 percent of tenants with calendared eviction cases had access to legal services” and that 71% of all tenants in housing court had attorneys, compared to 38% before the program. This year, however, the Office of Court Administration told Hell Gate that Right To Counsel providers turned down 7,000 of the 28,000 eviction cases that were on the calendar.