Portland is a community that values safety, healthy living, and solutions to homelessness – we all agree that it is inhumane for people to live outside, especially with the cold of winter upon us.

Sweeps don’t work and are not a solution to this crisis.

Each time a sweep has happened in recent months (Bayside, Deering Oaks, Fore River, Marginal Way), the people living in that encampment have moved to a different location within the City and experienced needless physical and emotional harm, including an increased risk of mortality, overdose, and hospitalization. Sweeps, coupled with the growing number of emphasis areas, have led to larger and larger encampments and unhealthy environments for people living in the encampments and surrounding neighborhoods.

In addition to supporting this moratorium on sweeps, please ask the City of Portland to:

• Support the health and safety needs of the entire community by providing essential services for unsheltered individuals such as water, toilets, food, medical care, mental health, and substance use treatment.
• Create an Intentional Plan to shelter and house unsheltered individuals. More than 100 beds will soon be available at the City of Portland’s Homeless Services Center and we need to move more people into shelter. For any plan to be successful, it must be created in partnership with unsheltered individuals.
• Continue efforts to make City shelters more low-barrier and accessible to people who are living outside. The City of Portland has just begun an outreach campaign to move more people into the Homeless Services Center and we must give this time to work.