Mental Health in Portland’s Homeless and the City’s Response

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 Out of the top 10 causes of homelessness in Portland, 8 of them are mental health related. The vast majority of people living on the street suffer from disabilities. Without a safe place to call home, getting better is even harder.  

What doesn’t make things any easier is the Portland Police. In 2017 the Oregonian found that 52%  of arrests were homeless. The numbers didn’t change much in 2020.

Source

Thankfully, the City of Portland has pushed for progressive change on two fronts: tiny homes and a special homeless first responder unit called Portland Street Response. I wrote about tiny homes a few weeks ago. The new division of the police department was voted on in 2019 but was delayed until early February 2021 and finally launched in the Lents neighborhood on Feb 9th. The program aims to send 4 person units to respond to emergency calls in place of a traditional police response. The teams are comprised of a paramedic, a mental health clinician, and two community health workers. You can read more about this here.

With such a focus on mental health, there is hope these new response teams are able to help instead of inflame. With everything that happened during 2020 in regards to Portland Police Bureau, I imagine most people are not excited to see police arriving on scene. These very qualified members of the same community should help ease those tensions and create a better relationship with the city and the homeless.  

Let's hope both these responses are enough to help stop the growing houselessness issue Portland is currently facing. The 2 reasons that are not mental health related are financial, so with a strong protective policy, Portland should be able to turn this around. 

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