More Than Laurelhurst: Sweeps After Covid

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On Thursday, July 29, the city of Portland executed a controversial plan to remove a 50-tent homeless camp from Laurelhurst Park. The sweep began at 8 am with the arrival of four marked police cars and about 50 Rapid Response Bioclean employees. The eviction of people from the iconic park, where they had slept for months, marked the beginning of an uptick in regular sweeps of camps. And these sweeps are not just taking place in affluent close-in southeast neighborhoods but across the city. In the same week, the Laurelhurst sweep took place, 11 other sweeps were conducted with little or no media attention. A spokesperson from the Portland Office of Management and Finance, who oversees the sweeps, says that the uptick in sweeps will be the new normal. The bureau plans to conduct 10 –15 camp removals for the foreseeable future, up from 4 – 6 sweeps at the beginning of the year. Before the beginning of the pandemic, OMF conducted an average of 40 sweeps per week.

City Commissioners say this is a compromise—more sweeps than Portland’s seen in more than a year, but fewer than the previous average—and is a political balancing act that reflects the values of a portion of the cities residents that view the sweeps as cruel and those who think the cities inattention to the camps is a safety risk. “The new protocols attempt to balance the need to manage public space, and the reality that there is currently not enough shelter space or deeply affordable housing to transition every person off the street,” says newly elected Commissioner Mingus Mapps. But not everyone believes the city has struck the right balance. Kaia Sand, executive director of Street Roots, says the city shouldn’t resume sweeps at any scale without giving unhoused people clear directions about where to go. “It’s still quite vague, what the city really needs to do is give unhoused people a map that shows where it would be safe to sleep.”


Read more about the Laurelhurst sweep here:

Information on City Hall’s decision:



Published by: Ariel Seth De Armas

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