Chronic Homelessness and the Avoidance of a Growing State of Emergency

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 “Here in Portland, you can’t be in the parks and you can’t be covered. They would wake you up in the dead of sleep and you have to walk around in the cold and rain trying to find a new place. When you finally get settled, an hour later, they move you again.” - Ibrahim, Portland OR


“The hardest part for me was when I started working again. I was

teaching kids, working in the school district. Having to wake up in the

morning, find a shower somewhere and get to work on time was an

obstacles every day. Having to be productive was even harder. I was sleep

deprived, hungry, and scared that if I couldn’t keep it together, I’d lose

my job.” -Mel, Eugene OR


“You are out here by yourself. When you finally get away from downtown and the police

harassing you, you then have to worry about other people. And if you got pushed far

enough out, you’d have to worry about cougars.” - Cara, Eugene



According to a survey conducted in 2015 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) there are approximately 13,176 reported Oregonians that are unhoused a single night. People of color being overrepresented in the unhoused population. Their data does not include those temporarily living in hospitals, jails, treatment centers who have no home to return to afterwards. Their estimate according to other sources seems far too low, as the Oregon Department of Education counted 21,340 K-12 students who have experienced homeless at one point in the 2015-16 academic year alone. This value only included children and far exceeded HUD’s numbers. Oregon has been in a State of Emergency for homelessness for nearly a decade now and things only seem to get worse after the recent pandemic. We have a sense that this is a bigger issue than any of us can comprehend, but if our government can’t even acknowledge the issue with reliable surveying, what does this mean for people who are suffering on the streets today? How are they underserved or more realistically, suppressed into chronic homelssness?


Being Homeless in itself is not illegal, but everyday necessary activities to live are illegal to conduct out in public. Local Governments can use the state statuses to criminalize homelessness in Oregon, by supplementing their own laws as well, targeting specific groups of people.  Anti-homeless laws enacted in the state of Oregon seem to boil down to four categories. (information found through cross referencing anti-homeless codes in the United States conducted by NLCHP as well as the Western Regional Advocacy Project of 565 unhoused Oregoinians)

  1. Standing, sitting, and resting in public places

  2. Sleeping, camping, and lodging in public places, including vehicles

  3. Begging, panhandling, and soliciting

  4. Loitering


It was found in Oregon that we have 224 laws restricting and criminalizing the four categories listed above. Efforts in our legal system, architecture, and many barriers created for those seeking to be occupied and housed, make it impossible to sustain life without the help of other community members. Even if acquiring a job is possible while being homeless, there is constant fear of getting fired due to sleep deprivation, inability to shower, and no access to food. 


Though there are many steps that need to be made, acknowledging our laws are supporting chronic homelessness is a step in the right direction. Efforts need to be made in our legal system to legalize the right to sleep. 


 In the link below breaks down how exactly the state of Oregon criminalizes homelessness and depicts tragic stories of those trying to get off the streets, or just simply survive.



Sources:

https://aclu-or.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/aclu-decriminalizing-homelessness_full-report_web_final.pdf

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