A notice from the City of Portland advising campers to vacate a city park in 2021.
Kristian Foden-Vencil / OPB
City officials throughout Oregon say they need more leeway to clear homeless camps as the state grapples with a housing crisis that shows no signs of abating.
Now they’re taking aim at a 2021 law they say stands in their way.
Last week, the League of Oregon Cities announced one of its top priorities in next year’s legislative session will be to win clearer authority for local governments to sweep camps their leaders believe are problematic.
The group is looking to roll back a law – championed by Gov. Tina Kotek when she served as a legislator – that blocks cities from enforcing camping policies that are not “objectively reasonable.”
By easing limits on how cities can regulate camping, the group says, lawmakers could “provide cities with the necessary tools to address unsafe camping conditions, safeguard public spaces, and protect the health, safety, and wellness of all community members.”
The idea has fans in both parties: At least one lawmaker, Democratic Sen. Mark Meek, plans to push a bill that would remove restrictions in Oregon law on how cities clear camps. Republicans have maligned current state policy as a “right-to-camp” law.
But the push is also certain to meet robust opposition from those who say cities already have plenty of power to address camps that pose hazards to safety or feature criminal activity.
Advocates for the houseless say rolling back the state’s camping policies will make things worse for vulnerable people who have nowhere else to go, and distract from the real solution of building vastly more housing.
“Anything we do that is taking away from our energy towards those solutions is bad for the state,” said Sybil Hebb, director of legislative advocacy at the Oregon Law Center, which represents houseless residents. “It’s certainly bad for our clients, and I think it’s bad for communities.”
Grants Pass ruling resonates
The emerging debate could upend how camping is regulated across the state at a time cities and states around the country are rethinking their stances on the matter. It’s the result of a major shakeup in the legal landscape around anti-camping policies.
For years, federal appeals court rulings that impacted Oregon set a high bar for such policies: that cities could not punish people for sleeping outside unless there was shelter space available as an alternative.
Those rulings led Kotek to introduce a bill in 2021, House Bill 3115, she said would spur cities to create camping policies in line with the federal standard. The bill gave homeless residents the power to sue cities if they were victims of camping enforcement policies that weren’t “objectively reasonable,” a term that was not defined in statute.
Cities and homeless advocates sat in on a workgroup in 2021 that hammered out the bill’s particulars, and the League of Oregon Cities adopted a neutral stance on the bill.
But earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court shattered the federal precedent. In a case that centered on the anti-camping ordinance in Grants Pass, the court provided broader leeway to states and cities to regulate encampments.
The ruling spurred swift reactions in some places. California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered state agencies to begin clearing sites on state-owned land, and threatened state funding to cities who didn’t follow suit. The City of San Francisco also stepped up camp sweeps.
In Oregon, the 2021 law – and the various city policies that cropped up in its wake – ensured that little changed. The law’s fans say that it has worked.
“HB 3115 was thoughtfully negotiated and sets the right balance between the legitimate desire of cities to monitor and regulate health and safety issues on the streets, and the survival needs of homeless residents,” said state Rep. Pam Marsh, the Ashland Democrat who chairs a committee on housing and homelessness issues that would almost certainly consider any change.
While local leaders press for more authority to clear encampments, Marsh said she’s also hearing from homeless advocates urging her to make the state’s restrictions on camping ordinances stronger. “My strong belief is that we just need to leave the bill alone,” she said.
Oregon’s law does not preclude sweeps. Portland and other cities in the state routinely clear encampments.
But the state law also gives houseless residents and their advocates leverage to fight policies they believe are harmful. When Portland floated a ban on camping on public property from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. last year, it was promptly sued by the Oregon Law Center. The organization and its houseless clients argued in part the policy was not objectively reasonable as required under state law.
The lawsuit eventually led Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler to unveil a stripped down policy earlier this year.
“What this does is it gives us now some reasonable tools for people who just don’t want to work with us,” Wheeler said at the time.
What cities want
The League of Oregon Cities has not unveiled a proposed bill for next year’s session, but says it’s looking for a few key changes.
First it wants state law to grant cities blanket permission to clear camps set up in certain areas, such as sidewalks within a certain distance of schools. And the group wants the law to explicitly define what “objectively reasonable” means. The term was left largely undefined in current law in part to allow cities with vastly different circumstances to craft policies that suit their needs, advocates say.
“I think we’re very aware of the sensitivity of this issue,” said Alexandra Ring, who lobbies on housing issues for the League of Oregon Cities. Ring said the group wants to “balance cities’ needs with a common idea of shared humanity. We’re not looking to rush to make changes.”
Not all of the league’s 241 member cities are on board. Notably, Portland Mayor-elect Keith Wilson – who won office on a promise to end unsheltered homelessness – told OPB he will not back proposed changes to the state law.
“At this point in time, I want to focus on ending the humanitarian crisis on our streets and moving people into shelters,” Wilson said in a statement. ”I believe we can work within the current law to end camping in our public spaces. Our intent is not to criminalize homelessness.”
At least one proposal to alter state law will be unveiled early in the 2025 session. Meek, the Democratic senator from Oregon City, has drafted a bill that would simply repeal the changes made under Kotek’s 2021 bill.
Meek was among seven lawmakers to sign a letter earlier this year unsuccessfully urging legislative leaders to create a workgroup to study changes to state law in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
“We believe the law now exceeds the legitimate authority of local government to determine appropriate policies balancing the needs of the homeless and the general public safety,” the letter read in part.
But advocates like Hebb, at the Oregon Law Center, say proposed changes are a solution looking for a problem – and could ultimately hurt a homeless population that includes seniors, domestic violence survivors and the highest rate of unsheltered children in the nation.
“When we’re talking about criminal behavior or problematic behavior, there are already full structures in place to address that,” she said. “There is a tendency to forget who it is that is experiencing homelessness in Oregon… We’re trying to change the narrative here and help people understand who it is who’s actually in this boat.”
