foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this is the Wednesday May 31st 2023 afternoon session of the Portland City Council back for more Keelan please call the roll good afternoon Ryan Gonzalez here Maps here Rubio here wheeler here we'll now hear from legal counsel on the Rules of Order and decorum afternoon welcome to the Portland City
Council to testify before Council in person or virtually you must sign up in advance on the council agenda at www.cortland.gov Council slash agenda information on engaging with city council can be found on the city council Clerk's website webpage presiding officer preserves order and decorum during the City Council meetings the presiding officer determines the length of testimony individuals generally have three minutes to testify unless otherwise stated each a timer will indicate when your time
is done disruptive conducts such as shouting refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or Council deliberations will not be allowed if you cause A disruption a warning will be given further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass additionally Council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually your testimony today should address the matter being considered whe
n testifying one state your name for the record your address is not necessary two disclose if you are a lobbyist if you are representing an organization please identify it three for testifiers joining virtually please unmute yourself once the council clerk calls your name thank you great thank you and we have two items on the agenda today when we get to the second agenda item I may have you reread it we have I believe 170 people signed up to testify that's a little over six hours and I don't wan
t to miss the opportunity for people to be fully cognizant of what the rules are so thank you um with that we'll get to the first time certain item it's a resolution item four five zero accelerate transportation wide priority and increase adoption of electric vehicles very good commissioner Max um thank you Mr Mayor colleagues this item comes to us from the Portland Bureau of Transportation this resolution describes the steps pbot will take to reduce carbon emissions in our transportation system
over the next several years now this resolution is coming to council because the 90-day resolution this Council adopted at the beginning of this calendar year directed peabot to report back to Council on the steps the bureau is taking to decarbonize our transportation system now more than 40 percent of our Region's greenhouse gas emissions come from Transportation this council's climate emergency work plan charged pbot with a task of developing strategies to decarbonize Portland's transportatio
n system and the resolution before Council today outlines at least three strategies pbot has developed for reaching this goal these strategies include first transitioning our transportation system from fossil fuels to clean electricity second making sure that renters and low-income Port lenders are able to charge their electric vehicles and third supporting micro Mobility options like bike town and e-scooter in addition uh this resolution before us today confirms our commitment to peabot's leade
rship role in transportation decarbonization it also identifies the steps pbot should focus on and begins to highlight the resource gaps between the city's aspirations to decarbonize and what actions uh must be taken now before we uh introduce our presenters I'd like to take a moment to thank peepot staff especially Anna Morrison Jacob Sherman and Eric Hess they have been instrumental in making this work real and now I'm here to tell us more about the resolution before us today we have art Pierc
e peabot planning projects and policy group director Kristen Hall peabot planning and project development division manager and Vivian satcherfield BPS Chief sustainability officer and with that I will turn it over to our panel uh thank you commissioner and Council we're glad to bring this item with you today and really appreciate your leadership with the 90-day resolution giving us this clear time sensitive direction to come up with strategies and bring a response back to council to show our acc
ountability to these very important goals we're going to quickly walk you through some of the context to the resolution today and then go into some of the details and we're very pleased to have a colleague from the Bureau of planning and sustainability of Vivian Satterfield here with us today I think her first presentation as a city staffer after coming many years as a friend of the city so we're very pleased to have her join us here today and provide a little bit of context on the work that BPS
does to help frame the goals for Peabody yeah thanks again art and Kristen and the entire team at peabot as art mentioned I'm Vivian Satterfield she her and my name are my pronouns and I'm pleased to join you all as Portland's city of Portland at BPS the chief sustainability officer for the past four months and I'm also pleased to be here today to see peabot's commitment to transportation decarbonization and the action items listed in this resolution as commissioner Maps already framed up for u
s our transportation sector is responsible for over 40 percent of Multnomah County carbon emissions so it is critical for All City bureaus and staff to take this bold action now to reduce Transportation related emissions and address Associated pollution and health risks that disproportionately impact black indigenous people of color portlanders and low-income portlanders as well the city's work to decarbonize Transportation sector fits into three main categories the first is about developing pla
ns that encourage or require developers to build Compact and connected communities to enable people to meet their daily needs without driving the second is to reduce vehicle miles traveled by building bike walk and Transit infrastructure to support safe and enjoyable non-driving trips and the third is the focus of the resolution before you today and that is to transition the motorized vehicles that remain on the road to be powered by electricity these are efforts that cut across all City bureaus
to help accomplish these goals and it's important again to acknowledge that not all portlanders have equal access to these amenities of connected communities electric vehicles or non-motorized Transportation options that was so much of my work as an advocate for the past 10 years in the city so I'm fairly passionate and a little bit of a transportation wonk when it comes to some of these topics um therefore this work needs to be implemented through a climate Justice lens to decrease these exist
ing disparities and to ensure clean Transportation options for all and I've always been a proponent of an abundance of Transportation options thank you for changing the slide um and so the climate emergency work plan is the city's most recent commitment to climate action it builds on a long history of Council actions including our current transportation system plan and our comprehensive plan the Bureau of planning and sustainability BPS led the development of the city's EV strategy which was una
nimously adopted by Council in late 2016. that is a lot of our leadership that this body has exerted in this realm and continues to several reactions in the EV strategy are now embedded in the city's climate emergency work plan and pbot is an important partner in this work I'd like to take a moment to just acknowledge several Transportation decarbonization projects that have recently been adopted by Council and are currently underway such as the EV ready code project this was unanimously adopted
by Council in just February of this year it requires EV ready infrastructure to be installed in 50 to 100 of parking spots at new construction multi-family buildings as a Next Step following the EV ready code update staff at the Bureau of planning sustainability are partnering with Rocky Mountain Institute to discuss EV charging Solutions with multi-family residents building owners and property managers and will be working to implement these Solutions and develop an EV charging toolkit to meet
the needs of residents in multi-family buildings their needs are going to be different than single-family home residents and others and then of course the Portland clean energy fund is developing the inaugural climate investment plan which will allocate at least 100 million for transportation decarbonization projects and programs over the next five years to benefit people with low incomes people experiencing disability and bypoc communities additionally BPS and pbot staff are working closely on
the right-of-way focused work that is included in pbot's transportation decarbonization resolution before you today the climate emergency progress report which includes many of these bureau-wide actions will be available later this summer and BPS staff will brief Council offices on that report in June and July so you can look forward to that thanks Vivian um so focusing in on Transportation um the city transportation goals as well as for through peabot has long focused on the reduction of Drive
alone trips um as a key strategy within our overall approach this shift is uh in how people get around reduces congestion improve safety and reduces Transportation related greenhouse gas emissions city council has also adopted the goal of reduced greenhouse gas emissions and reach Net Zero by 2050. this policy goal is directly addressed this climate and could could be achieved by a combination of transportation electrification and mode shift together meeting these policy goals is critical to add
ressing the climate crisis but also exacerbates pbot funding's challenges by reducing gas tax and parking meter Revenue are two major sources of of Revenue stream notwithstanding the our Revenue challenge our as Vivian mentioned our strategic plan and our approach to Transportation decarbonization really focuses in on a combination of reducing vehicle miles traveled through the way that people use the system the way we design and build that system as well as the shifting of clean fuels and vehic
les all centered around designing for transportation Justice together and that will we believe will get us to achieving the goal of less than 50 percent by 2030. picking up from there um we are working in a federal environment that's very different than anything I've experienced in the 20 years that I've been working in Transportation Planning and that is that the federal government has adopted a U.S national blueprint for transportation decarbonization and as focused in that blueprint on electr
ification above all else and as a result there have is an unprecedented amount of federal money available to support that transition to electric vehicles and Electric Mobility on our system the work we will discuss today will really position the city to benefit from that that Federal grant those Federal grant programs and be a national leader in transportation decarbonization but to really compete with that Federal funding peabot will need stable funding we need to use this moment to make gains
on our electrification goals but we can't do this without stable Bureau level funding winning grants requires pbot to be prepared with well thought out projects with private sector Partnerships and resources for grant writing and required match without these resources pbot will not be able to compete with Federal funding and will fall behind our peer cities in supporting transportation electrification one of the reasons that government has an important role in transportation electrification part
icularly this early stage if you think about the hockey stick of um technology adoption we're right there in becoming more ubiquitous and it's really around achieving Equitable electrification outcomes today there are nearly 400 charging ports places you can charge your electric vehicle in Portland but they're primarily located in our Central City and inner Portland neighborhoods very few are located north in north or East Portland public charging infrastructure is most important to people who l
ive in multi-unit dwellings are people who rent their homes and are not able to install EV Chargers in their own homes or garages we see our role as filling Market gaps and supporting an equitably distributed EV charging Network as well as a more complete view of public charging needs for other electric modes like shared scooters and Sheridan individually owned e-bikes and peabot has been busy on Transportation decarbonization already this isn't a new a new stream of work for us but it's one we'
re very focused on is a core pbot service area and the bureau has been leading efforts to implement Transportation decarbonization projects over the four years that I've been at the bureau and far before that um we already operate the electric Portland streetcar and other Transportation options like at bike town which is an all-electric shared bicycle Fleet we're also making moves to support EV charging in the right-of-way we brought to council a code and administrative rule update earlier this
year that will allow right-of-way charging for the first time we just won a 3.3 million dollar Grant with the U.S department of energy that will allow us to partner with our utilities to install 50 new EV Chargers in the right-of-way which will operationalize that code update which is very exciting to take something from kind of policy to implementation and that um that speed we're also continuing to build out safe cycling infrastructure supporting demand management strategies improving Transit
speed and reliability but our ability to do this work even the work funded by grants relies on having a bureau that was sufficient and stable funding and appropriately staff planning project development and program development functions keep going one more oh yes um so that brings us to today's resolution um the resolution before you today responds to the 90 90 day transition plot priorities assigned by mayor wheeler it seeks to confirm Transportation decarbonization as a key City priority and c
ore pbot function names implementable and actionable decarbonization strategies drawn from Council adopted climate emergency work plan it also highlights the continued resource challenges that peabot faces in delivering these other core services and finally it it highlights the the role that peabot plays specifically in implementing transportation decarbonization that centers equity and the needs of Frontline communities to ensure that no one is Left Behind in the transition to a decarbonized tr
ansportation system so we've broken this resolution down that you have in front of you into four primary buckets that I'll talk about today in the first one we really are asking you to direct pbot to make EV charging available to More portlanders by expanding the availability of public charging in the right-of-way and on other publicly owned sites we want to increase awareness about how portlanders can charge their electric vehicles um and the reason our focus on charging is because it's one lev
er that pbot can pull to expand the benefits of Transportation electrification equitably in the city and this is the area where that U.S department of energy Grant will help us the second bucket is around promoting Electric Mobility options and this is where we have items like supporting zero Mission delivery and goods movement strategies expanding our successful Transportation wallet program which helps people to make um decarbonized transportation choices at an individual level transitioning o
ur own Fleet at the city and other commercial fleets to electric vehicles and supporting TriMet and electrifying their bus system and expanding the use of public transit items on this list are particularly at risk if pbot bases unprecedented funding shortfalls the third bucket is investigating strategies that support e-bikes and shared micro Mobility this is about getting expanding who is using our bike infrastructure by getting more Port lenders onto shared or individually owned e-bikes and sha
red scooters it means supporting e-bike rebate programs including the one currently proposed by the Portland clean energy fund expanding the visibility and use of e-bikes and scooters is a Way Portland can meet their daily trans portlanders commute their daily Transportation needs and addressing barriers to e-bike ownership including addressing safe and secure parking and charging putting this all together the resolution directs pivot staff to report back to council about how shared micro Mobili
ty an individual and shared e-bikes and A Renewed focus on cycling can reverse the downward Trend in Viking mode share in Portland and finally the resolution um continues to highlight as you're well aware of the the funding challenge that peabot faces structurally based on the way that we are currently funded with with gas tax and with parking uh the graph here on the on the slide is that it shows a new estimate coming from the Oregon Department of Transportation showing a decline in the forecas
t for gas tax revenue based on Oregon being the second in the country for Ev adoption and for other factors uh leading us to to continue to lift up the need for Council support and Community investment in the transportation Bureau for us to be able to respond to this crisis um the be resolved we placed it right on it is um you know focusing in on the recognition that we're not currently funded adequately and the graph on the right is trying to highlight uh what it would take to get to full imple
mentation and in green where we are currently in yellow in the middle which allows us to use some of our resources our pbot resources to leverage grants and chase after the the planning team that Kristen supervises who are funded by the general transformation Revenue are able to use that time to then Chase and leverage um you know many millions of dollars annually in external grants and then in red sort of where pbot will be heading um if we are not better funded and better resourced and really
leading us to a false choice between the needs of today and the needs of of our pavement condition and the hopes of our planet and of our communities so we really you know welcome Council deliberation and support for continuing to have us on this path for decarbonization in your um your your sort of deep collaboration in in getting us there in a sustainable way happy to answer any questions and we also have some invited testimony callings any questions at this particular juncture why don't we he
ar the the invited testimony and then pump all our questions together thank you thank you and who's calling up the invited testimony great thank you um so the first uh panel of three folks who are joining us virtually are Jeanette Shaw from fourth Victoria from climate Solutions and Jackie trigger from the Oregon environmental Council thank you thank you Jeanette do we have you there's Chuck I see Jackie so why don't you go first hi everyone can you hear me yep loud and clear yeah great um mayor
wheeler and Commissioners thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of the resolution directing peabot and other bureaus to accelerate Transportation decarbonization strategies my name is Jackie trigger and I'm the campaign manager of climate and transportation with the Oregon environmental Council founded in 1968 oec is a non-partisan non-profit organization that works on behalf of our members Statewide to advance Equitable Innovative and collaborative solutions to Oregon's environme
ntal challenges we support the directed priorities especially the following make low-carbon travel options safe accessible and convenient for all decouple transportation funding from fossil fuels make low-carbon Transportation options more affordable especially for those who can least afford them and support state and Regional vehicle miles traveled reduction policies the way we get around makes a difference for our health and our environment cars and trucks emit nearly 40 percent of Oregon's cl
imate pollution and more than half of Oregon's air pollution runoff from our streets and parking lots pollutes our water poorly planned roads lead to sprawl which threatens Oregon's forests and Farms communities where residents can't walk or bicycle lease or bicycle safely have higher rates of chronic diseases like diabetes cancer and heart disease and many families struggle with the cost of Transportation it's cool for a transportation system that supports clean air climate stability and Health
y Families living in economically vibrant neighborhoods A system that provides everything including those two young two old too poor or physically unable to drive and provides for everyone with Equitable access to the places they need and want to go thank you for your consideration to help you support this resolution directing peabot to accelerate transportation decarbonization Good Friday thank you and I think I see Jeanette's here thank you apologize not being jumping right on my name is Jeane
tte Shaw good afternoon mayor wheeler and Commissioners I am the director of policy at Fourth and I use she her pronouns um I am very happy today to provide testimony on behalf of fourth fourth was founded in Oregon in 2011. our mission is to equitably Electrify Transportation by bringing people together and that is to create solutions that reduce pollution and barriers to access and fourth does this really in three different to four different ways through programs and policies that increase acc
ess to charging such as the West Coast Electric Highway at workplaces at community centers and apartment buildings also access to cars such as car sharing pilots and access to emerging modes such as e-bikes electric school buses and even electric tractors Force supports Portland's goal to become a top city for Equitable transportation electrification to promote Electric Mobility options as well as to support strategies to support e-bikes and shared micro ability and very excited with usdue's rec
ent award which you heard earlier for the right-of-way charging in Portland and also the U.S department [Music] station award to Pilot zero emission delivery Zone Portland is well poised to accomplish its goal to accelerate train station decarbonization and by working with community-based organizations establishing communities of practice based directly on community needs assessments fourth Partners to bring train station electrification Technologies to traditionally underserved communities such
as the city of Portland and Piedmont would be doing through this resolution in 2017 fourth work II accelerate translation electrification bypassing the Oregon clean vehicle rebate program and similarly in 2017 the Portland City Council adopted the Portland electric vehicle strategy to also accelerate the transition to electric vehicles which included e-bikes and we all understand the importance of decarbonization and decarbonizing the transition sector to mitigate climate change and I just want
to further emphasize the role of electrification I do know you have several other presenters so I'll keep it short and make sure my testimony has been submitted but we look forward to continuing to work in partnership with peabot to build lasting programs and policy models that will significantly increase translation decarbonation and working with the city of Portland so with that again very happy to support this resolution and we'll turn it over to the next presenter thank you great and I beli
eve I see Victoria here hi Victoria hey good afternoon um uh good afternoon city of Portland Commissioners uh for the record my name is Victoria paycar and I'm the Oregon transportation policy manager at climate Solutions and climate Solutions is a regional non-profit working to accelerate clean energy solutions to The Climate crisis I'm here today to voice our support for the resolution directing peabot and other bureaus to accelerate Transportation decarbonization strategies as well as share a
new program that climate Solutions has been working to accelerate Fleet electrification so last year climate Solutions partnered with four organizations including Oregon business for climate to create the breaking barriers collaborative that launched its first Fleet decarbonization accelerator which was a Hands-On cohort based program to help businesses accelerate the transition of their fleets to clean energy and it included Oregon groups like Central City Concern New Seasons Market organicall
y grown Pacific Coast fruit company mckinstry and the Oregon Department of Transportation this program was a huge success and showed the that there is a strong desire among small and medium-sized businesses to transition their Fleet to clean energy we hope that you'll continue supporting these organizations and businesses that they try to make the transition and while electrifying all modes of transportation is necessary to meet our climate goals this is just one of two important strategies so a
s you've heard the other is reducing the amount of vehicle miles traveled or getting people out of cars and using alternative modes of Transit and based on the 2020 report from climate Solutions called Transforming Our transportation we found that Portland would need around 97 electrification of all vehicle types and at least 47 reduction in vehicle miles traveled and both of these tax tactics are needed to be paired in order to achieve the biggest social and climate benefits such as health and
air quality improvements reduce Transportation cost burdens and address the climate crisis reducing vehicle miles traveled by almost half of today's miles means that we must prioritize investing in alternative modes of transportations that are safe affordable and efficient and this paradigm shift will help create a city where all people including those that don't have access to a car can better access essential services like getting to school work buying groceries getting your doctor's appointme
nts going to community events and more I'll take a moment to say too that the decision by the TriMet board to increase fares starting next year is an example of how not to reduce vehicle miles traveled as it will cut many of our most vulnerable low-income Port lenders off from being able to afford rides and increase traffic congestion when instead the city should be in conversations with TriMet to figure out ways to subsidize Fairless transit to achieve climate goals and maximize Society benefit
s especially to our most vulnerable Port lenders so the best pass forward here is to meet our transportation goals is making Transportation people centered providing Equitable Investments to underserved communities and prioritizing access to multimodal Transportation options that are affordable safe and efficient as well as electrifying all the rest thank you very much for the work you've done so far for Portland's Transportation future and let's keep going and Mr I believe we have is that are a
ll of our online testimony I think we might have some people in the room too come on up all right I'll go first good afternoon mayor wheeler and Commissioners my name is Eva de Cesaro a senior Transportation electrification specialist with Portland General Electric thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of the city's Transportation decarbonization resolution PGE appreciates our partnership with the city of Portland to support electric transportation and EVS together we've collaborat
ed on great projects like the recent application to the U.S department of energy for a grant Electric Avenue charging stations downtown and pull mounted EV charging demonstrations in southeast Portland in addition to peabot's bike Town being a recipient of our Drive change fund a grant fund program funded by Oregon clean fuels program and administered by Portland General Electric PGE understands that the transition to clean Transportation depends on both reliable charging infrastructure and on d
ecarbonizing our own electricity Supply PGE is working to achieve at least 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions associated with the power served to customers by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040. we share many of the city's Transportation decarbonization goals and want to help you achieve those outlined in the climate emergency work plan including Equitable Eevee adoption and promoting Electric Mobility options we're working to make investments in infrastructure and provide customer progr
ams that drive Eevee adoption and reduce the overall cost to serve these new EV loads for example we created a new Municipal charge and collaboration pilot which was approved by the Oregon Public Utility Commission in October of last year the municipal charging pilot focuses on level 2 Chargers in the public right-of-way to support those who cannot charge at home such as those who live in multi-unit dwellings providing this access is critical to ensuring Equitable adoption of UVS those who canno
t charge at home are unable to enjoy the many benefits such as reduced maintenance costs better air quality and the convenience and cost Savings of electric fuel we are also working on our transportation electrification plan that complements many of your transportation decarbonization strategies a draft will be filed this week with the Oregon Public Utility Commission and hopefully adopted later this year after robust stakeholder engagement we're excited to continue to collaborate on Transportat
ion electrification projects such as the recent U.S department of energy Grant and look forward to supporting our customers and our public Partners like Portland in decarbonizing the transportation sector thank you thank you good afternoon Mr Mayor Commissioners my name is Keith Wilson and I'm CEO and president of Titan Freight Systems of regional transportation company based here in Portland I'm here to voice my support for the resolution and also to share some good news yesterday Freightliner
based in North Portland notified me that the first trucks in my order of medium and heavy duty all-electric trucks were available for pickup these will be the first in Oregon and only a few short weeks the zero tailpipe emission Vehicles will be making deliveries to businesses throughout Portland the electrification of Portland's medium and heavy duty delivery fleets has begun while you consider policies to help Foster this continued transition I would like to outline to support you will receive
from a host of organizations while an electric truck costs hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the equivalent diesel engine truck federal and state credits and rebates are being established to offset this cost difference the federal government is offering a forty thousand dollar credit per unit and Oregon House Bill 2714 when passed will provide an additional 85 000 to 120 000 rebate per unit additionally these trucks will require an entirely new fueling infrastructure but Portland Gener
al Electric and federal credit to make it easy and affordable p GE offers a Make Ready program that covers about half the total cost of the infrastructure and new federal credits will cover up to 30 percent of the infrastructure and finally these all-electric trucks will enjoy significant ongoing support from Oregon's clean fuels program which provides the highest incentives for any trucks excuse me the highest incentives for clean fuels in the United States for example Titan will generally purc
hase electricity for these vehicles at 15 cents per kilowatt hour however we we estimate that the Oregon clean fuels program will provide credits that will offset this cost to very nearly zero to be clear the X the electricity to operate these trucks will be close to free these are only a few of the financial benefits that will help support carriers as they make the switch to all electric trucks however the most important benefits of this transition will be enjoyed by our community these trucks
will result in significant reduction in surface pollution in greenhouse gas emissions regarding surface pollutions these zero tailpipe emissions Vehicles will immediately begin to reduce respiratory disease that are attributed to diesel exhaust and which disproportionately affect low-income communities that live near Transportation corridors Port lenders will enjoy healthier lives and regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions this year with the use of these electric trucks and other de
carbonization measures my Oregon operations will reduce ghd emissions from a baseline of 1778 metric tons 550 metric tons is 70 reduction in global warming emissions something for which my team and I are very proud of so that concludes and I just want to thank you for this opportunity and with these new electric trucks as uh commissioner Rubio knows and commissioner Ryan I'm going to invite each of you and your families out to my office to drive a set of triples around our lot let's celebrate th
is achievement uh it's at the end of July and I'll let you know and I hope you're able to make it and enjoy it with your families that's great thank you appreciate it all right thank you commissioner Keelan how many folks do we have signed up we have four people very good uh Keelan will call you up please three minutes each name for the record first up we have George McCarthy joining us online doesn't look like they've joined us uh how about Corey Pinkard uh let's move to Jackie Traeger uh Jacki
e you I think participated in our invited testimony yes I already went yeah oh great thank you thank you and [Music] funny I'm um here to speak in favor of this resolution but with reservations um yes it's excellent that you are you know that Peabody is is is doing a lot to promote Evie infrastructure and making a more Equitable and that's all very good unfortunately electric vehicles are should be the smaller portion of our transition not the major portion we need to focus more on reducing the
vehicle miles driven and um and reducing and which which is in part increasing the use of public transportation um the there was a mention in this thing about the really the only concrete mention about TriMet and supporting public transportation was getting electric buses electrifying the system more which is wonderful but if you don't have people on those buses it's not going to do any good so um and an earlier person referred to the uh the recent bad decision by TriMet to increase fares and I
want to right now thank mayor wheeler for coming out against that fair increase really appreciate that we we need more of that from from the city and from peabot um I I would like to I would like people to actually work with TriMet um and you know encourage and do what they can to go to a Fairless system uh right now it's not only Fearless but they've increased Affairs which is essentially a tax on poor people because this is going to in this impacts low-income communities the most and um and an
d and not you know continuing to increase fares and and have expensive public transportation just does not do a whole lot of good so we we really need to focus more on public transportation and you know EV is great but it's it's not the BL and end all it is better than just you know trying to go for renewable so-called renewable diesel which is not also not an answer um another small thing is um you know I know you're talking about having you know less parking and all that and perhaps um transit
ioning more more parking spaces around the city especially in outer East Portland uh you know take away parking space here and there and put in shade trees which are contrary to what some of the board here seem to think are critical infrastructure so just want to say thanks for doing the EV thing and please focus more on public transportation thanks sorry that's my fan club outside [Laughter] great thank you and does that complete public Testament yes very good colleagues any questions commissio
ner Gonzalez so uh thanks for the conference Report with respect to the long-term Financial viability of pbot and our move towards electrification what's your best guess on the on the way out of this right so if over the next decade we're going to commit to electrification that's going to decrease gas consumption in in the area it's going to decrease our tax gas Revenue putting parking Revenue aside what how do we reconcile this financially that's a great question and honestly cities globally ar
e struggling with exactly this sort of cross incentives it really requires us to shift away from the the specific use-based fees of um of using gas as the as the credential and shifting towards other use-based fees and more General usage fees such as a lot of cities as we've talked about in recent weeks are moving towards the utility utility fee that is specifically that every household every business is contributing towards the need to have a transportation system rather than specifically taxin
g just one type of usage more efficiently spreads the the load to everyone who depends on that system every household every business needs a viable transportation system currently we're not set up that way we're really just focused on one specific uh system that perhaps was adequate when it was conceived of you know many many years ago but really isn't viable anymore is there is there a model that is plausible where we can Target specifically EV consume and um to to parallel what is historically
be done on the on the gas side my understanding is one of the challenges is the specific data set is how how to know what type the type of vehicle is and I don't believe that's readily available currently and how we're set up so that would be one of the sort of system challenges we would need to find a way to shift and and come up with that the Oregon wide Road user charge concept is is already trying to address that and odot's provided really great leadership Statewide in that of trying to shi
ft you know if if that could be ubiquitously adopted we could shift away from fuel tax and have everyone pay a road user of charge regardless of the of the fuel type right okay I mean obviously it's something that we just need to keep at the Forefront we have some big goals in the city of Portland uh it's a defining character of the city that we strive for these things but uh the financial viability of pbot should be on everyone's mind and um at this point these two polls are somewhat irreconcil
able at least at this point in time from separately what there's the gap between what we want to be and what we aspire to be and the infrastructure and barriers to get there and trying to either set goals that make sense for what we can actually achieve what the resources we have is going to be part of the grown-up work we need to do over the next decade for sure yes thank you great thanks colleagues any further questions if not this is a resolution please call the rule Ryan uh thank you first o
f all this is a very Noble Endeavor and I understand why our city needs to move in this direction thank you commissioner maps for bringing this forward an excellent presentation welcome aboard Vivian thank you art and Kristen I do want to set an alarm here it's been mentioned several times and while we're not on track right now to meet these goals what happens when we are 100 percent clean energy like you I'm a bit concerned about this fact so far I've not heard a plan to make up for the Lost re
venue for peabot when we are no longer collecting gas tax revenue commissioner Maps you've been very vocal understandably so and I appreciate that about the funding shortfall for pbot and I want to hear some vision and be in that dialogue so we can reform with the corresponding Revenue plan where is the model where Portland is climate friendly and we have money to fund important and necessary entities like peabot I look forward to seeing an alternative Revenue plans so that we may continue to in
vest in our city beyond the sale of gasoline of course I'm going to vote in favor of this item I just want to make sure we as a council recognize and address a plan for lost Revenue congratulations Keith Wilson there you are in Titan for your leadership in the freight industry you offered a tangible you offered some tangible good news today which is very refreshing and um I gotta say I'm looking forward to coming out and taking a spin we also need to be mindful of the equity issues here electric
vehicles do bear certain costs that I don't think it talked about enough I want to make sure we have we actively ensure that our climate policy is also Equitable and fair and I know you all share the same thoughts having said all that I vote I Gonzalez I.E I'm going to support this resolution I want to Echo the concerns just about long-term Financial viability for pbot uh developing a strategy that addresses that um also would like to remind Portland walking uh public transit utilization those
have all declined in recent years it's a painful reality as portlanders so those listing at home encourage you to bike more walk more and use public transit when you feel safe it's on us to make sure those are all are in fact safe Avenues and feel safe but I don't want to lose that and when we talk about decarbonization last but not least our grid is not yet clean in Oregon and in the short medium term the push for electrification does have some unintended consequences and further coal consumpti
on and even natural gas consumption so I just want to keep that at the Forefront I think the long-term goal of driving electrification makes a ton of sense we will soon have online our first electric fire truck in the city of Portland so uh that's exciting uh it takes a mammoth charger but uh we're going to celebrate the heck out of it once it comes online uh but uh all those things notwithstanding I vote eye on the resolution um I want to thank everyone who testified today um I also want to ack
nowledge the hard and excellent work done by people at staff um who contributed to this resolution and this body of work well this resolution is future focused it sits on a foundation that peabot has been working on for many decades supporting Equitable sustainable and Safe Transportation is core to the bureau's mission and we are excited about continuing this important work however I must also point out as my colleagues before me have also that decarbonizing our transportation system will requi
re resources and frankly pbot does not currently have these resources nor do we have a any anticipation that these resources will be coming to our budgets unless something fundamental changes as we have heard people but fundamental funding mechanisms are broken this Council will not be able to achieve its goals and decarbonizing our transportation system until we develop a new funding model for Portland's transportation system now I appreciate the sensitivity and curiosity my colleagues have exp
ressed around fixing this problem and I look forward to working with my colleagues in this Council to develop a new approach to supporting Transportation here in Portland in the meantime I vote I yeah thank you commissioner Maps Vivian and the peabot team for bringing this resolution forward and just to Echo my colleagues very very much looking forward to that broader conversation around long-term funding decarbonization is an important part of the city's climate emergency work plan and I'm real
ly really happy to see the measures outlined in this resolution that can really move the needle on this work I also want to further state that climate change and carbon reductions need to be prioritized by all of our bureaus because the impact to our communities cannot be ignored and we all know that portlanders that are most impacted by this crisis need to be kept front and center and those are our front line and vulnerable populations who've been disproportionately impacted as some of the Acco
rding to some of the well we know this already but was further echoed by a lot of the testimony that we heard today the goals and the resolutions are important and we need to keep focused about publishing these things together so I'm glad that BPS together with Vivian's leadership will continue to be a strong partner with peabot to make Transportation decarbonization a priority so this is very critical work and I'm happy to vote I wheeler I will just mirror my colleagues and uh commissioner Maps
I want to thank you again for bringing this forward I think it it is a good road map for the path ahead and I think you've been very clear-headed and honest about the challenges that we Face going forward we are trying to re-structure the way we think about transportation funding we're moving from one uh Paradigm to a completely different Paradigm I would suggest that we will have to be proactive in defining what that is this is not news to us that as carbon based fuel dissipates and people mov
e towards other platforms including electrification the traditional revenue streams will continue to wither and I would suggest that others will not necessarily come forward with the solution for us even though I realize every Transportation Bureau in the United States is facing exactly the same fiscal crisis to greater or lesser degrees so I I appreciate the the work that went into this in the conversation and I have hopefulness towards the future and it's in that spirit that I vote I and the r
esolution is adopted colleagues we will take a looks like about a seven or eight minute recess until we do our time certain at 3 P.M we are in recess [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Mus
ic] [Music] we are back in session before we get to item number 451 I'll ask legal counsel to read The Rules of Order and decorum again please hmm welcome to this Portland City Council to testify before Council in person or virtually you must sign up in advance on the council agenda at www.portland.gov Council agenda information on engaging with city council can be found on the city council Clerk's web page the presiding officer preserves order into Quorum during City Council meetings presiding
officer determines the length of testimony individuals generally have three minutes to testify unless otherwise stated a timer will indicate when your time is done disruptive conduct such as shouting refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or counsel deliberations will not be allowed if you cause A disruption a warning will be given further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to ar
rest for trespass additionally Council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually your testimony today should address the matter being considered when testifying one state your name for the record your address is not necessary to disclose if you are a lobbyist if you are representing an organization please identify it three for testifiers joining virtually please unmute yourself once the council clerk calls your name thank you thank you just a couple of of notes uh on this afternoon's item
we have about 170 plus people signed up to testimon testify so we did notice that it will be two minutes of public testimony keep in mind that that is over six hours of public testimony we want to make sure we get through everybody who would like to be heard today so please as you're planning your talking points limit yourself to two minutes The Rules of Order and decorum are so that we have a safe environment for everybody regardless of their perspective we want to make sure that everybody feel
s safe and welcome to express their views if you came into the chamber with the assumption that you have the only Viewpoint you will be wrong we want to make sure that we do have the opportunity to hear people and that includes people who disagree with me people who disagree with my colleagues maybe people who disagree with you but let's show that the Democratic process can work and if it doesn't I just want to warn those of you who think this doesn't matter we will go to Virtual we do not have
to legally meet in person I'd prefer we do that we have everybody here that we can look each other in the eye and hear different perspectives and be civil about it but if we can't then what I'll do is I'll give notice that we are going to go virtual we'll clear the room and that will be that so with that we will get to our first item item number four five one amend city code to update existing public camping restriction policies to comply with House Bill 3115 colleagues this is a first reading o
f an non-emergency ordinance that means we will not be voting today but we will hear a presentation we will have public testimony there will potentially be some opportunity for Council discussion depending upon what time we get through testimony this item amends the city code to update existing public camping restriction policies to comply with the state's house bill 3115. before we begin I'd like to make a technical Amendment to the ordinance to remove and correct references to the hearing's of
fice this is a technical amendment I move as follows section one finding Aid of the ordinance regarding the hearings office is stricken and replaced with the following sentence the city will ensure the District Attorney's office is aware of the additional affirmative defense that may be asserted under house bill 3115. could I get a second please second second from commissioner Maps any further discussion on the amendment mayor commissioner Gonzalez so can can you just help clarify the background
here on on the need for the job I will defer to legal counsel as it's a technical Amendment uh but I believe what it is doing is stating that under house bill 3115 there are additional legal rights assumed under these time place manner ordinances and we are acknowledging that but I'll I'll defer to Robert who actually is an attorney thank you mayor Robert Taylor City attorney under house bill 3115 there is an affirmative defense for somebody charged with violating a city ordinance passed under
that bill and the affirmative defense allows the defendant to assert that the Restriction is not objectively reasonable and so this technical Amendment just makes it clear that the city will instruct the district attorney about that affirmative defense is is the intent that we bypass a hearing officer mechanism or entirely the the intent under the enforcement mechanism is to provide two warnings and then after those two warnings it would be subject to a criminal prosecution by the district attor
ney and we also understand that the district attorney is interested in diversion opportunities to connect people with services and resources and just to be crystal clear so what's envisioned would bypass hearing officer unless diverted to uh by the D.A or in so as a part of that Criminal Justice System correct okay thank you for the clarification I uh want to think about it I'll prove it for purpose of the amendment but we'll want to think about that a little bit would you like me to hold off on
the vote on the amendment um I mean I don't want to disrupt the process so if it's advantageous to get it in right now I I would support it but I why don't we do it because it basically has to be in it as I understand it please any further questions no please call the roll Ryan aye Gonzalez aye wheeler all right the amendment passes I'll also note that two sentences in the impact statement at the eighth paragraph of the budget office Financial impact analysis regarding the hearings office will
also be stricken by the council clerk though that correction does not require an amendment thank you colleagues so to the matter at hand there are currently hundreds of unsanctioned sometimes dangerous and often squalid homeless camps across all 146 square miles of the city of Portland these homeless camps as I've said on many occasions represent nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe for those who are struggling in those encampments as well as the community at large who often struggle as w
e heard this morning under the public health the public safety and the livability issues caused to everybody in the community we have to continue to balance these important issues we have to develop workable and compassionate means to connect people to the services they need to get off and stay off the streets and we also have the further requirement now to update our city code to comply with new state laws related to homelessness in 2021 specifically the Oregon legislature adopted house bill 31
15. this bill requires all cities in Oregon to update their local camping ordinances to ensure that they're objectively reasonable with respect to time place and manner restrictions on unsanctioned camping these changes must be adopted by all Oregon jurisdictions by July 1st 2023. House Bill 3115 along with rulings from the 9th Circuit Court like Martin B Boise require local jurisdictions to adjust their laws regulating unsanctioned camping so that they can be meaningfully enforced within this l
egal framework my Administration aims to bring Portland city code up to par with state law by ensuring the city has reasonable time place and Mana regulations while continuing our work to find solutions to these complicated problems these changes to City policy are necessary for three primary reasons first to make clear my goal of ending unsanctioned camping in the city of Portland second to align our unsanctioned camping city code with the requirements of current state law and third to explicit
ly state in writing the city of Portland's policies as well as our enforcement strategies as such I'm proposing the following changes to city code regarding time prohibit all camping between the hours of 8 AM and 8 pm regarding place a complete ban on camping in specific locations including but not exclusive to Parks docks sidewalk areas intended for pedestrians as well as areas near construction sites schools day care center existing shelters High crash corridors and environmental overlay zones
regarding Manor camps may not obstruct access to private property or to businesses start or use gas heaters in or around a site set up permanent structures accumulate garbage or hazardous materials assemble or offer to sell multiple bicycles cars or other parts enforcement of this ordinance is intended to be a tool to connect people with appropriate resources while also addressing behavior that is damaging to our community at Large the ordinance requires written warnings prior to any penalty af
ter two documented warnings an additional violation could result in criminal penalties Our intention is to offer alternative shelter opportunities to those living on our streets we will phase in our enforcement if passed which will coincide with the opening of our first temporary alternative shelter site with more to follow shortly thereafter individuals who do not abide by the strict restrictions outlined in city code will be subject to a warning citation my team has expressed my strong commitm
ent to collaborating with the district attorney as well as Multnomah County courts to support any efforts to create appropriate alternatives to criminal sanctions for violations whether it is acceptance of service referrals completion of community service or restorative justice participation I'm fully behind creating Pathways out of the Criminal Justice System we're investing millions of dollars in various programs to provide access to services and to shelter this includes but is not exclusive t
o the city's safe rest Villages temporary alternative shelter sites and funding to the Joint office of homeless Services which goes towards shelter rent support alternative campsites transitional housing housing and other services including Behavioral Health substance use disorder treatment basic health care access and navigation to housing I will continue to work to increase and bolster these programs while ensuring the city has reasonable laws that it can enforce to address unsanctioned campin
g I also recognize that this ordinance change May Place additional burdens on day Center facilities my team is working to identify opportunities to support these critical services my goal is to have enough shelter housing and treatment access available so that we can fully eliminate unsanctioned unsheltered camping within the city of Portland I believe that this would be helpful to those who are currently struggling on our streets and I believe that this is what portlanders in general are asking
for as well since announcing these changes our offices received overwhelming positive support for this proposal these changes are critical you may not agree and that's fine that's democracy these changes are critical to the city's compliance with state law and vital to our community's ability to return to the vibrant place that we all love I'd now like to invite Skyler brocker now my senior policy advisor as well as Robert Taylor our City's attorney to present information to the council thanks
Skyler and Robert I appreciate it thanks mayor hi Commissioners good afternoon Skylar brocker Knapp senior policy advisor for the mayor we're going to discuss some of the background and context and then go through some of the pieces kind of an overview of this ordinance so just to reiterate this is amending city code titles 14 and 20 with respect to unsanctioned camping in the city of Portland to comply with House Bill 3115 that was passed in the 2021 Oregon State legislative session requiring a
ll jurisdictions within Oregon to comply with that state law um every jurisdiction has to comply with the ordinances that are objectively reasonable as the time place and manner with respect to persons experiencing homelessness if voted upon and approved will be in compliance with this state law in early July and Robert's going to speak to some of the legal context for this as well thank you Skyler Robert Taylor Portland City attorney the Martin versus Boise case is a case out of the ninth circu
it and it held that a city cannot prohibit camping city-wide if there are not alternative shelters available for people experiencing homelessness the court however also indicated that even for those who are experiencing homelessness and where there is not alternative shelter space available cities can adopt reasonable time-place manner regulations governing how that camping is done and that's why you see in 2021 the Oregon legislature adopted house bill 3115. that required all cities in Oregon t
o make sure that their local camping ordinances were objectively reasonable with respect to the time place and manner regulating camping that's what the city of Portland is proposing to do today with this ordinance and this is also why you see other local jurisdictions throughout the state going through this same process to update their local ordinances thank you next slide please so I'm just going to run through some of the pieces of the ordinance and these restrictions so as to time camping wi
ll be permitted only between 8 pm and 8 A.M um after 8 A.M all items have to be packed away and the campsite needs to be removed this is similar to the city of beaverton's proposal so neighboring jurisdictions have similar proposals as well next slide please as to place the mayor ran through some of these as well but just to reiterate this is not an exhaustive list um involuntary home an involuntarily homeless person may not camp in the following places at any time even during that 8 pm to 8 A.M
time frame that's on The Pedestrian Plaza on City docks in a pedestrian youth zone along the sidewalk that people use in a park within 250 feet from a preschool kindergarten Elementary secondary or Child Care Center within 250 feet of a safe Park site a safe rest Village or a temporary alternative shelter site and then within 250 feet of a construction zone with a building permit in high crash Corridor networks and then within 250 feet of the environmental overlay zones and River Natural Area z
ones also within areas posted no trespassing by City bureaus next slide please in terms of manner these restrictions mirror a lot of the elements in our impact Reduction Program Matrix so already part of City policies but being codified into city code some of those include not being able to obstruct access to private property or businesses adjacent to the public right-of-way that includes Ingress and egress for fire safety issues as well um starting or maintaining a fire for the purpose of burni
ng any combustionable material in and around a campsite or the use of a gas heater setting up any type of permanent or temporary fixture or structure in and around public property or public right-of-way storing belongings or other objects in a total area encompassing more than 10 square feet outside a tent or a readily portable shelter and then as the mayor mentioned assembling disassembling offering to distribute or store three or more bicycles or two or more automobiles or their parts Robert i
s going to talk about enforcement of this ordinance enforcement will be phased in using a series of warnings before somebody is subject to criminal enforcement somebody would receive two written warnings identifying the provisions of the code that were violated the warnings have to come at least 24 hours apart and then if you have a third violation within a one-year period or or a third violation after a conviction within a one-year period then you would be subject to criminal enforcement punish
able by a fine of not more than a hundred dollars or imprisonment for up to 30 days or both [Music] uh again folks we can go virtual it's up to you if what I'd really recommend you can hate this all you want but let's hear the presentation and then when it's then when it is your turn to testify you get the mic but if we can't if we can't be civil we are going to go virtual and that's the bottom line it's my call and that's what I'm telling you it's not scary it's actually just being civil go ahe
ad the the District Attorney's office would be responsible under the code for enforcing those criminal penalties although the D.A we understand would be focused on diversion to connect people with necessary services and resources and that is the intent of the criminal enforcement is to provide a venue to help people access those additional services and resources next slide please so our next steps in terms of communication and Outreach we have spoken with service providers day Center providers M
ultnomah County and the DA's office as well as other folks involved in this process there will be a need for ongoing communication and education and Outreach for all parties involved so we've had those discussions some of those discussions already and we'll continue to have those discussions over the next couple months it will be a phased in enforcement process that will require a lot of education and Outreach because it's a change in city code it won't happen overnight um so communication that
will be provided on our website and printed handouts we will also hold Virtual Office hours to answer folks questions Robert and I will be made available to answer technical questions we've already briefed the media once but happy to do it again in a technical briefing Outreach obviously through the street services coordination Center our impact Reduction Program through the joint office of homeless services and Portland Street response and then also the coordination with community-based organiz
ations like I mentioned there's hundreds of Outreach workers who work in the city and the county and we want to make sure that everyone is aware of these code changes and educated on them as well again just to reiterate these this process of enforcement will be phased in over a period of time after the first opening of the temporary alternative shelter site and again it'll be an educational process for everyone involved changing city code means that we need to educate every person who's a part o
f the process along the way thank you very good and does that complete your presentation yes very good Commissioners I understand some of you have invited testimony I'll pass it to you introduce those testifiers commissioner Gonzalez sure I'd like to invite Nick Coffey from my office up oh absolutely yeah do you want to go first now sure Nick we're going to switch uh commissioner Ryan would like to go first if Aaron Watson is online I know you have to leave at 3 30. small business owner West Sid
e Electric you there yeah there he is hello everyone yeah I think you have three minutes yeah or two minutes is that the rule uh it's invited testimony so why why don't we say two minutes two minutes all right thanks Aaron I'll try to be quick here thanks so hi my name is Aaron Watson I'm the owner of West Side electric and um we have 40 amazing people here on our team uh members of Nico are a union electrical contractor Local 48 we provide residential and commercial electrical services to the c
ommunity for years we've had major problems with the street camping around us we've lost numerous people from our team that were very important to our staff and to what we do because they could not they didn't want to come to work or live around the extreme is around us the RVs and the tents and the structures block the sidewalks around our building uh there's trash and debris that piles up around those camps and our our in our front door uh there's there's garbage being burned that sucks in thr
ough the rooftop units and it affects all the employees in here we had to put filtration systems in so that people could not be coughing and try to breathe um you use our landscape as a restroom there's drug items thrown over our fence indoor lot can't find a landscape person that'll even come and clean it up uh cut down our trees they're breaking into employees vehicles our company Vehicles stealing our tools breaking into our our building cutting through our fence I could go on for hours with
everything that I've had to deal with with this being down here eight to twelve hours a day I've had personal conversations with many of the people around here this the people that are living in these camps trying to help them to see if they need help I found one gentleman a job and a place to stay to get him out of this situation because he seemed he wanted that he did not want help he just moved his Camp over a little bit and continued to do what he was doing there's drugs everywhere they're s
elling bikes and tools and everything all day long outside of my windows it's it's a problem because I care about everyone that's here and I don't like to see people living like that out there on the street and it affects our business customers don't want to come down here um I could go on a little more thank you support this pan I think it's the best thing thank you appreciate it Dan said commissioner Gonzalez this person can't get away from work Nick coffee from my office I just has some resea
rch that we wanted to walk through briefly afternoon mayor and Commissioners my name is Nick Coffey I'm a policy specialist for commissioner Gonzalez he asked that I analyze his current proposal and contrast it with some of our neighboring jurisdictions to identify where we largely align and where some differences exist in its current form two of our larger neighbors Beaverton and Tigard are putting forward their own ordinances right now and I have noted some differences last week Tigard adopted
their time place manner ordinance and Beaverton is set to pass their most recent amended version on June 6. Tigard has gone a step further than Portland at this current proposal by largely increasing the campaign buffer zones around child care providers schools and high traffic corridors to 500 feet while this proposal dictates only 250 feet additionally both Tigard and Beaverton have larger distance buffers for camping near shelters and homeless service providers as well as a broader definitio
n this current proposal for Portland dictates a camping ban within 250 feet of city-owned safe Park safe rest and future sanctioned camp areas both our neighbors to the West include non-profit and private providers and their definitions of Sheltering and services this proposal only includes city-owned sites Tigard has implemented a 500 foot buffer around shelters and providers Beaverton will adopt a buffer of 1 thousand feet Beaverton is also dictated buffer requirements between campsites and re
sponse to issues they have noted in situations where the campsites are closely clustered together in response they are pursuing a 150-foot buffer between the campsites if you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out to our office or the city attorney's office for inquiries on the language in the ordinance itself thank you thank you uh follow-ups you want to hold on one second here um can you walk us through what you found with respect to Lake Oswego uh sure uh Lake Oswego has dictated that
they do not feel the need to create a new time place manner ordinance uh seeing that they're existing City policy already went far enough in meeting the state's concerns um Lake Oswego has been much more strict than city of Portland and other surrounding municipalities up to this point so they are not providing an updated time-place manner ordinance at all and highly can you just give like the high level on what Lake Oswego currently prohibits um sure so Lake Oswego does not provide City sponso
red sites they only allow tent camping in the event of it being in an individual's backyard um I'm sorry I'm I can't speak much further into it fair enough so is it fair to say based on a review of neighboring cities that Portland is less restrictive than Beaverton Tigard or Lake Oswego that's correct okay I'll leave it at that for right now all right thank you anybody else have invited testimony commissioner Rubio you have an amendment [Music] I'm interested I'm introducing the following Amendm
ent um sort of in the spirit of reflecting on the conversation we back had back in November 2022 a majority of this Council stated publicly that we would not seek to criminalize a Community member solely for being homeless and we also agreed that we needed to create an expanded system of housing options and given that we do not yet have all the available units and that's why we're opening the temporary alternative shelter sites with on-site Services my amendment makes it clear that we are aligni
ng our timelines to match with the increase in available shelter sites and in addition to give our our officers time to be trained by the new training Dean um I don't know that they know all the details of this ordinance I also believe that all of our shelter providers need time to understand what this new ordinance will mean so what my Amendment reads is as follows amending section one Council finds and adding paragraph number 11. um the city of Portland resolution number 37 37595 directed the
establishment of at least six designated camping sites that must be diversely spread across the city that will serve as an alternative to self-site sanctioned unsanctioned encampments offer mental health and substance abuse treatment services to people in Portland experiencing homelessness also adding section B to the council directives as follows now therefore the council directs that enforcement of city code section 14a.50.025 will be integrated into the timeline and phased as such as to match
the delivery date of the first two designated camping sites such as there is congruence in the enforcement and ability of people to have meaningful places to move to after being giving initial warnings and allow sufficient time for the training deed to training Dean to provide training to to City officers so um I just want us to have hold true to what we had stated in the intent it doesn't make sense to me to move forward with this aspect if we don't have the tasks set up fully equipped to rece
ive people so they have a place to go so that's my Amendment very good is there a second to the amendment [Music] I'll second it for discussion purposes and then we'll keep it up I I'll be honest I don't support it I'll tell you why um I number one I'd like to maintain I would like to maintain the flexibility that is in this particular ordinance the time place manner ordinance is separate from the temporary alternative shelter sites that is a separate issue and it may be the case that in a year
or two years or four years or seven years we don't need any of them which would be my hope we might go in a different direction and expand shelter services or other alternative temporary sites but we're locking ourselves into one specific strategy temporary alternative shelter site the first one will open in July and it will hold approximately 140 people our current shelter system holds over twenty five hundred so it's I mean What that particular strategy right now as we are just beginning to sc
ale it up is a drop in the bucket so I'm putting my cards on the table I appreciate the spirit which you brought this forward commission RC where you're heading with it uh and you're it I see what you're trying to do I just want support that's where I am but I will second it for the purposes of discussion commissioner Gonzalez yeah I just had a follow-up question I guess this is first to the mayor and his team um what is the anticipated timeline for the second temporary uh temporary alternative
shelter so first July and Sky if you're still floating around here somewhere maybe you could come back and tell us what you think the approximate time frame for number two is yeah thanks mayor and Commissioners Skylar Bruckner senior policy advisor um so it will likely be in Fall we don't have a precise date just due to construction timelines um probably in early October would be my guess and do so do we have a site located a lease signed for the space not a lease we were working on a lease righ
t now no sign lease do we have a provider selected will be Urban Alchemy for that purpose um so no no sign beliefs in your thinking it would be fall for the second yes okay um I think that I'm good on questions from Skyler thank you um I I'll Echo the mayor on this I I won't support this amendment um I think time place manner needs to be separate from the discussion about creation of shelter we need to pursue both of them with Earnest but um I'll leave it at that for now very good uh commissione
r would you mind if we leave this open for Testimony terrific good thank you any further amendments good we'll get to the main show then many individuals have signed up to testify today how many folks do we have signed up Keelan 176. 176. so again uh we are limiting testimony to two minutes that's still over six hours of testimony I know not everybody can stick around that long some of you who are at the end of the list might want to come back uh it's certainly your call note that the clerk will
mute virtual testifiers when they've completed their two minutes that is not her choice that is my directive just so we keep things moving so that we can hear from everybody for those of you who are in person I would kindly ask you to complete your testimony within that two-minute time frame thank you so with that I will turn it over to our very wonderful Council Clerk and she'll call People in Order you don't need to give your address or anything like that you can state your name if you'd like
we prefer it if you're a lobbyist we need to know that and if you're here representing an organization you're certainly welcome to say that too thank you thank you mayor first up we have Heather Lynn van Wilde in person talk about putting the cart before the horse astroturfing dark money grew people for Portland released polling staying 23 percent of portlanders opposed this ordinance better numbers than what Sandy Chung of the ACLU pointed out when in 1961 Gallup asked who approved of the Free
dom Writers that was only 22 percent just because something is popular does not make it right and this ordinance as written is not right the rules proposed do not give objectively reasonable restrictions about homeless people being able to rest it gives no recognition to homeless people who actively work night shifts and yes they do exist who would now have no safe place or time to sleep it discriminates against marginalized people who sleep during the day so they can stay awake at night when th
e risk of harm to them is the highest it makes no effort to address where people are supposed to maintain their belongings if they have to pack them up every morning it makes no provision for where it's for if there's no safe place to go looking at the list of now banned places even as a longtime resident I'd be confused about what's allowed and what's not allowed without a map this will actively hurt non-profits like Blanchard house Sisters of the road and rosehaven homeless advocacy groups did
not get to provide feedback on this plan nor does it appear where any homeless people consulted even the Oregon Law Center who helped frame HB 3115 says this is an inappropriate response contrary to Mayor Wheeler's previous claims this is an attempt to criminalize homelessness and instead of jailing homeless people that money could be better spent working to provide adequate housing for a fraction of the cost experts agree a permanent Supportive Housing is the most cost effective solution too b
ut instead we go back to the Trump Playbook the city had two years to address HP 3115 but literally waited until the last month to come up with a deeply flawed and likely unconstitutional plan but hey at least it removes a ban on skateboarding on Cobblestone roads our next three testifiers are joining us online first up Lance Goldenberg followed by Tim McCormick and Vadim mazirski um yeah hey um can you hear me loud and clear oh great okay well I just want to thank you guys uh mayor council for
your courage and finally taking steps to address this critical issue in a humane and realistic way enacting and enforcing clear time and place restrictions on camping is long overdue and I applaud your effort to codify this so that various bureaus have full authority to humanely redirect individuals to sanctioned camping parking shelters and other resources many of our City's best intentions have misfired and come back to haunt us we have enabled and in some ways even encourage Street living to
the point where far too many of our streets and public spaces are now inaccessible environmentally on sound unsafe often resembling open-air insane asylums yeah I know it's cliche and it's all because of you we absolutely cannot allow this situation to continue we cannot allow people to keep refusing help refusing shelter refusing hope to keep living on the streets because Portland has allowed this horrible situation to snowball to the point where it is now nearly unmanageable we have to turn of
f the welcome signed Street camping and be strong enough to say no we need the legal tools to encourage and compel people experiencing mental health or substance use disorder to get help doing otherwise creates a potential danger to those in crisis and those around them we've long difficult uphill struggle ahead of us but at least what's on the table today is finally a step in the right direction thank you next up is can you hear me yes we hear you good afternoon mayor wheeler council members my
name is Tim McCormick I'm the director of housing Alternatives Network non-profit first I want to thank you for tackling this tough issue in a civil way and letting different voices be heard I think mayor wheeler kind of got to the heart of it in a statement this morning early on when he said people need to know if they can't be there where can they be as Hillel the Elder said about 2000 years ago if I am not for myself who will be for me if not now when we can add if not here where now I'm ask
ing this myself because I personally don't have housing for next month and I'm building a car trailer to live in as a fallback if nothing else comes through thousands of other people now on the street will or currently have that problem the city has this question also in order to enact and defend uh any such policy so you might say that ironically we have a common interest here so I have a proposal about something concrete and practical we can do that we can do today and in fact I've already bui
lt the first version of it that is a tool to help anyone answer the question immediately can I be here if not where can I go what can I do you can go online at if not here.org to see the start of this and see how you can help you can email help if not here.org you can tweet if not here or hashtag if not you're aware We'll add a phone number so you can text and finally if you are housed and you're not personally facing this we still learn and you want to know how you can help as I said I'm buildi
ng a trailer it's a way for me to solve the problem for myself but also to potentially solve it for hundreds or thousands of other people if you have a garage a driveway a side yard or a backyard and you can offer it let us know you can provide someone a place to be yourself thank you bye next up is Vadim mazirski I have a strong suspicion will be plenty of opinions presented even over the next six hours of testimony so let me Begin by reading off some facts a record 193 homeless people died in
Multnomah County in 2021 a 53 increase compared to the previous year substance abuse contributed to about 60 of those deaths last year 36 percent of pedestrians killed in traffic related crashes were homeless homicides in the homeless Community more than doubled to 18 in 2021 amounting to 20 of homicides that year in 2022 there were almost 2 000 homeless related fires 41 of all fires in the city these people are all the more staggering because the homeless comprise of only about point seven perc
ent of Multnomah County last year the city and contractors picked up a total of 16 million 167 273 pounds of trash from around encampments a new record a cities in the past has built a reputation for being environmentally conscious we have a humanitarian a public safety a drug addiction a mental health and even an environmental catastrophe in our hands we all know the obvious truth from these staggering figures the status quo is not attainable are we always likes this uh 75 of Multnomah County v
oters say that homelessness in Portland is an out of control disaster quote unquote 71 percent they support the current ordinance this ordinance provides folks support that hope to Portland Bears who know the status quo is not working for them and their families it is pragmatic and addressing the livability and safety needs of portlanders and visitors alike while also compassionately addressing the need to connect the homeless to services we have a long journey ahead of us to fully deal with the
mental health and drug addiction crises that we're witnessing in our streets on our sidewalks and our green spaces but this ordinance is a step in the right direction at an unnecessary stem thank you next up we have Eric Cole joining us online followed by Sandra Comstock and Dwayne Reynolds in person thank you mayor and Commissioners my name is Eric Cole I'm my pronouns are he him and I'm here on behalf of revitalize Portland Coalition and I am a registered lobbyist we're the voice of the comme
rcial real estate industry which I think you know is the largest industry in Portland's downtown our membership represents a Workforce of over 8 000 members across Oregon we support 451 on your agenda today with the understanding that additional shelter options come online rapidly as is so apparent we believe the status quo of tense unabated debris and dangerous conditions calls for this action to be taken and we agree with mayor wheeler that we do face a humanitarian catastrophe as our members
see it every day on their properties and in their neighborhoods we're also frankly concerned about an economic catastrophe for our entire region if we don't address the situation in our Central core District a diminished Central City has economic consequences for all our neighborhoods We Believe reasonable rules on unauthorized camping is a necessary step people camping on our streets aren't served well by this status quo as you establish safe alternative shelter opportunities separately from th
is ordinance they can result in a greater connection to services and resources and we think these settings provide a valuable opportunity for vulnerability screens for folks to get access to mental health issues substance disorders addiction as well as co-occurring diagnoses hopefully that can lead to improved treatment and support instead of giving out tents we should not be satisfied until no one lives in inhumane conditions on our streets we respectfully ask you to approve this measure and we
will We believe it will improve the quality of life in our city as well as connect more support lenders to Services treatment and housing thank you next up we have Sandra hi I'm Sandra Comstock and I'm here because I'm really tired of cleaning up after the city a city that punishes rather than helps unsheltered neighbors the camping ban is uh just one more weight on our overwhelmed shoulders as providers asking homeless portlanders 60 percent of whom live with one or more disabilities to carry
their homes on their backs for 12 hours a day seven days a week will heighten mental and physical distress Heating houseless and front-wide workers like a punch to the gut slapping a hundred dollar fines on homeless portlanders will result in warrants jail time that raise rather than lower barriers to health and housing the key to our success and solving this problem a call in a call last week Skyler Brock or Knapp couldn't tell us what rules would govern ticketing stating only that tickets woul
d be for those who officers remembered with Portland's record of over policing black brown transamentally ill residents this ban won't just generally harm but disproportionately took it and jail groups who are already targeted and underserved last week Eric Zimmerman additionally promised businesses that the city would be sending tough Urban Alchemy staff out into the streets with extra police to the central East Side to push people into the UA camps where quote no one would be hugging it out wi
th homeless people the harsh and counterproductive methods of urban Alchemy are backed up by its record of shooting a homeless man in San Francisco and the woeful performance of its La camp where just seven percent of residents found permanent housing 50 disappeared and seven died the camping van will just deepened the suffering it promises no relief for housed or houseless portlanders with this in mind why not address the problems House people are complaining about and houseless people are suff
ering from from the hucker data we know that those complaining about camps are most concerned about trash bioaste and use of public Space trash and bioways could be solved by doing what those of us on the clean and green committee have been urging the city to do for years provide public toilets and rationalize trash service improving access to city streets and land is as also possible if we focus resources on things like moving Multnomah and master leases which Fast Track 214 to healthy housing
in less than four months for just four million dollars a fraction of what the cost of one of these 250 person Urban Alchemy camps is going to cost you yet we are poised to spend [Applause] time after 30 seconds okay yeah we're supposed to spend 60 million plus on sweeps tickets jailing in camps to nowhere I'm tired tired of cleaning up after the policies that strain our resources and kill our health and well-being of homeless low-income and Frontline workers alike I wish that you would listen an
d collaborate it's time to put on your grown-up pants but stop putting fingers and belittling us and wearing out those of us who stand between you and a much bigger humanitarian disaster thank you so um I I don't I don't want to be the the time police so please keep your remarks to two minutes thank you next up we have Dwayne Reynolds they were planning to join in person as Dwayne Reynolds here okay we'll move on to David Dixon joining us online hello my name is David Dixon I co-chair of the dow
ntown neighborhood association homeless houseless team during the covid camp in place period our 25 Good Neighbor volunteers delivered survival items on a weekly basis to our unhoused neighbors in downtown as a good neighbor I witnessed firsthand the cruelty and inhumanity of unsheltered camping we held a memorial service for a double amputee who died in his tent I greeted a young girl who returned to her camp in tears after being raped a 15 year old Camp leader died of an overdose we must build
more housing for the thousands of unhoused portlanders but we cannot wait forever for this to happen if an earthquake left thousands homeless would we let them suffer on the street for years waiting for housing to be built no we would immediately create safe and sanitary shelter we must do the same today I support the mayor's plan to end unsheltered camping unsheltered homelessness is cruel and dehumanizing people are dying on the streets we must use all of Portland's creativity to create shelt
er for our unhoused neighbors sweeps alone do not solve the problem they make it worse the mayor's plan for large outdoor shelters will work for many but but it won't work for everyone we need multiple shelter options that will work for the many unique needs that our unhoused neighbors have let's build on what works dignity village with its long history of self-governance we shine tiny home communities safe rest Villages kenton's women's Village and hazelnut Grove the pop-up shelters proposed by
Keith Wilson using churches and community centers as night shelter sites unsheltered homelessness for too long has hurt Portland's reputation and quality of life for everyone especially our unhoused neighbors let's harness our Innovative spirit and end unsheltered camping in Portland now thank you next up we have Frank Cobb Frank Cobb K wren K Ren erita wren arita Ren Melissa Hansen Melissa Hansen Gary Barker Gary Barker could I ask a a question if somebody's in the Overflow room how are we goi
ng to know so if uh in the Overflow room if your name is called and you hear it just come to the the main chamber and we'll set you up in here we're not going to skip over you great thank you for making that announcement uh let's move on to Jonathan malson welcome good afternoon Commissioners on mayor wheeler my name is Jonathan Nelson and I'm a business and property owner in Portland Central East Side I'm a board member of the central East Side Industrial Council over the past 20 years our busi
ness beam development has been fortunate to work with countless small businesses of all types in the central east side and therefore I'm confident we have a unique insight into the challenges these small businesses face which are such a vital part of our local economy the primary concern we hear from these small businesses is the lack of safety on the street resulting in employees and customers not feeling safe coming into our district and thus making it extremely difficult to sustain or grow a
business in the district and provide the quality jobs that have historically existed there the main factor driving the perception and reality of an unsafe district has been the proliferation of unsanctioned camping on sidewalks in the street under overpasses around off-ramps and on other publicly owned properties of which there are many in the central East Side in a district struggling to recover following the pandemic navigating around tents trash human excrement and drug paraphernalia is simpl
y too intimidating and traumatic for many workers and customers to feel safe returning something needs to change I believe our community's intentions have been in the right place by prioritizing compassion for those who find themselves on our street however I also believe that our community has been taken advantage of by significant number of people that do not want shelter treatment or the like and merely want to live consequence free on our streets we need a new approach to the persistent prob
lems of houselessness and unsanctioned camping an approach that will allow our city to revitalize ensuring we have resources to help those in our community most in need for those reasons I support this ordinance and respectfully ask that the council adopted thank you good afternoon mayor wheeler and Commissioners my name is Art Fortuna I own a business called Viber Table Catering we're located in in southeast Portland I also am the current vice president of central East Side Industrial Council a
nd I'm on the board of member of the ESD that was formed about four years ago that is called the central East Side together and um you know we formed that we formed that ESD with the support of city council to uh to provide additional services in our district which included sanitation safety care teams and graffiti abatement frankly we've been overwhelmed by the problem of the houseless community we even though we have a major representation on our Board of all communities including house lists
as well as associations that working with the houseless and um we have found it to be incredibly difficult to maintain particularly in the last three years of the with covid and uh we're we're finding that [Music] um we formed with the concept of uh using informed care trauma-informed care and we've maintained that throughout the process but it's still an overwhelming problem that we can't seem to to do enough for um in recent years recent uh weeks and months we've got the the mayor's program wh
ich has been the um 90-day reset which we've seen nice improvements on and we think that that's a step in the right direction and we support both the cic and the CED do support this measure so that we can give the Portland Police a tool that helps them move in the direction that I think in the long term will be improved thank you very much you don't want to be in a democracy where everybody agrees on everything let's let's have a competition of ideas let's hear everybody out can we do that pleas
e next up we have Scott Carmen Scott Kerman mayor wheeler and Commissioners my name is Scott Kerman I'm the executive director of Blanche house and I use he him pronouns should this ordinance go into effect its day centers like blend Shea house that are going to be on the front lines helping people who are affected by this ordinance and likely further traumatized by ordinance I'm here to request financial assistance for Blanche house and other agencies who provide these essential daytime Service
s if we are going to meet the increased need for our help that this ordinance will cause we are going to need your support NJ House's Founders Cafe which each of you have visited is a community space where people not only receive hot freshly prepared meals but also clothing peer support resources and referrals in recent months our team has also become First Responders Reviving people overdosing on Fentanyl Blanche how to become a hub or both public and private agencies come on a regular basis to
deliver information and resources as well as health as well as health care and other services people need and if I might interject a reminder that we serve not just unsheltered persons but also people who live in other shelters or low-income housing unsheltered or not the people we serve live in in extreme poverty and insecurity all of this occurs without the assistance of public dollars Blanche houses for budget and expanded its staff to meet the profound need in our community thank goodness f
or the generosity of individuals foundations and businesses that we've been able to keep up with this need but this measure will require us to do even more as people are affected mayor wheeler you yourself have not has acknowledged that day centers will be an important resource in helping people affect by this measures how will we respond we'll serve of course because that's what we do for the last three years we've responded to every crisis in catastrophe no matter the cause or consequence we p
rovide a safe place for people to go for care and comfort and we provide services that keep people going until there's shelter and housing available for them with regards to this ordinance we're going to need your support if we're going to keep going thank you uh Scott if I may I I want to say I agree with you and we'll look forward to working with you on that thank you thank you uh next up we have Chris Hanson thank you my name is Chris Hanson I founded Nordic Semiconductor in about five years
ago in downtown Portland we are a public company based in Norway with about two thousand uh employees worldwide we currently have about 30 employees in in downtown Portland and about another 60s spread across the Pacific Northwest and uh and the rest of the United States I mean I chose downtown Portland at the time five years ago because it was a hip City easy to attract new employees it was a nice city living it had good Transportation public transportation into downtown from outlying areas eas
y walking distance you know The Walking Store was very good people could go to restaurants and things like that and it was a great success but unfortunately because of the you know unsanctioned housing I guess it's called those benefits that we had have actually turned into liabilities for us now it's it's very difficult we have employees actually who are who are frightened okay so instead of using public transportation now we're actually funding parking for people's cars in downtown so instead
of using our excellent transportation system we are paying for parking for people so they can avoid it which is not what we really want long term in the city additionally we have not getting people coming from from abroad on the Delta flight from Amsterdam people have been unfortunately had some bad experiences with this so they're not even coming to Portland any longer either so with that I'm just saying that this is a situation we see I I so I like this for the mayor and the council so I suppo
rt measure 451. but I also want to stress that we need to support uh the vulnerable and and needy amongst us in the city too we cannot shirt those responsibilities at the same time thank you appreciate it thank you for being here next up we have we have Katie O'Brien followed by Alan Combs hi my name is Katie O'Brien and I'm the executive director at Rose Haven we are a daytime shelter that serves women children and gender diverse folks who are experiencing homelessness and poverty and we help p
eople meet their basic needs for safety and restrooms and showers and nutritious food and then we have on-site Advocates who help navigate the limited resources available for housing and recovery and domestic violence and mental health and um our primary mission is to progress to provide community and connectivity but over the course of the last year we've just become more and more of a crisis response Center to the point where we've added three mental health workers to help us deal with the eme
rgent need of people in serious crisis who have nowhere else to go but here this ban on daytime camping is going to exasperate a lot of these issues and it's also going to really complicate things for women who tend to stay awake at night and sleep during the daytime for safety reasons I I want I want to make sure that we have complete clarity about what outside spaces are available for people I think so there's a long list of places that they can't go so we we need to we need to know that and a
dditionally you've referred to daytime shelters spaces that people can go to but this van is going to increase the pressure on agencies like ours and further challenge some delicate relationships that we have with our neighbors here we moved from a 3 000 square foot facility to one that's ten thousand square feet just this last year and we demand for services is just continuing to Skyrocket and we've served over 3 000 people last year yesterday was the first day in 26 years that we've ever had t
o not let people in and hold a line out front because we had 145 people inside so I just want to say that we're going to continue to be creative and responsive to need but we are at a Breaking Point and this is not going to happen without a whole lot of help you know we're at capacity and we have no Financial reserves to make this happen so we need your support thanks Katie next up we have Alan Combs good afternoon mayor wheeler and council members my name is Alan Combs pronouns he him I spoke t
his morning for item 437 and I'm back to register my support in favor of conforming the city ordinances with HB 3115 before explaining why support the measure let me suggest one amendment I regularly witness the unhoused sleeping within inches of dangerous public roads I recommend that unless the easement is greater than say 10 feet a camping adjacent to a road with a speed limit above say 30 miles an hour and that has two lanes be prohibited even if it's not considered high crash suggestion but
back to why I support in December I testified before you and recounted my experience of observing a bimodal population among the unhoused one population with a high turnover rate that either got services or otherwise moved off the street and another a group very intent on staying put five months later this is still true and the inconvenient fact is that nearly of all the state put crowd people that I observe and try to help in the ways I can are either addicted or experiencing severe mental ill
ness I say this because I see Portland Street response come time after time they offer dialogue shelter but these people will not go we've made it very easy to be an addict in the city and to do so in public spaces you define incentives for them to get off the street and get safe Portland is a compassionate City the approval of the homeless service tax literally raises hundreds of millions of dollars in the footprint of Portland through the county the city and county have the capacity to open al
ternative shelters and the city ordinance before you today provides an incentive to get chronically unhoused into shelters possibly alternative ones where they'll receive better services to say that unrestricted camping anywhere anytime is a path to services or somehow provides harm reduction is to me is cynical and nothing less than cruel you are our leaders and you have a choice of where this city is to go do you want a place that is attractive to newcomers a place to live where you can make C
ommunity or one that it provides a very big future for the rest of the time thank [Laughter] [Music] next up we have Edward Johnson followed by Emily Holly both in person good afternoon my name's Ed Johnson I'm the director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center I've had the privilege of representing oregonians who've been forced to live outside for more than 25 years I'm the lead Council in the Grants Pass case that's currently pending before the ninth circuit I understand that I'm not going to
be able to persuade you to do the right thing here today but this ordinance is the wrong thing to do life is very hard for people who are living outside and this ordinance is about to make it even harder this ordinance will not solve the serious problems that this city is facing it will make those problems worse we know what works Supportive Housing rent assistance tenant protections and supporting people keeping them stable when they are outside this law Cuts against all of that it will destab
ilize and criminalize our neighbors who've been forced outside and they will waste money it could be spent toward these Solutions on the legal front there's no doubt that this new law violates ORS 195 530 because it is not reasonable to expect people to pack up and disappear every morning when they have nowhere to go it is not reasonable to expect people to understand the incomprehensible list of places that they cannot Camp when there is no list or map or information about where they can camp I
read ordinances and statutes for a living and if I had to sleep outside tonight and comply with this law I would literally have no idea how to do that it is also unreasonable because it is unfair and unreasonable to throw people in jail for 30 days after two warnings for violating an incomprehensible law that they have no choice to violate to begin with so I understand you're going to pass this law that you should do it with the understanding that it will not work it will make this situation wo
rse and it will face the city with liability for violating state law the Eighth Amendment and the 14th Amendment to the U.S Constitution [Applause] excuse me sir excuse me excuse me hello uh folks folks uh commissioner Gonzalez had a comment or a question if you wanted to come back um could I could I please implore you again look it's fine that you support the position you support that's fine but well no what you're what you're doing is you're shutting down other voices because it's taking this
we're not we're not here to applaud we're not here to Boo or hiss or Heckle people we're here to listen to people's perspective he gave a good coach an argument so let's hear it and and I will I will say again if we have to go virtual we'll go virtual it's up to you it's your it's up to you commissioner Gonzalez just some quick follow-up questions there um are you familiar familiar with beaverton's proposed ordinance I'm sorry I couldn't hear you are you are you are you familiar excuse me once a
gain this is literally the last warning I'm giving and then we are going to clear the chamber and we are going to go virtual this is it the one guy claps again thank you sorry sir go ahead I want to thank you for testifying first of all but are are you familiar with beaverton's proposed ordinance only what I heard your staffer say earlier today are you familiar with Tiger's proposed ordinance same thing are you familiar that Lake Oswego is not proposing to amend their existing bands and on only
what I heard here today so why do you choose to Grace the city of Portland with your presence on these ordinance but not Beaverton tiger or other jurisdictions that are also doing their best to balancing the very difficult public policy consideration I'm a portlander and I've lived here for 27 years and I care about this city I I appreciate your testimony I'd encourage you to make yourself aware of what other cities are doing to try and comply with state law before stating a very public conclusi
on about the lack of objectivity and what the city's proposing here I'd leave it at that thank you [Applause] next up we have Emily Holly can you hear me yes loud and clear thank you mayor wheeler and Commissioners Gonzalez Maps Rubio and Ryan the opportunity to testimony to testify in opposition to this draft ordinance on behalf of the ACLU of Oregon we strongly caution the city of Portland that proposed the proposed ordinance likely violates Oregon statute 195 530. this broke these prohibition
s further risk unconstitutionality under Martin B Boise the fact that other locales have also proposed ordinances that may be worse than this does not make this policy Humane or reasonable as drafted this ordinance imposes an impossibly restrictive constellation of places to rest and in Practical limit and practical and harmful limits on when an unsheltered person may do so the daytime camping ban ignores the reality that for many houseless individuals nights are not safe houseless individuals a
re just disproportionately victims of violent crime especially women and members of the LGBT community this ordinance would effectively penalize those who Knights for whom nights are the least safe the ordinance would further ban camping in a long list of locations that others have made clear and what they've also made clear is that this list is so expansive that it leaves one wondering what places remain for House of houseless people to exist people and our physical bodies and possessions canno
t simply disappear from public spaces because the government orders us to do so this requirement is particularly harmful and unreasonable for houseless individuals with disabilities and those experiencing mental health crises it's foreseeably harmful unduly burdensome and unreasonable for the city to create such complex and ever-changing place restrictions moreover the ordinance ultimately relies on criminal enforcement turning to an extraordinarily expensive inhumane and ineffective response to
the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Portland Urgent City of Portland to reconsider this ordinance and engage in a process that centers the experiences and voices of the houseless community in developing an ordinance that addresses the intent of House Bill 3115. thank you next up we have Jessica shellhorn online followed by Sarah Rudolph hello I'm here to support the proposal you'll hear a lot about vulnerable communities today but no one seems to care the most about the most vulnerable co
mmunity of all her children it's not fair markets are yours that 10 feet from his car seat my toddler can watch someone shooting drugs into their arm at a stoplight it's not fair to my kids or yours to see a dead body on the side of the road as we try to leave the house for hot cocoa it's not fair for my kids are yours that on the first nice evening of the summer art after enjoying a family Barbecue our 12 year old has to ask if we should go back inside as the sun sets because he does not feel s
afe within running distance of her own front door some people today will say the proposal is not fair to people experiencing homelessness you know if it is less Fair dying alone in a tent covered in filth with a needle in your arm on Thanksgiving evening this past year my family got a phone call from my sister-in-law that her sweet Lively and adventurous 26 year old daughter was found dead in a tent under the Steel Bridge I will never forget the sound of my sister-in-law screams or the way my mo
ther-in-law crumpled into me that day what the city has allowed is particularly not fair to the houseless community as an addiction pandemic ravages our city the loudest opposition here today will be the non-profit people who need to believe their ideas will work because their jobs depend on it but when they leave here to go back to one of the still nicer areas of Portland patting themselves on the back while drinking their six dollar oat milk lattes [Applause] and immigrant communities of Portl
and are left trying to survive the next scary thing please support this proposal next up we have Sarah Rudolph well I would just like to point out that there are unhoused children as well thank you perhaps are more threatened by the current situation than your post-barbecue 12 year old [Music] [Applause] I'm going to express my disappointment that the city with actual answers to these issues even though the answers are in front of us it is very disappointing that five six years ago we decided th
at cops were not the people who should be interfacing with the homeless we decided that 50 of homeless arrests or the 50 of arrests that the police Portland Police made of homeless people are not doing us any good and they're not doing the system any good these police have stated that they are not trained or willing to do these interactions so instead of continuing to put money into police response what if we gave money to Portland Street response a proven successful program what if we put money
into the treatment options the behavioral and Mental Health Options that we were promised that we have no availability for you need more shelter space but what if instead of looking at cities like Beaverton and Lake Oswego which have nothing in common with us thank you so to us if you like Seattle who had recently established a public housing developer housing to put people in which is another thing we don't have that's all I got today have a great one next up we have Richard Perkins in person
followed by Tim Larson welcome good evening my name is Dick Perkins I've been a Portland resident for 35 years all I've been housed the last 18 years have been as a downtown resident before living in Oregon I was a heroin addict served time in both jail and prison and experienced times where I was unhoused I have compassion for those living on our streets all people deserve housing come from safety and dignity and a sense of purpose unfortunately this County's this County's multnomas policies fo
r homelessness and Behavioral Health are making Solutions Harder by shrinking public support and chasing those who fund the solutions away from Multnomah County I know quite a bit about homeless population downtown because we share the public spaces with each other and interact daily Portland has always had a homeless population and drugs and mental illness were often correlated with it but never like we are seeing today over the past several years the use of new and more addictive drugs among t
he unsheltered has grown dramatically and along with it the intractability of the solutions for homelessness irrespective of the reason someone is homeless once homeless it is easy to understand why people are self-medicating cheap plentiful and de facto legal drugs supplied by sophisticated cartels have changed the safety and livability environment for everyone housed and unhoused alike it has devastated the minds and reasoning ability of users and created unintended consequences the County's l
ack of emphasis on good data about those on our streets the housing first and harm reduction policies we've been trying to employ in the absence of good data and some incompetent coordination have damaged the very businesses and residents who are funding the affordable housing we so badly need the measure we passed did criminalize drugs and prevent the criminal record that often comes with addiction has instead devastated the homeless population and killed way too many now we need to provide a p
ath from addiction to a more stable life which eventually includes housing and for many a job a sense of self worth and with it dignity that will require more data about those living on our streets a Continuum of shelter and treatment options and the way to that housing and a greater engagement from all of us not just the few people with lived experience we need people who can make and execute a real plan and help develop a future for people after homelessness I think this ordinance is a good st
art welcome sir good afternoon my name is Tim Larson Portland residents since 1949. I'm here as an unbiased Observer of the homeless situation in Portland and Multnomah County someone who has personally worked with interviewed befriended countless homeless individuals over the past three years I personally participated in the last two point in time data collections completing two segments for each interviewing over a hundred homeless individuals past and current city councils have made serious e
rrors in non-enforcement of long-held camping prohibitions that have previously been law for all publicly owned property in the city of Portland you have a chance this afternoon to rescind these damaging and very expensive decisions and to return to some semblance of Sanity to this city and its beleaguered citizens I'm also a part-time Uber and Lyft driver which has given me a perfect view of how illegal camps have grown over the years and the devastation they have created in our neighborhoods i
n just the past two weeks I have seen and heard the reactions of not only visitors to our city but from three families that are leaving or have already moved to safer places to raise their children during the past two weeks I met the 79 year old man who was viciously attacked along with two other passengers in the train driver by a mentally unstable homeless person in January on the max my heart has been broken many times in Old Town when I have witnessed the mentally ill walking the streets in
the pouring rain and 45 degree temperatures with no jackets and often with no shoes only wet socks I've been equally shaken by the dozens of rats scurrying across the streets nightly from tent to garbage piles to another tent I'm begging you please ban on sanctioned camping in Portland and stop the horrific crime wave that I am certain has affected you and some of your personal acquaintances thank you very much thank you Leslie bienen next Doug cryman Doug krimen Sarah Fisher Sarah Fisher if if
somebody hears their name in an overflow room just get to the microphone or get to somebody we will get to them we're not going to exclude anybody good afternoon hi again friends I'm still Sarah Fisher the priest at Saints Peter and Paul Episcopal Church on Southeast 82nd Avenue I'm here because my faith binds me to respect the Dignity of every human being this ban suggests that unhoused citizens people experiencing the humanitarian catastrophe firsthand have less of a stake in the common life o
f our city than those who want them to disappear it is convenient to embrace myths that keep us separate the myth that they are transients when most of them Camp fairly close to where they last had stable housing the myth that shelters our reasonable option when they are known for drama drugs and bugs the myth that homeless people are different from us the unhoused people that I hang out with listen to the same music that I do and root for the same sports teams we share values and favorite foods
like me they are following the story of this ban and they feel that our city has failed them we have failed if we want to get our neighbors out of sight rather than treating them with dignity and respect this ban not only further separates us who are housed from those who live in tents but is a cosmetic fix that makes things worse for all of us what we need is not to spend more money jailing citizens as punishment for their very existence but to work together with our most vulnerable neighbors
please join me in respecting the Dignity of every human being and deliver actual outcomes that address the actual homelessness crisis our city is full of people eager to make that happen thank you stuff we have John Hollister John Hollister followed by Lauren Armani welcome I'm very fragile um before I start there there's a little handout that I that I gave and I didn't have enough copies for everyone um foreign as you're reading through that I just want to read a couple things I have tremendous
empathy oh by the way my name is John Hollister and I'm a citizen here um I have tremendous empathy for our disabled citizens in wheelchairs I can't imagine how frustrating the last few years have been because many of our sidewalks are blocked by tents not allowing tents during the day will allow uh whatever most vulnerable populations the freedom to travel on our public sidewalks I also have tremendous empathy for our homeless living on the streets no one I've talked to many people who live on
the streets and put through my Outreach and no one on living on the streets is has told me they're living their dream um with this ordinance the well actually people don't live in the streets they're living with tremendous levels of trauma and this ordinance will actually cause additional trauma and what I believe that needs to be met to like the rose Haven person said and The Blanche house said is we need to be able to invest in those daytime Services invest in um higher levels of humanitarian
reach Outreach the I currently am associated with an organization that places over 20 people a week into into shelters um and it's in a very very small area [Music] um we've worked very well with the city but what you'll see in front of you on the the on the example is is one people don't worry about being anyone being jailed because there have been signs up for a long long time on ODOT property and uh things are being prohibited and no one's ever gotten a ticket um so the what we have on the s
econd and third page is some of the operations that we did last May where we completely we move 45 we help 25 homeless neighbors get into shelter cleared 45 tents cleaned up the area to look like a park light like and then the um ODOT decided to rip all of the tents down and create it into a an area where there are actually filth and um excess of trash we removed eight tons of trash and I know I'm going over yeah um and 35 put down 35 000 pounds of bark dust to make the area clean and I would li
ke to have you guys support us being able to put those barriers up I know I've talked to you uh commissioner gazelle and now uh Mr Matt our Mr Maps I want to work with peabot to be able to get some of those things back up thank you thanks John yeah next up we have Lauren Harmony hello Commissioners my name is Lauren Armani and I'm from Sisters of the road within the last 10 years I also received the title of unicorn simply for being a lifelong resident of Portland we are so rare now because of t
he devastation left in the wake of the latest iteration of colonization gentrification houses in Portland that were seventy thousand dollars in 1990 are now valued at over 1.2 million over 17 times their value just 40 years ago how is this allowed this system is rigged from Plymouth Rock to Broken treaties to 40 acres and a mule and redlining this system has always been rigged to criminalize people who are forced to lose this rigged game is violence to force people to make the choice between cri
minalization and your camps is violence you're using our unhoused residents as scapegoats for your inability to lead the federal government's disinvestment in Housing Services may not be your fault but your lack of advocacy on behalf of Portland residents is yeah you shift the blame onto the county the state and the homeless themselves you could be working towards Solutions like guaranteed representation in eviction Court stricter rent cap legislation high quality public education or mitigate li
terally any other inequity caused by capitalism and oppression and you do nothing oh wait you have done more than nothing you continue to hand over the reins to speculators mining Portland for its cultural capitalism through tourism and leave the poor to pay the price time and again sweeps and camps do not end house listening do not end houselessness they just attempt to invisibilize it at what cost 10 million to rapid response annually how much goes to police private security entertainment fees
millions of dollars for Boulders under freeways and now 10 million to Urban Alchemy a year and this is without the enforcement of the camp ban what is stopping you from just housing people because it sure as hell isn't money [Applause] on the floor stop the camping ban thank you next up we have Finn oviat online followed by Michael o'callaghan and Jamie arcele in person hi my name's Ben bougat I use the he pronouns um I don't have anything as succincts or impressive to say in opposition to this
measure I'm just a 22 year old kid I grew up here in a part of town that I think a lot of people don't think about I grew up on 82nd near Clackamas um you know I've been at risk of houselessness a great portion of my life and I can firmly say like I don't I don't know that this is helpful I mean so many people have said like I think that we are collectively a lot smarter than this I think that we're a lot more creative and imaginative um you know I I feel like there's better Solutions so many p
eople have given so many ideas you know when they don't even have to this is a lot of time I mean like I've been sitting here for several hours just to speak and you know I can't imagine like I don't know actual houseless people currently living downtown coming here to say something I mean like this is too much they're too busy waiting in line they're too busy like trying to like make it through the day without like imploding on themselves I don't know I I want to believe that uh my elected offi
cials are are able to think of something better you know I know the the response that a lot of you seem to have is like oh well if you don't want this well what do you want then and I think that's that's a pretty shitty thing to say I I mean like there's more than just the one option there's a lot of gray area in the world there's a lot more beautiful creative things to happen to do to think up um maybe that's just the art student in me speaking but like Ma that's all I have next we have Michael
o'callaghan in person welcome hello oh I thank you for the opportunity to testify my name's Michael o'callaghan I've been involved with the unhoused issue for gone probably 20 years now I knew I ever heard referred to Martin V Boise you also can refer to at the same time o'callaghan versus the city of Portland because I figured I was the first on house person to win a case before the ninth Circuit Court foreign [Applause] said he would ignore that order so that was interesting I helped the star
t right to dream I wrote their 501 C3 so I have some experience okay um a couple of things that this ordinance doesn't do it doesn't allow for the confiscation of private property okay the city does that with impunity there is the Fourth Amendment that says we shall be safe I'm not okay you've stolen my tents four times in the 2016 sweep okay now this is uh this process here is a carrot stick process it is generally used by our government okay and carrot stick thing um doesn't work so well you h
it it it's easier to hit them with a stick right you know this is a white wash is basically what it is you guys want to supposedly go along with this state law it's a objectively uh uh reasonable that this law is not in compliance with the Constitution okay what this law will do is kill people okay what happens when somebody goes without sleep for three days they're certifiably insane you create this Insanity you create this drug addiction this is not a solution thank you very much [Applause] Ja
mie arsely Jamie arsely next we'll go to Hopkins Laura Hopkins Laura next Christine Breton Christine Breton about Ria Hannan oh Raya Hannon sorry okay welcome good afternoon my name is Ray Hannan and I'm with sisters of the road in my free time I babysit for a kid who loves to climb trees as a police officer going to cite her for it I know a read student who hammocks and Laurelhurst when the weather is nice is an officer going to interrupt her reading what about my friend who swims in the river
with her dog will someone call the cops say whatever you like but I'm guessing not but what about an unhoused person doing any of the same activities we know exactly who these restrictions Target and it's not you or me or the kid I babysit or my outdoorsy friends it's unhoused portlanders who you continue to treat like perpetrators of a heinous crime you criminalize dehumanize destabilize why countless Studies have shown that unhoused people experience violence at twice the rate of the average p
erson and people with minoritized identities experience even higher rates so many women and youth stay up all nights to keep themselves safe the violence they experience will be intensified by the daytime camping ban and could be significantly reduced with access to housing oh and to clarify I don't mean urban Alchemy camps I mean stable permanent housing not over policing not criminalizing human lives not a camping ban house keys not handcuffs you've known for over 10 years that Portland needs
more housing you failed to provide adequate shelters you've known about HB 3115 and the July 1st compliance deadline since 2021 and you've had nearly two years to comply yet you're in action on both will now result in the criminalization of homelessness so here we are a month away from July 1st with you citing time constraints as the rationale for forcing through this sloppy unethical ineffective plan if you really want to talk about time constraints talk to an unhoused person traveling across t
he city to access food resources Health Care even a chance for housing ask them what time constraints this daytime camping ban will impose listen to community Advocates and people with lived experience work with us respect us hear us thank you next we have Evelyn tarosh online hi my name is Evelyn tarosh I am a resident of Portland Oregon thank you for the opportunity to testify in opposition to the ordinance proposed today making camping illegal does not solve homelessness but instead creates m
ore difficulty and suffering for those who are already disadvantaged housing and resources need to come first if you are not providing permanent Housing Solutions low-income housing rent restrictions and other housing assistance than you are effectively criminalizing and making the existence of unhoused individuals illegal these are members of the community these are our neighbors these are people in Portland who live here and they have not gotten a say and like others have mentioned we need to
start listening to the actual people experiencing homelessness as well as people who Advocate on their behalf and work with them every single day you state that there will be a transition to shelters not permanent housing working directly with on house community on on and off since 2020 I have learned the various very valid reasons that people refuse shelters these include safety restrictions on belongings inability to bring animals including service or emotional support animals and lack of priv
acy not only does criminalizing camping cause further harm and suffering it also fails to solve the problem of homelessness which is a failing on the part of this city and its government it does nothing to provide housing or resources for those members of the community if the issue is trash or human waste as others have mentioned then what is needed is services not sweeps and not a ban on camping how many will die or be harmed at the hands of law enforcement simply because they needed a place to
stay or exist during the day moving people from streets to jails does nothing to solve the problem where are they supposed to go for all these reasons I would like to State my extreme opposition to this ordinance thank you [Applause] enough we have Jesse Presley Gerson online Jesse you're muted Jesse are you able to unmute all right we'll come back we'll see if we can get Jesse Keelan is that monitor about to go off I can't see what it says something about turning off oh okay yeah thanks I thin
k we're on it great thank you sure it doesn't turn off thanks uh okay next up we have dalen Russell Daylin Russell uh Reverend Nathan Jimenez National in person Reverend Nathan Jimenez National how about Dominic Murphy Dominic Murphy Kaya sand oh Council I'm Kaya sand I'm the executive director of Street roots it's a sad day when The Logical outcome of policy is that the most reliable shelter is jail instead in the city where the arrests of 2017 were more than 50 percent unhoused people when in
2008 over 50 2018 over 50 percent of the arrests were of unhoused people the 19 over 50 of all the arrests were of unhoused people 2020 over 50 of all the arrests were of unhoused people that's the last year that's been measured this is the lot of our policing most of the infractions are of crimes of homelessness and old offenses and those old offenses will grow when we use citations in jail as penalization for actually just simply being housing and then police will be essentially employed to co
ntinue to enforce this attending Courts for entire days we're just soaking up our police budget in fact with a non-solution with making life so much more difficult this is bad faith to the constituents of Portland that you pursue policy that in fact invites lawsuits I don't want us to be tied up in these lawsuits and we know that this is going to be challenged I want to address democracy you'll notice it's very very difficult for unhoused people to testify I'm here at Street Roots we've got a sh
eet on the wall people are lined up they're watching a number of people will be after me but in fact people have to bring everything that they carry when they go into the city hall they can't go through the metal detector imagine what it's going to be after this ban takes place so I just want to say I want to see moral fortitude from our leaders that in fact what you're doing is you're breaking our Collective Civic heart thank you [Applause] next up we have Annette Johnson hi my name is Annette
Johnson I go by Nettie I'm a vendor here at Street roots and this is a complicated situation okay I live uh in southeast Portland near the Woodstock area and I want to say something to uh what's the man's name over there that just wanted to join hardest DC hold on this is not a funny situation because most of you guys got a place to stay I asked you were you the new commissioner and you said I'm trying to be oh you were running right and I said what do you plan to do about the homeless issue dow
ntown and you specifically said I want to give them jobs okay let's hold that thought Carmen how many homeless people are in Portland Oregon right now how many you don't know okay thanks uh Mingus man okay um you know that the reparation law they're trying to fight for right so you know what it's like to feel sidelined okay damn Ryan who ran on your brother's death Ed wheeler has always held his position Stern you don't waver he's not sweating money but I was working in downtown Portland cleanin
g parking lots and I resigned three weeks ago because it was so dangerous I've been homeless and all that we're not here for a sad story but guess what we all are the ones that's next to becoming homeless what do you think next up is George McCarthy hello everyone my name is George McCarthy myself I was homeless for almost 10 years a long time in Portland I understand the situation I have lived in and suffered a great deal of brutality everything from beatings with sticks fist fights attacks wit
h knives I've been shot at them and robbed at gunpoint I know what it's like to live outside when I look at this proposition I'm sorry to say it looks very nebulous to me it there's nothing locked down about it nor does it seem to have a specific plan at all it's basically you were going to do this and you know it's up to you you it immediately will make make your life virtually a criminal just being alive you have to 12 hours to be up out moving around hustling your things back and forth it lea
ves you praying and it leaves you open all kinds of surveillance all kinds of ill treatment and it's dangerous for people for women more than ever I was I was homeless for a long time with social more brutality and you can imagine but women have it worse far worse and I worry about them all the time and it makes it so much harder the most vulnerable people in the city to even live or get by or move around now when you realize when you hear somebody say what are you going to do Portland you're go
ing to make this attractor to investors or not or people that seem more disgusted at the sight of a dead body and the fact that somebody's dead [Music] [Applause] we want to clean the city up you know the viruses oh we want to go back to work we don't want this to deal with this and that's how you end up with a circumstance where you put together something without a clear endpoint that leaves people so many so vulnerable to such danger and to such problems this is not going to fix anything for a
nyone it's going to make things impossibly worse I don't know how you're going to support it you know or are you going to have a separate task force to follow homeless people around give them a hard time 30 days in jail can be 30 days too many I can tell you you know uh these are not places you want to be and to criminalize people for suffering this kind of sickness I mean we have had everything from the worst turret attack in history to horrible economic crashes pandemics drug problems I mean i
t is very hard for people and when you suffer on this because of gentrification we are not homeless because we gave up on work we're homeless because we've been virtually driven out but anybody wants to make money because we are the ones that are really really suffering for it and I really wish it would take all of this into account ask some of this get some understanding have a plan at least before you lay this hammer down on us thank you very much foreign what's wrong with all of this is some
things that nobody's mentioned yet um when you criminalize a group of people oh say gypsies Gypsy Steel not all gypsy steal street too much not all gypsy straight too much not all homeless people steal not all homeless people take drugs those that take drugs not all of them take drugs publicly not all of them throw garbage around there are a lot of people who voluntarily sleep out of the flow of traffic and do only sleep at night and get up in the daytime and do things like everyone else they wo
uld be embarrassed to be lying on the sidewalk at to noon when other people are walking about going about their business when you analyze a group of people when you criminalize people for looking a certain or sleeping in a certain place wind up criminalizing people who haven't done anything they haven't done anything wrong and when you do that who you criminalize becomes arbitrary [Music] thank you next up we have Joseph Smith Joseph Smith's okay I know we got a little time frame which is unders
tandable get everybody in uh best Street Route vendor now for two years has been a blessing I also work with ground score goes around cleaning up the city I'm not on the payroll but keep showing updated daily to daily I worked all my life I was in the military I did search and rescue missions I've been through a lot a lot of stuff affects the military as well as coming out and them experiencing homelessness as well as people uh when elderly people have their home and they lose their home on some
mistake you know what is their home is supposed to be their home you know whether whatever happens with that uh I don't agree with what you're trying to do Mr Wheeler mayor wheeler I don't agree with uh Ray uh Mr Gonzalez and some other people uh if you had never experienced homelessness or in your life you don't know what it's like he put you out there for 30 days I got two suggestions we'll put you out there or any other people for 30 days Wait nothing and you sit there and you survive a grea
t thing about Oregon yeah we do have a lot of food food places to go uh but some people with bad Health they can't excess things they can't get around some people homeless or not they work uh some of my friends and family of Street Roots uh ground score people I meet every day I've worked for regular jobs I've worked through labor jobs that's how I taught myself I was adopted long story short I'm gonna cut it really short because I know it's a time limit but my music teacher father saved me I go
t blessed by being adopted by a music teacher and a speech therapist I went through traumatic stuff and I'm still going through it every day you walk out of your home your Camp wherever you go you got to get ready for survival you're surviving there's bad people out there there's good people out there bottom line Oregon's a beautiful state I've been coming here since I was five years old the man and uncles Hillsboro Farm they still got it today because they went tears and everything they worked
their butts off to get where they're at so I uh I don't agree with it I know you guys are gonna vote on it I do agree with keeping the standards and the Constitution and you're totally breaking the law on that freedom of speech we all have rights I agree that yeah okay City places schools yeah we don't know where these people are coming out of jail you know what I just got involved with somebody that tried to kick in my girl's door the other day and she told me and as soon as I sit there and fou
nd out the guy who it was he was right there in our perimeter and guess what we protect our family we protect our own I live by the military code and live by the government code you know what happens when the cops don't show up we as Community have to come together it's all about Community it don't matter about race religion I don't give a Brian Hoots you know but bottom line hey I'm also one more little note I'm running for mayor bill I hope [Applause] thank you Don you got to go out and do it
nobody gives you nothing I know what it's like to be poor I had family or whatever I was taken away my grandma was wonderful it wasn't for my grandma and even my adopted grandma you know you know nothing gets you Mr Wheeler I know you got a lot of stuff on your hands no I will speak and then you you can't speak sir no I respect you I respect people because my higher power said I have to respect authority even if I don't agree with authority but I have a right to fight I I could be a voice for pe
ople I can help whether I don't care where they come from we definitely need mental health positions in place behavioral mental health is Big anybody that seems normal or whatever I'll go through stuff sir thank you thank you and be careful because I might vote for you am I getting short on time can I get my last little sentence you seem to like not to sit there and answer a question thank you uh you're you're two minutes over thank you [Applause] you know that everybody uh next up we have Joshu
a magnanimously it's still talking Hey Kaya was Joshua gonna testify from your account [Music] why don't we step away from Street roots for one speaker and get back to Kai okay great thank you uh no wait wait he's he's moving he's moving Joshua magnanimously it's muted Joshua can you unmute there we go yep we hear you um I absolutely am opposed to this proposition it's the horse in front of the cart um there's no system in place it really needs to be a Phalanx going from mental health all the wa
y to a housing temporary position uh but that takes a lot more time than two minutes I wrote a few little little excerpt um undoubtedly dubbed the fastest shrinking city in the country is Portland Oregon MSNBC The erratic behavior of being recluse pay as you go with no results unafforded the opportunity of happiness in the pursuit of what gives us self-care left houseless more staggering than the life expectancy is the quality of life in and of itself Armageddon pose is a classless war of fascis
m it wasn't being confined is the Federalist taxation debtors inadequate representation failure in all systems being more than the inflation on our homes groceries and basic cost of living what life expectations facts as neurotic moral bankruptcies now opposed as mental illness two-faced is co-deficiencies of selfish witness insubordinance to covid-19 and monkey pox receding more than the economy blame shifting us a hypochondriactive today the erroneous facts are the Roaring 20s collapse of cata
strophes absolutely not so fabulous the tutelage of those who don't even have the entrepreneurial Spirit draining every person in the circumstance without calling life moral qualities accepting those of self-service Defiance and feeling unappreciated however unawarded doing the respect of commitment to our citizens and unfortunately the Constitutional member of our society no longer is it to be okay to be complacent in our community and I have more but I would hate to waste any more time uh next
up we have Dwayne rennison Dwayne reynoldsen oh hi guys I really don't like it here you guys don't like me I'm homeless I hit these streets in 1975 when 205 wasn't built who are you guys where you come from are you a portlander were you born here were you poor have you ever suffered have you ever had a natural disaster has your wife died how's your children died did you get depressed oh your family didn't love you so you hit the streets at 13. it's okay I see I tested by the way I want don't te
ll me that I have that just as much as I have the right to talk check it out I'm not scared of you guys I'm not scared of you you should be scared of myself [Applause] your house is in the view of me seeing the hills of the trees it's all George so is yours so is yours so is yours so is yours it's all yours and everybody is on this panel wants to play a game with the money that's been given to us to solve a problem [Applause] 3.2 billion dollars you did not buy one house 17 000 ghost houses in t
his city but you all hold a house and I scared I got the right to swear I'm an American not a United States citizen I wasn't born on Federal Land I'm Sovereign you hear me now I'm sorry and so is everybody here the way you spell my name on my ID is wrong my name is spelled capital E lowercase U lowercase a lowercase n lowercase e capital S lowercase C lowercase o lowercase T lowercase r capital I mean t capital r Lord Casey lowercase y lowercase n lowercase o lowercase L lowercase D lowercase S
I am an individual not a corporation you have no right to sentence me in any way a New York corporate laws I'm sovereign we're Americans and I'm a soldier I am a disabled veteran did you serve our country are you serving our country by being dirty people greedy filthy extremely greedy dirty people your cavity well well I started as a sovereign American Lucius it's because you guys start us yeah yeah you give me 58 a month to eat with oh how much do you eat at breakfast lunch or dinner for just y
our fat now says I'm not playing I'm not scared you better look at me I've been here and then parks since modern French was the largest building in Downtown Portland home I've watched you built I've watched you be dirty you selling our City to California giving our money away to California where are y'all from [Applause] I never heard of you before five years ago are you are you are you are you you're all dirty yeah you're gonna have to wrap it up you're two minutes you're gonna have to wrap it
all good thank you sorry it's all right all right everybody let's let's keep the temperature down everybody let's let's keep the temperature down good thank you appreciate it Hector thank you next individual please thank you all right thank you thank you for your testimony let's let's let's give somebody else the mic we heard you thank you we appreciate you thank you the next person please next stop we have Cass Johnson here 14 years ago next up we have Cass Johnson Cass Johnson let's try Chris
L online okay um my name is we'll do my opponents are they them um I do not support this band I am um I understand that this will pass and what I'm going to share is what I was able to put together uh okay um what I'm going to share may sound like I'm talking about holding on to things but I'm really talking about holding on to people about holding on to community um I asked the question why do some people are allowed to hold on to material possessions especially once connected to survival when
what they when they matter to everyone and we all need them this has long been a criticism of sweeps I must only some people be allowed to accumulate items that are meaningful memorable sentimental um I'm not going to talk about what my experiences are though I have spent some time on anyway um I'm going to imagine a magic wand because doesn't this band assume one does that make sense in all belongings just appear into the air only to reappear 12 hours later I understand that that the effort is
going to be placed onto onto the day shelters and I really that's important but we really need to focus on housing um I think we also need to stop agreeing to believe in the false claims that individuals are not the system are to blame for a lack of housing that the deterioration of our mental health or the use of substances that some days maybe the only thing that addresses for a day or for a few hours hopelessness and despair how is the fan expected to work without hurting so many people it ce
rtainly does not increase safety for those impacted by it especially women and gender non-conforming who are in trans people as people have said who may sleep during the day to mitigate risks um uh creative communities recognized as an essential human need I think I say that paternalism has turned into predatory um we need to stop pretending that everyone has the same power um and instead look at in the words of Emmy koyami um uh Nicholas our power is constantly being weakened under mine and sto
len by violence and societal injustices in our lives um please vote no on this ban he's fine please find housing thank you thanks Chris next up we have Michelle pornback welcome my name is Michelle Hornbeck I'm a part of Welcome Home Coalition housing community advocacy committee uh I'm also a person with lived experience I'm here today to talk about the camping ban and how it criminalizes homelessness here are some of the reasons it's a dangerous and unsafe policy to accept expect somebody to c
arry around all personal belongings for 12 hours is unreasonable we have disabled people and we have veterans out there that are not able to do that to expect people to put their stuff in your storage all day is also unreasonable some people do work and if they're not often time to get their stuff out of your storage units then they just don't have anything for the night safety is an issue we have women we have children that are houseless that to ask them to go to sleep at night is totally unrea
listic we don't sleep at night that's when the mother in US comes out that's when the Survivor in US comes out so no we don't sleep at night so to ask us to pack up and just stay awake so that we can at least stay alive is unrealistic it's important for people to be able to sleep during the day some people have insomnia they can't just go to sleep on a schedule you talk about we have a housing crisis we have a Health crisis there's no access to mental health treatment there's no access to rehabi
litation services so if you want the people to do better than damn it you do better [Applause] and you must have forgot that we gave you a job we the people gave you a job and we can take that job from you so if you want us to do better get off your ass and do better yourself [Applause] we have Ann Archie and Archie how about Mia Winters coming Mia I'm right here um hi I am gonna just get right to the point because I've heard a lot of really good remember here and I used to live in the queer Aff
inity Village I moved in right at the beginning of covid and this is my compliment before I constructively criticize uh what you're doing uh so it worked until you like let all good Northwest take over and they're like awful lots of bad things to say about them but like literally you're just uh this is ridiculous you're like the I heard the word nebulous used earlier that is what this is um who are you trying like this doesn't just affect uh like I'm housed now I live in an apartment and I find
myself walking Between Two Worlds and trying to like bridge the gap between the houses community and the people that are housed the only difference is that we have a we have a roof over our head and they don't and I don't know I just I was homeless for five years um and I just I saw homeless people taking care of each other way better than you what you're doing with these encampments is forcing a bunch of people from all walks of life into like you're basically putting them in a giant death trap
I don't want to call them concentration camps but like uh it's it's borderline um I'm really nervous and I didn't I thought y'all had skipped me um I really have a lot to add but what you're doing is not going to work and it's literally just like a you to taxpayers some of the other taxpayers and uh Carmen Rubio you're okay the rest of your talk [Applause] [Music] uh commissioner Maps sure uh Mr Mayor colleagues I'm scheduled to uh testify me for a panel of our federal Partners uh now so I need
to step out for a few moments I'll be back thank you uh next up we have Megan Brown Megan Brown and and just a heads up we will be taking a break at 5 30. uh uh corn Nick Chaya Chach corn stop interrupting please uh next up we'll let you know when we get to the break which will be at 5 30. thank you next up we have Josephine Welch Josephine Welch next Joanne Reese Joanne you're muted there we go can you hear me yep loud and clear Joanne won strong housing team he lents a home for all our neighb
ors speaking for myself restricting recreational and survival camping in certain areas and respecting Ada accessibility could be considered reasonable however before sentencing houseless neighbors to 12 hours of wandering city council needs to personally test walk this plan an impractical knee-jerk response that will further traumatize unhoused and housed Neighbors where do people go without being hassled for loitering or expect it to be a paying customer on a 12-hour wild goose chase Guided by
2-1-1 what seasonal and weather emergency considerations are being made setting up camp in the dark and wet power people particularly houseless seniors and people with disabilities expected to carry all day-to-day survival needs in a backpack for 12 hours at a time how and where will this camping ban be enforced selective enforcement is discriminatory will whiter more affluent Portland neighborhoods essentially become gated communities while diverse poor Working Poor and working class unhoused a
nd housed neighbors many of whom are Transit dependent get siled into internment camps and blighted neighborhoods without resources the better to contain and control them what is the intention behind this plan before enacting in an ordinance that will negatively impact entire communities and further traumatize the most vulnerable unhoused and housed neighbors each member city council needs to take this plan on a test walk to assess its feasibility assume informed responsible leadership leadershi
p cannot be performed remotely arbitrary decision making is fascist in this case city council needs to literally and figuratively Walk The Talk housing first thank you thank you next step we have Ben Stern Ben Stern how about Lyle silver Lyle silver Jenny greb Jenny greb and Keelan but before you go on Just for people who are still in the Overflow I think the Portland Building is closed at this point so we have some folks in the Lovejoy room you're welcome to stay there but if you'd like to come
into Council there are seats here available in the council chamber Elise Christensen Evan Cordes Evan Cordes Ava Proctor Eva Proctor Molly Hogan welcome thanks for being here hello my name is Molly Hogan and I'm the director of The Welcome Home Coalition I'm here today to ask the council to not enforce an 8 AM to 8 PM camping ban but rather focus on supplying restrooms trash pickup drinking water and other hygiene supplies to make encampments more safe for everyone until sufficient housing acce
ss is a reality there are many reasons these amendments are troubling but one obvious one is that we know many people experiencing homelessness will not be able to comply due to the physical hardships such a requirement demands many living outside are elderly or experiencing disability and the expectation to dismantle a tent and carry belongings all day is unreasonable I asked Portland to learn from another hip city as a cautionary Tale Austin Texas began having police enforce a camping ban on p
eople experiencing homelessness in 2021. there was just a report released a few days ago describing the state of homelessness in Austin today and it shows that there's actually been an increase in unsheltered homelessness and people are camping more on the city's edges and in more remote less visible green spaces this makes it much harder for outreach workers to connect people with services and housing let's learn from Austin's experience and instead of making the same mistake the city of Portla
nd can invest in ensuring people living outside have easy and continual access to hygienic resources while waiting on a pathway to housing let's also focus on investing in a thriving Community Social Services Workforce the very Human Experience of suffering from mental health and drug addiction challenges we see in our streets can only be addressed by being met with The Human Experience of connection connections that are being built by the compassionate hard-working peer support specialist can c
ase managers showing up every day in our city thank you thank you [Applause] Isabel Hernandez Isabel Hernandez Armand Singh Armand Singh Grace Kennard Grace Kennard Lee shutzlein Lee shutzlein Draven Ford Draven Ford Theo Spain Theo Spain Bree Higgins Bree Higgins Adrian Watson Adrian Watson Keely Higgins first they come for the tens and Tarts am I right Renee thank you for the time I'm not thanking this Council I'm definitely not thinking Ted wheeler I'm thinking every person who's behind me ri
ght now every person who showed up today who's outside right now because they were barred from coming in those who are watching from home and to the folks who couldn't make it to this meeting because of the inaccessibility of the scheduling we are all here to stand up to you Ted to you Carmen and Dan and Renee and Mingus and say no to this inhumane and violent band we will not let you eradicate an entire Community we're sitting here in you're sitting here in hate and greed and we are showing up
with radical love for our neighbors our community members our friends our family we come week after week to fight the step-by-step process that you are all creating toward a total state of fascism and make no mistake this will be all y'all's Legacies of you whatever modicum and I use this term so Loosely with y'all good you've done for this city will be forgotten and your efforts to dehumanize and eradicate a group of people all while getting a yearly salary upwards of 125k 150k for Tevis uh wil
l be all that you are remembered for do not pass this ban work with your constituents work with the people that are here [Applause] work with your city do not work with the Portland Business Association though they definitely pay you much more than we can work with the people who this band would harm if you've noticed I've been using the word people a lot just a reminder you are playing Nazi with a population of human beings who have every right to be here in this world and in this city as you I
would argue that they deserve to be in your houses and plural mansions for Ted wheeler over here all of us here we're two feet on the goddamn ground and we're running at you with more tenacity more grace more empathy and more hope than all of your small minds combined could imagine do your best and be on the correct side of history let go of your ego your sense of entitlement work to deconstruct your external and internalized white supremacy stop sweeps give people money give people permanent h
ousing and if you can muster up just one ounce of goddamn compassion today then you say no to this band protect and support the people of the city don't tell us we don't matter don't tell us to shut up don't tell us to go away don't discount us your position is voted in and it is voted out you will fade and we will continue to be here if you burn this community to the ground we'll just make a new on your ashes [Applause] where are you [Applause] all right this is a good time to take a break we'l
l take a 15-minute research [Music] laughs [Music] all right [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign all right [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Musi
c] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you thank you [Music] [Music] foreign thank you [Music] foreign [Music] sorry we'll resume public testimony next up we have Tina Prettyman silver [Music] welcome back hi so um my name is Tina and I was homeless for seven years uh we say covet is a scary thing but I'm telling you with all the bads there was some
good and that good was that some people that were high risk did become housed um I would not be housed right now if covet hadn't happened still being homeless is scary you look over your shoulder every day every day is a new challenge um every day is pushing through the day to get through it's hard no one wants to be out there I don't care circumstance puts people there not everyone's on drugs not everyone's bad not everyone has criminal records sorry sorry People Are People We're Not Invisible
we will never be invisible we all deserve to have a home a place to feel safe no matter what that home looks like right now people have tents they have blankets on the street they have lean shoes they have trailers whatever the case is a home is where you are your home is where you live that is where you are it's not it's not always bricks and mortar it's not always wood it can be anywhere you're at that's your home and you deserve to be safe to feel loved to feel cared about to be respected as
a person because we're all people we deserve that right to be to feel comfortable where we're at and we need housed that's all I have to say thank you we deserve housing everyone deserves Health appreciate it thank you our next two testifiers are going to join virtually it's Nicholas Peterson and Derek Avery doesn't look like they've joined us in Zoom yet we have Katie Reinhardt you're going to join in person mystery Penna mystery Pena um Sam Andy they were going to join virtually uh Megan has s
omething oh it looks like Derek's up hi Dirk hello hello can you hear me yep loud and clear great thank you so as stated my name is Derek Avery I am a resident a tax paying Community member and the homeowner in the city of Portland and heard a lot of testimonies during facts opinions and personal experiences regarding homelessness in the city along with potential Solutions many were shared much more eloquently than I ever could I mainly wanted to bring representation at this Council as a communi
ty member who is both a homeowner uh and who believes that we should not further criminalize homelessness and that we should instead Embrace creativity and empathy and helping with the marginalizing and house folks within our community it strikes me that to even propose legislation like this where cops will undoubtedly harm more community members with continued lack of accountability that those of you who approve this path are not in community with those who will be harshly and unfairly impacted
the most and note that I didn't say have seen or spoken a word to some of these unhealth uh the presentation at the beginning of the session noted that the city is supposed to comply with the reference house bill but also say that the city can read that they didn't have to introduce stricter read harsher enforcement policy to support it and the continued inhumane approach to addressing this issue of homelessness is a egregious and it seems that it's mainly due to the fact that it doesn't impact
any of you who are creating these policies so please listen to those who are getting impacted by this the most and who are getting harmed please consider that to propose these Solutions of law further stricter laws and enforcing these laws harshly without providing housing first real solutions there that you're just harming more people and perpetuating this issue that we're trying to address thank you [Music] the next two testifiers are Char Penny and David Potts hello this is Char penny I was
there earlier this morning when we were doing the Ada um I'm in support of item 451. needs to be updated to restrict Street and sidewalk camping throughout the city of Portland between the hours of 8 A.M and 8 P.M in order to reclaim Portland and make it a safe and livable City again we need to start taking serious steps to clean up permanent structures accumulated garbage and hazardous waste on our sidewalks and the city streets after spending three hours cleaning a small area of the sidewalk a
nd streets around Lentz downtown it is quite clear that the homeless situation is out of control and we can no longer support and endorse this type of living condition on our streets starting here is hopefully a step forward thank you thank you and next is David Potts hi David looks like you're muted there you go thank you I'm David Potts a Portland resident for over 40 years I raised my four children on a Portland that's sadly no longer exists I'm glad they moved elsewhere to raise their famili
es and more family friendly and safer cities I have a long time proponent of livability for the lens neighbor lands like much of East Portland has ever diminishing livability and has already seen gentrification as a result of inviction eviction restrictions that make Portland untenable for Mom and Pop landlords homeowners that can afford to perform and moving to safer places Council agreed earlier today to the settlement in the suit to require the city to comply with the provisions of the Americ
ans with Disability Act Now the city will be required to keep public sidewalks clear of homeless encampments this is a good first step the city now needs to keep public sidewalks and public spaces accessible to all of those who live and work in Portland our sidewalks are scarcely a better place than the mud pits in East Portland that are home to many on Portland streets it is not compassionate it is not Humane we need to find better places for our own house to to live that said it's time to keep
the public sidewalks clear in the daytime you owe it to all portlanders a lot of money is being spent to build very expensive housing that was doing little to reduce Sun sanctioned camping no matter how much housing is built without mental health and Addiction Services and a willingness figures many will not stay in that housing that may feel unkind but the truth is that it will take tough love to get many to choose thank you next up we have Avery Temple welcome my name is Avery Temple and I'm
here to testify against the proposed band today I'll keep it short to ban camping is to legalize the persecution and death of people who are unhoused I would know I was unhoused for much of my adolescence folks who are houseless are the very people you fail to protect and provide resources for and who will be filling your jails who will be assaulted or murdered by the police who will die in the cold during winter or suffocate in the Smoke of the inevitable Fire season most of these people are bl
ack indigenous people of color youth trans queer disabled but y'all already know this this band shows just how to out of touch deeply troubled and cold-hearted y'all truly are if I'm being honest I have little to no faith that those of you with power will do the right thing knowing that my message is for those who are here today opposing this band who care and who feel like something must be done to prevent this unnecessary cruelty this is not the reality we want or need to live in the city in t
he state do not care for us and never will as long as there's profit to be made from killing us let's stop wasting our time appealing to those who March us towards an ugly unlivable future regardless of their situation or background what we have or haven't done everyone deserves safe housing we know this and so we must take care of each other we must be creative rebellious and brave in our strategies now is not the time to play by their rules their laws or what they deem acceptable now is the ti
me to come together to act to build the world we want to live in and to fight for it if they want do it won't do what's right then we will we must house the unhoused together by any means necessary thank you stuff we have Becca Krueger planning to join virtually let's move on to Tamara chicken look like they've joined us Dylan silvilus Silvis they were planning to join virtually EDT move on to Jorge Sanchez Batista Sean Hardy they'll be in Zoom Sean are you unable to are you able to mute hello I
'm here uh thank you um good afternoon um uh I would like to say that I was homeless for three years as a youth um and the only reason why I'm now not homeless is because I had kind three people with privilege um that they held to help me find a space where I can be myself and educate myself freely but I know that I am always a patient away from homelessness and I rely on welfare to get myself through each month for Food and Health Care this bill will impact people like me who are low income but
fear helplessness every day and is the very possibility for every one of those especially us working class folks and marginalized folks I had to sleep in public before many of my peers had to do the same sleep on the streets because they were unwelcome with their own homes that they grew up in many shelters will kick us out anyway if we break a rule and many of those rules are to nitpick those who are going to be discriminated more such as black indigenous people of color and lgbtq and trans fo
lks people say just go to a shelter where many shelters here in Portland are constantly full and dangerous for some of us to some people the times that this bill will restrict camping will only hurt them as some of them need to rest in the daytime to avoid risk of sexual assault and this can happen for perpetrators who are not helpless all my peers Who were or still are homeless right now are working while living in the streets and there's a stereotype that um houses folks choose to be houseless
when many people just like me were kicked out from our own homes because of discrimination and because of the anti-oh ideas um if you care about buy Puck folks lgbtq folks and children as I was once a child myself in the situation you will not go through with this bill it hurts everyone not just the folks who are sleeping in the streets right now but the possibility of homelessness is something that does not discriminate thank you thank you let's go back to EDT um welcome thank you I'm an idiot
um I'm a student I'm sorry I have some notes um I want to reiterate something that Ed said which was that many of the people that came here to testify don't necessarily believe that our words are going to have an outcome on the effect of the vote um and that we're just here to be here um and many folks that would be here to present weren't able to make it as a result of various disabilities physical and then mental health problems that are being severely exacerbated by our our Collective failur
e as a house population to engage with the homeless community and to protect like the most vulnerable members of our city um and I'm testifying here because I can um I have the time and I can drive myself here um I think the majority of the people here in person are here because we really believe firmly in the power of community and of love and severe compassion and people are really scared for their lives and the lives of their friends and their family and we're here like essentially begging no
t to follow through with the proposal because we are scared um and it's the people it's the people with hate in their hearts that are pushing a violent and perverse rhetoric about the homeless community in the city and we can't embolden them with policy that's going to just further modern forms of class segregation it it needs to be condemned we can't talk about people and synonymize them with needles and trash I think it's inappropriate and I just I think that all of also going to like feel the
brunt of it but it will be the on-house folks that are gonna die yeah thanks but yeah I think you can listen I am so I went over time on the next five individuals are planning to join virtually so I'll just make sure they're not in person we have bardosa and ahada Todd Littlefield Sam Cohen Alexis McCain Alex Matthews Isaac to Watson we'll move on to Rebel black and Frank blackston hey there sorry I just popped back on and you called my name hi everybody uh I don't have anything stupendous to s
ay I just want to voice my support for this for this agenda item but I know it's controversial but everything goes out of balance right now so I think it's a step in restoring balance and I will say I hear a lot of people screaming at you about shelters I gotta remind everybody the county is in charge of shelters uh anyway that's it thank you thank you oh wait I heard that yes let's rephrase the joint offices so talk to them all right thanks Frank next we have hyper Cronin doesn't look like they
've joined us Courtney Cox Hazel Jordan we have Sangha MC blockney Isabella guernick you saw me walking my Colonial name is Demetria Hester which y'all should already know because I mace Jeremy Christian the night before he went on his rant right you remember me don't you wheeler huh the same person that you came so smugly and said you get to make the decision right but we're the community who pays your salary who pays your salary Rubio who pays map salary Ryan who pays your salary Gonzalez who
pays your salary we do but you sit here so smug and so self-entitled because you're white men because you have money you've lined your pockets with the money you're supposed to give to the community in your pockets are you homeless no you would never be homeless because you're white you're a white man and you feel entitled don't you don't you because you pay your way everywhere you go don't you yes no oh you don't have nothing to say now but yet you want to shut us down when we was talking letti
ng you know that there's a capitalist system that you created now is houseless people at first it was black people Police Commissioner which is going to make money over hand over hand building more prisons to House houseless people aren't you going to become rich Rubio saying that oh you're against it but look who you are with how can you be against it but look who are you with it's just a lie it's all you know it y'all have already made the decision like you say mayor wheeler you're not our may
or you appointed yourself mayor by paying for it July 1st when this comes into effect be ready for what you had to deal with in 2020 Us in the street ready because we're your houses your cars what are you gonna do then decide because we're coming for you Ted wheeler you [Applause] all right we've got into the personal threat phase of the council session who's next Who's Next threats so unnecessary um hello my name is Isabella I'm speaking here today on behalf of free lunch Collective a mutual Ai
d group here in town providing meals and supplies to our own house Neighbors on a weekly basis we've seen time and time again how people have been terribly impacted by the city's policies which essentially criminalize poverty proposing to ban camping for 12 hours of the day and punishing those who have nowhere else to go with jail time or fines is not the solution to this crisis people aren't living in tents because it's fun they're doing it because it's their only option I've worked at shelters
in town and I've seen how difficult and confusing it is for people to access limited shelter beds why are we not addressing the root cause of the issue Portland's rent is way too expensive as raised by 30 percent in the last decade alone as of January of 2023 landlords in Oregon can now increase rents by up to 14.6 per year last year the cap was 9.9 percent every month there are between 400 and 1100 evictions followed Multnomah Clackamas in Washington County that's between 13 and 36 households
every single day the majority of those being for non-payment of rent the average one bedroom in Portland is fifteen hundred dollars per month and somebody working full-time at a minimum wage job is only going to make 2 360 per month and that's before taxes that's barely enough to cover rent utilities transportation and food there are already four vacant homes and apartments for every single person who is homeless in Portland homes that vacant will people die needlessly on the street what we desp
erately need is rent control the problem here is greedy landlords and the politicians that enable and benefit off of that green I strongly urge all of you to vote no on the Campion ban although I'm sure you'll just listen to all of us and then go right ahead and do whatever you are planning on doing anyways so that's all I have to say we have Kelby self Jamie Young Emma Cooper Cassidy schoberg Kim Doty some Kim's here Kim are you able to unmute yeah can you hear me yep okay my name's Kim Doty um
I have uh I'm a Portland homeowner for the last 18 years I'm also an ICU nurse for the last 25 years so I've seen quite a bit of pain and suffering in my career um I've had two children go through Portland Public Schools completely through the school system I've been living in southeast Portland the whole time I've been here I volunteer as a health care worker at the Everly project which is a harm reduction program here in southeast Portland and I am surprised that my ICU nursing job didn't rea
lly prepare me for what I have seen over the last few months of volunteering there um this law is cruel it's inhumane it causes harm to human beings um I think we are all um educated people um we know that we all need to have our basic needs met to be able to succeed and move forward in life and what I'm seeing from our houseless neighbors is hunger um obviously no shelter no water no heat in the winter no uh way to get out of the cold and no way to get out of the the Heat and elements um every
day is a crisis I'm taking care of people who are disabled they have veterans who have PTSD pregnant women lgbtq and trans folks who are targeted and afraid to sleep during the night time so they sleep during the daytime which I know that you've heard over and over um these people are in medical need um they're really hungry and thirsty and you know every like I said every day really is just a crisis and I feel like this this law would really turn over their health care and their needs to police
and turn our jails into shelters and I think that's a really really bad way to go thank you very much thank you Kim [Applause] next is Lejeune Thorson yes mayor Commissioners good evening my name is Lejeune Thorson I live downtown and I'll be brief we all need our sidewalks back I empathize with our neighbors housed and unhoused who have physical or Vision disabilities as they attempt to navigate our sidewalks we depend on businesses such as restaurants and retailers to keep Portland viable our
businesses need to be revitalized by more foot traffic we all deserve to feel safe whether we are housed or unhoused no one should live in squalor as some of our homeless neighbors do everyone should have hope I wish there were no drug epidemic I wish the mentally ill would get help before they risk homelessness I wish wealth disparity wasn't widening but until Society can solve these problems we must deal with the reality we have and we must change what we can change stay fresh Villages the qu
eer Affinity Village near where I live the shelter is offered by non-profit groups and the large temporary shelters currently in development are a good start this measure is another step in the right direction and I hope you will pass this thank you for listening and thank you for listening to everyone who is here today thank you next is Annie damada hi Annie hi can you hear me yep loud and clear we see you as well my name is Dan cortland's unhoused Community for nearly a decade I co-founded an
organization called The Everly project that provides services to over 200 unhoused people every week our people are hungry they're sick they're desperate for survival and basic needs what we see every day are living conditions that would shock many of the more privileged people in this room and that's but that's what this is about right what I've heard here today is massive inequity and Injustice disguised as a pragmatic plan to end homelessness I'm not buying it is about the haves versus the ha
ve-nots it is profit over people and you will not end homelessness with this plan but I think you already know that in fact you will make it so much worse let me be clear you are killing people with these sanctions [Music] [Applause] you're making it harder for those of us who are trying to tend to our neighbors with care and compassion over the past few months my job has consisted of sitting with people who have experienced Relentless encampment sweeps helping them process the extreme trauma an
d loss of stability that this is causing I've held people as they sob tended to hopelessness suicidality and fear it has been a hard year working on the front lines if this new ban is passed we are going to see it get so much worse you will create more Health disparities and you will be killing people if you want real plans and homelessness in a caring and compassionate way look up into the gallery or go out onto the streets the experts are here we show up every day and we already know the solut
ions thank you thank you next is Angela ice Angela and we have Charlie lodgequis Vicki Payne I see Vicky hi Vicky hi um my name is Vicki Payne and I'm here I'm a resident of the canyon neighborhood in North Portland I'm here to support and thank mayor wheeler for proposing this update to the city's code to set campus finalization which are as you explained earlier illegal to do so and seemingly being enforced this way in every other jurisdiction under the Martin V Boise decision except for Portl
and multi Wikipedia page on the topic mentions that fact sleep is not illegal setting sleep hours isn't cruel we have options available and the county has plenty of money to create more daytime options camping have to pack up and move during the day will eliminate a lot of the health and safety hazards and crime that come with the garbage pileups at certain larger campsites and eliminate the need for the millions of dollars of these biohazard zones of course we aren't criminalizing or solving ho
melessness with enforcement will be extremely difficult until both the city and county set up more legal sanctioned places for people to go but enough is enough we have to stop allowing people to refuse help because they feel like staying outside on the street with all the participation and too many are taking advantage of our lacks laws and empathetic demeanors and breaking the societal contract we all have to be good neighbors house and unhoused 65 percent of those surveyed arrived in Multnoma
h County Without Shelter from another state we have to turn off we want to choose between Portland and making it uncomfortable to stay permanently in one spot outside day after days one way to deter people from relocating here and also having the effect of bothering existing campers so they will finally accept the offers of assistance they've been given eventually having cameras in only sanction areas will help us truly help them this proposal is a step in the right direction towards that goal o
f ending the need to sleep outside on the streets and I hope everyone here today shows up early meeting tomorrow morning at 9 30 and expresses these uh wishes that you are putting on the city because this is the counties yes it's called The Joint office but the city only gives them money they don't have any say thank you thank you next is Laura Taki Angela Garcia Daniela Del Mar hi that's me hello my name is Daniela Del Mar I've lived and worked as an educator and an artist in Multnomah County f
or over 14 years according to the airbnba property investment Portland website airbtix.com an average host in Portland can earn up to 33 348 during Peak seasons there are over 3 342 Airbnb listings in Portland according to Multnomah County's 2022 point in time count an estimated 5228 people are experiencing houselessness I'd wager many people are not recorded in this number with only approximately 2 000 shelter beds available people people are living in tents and tarps on sidewalks and in vehicl
es across the city that same study found that 38.5 percent of houseless people recorded suffer from mental illness 26 from physical disability and 37.5 from substance abuse disorders published by the Salem reporter quote Decades of de-institutionalizing mental illness locally and nationally have made it impossible to meet the increasing demand for mental health care Oregon has less than one-tenth the number of state hospital beds for mentally ill patients than it had in 1950. Neil ratman interim
deputy director of Multnomah County's mental health and Addiction Services Division the tourism industry uh and homeownership opportunities exclusive to upper and middle classes combined with decreased mental health and support services over the long term for the houseless population are unequivocal compounding factors in the current housing crisis among many others the Multnomah County transient lodging tax projected at 29 million in annual revenue and the 23 budget review should already provi
de sufficient funding resources for expanding mental health addiction support and other social services exclusive to The house's population as well as permanent Housing Solutions any proposal to ban camping without first providing housing and Mental Health Services only seeks to whitewash the writing that's already on the wall thank you for your time thank you next is Andy Miller good evening mayor wheeler members of the council my name is Andy Miller I'm here on behalf of our just future an org
anization formerly known to you as Human Solutions we provide a Continuum of responses to our crisis including shelters housing and jobs programs and affordable and Supportive Housing I want to start by just noting there's a lot of agreement in the room tonight despite some of our deep disagreements we all want to end our homeless crisis we all support a Humane approach to that work we all want to see more housing and shelter options across our city and county and we all agree that what we are a
lready doing is not enough that we must act with more urgency to right the ship but here's where we disagree that these restrictions are a reasonable humane way to achieve our shared objectives I submit the restrictions in this in these Provisions are unreasonable criminalizing daytime camping is in no way reasonably related to the objective of ending houselessness or better connecting people to services or housing a daytime camping ban is not a Humane response I share with you the notion that l
eaving people outside without a decent home is inhumane it's twisted logic to assert that asking people to pack up and trudge around with their belongings for 12 hours at a time under threat of penal consequences somehow increases the humanity of their situation the timing here makes no sense we have yet to build sufficient housing or even safe places for people to lawfully rest it is simply cruel and premature and likely unlawful to ban camping at this time in this way let's build the remedy be
fore we invoke the penalty mayor wheeler you mentioned the sacred nature of democracy and I appreciate that but let's remember the countless examples in our own American history of how a democratic majority quickly easily and brutally have discounted the basic Humanity of their fellow human beings of more humble means often to a course of cheers and praising editorial comments let this not be one more example of the tyranny of a loud majority of means stomping on the humanity of those most vulne
rable [Applause] hi my name is Crystal delahanti I'm the founder of PDX dance club and also a community health worker we are a direct Outreach organization we make about 340 unduplicated contacts a week so we literally live and breathe the stories of the people um I've grown up in East Portland I will admit that my heart is broken over the state of our community and that there is evidence of a severe emergency it's hard to look at and I recognize the impact on poor neighborhoods especially the o
ne I grew up in families in neighborhoods who are struggling or having to experience the worst of this crisis but this proposed ban is coming from a reactionary Place based on the trauma that we are all experiencing we must stop and regulate those emotions towards thoughtful solutions that are sustainable and support every human those Solutions must be holistic and collaborative Oregon ranks 50th in the U.S for providing access to addiction treatment it ranks 49th and providing access to mental
Care Mental Health Care Oregon ranks the worst in the nation for access to Youth for mental health and Behavioral Care Multnomah County Joint office under spent their Supportive Housing service budget by more than half last year we must be willing to recognize that there are severe systemic issues that need to be addressed to make any kind of lasting impact in the crisis that we're facing while community health workers are down here just trying to hold the goddamn seams together you are wasting
our time proposing we erase humans from sight during the day we as a city have failed the people and now rather than take the time to create addiction treatment services pay livable wages to peer support and housing Specialists to social workers rather than bolster up our Mental Health Care System invest in programs in Rapid re-housing for our youth and find out why the hell joint office spent underspent 43 million dollars last year rather than take responsibility for the ways our systems have c
ontinually failed people you're proposing to further traumatize poor people with a threat of criminal action I ask that you reconsider implementing any ban on public camping while we take a hard look at why and how we allowed ourselves to get here in the first place next is Jeffrey lidicoat I almost decided not to say anything here today because people have said an awful lot of things that if you guys could just listen then you wouldn't do this if you do this anyway I'm sorry but you're idiots u
m I have been active in local politics for a long time I'm not homeless I'm not houseless but I choose to live outside and to the guy that said oh I don't know anybody's including the dream that's the outside ever since I can remember thinking I wanted to live outside and I'm leading my dream right next door to people who are living a nightmare some of them by their own doing some of them as a result of the circumstances most of them as a result of public policy the Reagan cutbacks and the housi
ng programs the criminalization of drugs ongoing racism where we get to natives in this country most of it is our fault this bit where you guys are saying oh acting like Oh I'm a humanitarian because there's a big humanitarian crisis out there and so I'm not getting the public to swallow Hook Line and Sinker the that this program is somehow a humanitarian program is mind-boggling to me if you had the least little bit of humanitarianism in your hearts you wouldn't have rapid response out there te
lling people who don't have legs to move they'd be helping them a little bit of discernment in these programs in your policies yeah get people off the sidewalk help them get off the sidewalk not doing that is when people say that this policy is killing people it's killing people the able-bodied people it's nothing new Under the Sun ever since the beginning of time the haves have victimized the have-nots and whoever has the least is victimized by whoever is just a little bit above them so this is
just more of the same old same old same old and all you're going to give from that is the same old stuff next is casoca they were planning to join virtually uh Kelly lanspa also virtual Mateo Gutierrez that's welcome hello I'm 17 and I live downtown and I oppose this camping ban I'm Not Afraid when I go to my Max stop to go to school I'm not afraid of the conversations I have with the people that this band would criminalize yes I've been harassed by on House people but I've also been harassed b
y housed people anyone has the capacity to be harassed by someone or for people to harass others but people who are in a crisis are more used to reasoning with violence the best way to end this violence and harassment is to get them out of their crisis a simple solution to homelessness is housing such as the housing first model which gives people housing so they can effectively address the issues affecting them such as mental illness addiction or escaping poverty the model shows that around 73 p
ercent of people who went through this model have stayed housed after a year of the program I know that housing people short and long term is cheaper than Camp sweeping because Camp sweeping only deals with the symptoms of homelessness it doesn't solve it s own set of criminalizing poverty from being in the public eye we can be more of a friend in helping our fellow person and one of the main problems rather than hiding it to keep a good looking city rather than a just City thank you [Applause]
Darren Zoom Dan are you able to unmute we'll come back to Dan uh Veda Hernandez Daniel Curtis Maggie powers let's go back to Dan Dan are you able to unmute Marina Haven welcome hi I'm speaking on behalf of my wife Marina Haven that's fine my wife Marina is teaching as a teacher of seventh grade right now they wanted to share a statement they wrote for themselves and on behalf of Faye Shannon laronda and Missy all women they met at Portland Rescue Mission all of whom share the struggles of trying
to navigate a broken system is what they have to say I went through the shelter system and it's dehumanizing I got a lot of help from the city so there are good things that come from getting those services like Central City Concern they basically saved my life and helped me tolerate getting through being homeless however living in a shelter was the worst part of being homeless people working in the shelter act like you're less than the fact that freedoms are taken away makes it worse basically
you can't sleep in you can't take a nap you have no privacy you have to leave by 8 am every day and be back by 8 PM no matter the weather you have to give up your stuff you're only allowed to bring two small bags and forfeit the rest if you don't have someone to store it for you they made us prioritize weekly house meetings over employment opportunities and would sometimes deny work opportunities after curfew I think I was able to get out of being homeless because of my higher education I have a
masters of education and a law degree I definitely know that the people who were in The Shelter with me couldn't generate the same opportunities that I was able to even I found the navigating the system to be overwhelming I personally saw the stiff rules and lack of compassion caused a lot of people to fall through the cracks I still wonder about some of those women whether or not they're still alive today laronda I'm pretty sure she's passed away because I haven't been able to track her down i
n a while she had a heart condition I believe she went back to the streets Jean's place is a little better however there's a very long waiting list to get into that shelter and you can only stay for a short time you don't have the infrastructure to support the homeless population at this point in time and these proposed changes will put humans in the prison system which is even more dehumanizing when all they're really trying to do is pick up the pieces of their lives all I ever saw these women
doing was looking for housing jobs and friendship and now you want to improv imprison us all thank you and I'm I'm next to Emily Haven so I'm now speaking for myself okay thank you I worked at the shelter that Marina was speaking about in Portland Rescue Mission I saw the dehumanizing nature of the shelter's expectations I saw them prioritizing the processation of their faith over providing compassion and services in my opinion the way they ran the women's shelter was that the women were guilty
until they proved their innocence that's mostly in reference to drug addiction and mental illness more than half the beds were often empty I ultimately left that job because I saw them doing more harm than good and ultimately they would not allow me to stay in contact with some of the women I had built a connection with specifically Marina who became my wife two years later one of the biggest needs I see not being met within this the shelter system is human connection and if an organization or g
overnment refuses to prioritize the real need for connection as well then you're missing the whole point when Marina and I see tents on the side of the road we don't feel angry or fear those people we know they're doing the best they can to survive a system that's trying to erase them we acknowledge that tense can disrupt businesses however you're trying to ban tents from places that don't harm anyone we need solutions to help them deal with their garbage store their personal belongings and deal
with food scarcity and personal hygiene you need to invest in solutions for these issues and create the infrastructure before trying to move forward with a tent ban whitewashing the streets won't make our city any safer for the most vulnerable or the rich people complaining about them you can't make humans disappear this is a problem with the system and not these people what you're proposing is the criminalization of poverty and calling this proposal compassionate is an outrage and a blatant li
e Ted wheeler Your Privilege is showing and it's repugnant thank you [Applause] [Music] I'm going to ask you no please you you got to testify we heard you thank you Deb Meyer Corey McCall Jason Bolt welcome Jason Gonzalez commissioner Ryan all right good evening everyone my name is Jason bolt my wife Laura and our two-year-old daughter Evie are proud residents of Southeast Portland we've also been local business owners for over a decade we'll be moving our business from the central East Side int
o the Pearl this year first I want to express my gratitude to the city council and mayor and the dedicated individuals at the Everly project Portland Street response The Blanche house Street roots and many others who are working tirelessly to address what mayor wheeler correctly referred to as a humanitarian crisis or catastrophe your commitment is truly inspiring today's discussion on the proposed ordinance goes beyond clearing our streets of tents and trash it's about how we treat approximatel
y 6 000 fellow human beings who are suffering on our streets take a moment to let that sink in in a free democracy our government's most important role is to provide a safety net and protection for its citizens as Gandhi once said the true measure of any society can be profound and how it treats its most vulnerable members anything that works against that objective is a waste of our tax dollars and time I urge you here to take a minute and look around at the people in this room make eye contact
don't look at your computers smile all right there's a lot of people in this room that are going to sleep in fear on our streets tonight about a lot of them women 75 of the women on our street are out there because of domestic violence they're escaping that in their homes some of them have kids they won't have an alternative place to rest during the day if you ban camping how are they supposed to find solace in the most desperate terrifying and helpless time of their lives by prioritizing and wo
rking urgently together on the mayor's call for having enough shelter housing and treatment access available so that we can fully eliminate unsanctioned unsheltered camping in Portland we will achieve our Collective goals of reducing crime cleaning up our streets and creating stability for the entire community if we do this in an incorrect order and prioritize criminalization of camping in one month it is unsafe and unfair for everyone the only way we are going to solve this humanitarian catastr
ophe is by first prioritizing care for our most vulnerable and working together as a community to help them there really is no other way so I am asking you to take the right stance here and prioritize caring for these citizens for the 6 000 people suffering on our streets it's not us it's not you guys it's not me but we have an opportunity to inspire our young people today to show True leadership and that's compassion and that's empathy [Applause] let's try Dan orney again in Zoom Dan if you're
able to try star six to unmute okay let's go to Margaret zabroski hi I'm Peggy zabroski resident of North Portland and a board member of hazelnut Grove the um one of the self-declared and self-managed houseless villages in north in this city I'm here to object in the strongest possible terms to your cruel new camping restrictions every day on the streets of Portland we see people trying to survive outside in your own desperation to a face the reminders of how unbalanced life is becoming in our c
ountry you propose setting up large compounds to which the houseless will be driven once life on the streets has become completely untenable but mostly those camps don't yet exist and are to be staffed by a very new and very problematic agency Urban Alchemy who are being sued for their treatment of staff and residents wherever they have contracts did you research this outfit before you hired them you guys I can't understand this particularly cruel is the hours mandate as many people have said he
re today with so many in wheelchairs so many elderly people so many ill and injured people in the streets back up your wheelchair buddy it's 8 A.M and when it's winter sunset at 4 30 but you keep rolling another three and a half hours because maybe it'll keep you warm because when you do bed down you may not have any heat right could it be worse okay um and those shelters were building they don't have wheelchair access so looks like you're in a catch-22 wheelchair person with restrictions about
how many where people make Camp being extended to areas around Parks schools daycare centers High crash corridors and many other places how is anyone to find a safe place to be are you going to publish maps that you that you update every day please let me finish um how chillingly these new laws Echo those of our uncaring past from Chicago in the 1870s no person who is diseased maimed mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person to be allowed i
n or on public ways or other public places in this city or shall therein or thereon expose himself to public view under a penalty of not less than one dollar nor more than fifty dollars for each offense for maimed and mutilated read poor we house folks don't want to see the price that other people pay for our privileges for this you should stop sleeping well if you have any Consciousness at all for this you should burn in hell and I'm sorry it's so ugly what you're doing [Applause] next is Monic
a Corey they were going to join in Zoom uh Wanda McNeely Cara helgren hello I'm I'm on Zoom yep we hear you um good evening my name is Cara hilgren um I'm a lifelong Oregonian and have reside in Portland for the last 20 years plus and testifying today as an average portlander who is horrified by the consistent dehumanization by the city council of our unhoused neighbors this camping restrictions update is an attempt to ban our unhoused adverse from just keeping existing a way to push out of sigh
t and out of mind my inner root cause of the housing crisis in crime which is an ever-growing Cavern between the wealthy and the rest of us this camping ban is incredibly unrealistic demanding people pack up their homes from eight to eight and find a purgatorial somewhere to wait after day as long as it's a couple hundred feet from absolutely everywhere with this band the Kansas reminding the rest of us of their commitment to the interests of the Portland business Alliance and the Portland Polic
e unions because this camping ban isn't for me or any other regular portlander as a Mexican-American who brought migrant all over Rural Oregon I've had lived experience with hunger and housing instability I've also experienced firsthand the devaluation of my Humanity by my wealthier and wider Neighbors I've watched government local and National criminalize people for the crime of existing most portlanders are just a bad year of outrageous rent increases and unexpected medical bills away from bei
ng on the streets ourselves should I ever have The Misfortune of a bad hearing land on the streets I fully expect to be just as dehumanized by a city council of Legacy wealth funds and lobbyist Hills as those who are still live on a sidewalk now from one average Portland to my neighbors the span like this Council isn't for our benefit I urge all of us remember that as that as this Council continues to show us exactly who they are thank you next is Jay amachi hello I'm Jamie Chi and I am the rema
tching community safety manager with unite Oregon also a member of the anti-displacement coalition I strongly urge you to reject this ordinance responding to a humanitarian crisis through criminalization and fines is not only morally reprehensible but deeply damaging to our community Portland's houses populations are not just numbers they represent our neighbors friends and fellow citizens who are experiencing unimaginable hardships instead of turning our backs on them we should be working tirel
essly to find Humane solutions that address root causes of houselessness and provide tangible support not only is sweeping on sanctioned camps ineffective in solving the issue of houselessness it actually exacerbates the challenges faced by individuals facing houselessness rather than providing meaningful Solutions this ordinance perpetuates a cycle of displacement instability and vulnerability research and lived experience has consistently shown that banning unsanctioned camps does not address
the underlying factors contributing to houses Niche such as the lack of affordable housing job opportunities and accessible Social Services instead it pushes individuals further into to the margins and compounds the difficulties they already face in rebuilding their lives for Memorial standpoint it is essential to recognize the intrinsic worth and dignity of every human being regardless of their housing status houselessness is not a moral failing it is typically the result of systemic issues per
sonal circumstances and a lack of support networks subjecting houses people to punitive measures further marginalizes and stigmatizes already vulnerable individuals and communities we have to adopt a compassionate and comprehensive approach that prioritizes long-term Solutions this includes affordable housing initiatives expanding access to mental health care and substance abuse treatment and Etc but we have to address root causes and offer sustainable assistance working towards empowering indiv
iduals to regain stability and Lead fulfilling lives and furthermore just think about it has there ever been an instance in our history where putting marginalized people at camps ever worked out can you name a single instance of mass encampment that was not a human rights violence violation I bet you you can't so one more thing I want to say is I just wanted to address some of the comments made by mayor wheeler earlier because we have to always prioritize Justice Over The Superficial trappings o
f Civility historically calls for civility have been used to suppress marginalized voices and maintain the status quo unless we forget 75 of Americans disapproved of MLK in his day and the Gallup poll will show the times showed that 57 of Americans thought that taxes such as sit-ins and demonstrations hurt the Civil Rights Movement rather than helped it so progress has always been driven by acts deemed uncivil at the time as nlk said the negro's greatest stumbling block in the stride tourist Fre
edom was not the Klu Klux Klan but the white moderate who's more devoted to order than to Justice who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to positive peace of which is the presence of Justice who says constantly I agree with you and the goals you seek but I can't agree with your methods of direct action requiring oppressed individuals to express their Grievances and restrain manager men a manner it diminishes the urgency of the situation people will die because of this ordin
ance and their blood will be on your hands the concept of Civility is a tool of social control and perpetuates white supremacy by silencing descent and maintaining a false sense of Harmony not to mention you're a minute and a half over testimonies is a useless exercise of power and a waste of all of our time so stop doing it whole like stop holding the prototypical white matter move on [Applause] let's go back to Monica Corey okay am I there yep thank you hi guys this has been uh really powerful
I've been listening to all of this testimony and I think a couple of thoughts come to mind one I'm sorry to see this be so um so much antagonism and so much intolerance but I from the audience when there's a divis uh an opinion that's different but I would like to say a couple things I think maybe instead of focusing on time limit for campers we really do need to focus on location and I stand by the fact that I do not agree that people should be allowed to camp anywhere they choose it is not fa
ir to the existing members of the community I do believe we need to designate camping areas and also provide suitable housing options I believe that people out who are out and about and who are into camping areas need better basic services including bathrooms and laundry and showers they also have to have expectations of behavior I think it was deplorable a few years ago when we went around putting all kinds of public bathrooms out on the street to help people and they're all vandalized and kick
ed over and spray painted like everything else that people try to provide that aside I applaud the city council and mayor wheeler for trying to find a solution for the common good when the reality is so much of the problems that we're facing are because of the inaction of Multnomah County under the direction of Jessica Vega Peterson Multnomah county is in charge of Health and Human Services and that includes homelessness mental health and addiction all the things that are troubling us all that w
e've been talking about so the people with all this Venom and anger pointed at you Ted wheeler need to redirect it and it needs to go to the county and by the way they have an open meeting on Thursday mornings at 9 30. Southeast Hawthorne and Grand they're in charge of the joint homeless task force they have the unspent money to provide the services that will help the people who are suffering and also Elevate our city we can have it both ways but the county needs to step up so thanks folks thank
you next is Stephanie Phillips Bridges my name is Stephanie Phillips Bridges I am a senior policy Analyst at the Urban League of Portland I'm here to testify regarding I agenda item 451 I also submitted written testimony we have concerns about the proposed camping restrictions homelessness is traumatic the proposed amendments will cause more trauma this is more acutely felt if you are black and homeless a 2015 study in New Jersey found black people are more black people are arrested for Crimina
l Trespass at twice the rates of whites that's a charge police increasingly used against homeless people in Florida blacks represent 17 percent of the population but only 37 sorry blacks represent 17 of the population but 37 of the Char of those were charged with criminal trespass in the past 15 years the proposed campaign restrictions will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the criminalization of black people whose only crime is poverty especially if they are homeless as studies show homeless p
eople are arrested at higher rates in Portland between 2016 and 2019 about 51 of all homeless people booked in Multnomah County were charged with criminal trespass theft and disorderly conduct it is unequitable to charge and arrest people experiencing homelessness with criminal trespass or disorderly conduct when they have nowhere else to go or are experiencing a mental health crisis we encourage the city to follow the lead of Hud who is pushing communities that are responding to homelessness wi
th encampment sweeps and laws criminalizing outdoor sleeping to invest in other Solutions other Solutions such as funding for housing housing Trace vouchers and permanent Supportive Housing resources the criminalization of homelessness will only prolong homelessness not solve it thank you thank you let's go back to Todd Littlefield Todd are you able to unmute you can try pressing star six let's move on to Brian Kim cool hey can everybody hear me yep loud and clear perfect cool so my name is Bria
n Kim I go by he him pronouns and I'm the financial director of The People's housing project we're an entirely Community funded group it gives Emergency Shelters to homeless folks and we combine that with Support Services uh like water drop-offs heating stations and trash them you don't pick up uh and we also yell at the government on the city accounting and state level to invest in permanent shelter that will include mental health and addiction treatment and why I'm here to testify on behalf of
the people's housing project against this bill um commissioner Rubio it's good to see you I think you were doing the best that you can in a broken system so thank you for that uh Dan congratulations on the SRV uh it is better late than never uh Mingus and Renee you guys are doing a fantastic job for the Portland business Alliance and the dark money pack that elected you so I look forward to getting you out of office next November Ted I really feel for you because it's clear from the testimony t
hat a lot of people think you're evil when it's very obvious that you're just incompetent and cowardly because we all know that the only way out of this is to invest in public housing that will pay for people whether they can afford it or not it includes mental health and addiction treatment like I know you guys have the money because you waste on average twenty eight hundred dollars per homeless person per sweep and you could choose to invest that money in alternative shelters like our organiza
tion was replacing tent cities with Emergency Shelters and the city chose to come and spend money sweeping them so rather than collaborate with a local clear and POS organization and leverage our work like a smart politician would you chose to use and waste City money sweeping and traumatize the people that we've worked with and made it harder [Applause] even though there is very clearly nowhere to go but the truth is bro like I don't expect you to listen to me when you wouldn't listen to the la
wyer telling you it's unconstitutional to the ICU nurse telling you that who who does more at night than you've ever done in your entire life like when you wouldn't listen next is Jillian Bordeaux hi everybody can you hear me okay yep okay uh so my name is Jillian Potro I'm a clinical psychologist and a homeowner and a mom living in North Portland um and I'm coming out in strong opposition to this camping bag um I actually am pretty new to Portland I think I'm the kind of person that uh this ban
d might be trying to attract um and I actually brought my family here to start my small business which in part tries to plug the hole in the you know in the dirts of of Mental Health Services for children because of the clarity in the eyes and in the voices of all of the beautiful people who came out today in opposition of this band so I brought my family here I brought my business here because of the possibility for radical compassion and love in this city and I feel so excited that regardless
of how this vote goes there are so many of us here who are not going to stop fighting and who are going to remember that we're actually much closer to our unhoused friends than we are to any of the people who are going to vote on this and we will continue that support thank you next we have Amy wood Timothy Farrell David Lynn hello can you hear me yes thank you thank you for having me my name is David Lynn I am currently the president of the Centennial Community Association I am also an elected
member of the Centennial School Board I am not here representing them tonight growing up here and raising a family over 40 years I was also honored to be a twice elected for the montavilla neighborhood association so in the 20 years that I've been working on this issue we have consistently and constantly been asking city council for the whole menu of homeless services in our communities we've asked for low barrier community-based shelters we haven't gotten them we've asked for you to use aggress
ive eminent domain on zombie houses and banking Lots with absentee landlords you haven't done it we've asked for police reform and we've asked for an expansion of the Portland Street response and what we're seeing is almost an active sabotage of those efforts what we have consistently asked for at those organization at those neighborhood associations in East Portland and and with the entire Multnomah County Democrats we passed resolutions asking you to specifically not do two things that was swe
et our homeless neighbors and criminalize our homeless neighbors and now it seems like you've done both it's been a waste of time it's been a waste of money it's been a squandering of the community's Goodwill we are working in the community to raise these people raise our neighbors up and efforts like this ordinance change would is just bringing people back down blaming people for the crime in our community as a cop-out it's not backed up and supported by evidence you've actually just let police
officers stop investigating assaults and robberies in our community mayor wheeler you asked for balance between service and enforcement but you've never followed through on the services in the first place in our community so this will be selectively enforced it's cunitive and it's counterproductive and it's criminalizing the and criminalizing the homeless will never help the homeless so please expand Portland Street response and please give us the other things that we've been asking for for dec
ades go back to Amy wood my name is Amy Wood mayor wheeler and Commissioners first I'd like to say thank you for the incredible patience that you're showing in listening and caring about each and every uh testimony tonight I'd like to Echo what was just said a few moments ago by someone several testifiers back that much of the frustration that people have today in the room regarding what the city is not doing needs to be redirected to the county show up on Thursday mornings and give this same en
ergy to the county in asking why millions of our tax dollars have not been properly deployed to help homeless people to tonight's issue to the mayor and Commissioners I commend you for considering this imperative step of limiting and creating some boundaries around camping hours by curtailing 24 7 camping we will have a much needed mechanism to encourage individuals to move into sanctioned campsites eventually where they can then access the services that are designed to help transition them out
of homelessness establishing boundaries will change and save lives the truth is many of the homeless individuals on our streets were attracted to Portland because we've made permanent camping and open drug use far too easy and accommodating despite portlanders paying tens of millions of dollars for for homeless Services we still require zero responsibility and zero accountability from homeless individuals this is not a sustainable social contract unfortunately we also see homeless camps and drug
addicted individuals so often now that we've become desensitized in a way to this human suffering and are forgetting that we have a role in helping end it if we don't directly and proactively begin to intervene we are instead actively contributing to the pain addiction and Death on our sidewalks it's time now to have the courage and conviction to set some new boundaries I encourage you to please amend the city code thank you so much thank you next is Mo Phillips hi can you hear me yes yes you s
ound great hi my name is Mo and I'm an advocate at Rose Haven day shelter I love the job where I get to help people access vital Social Services every day including shelter housing mental health care and treatment programs my esteemed executive director spoke here earlier today I'm here to testify my passionate and heartfelt opposition to this proposal I would like for each of you to try to survive one night outside and then tell me what you think about this proposal I would like for you to spen
d one week doing my job and then tell me what you think about this proposal have you ever sat across from a woman and given her practical advice on how to survive the night pull your tent zipper inside bind them with a padlock if they come in blind them with a flashlight no of course you haven't doing this work is nothing compared to experiencing firsthand this trauma I'm also curious about what mental health and treatment resource and addiction treatment resources you're talking about as if the
re's some kind of magic wand every single day I try to support houseless folks in accessing desperately needed housing and mental health care and let me tell you it does not exist like you think it does there was one month where every single morning my co-worker called treatment centers one after the other to try to get a spot for one guest and time after time today is turned down I also want to bring up the fact that you are Staffing these new sanctioned campsites by Urban Alchemy Urban Alchemy
already has several allegations against it in California serious allegations among them for sex for staff sexually as female campers on site selling and distributing drugs and abusing residents I imagine you're Outsourcing camps to an organization out of state no self-respecting Social Service Agency in the area would agree to be complicit in this plan the only heartened me is hearing the protests of my fellow portlanders here this plan is crucial human I feel so deeply disappointed and heartbr
oken that you are my elected representatives thank you for your time next is Catherine Kirsten members of the council my name is Catherine kerstein I've lived in Portland Oregon for over 20 years working as a veterinarian and raising a family I am blessed with the privilege of being a homeowner while you did not create inequality or build an economy that favors profit and property over the care and Welfare of its people should these measures pass you are guilty of perpetuating both why do you wa
nt to blame and punish those who need our care the most the good people of Portland love their pets I see this every day in my career as a society we are heartbroken and outraged by animal cruelty and by unsheltered animals where is the outrage for our neighbors who are starving on the streets every week myself and a community of others cook and deliver nourishing meals and supplies directly to our unhoused neighbors in that time I have met some of the most kind and giving people of my life but
they are suffering from chronic trauma I have gotten to hear many of their stories whether it was a Health crisis loss of income eviction due to Soaring rents or escaping domestic violence not one ever thought that they would be living on the streets they are doing all they can to survive each day but it's taking a toll it is well known that the failure of a society to provide the most basic necessities of permanent housing and health care including support for mental illness and addiction contr
ibutes to the National homeless crisis yet rather than investing in these resources you'd rather spend our tax dollars invoking monetary fines and the risk of Landing in jail both of which will make the likelihood of securing work and permanent housing even harder instead of investing in affordable housing and health care that your citizens voted for you are diverting 50 million dollars over the next five years to Urban Alchemy a business rifled with lawsuits for labor violations civil rights vi
olations sexual harassment and inadequate training of its staff I did not vote for this nor will I be voting for a single one of you ever should these measures pass show your voters that you can do better and vote no to these inhumane ordinances next is Michael Hurst and zoom hello everybody um I was uh in the chamber earlier today with my son he is he was really excited about uh learning how laws are made he had some questions about that so it was great for him to come in and see all the differ
ent perspectives um we had a good talk on the way home and he really doesn't like the the snapping he thinks we should be clapping when we agree with something so it's kind of funny that he uh he's focused in on that thank you for the club um anyways a lot of good perspectives here and I've been really happy to hear from from everybody um but when I offer my own uh perspective as well so um I moved to Portland all right I live in the Richmond neighborhood and we moved into our house about 10 yea
rs ago we moved here it's a family neighborhood and there were a lot of kids around uh and uh you know it just it seemed like a great neighborhood to live in about two and a half years ago we had a neighbor move in who had uh we didn't seem to have a very high opinion of women shall we say he uh he he clearly had some issues um it turns out that he had left Phoenix to move here and he had a background of abuse um he you know moved here we thought well maybe things will get better they didn't but
he um started yelling at women and and eventually it escalated to the point where he he hit somebody he hit a woman a woman in the back of the head with a rock and became known as a rock guy we called the police over and over again to report this uh reported harassment and Medicine Etc but they wouldn't really do anything um we had a couple of issues like this the one thing about um and it sounds ridiculous but the one thing that that set him apart was that Robert uh lived in a tent and so it s
eemed like he like like because it was a homeless issue no one would touch it I think that we were really looking at so many different uh problems as homeless problems um that we're not really giving the individual aspects of the problem the right amount of attention so for example I mean there's so many different homeless people out there there are some that choose so that don't some that are good people there are some who are definitely bad apples next up we have cat Turk cat Turk here Thomas
Stinson Jonathan approach wag Anna Patterson Kelsey Greggs hello I adamantly oppose this ordinance it's an outrageous move that falsely claims to address the problems of houselessness when in reality it just does a terrible job at hiding it I am appalled by the disgusting appeals made earlier by some feigning concern for unhoused individuals while advocating for sweeping them away citing drug use and isolated incidences of homicides hit and runs fires as justification is a disingenuous tactic th
is camping Bill ban will not solve these issues this plan will kill people implementing this proposed ban not only tramples on the fundamental rights and dignity of our unhoused neighbors but it blatantly defies the Martin V Boise decision and Oregon State law this cowardly attempt to exploit a loophole to criminalize houselessness and poverty is disgusting moreover it is utterly disingenuous to assert that state law mandates the creation of this reprehensible policy HB 3115 was enacted to recti
fy unconstitutional ordinance but it certainly does not demand this specific update the audacity to transition from an unconstitutional stance to a policy that blatantly contradicts what state law is deeply alarming instead of resorting to punitive measures we must confront the underlying causes of houselessness scarcity of affordable housing in an inadequate Mental Health soaring costs of transportation and Central needs etc etc you behind the dice hold an undeniable moral obligation to safegua
rd the rights and well-being of every member of our community instead of exacerbating the hardships faced by on house neighbors I implore the city council to embrace compassionate evidence-based Solutions it is high time to prioritize affordable housing comprehensive social services and robust support from Health populations let us not forget that this ordinance extends Beyond camping restrictions it directly criminalizes poverty it perpetuates a cycle of Injustice and systemic discrimination wh
ich we must fiercely dismantle our shared vision for the city must be safe and affordable and it's a fundamental right for every individual regardless of their socioeconomic status I'm dubious on whether you'll take any of this testimony before you to heart but I implore you to reconsider this item wholeheartedly in Champion policies grounded in Justice and compassion [Applause] Suzanne Bishop Edith Gillis eat it this year the cruel illegal unworkable and classy ordinances makes the most vulnera
ble Crime Victims with disabilities who are suffering the most with the least support and resources take eight or more hours each day to take apart their tents tarps and camps pack it all up drag it behind their Wheelchairs and toddlers with frequent breaks to rest in pain or nurse their babies to push in a train of shopping carts to bus and Max stops load it all onto public transit slowing rides for everyone forever how many routes to and from non-existent but needed lockers and large rooms whe
re they can hang up and dry out their tents tarp sleeping bags clothes each day no matter the snow heat or smoke you will force more disabled people to crowd our sidewalks with our wheelchairs and strollers young children service animals diapers and stuff toys and school books and prosthetic limbs oxygen tanks Etc that they have to navigate from blocked sidewalk signs tables and chairs heaters Planters trees bags of business garbage Motel valet desks newspaper dispensers scooters Etc while they'
re exhausted hungry stressed children with disabilities in autism have meltdowns not allowed to access toilets and water in the face of so much hatred and Injustice well you'd have to pay at least two people at a time per tent to do the hours of campsite removal each morning and two or three setting up campsites each night per campsite with rainproof side covering during the process at least one person pretend to help campers during their hours of travel Transit and ways to get in and out of the
campsite storage insurance and suitable waterproof that proof easily movable storage of their belongings the staff need to staff to move them twice a day multiple facilities for their equipment trauma-informed culture staff and guards protections from the abusers that would come and and haunt them as they come to the facilities and they'd be more in sight for the fascists and the cops to brutalize them and for the house neighbors to dump more garbage at their sites you'd have to have more peopl
e there to take care of the housing and the environment that is destroyed by the repeated up and down up and down of tent Stakes you need to provide the showers and staff and you'd have to help other people take care of those jobs while the parents can no longer do their jobs go to housing or parent their kids or attend their kids school appointments to do this you would have to hire so many more people and spend so much more money next up we have Justin skolic welcome my name is Justin skolnik
I'm speaking in opposition and speaking for myself mayor wheeler I know conservatives can't actually prove that government doesn't work for us unless they sabotage it waste our money and sit on their hands but history keeps making you do things and when at last you do what you proved is that government is fine the problem is your raw political need for years right-wingers cross state lines to bully Portland's minorities and respected Community leaders pleaded with you to do something and you did
nothing and doing nothing you emboldened these right-wingers to escalate and escalate they did so that in August of 2019 hundreds more all done to wave their guns along the Waterfront and you're in action so far from winning you our effects keep your testimony to the matter before us today I'm getting there I'm getting there and you're in action thank you because you're way off base at the moment I'm getting there so far from winning you our affection when you the taunts of slimy slimy Ted Cruz
so at last you did something you gave the proud boys a police escort across the Hawthorne bridge for analysts that 2019 debacles at the stage for the January 6th attack on the U.S thank you next please no he's he I asked him to keep it to the issue and he didn't he kept going in a different direction all right then get to the point yes thank you it's been a long night there's a lot of people who want to testify thank you for this issue thank you for being here I'm getting there [Music] for anal
ysts that 2019 debacle set the stage for the January 6 attack on the U.S Capitol in that 2019 debacle followed years of boldly ignoring the warnings of residents who knew what might follow you let a bad situation fester and then you made it worse the same pattern appears in your handling of the homeless crisis years of ignoring expert plans from Advocates and developers you worked so hard to do so little and now it's so bad and history is back and knocking at your door above your shoulder is an
angel in the Brilliant Minds fighting for their lives against the billions of dollars spent to keep the poor in poverty this angel will help you resolve this crisis and rescue your political Legacy above your other shoulder a devil dangle's campaign cash not a soul in town Ted believes City Hall can contain your ambition but your ambition is so much greater than your talent for lying and I hope your pals at the business Alliance are honest with you about that I know your goal is to sit back put
your feet up and let the city fall apart like a house in a Redline neighborhood investment opportunity right but these last six years history keeps bursting in let that Devil tempt you again and he might buy you a term governor of state history for once in your career listen to the angel [Applause] folks there are a lot of people who'd still like to testify on this issue so I'm just asking you politely let's keep it to this issue it's been a lot of ad hominem attacks today let's focus on the pol
icy we're hearing good discussion let's let's try and keep it to that it wasn't relevant at all with all due with all due respect if it's not next individual next up is Lena Roper online welcome Lee hello hi hi you'll be perhaps relieved to know that due to recent illness I'm unable to raise my voice so a tough act to follow okay my name is Lena Roper I'm testifying to challenge some of the changes to city code that I believe are not objection objectively reasonable as required for compliance wi
th House Bill 3115 so we're going to address this from the framework that has been set by the agenda um under item one camping prohibited except between a day and eight prohibited between 8 AM and 8 pm the effect of this restriction in combination with the other standard items prohibiting permanent or semi-permanent shelters is to force people experiencing homelessness to pack and unpack their Camp each day and carry their entire material possessions with them for a minimum 12 hours between 8 AM
and 8 pm please consider all the essentials you use every day just for basic functioning including clothing bedding shelter hygiene medical equipment cooking utensils and supplies for companions these items are of considerable weight and bulk in total it is absolutely not objectively reasonable to expect this level of physical exertion from people experiencing homelessness and the coincident sleep deprivation and damaging health conditions according to Portland's own homeless statistics availab
le online under the toolkit people with disabilities are drastically overrepresented among the homeless population estimated 57 percent of homeless people have a disability in contrast about 14 percent in the general population the time restriction places an unreasonable burden on individuals who are experiencing both homelessness and physical disability I would remind the council that under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act the city of Portland is prohibited from imposing any poli
cy that has the effect of discriminating against people with disabilities as unfortunately we have had to settle for the failure to keep the sidewalks clear I hope you'll keep that in mind thank you thank you next up we have Juanita smartwood I'm hoping that you can hear me yep you sound good all right thank you I I've been here since two o'clock so I know you're tired and I'm gonna keep this short but I am in total support of item 451 I'm ending the code we are experiencing a lot of homelessnes
s and I guess I should back up and say I am living in the lens area I live on the border of the Clackamas County and Multnomah County Line and I've been a resident of southeast Portland for 49 years the amount of homeless population in my area has been unspeakable I mean the suffering and the people that are on the streets it's it's unbearable to watch but I think that I'm praying that you have the courage to listen to all angles but also think about the residents the citizens that have voted yo
u in and and I'm very excited that Portland is um has a possibility to return to a safe productive City I mean we just are praying that this bill goes forward and it's time that Portland moves toward a more productive United City and one of the things I have been seeing is a lot of children and a lot of sex trafficking on the streets and it's it's unfortunate it is something that we need to address I am soft-hearted about the homeless on the streets but I'm looking forward to you making the deci
sion and and being brave and going ahead and amending this city code and I appreciate your patience today and a lot of the people speaking and I pray that we can somehow unite together as a city and get a solution to this issue thank you next up we have Katara Horton Jenny York Collette laskery Aaliyah mumtaz Aaliyah is online go ahead Aaliyah you're muted sorry hi my name is Aaliyah isle town Chinatown the native 46 years from foster care I was a Teen Mom and I'm also disabled for over two year
s residents of McCormick Pier condos the yards and Levi housing have been brutalized daily due to the city's failure to remove its unsanctioned camp that covers over a square block of our neighborhood around the city storage container for the homeless the city's end sanctioned Camp is centered around the city's homeless container with bathrooms it sits in the part of the Waterfront Park just under the still bridge this unsanctioned camp and storage container for the homeless belongs to the city
of Portland currently there's over 24 plus and sanctioned tents and trash that cover this area and it's growing daily there's even drug they've even dug caves under the Union Station train track that crosses the Steel Bridge open fentanyl use is rapid in this area of the Waterfront Park due to the city's large unsanctioned camp that Portland city leaders are allowing to grow larger residents are being tormented abused and traumatized daily from the situation that they have to walk through if the
y want to use public transportation leaving the area between the Broadway Bridge and the still Bridge an elderly couple was severely beaten on our property by a man from this Camp drug addicted men from the same camp are following women home and showing up on their doorsteps threatening sexual assault there have been fires set to our property we have had Vehicles vandalized there's been multiple overdoses and a dead body was recently found on one of my neighbor's property I watched the I watched
a woman be sexually assaulted in this area at the same camp me being a sexual assault Survivor this was hard for me to watch clustering five homeless services in our small area that attract unsinction campers drug addicts and criminals without strict regulations 24-hour security and oversight from the city is causing increased safety risk trauma and cost to the currently housed residents like myself who are vulnerable on fixed income elderly and suffering from mental health issues such as thank
you next up we have Charlene penny let's go to Bruce Barnes Aaliyah Mays Haley Atherton Keenan Smith Anna shank Roots um oh okay sorry there was a hand raised I think they already spoke Anna you're muted there we go hello hi Anna my name is Anna Shane Groot and I'm a resident of northeast Portland Commissioners and mayor wheeler I'm speaking to you today to urge you not to adopt this camping van the mayor's office has mischaracterized the intent of both Martin V Boise and House Bill 3115 House
Bill 3115 requires that any city law regulating camping activities must be objectively reasonable the standard originated from the ninth circuit Court's ruling in Martin B Boise which prohibits cities from arresting people for sleeping on public property unless there is enough shelter available to accommodate a city's homeless population the most recent point and count point in time count of people experiencing homelessness found that 3000 6287 people in Multnomah County were homeless in late Ja
nuary of this year at that same point in time 1794 shelter beds were available and 92 percent were occupied based on those numbers there are enough shelter beds to house only 28.5 percent of all folks experiencing houselessness on a given night beyond the availability of shelter beds there is an equal if not greater shortage of safe and accessible places for unhoused folks to stay during the day local agencies that provide day space have been vocal opponents of this code Amendment saying that th
ey were not consulted and that they do not have enough resources to accommodate the inevitable increase in demand that would result from this policy change well I agree that the current city of Portland camping restrictions also violate House Bill 3115 State lawmakers behind the bill disagree with the assessment that the implementation of the bill on July 1st necessitates these city code updates the proposed code amendments threaten to unfairly subjugate our houseless neighbors to police violenc
e fines and jail time I urge the council to consider alternatives to solving the crisis of homelessness in our city that focus on the provision of affordable housing and the expansion of resources to combat addiction and mental illness please reconsider implementing the proposed changes and instruct staff to take the necessary time to craft code language that aligns with the intent of House Bill 3115 and the Mandate for just treatment of our unhoused neighbors intended by Martin B Boise thank yo
u thank you um we lost our timer I mean can I have just a second oh yeah of course time on my phone until we get it back into the meeting sure next up we have Sydney Poole my name is Sydney pool my pronouns are they them and I'm testifying to oppose measure 451. this hasn't been the only time I've testified but the more I do it the more frustrated I get no matter how many times we say that sweeping criminalizing poverty poverty Etc is traumatizing violent and downright counterintuitive no matter
how many times we try to mention the constant hardships that Funhouse people face how little resources the city actually use utilizes even though they tend to say that they do utilize it you'll find a creative way to just do the same inhumane thing over and over again and expect different results so I'm going to talk about my experience living in this city as a newish resident as a way to hand you a mirror and reflect before my partner and I moved to Portland we had lived in La for a year and a
half and while the city had its own unique problems like corruption gaping income inequality and much a much bigger houselessness problem by scale and despite the embarrassing policies La has imposed on House people recently like Echo Park and the camp bands when you actually talk to Everyday Working Class People a good portion where sympathetic and understanding of houseless people's situation I would more often than not find myself in conversation with Lyft drivers who personally knew someone
who was going through the same thing because of price gouging and rent and evictions there were obviously people who are ignorant but a majority of the time when it came to negative outlooks the ones I encountered were just indifferent to the homeless Community because they were more focused with their own life selves to notice that issues and bear no ill will it wasn't until moving to Portland in 2020 that it witnessed such active vitriol such contempt a different kind of apathy that bordered
on disdain not just from upper class people but sometimes dishearteningly from other working-class people as well I have witnessed people calling the unhoused dehumanizing terms such as cockroach verbally and sometimes physically assaulting them taking pictures of them without consent in their most vulnerable state even when feigning politeness this is what Portland looks like to newcomers and it was such a disgusting culture shock and almost disillusioned me entirely entirely the only reason I
hope I still have hope for Portland is because of the many other Everyday People the houses people non-profit organizations as well as the people here today who continue to fight tooth and nail for the unhoused community who are pushing constant pushing back against this needless hatred and scapegoating city council Ted and those who support this horrible measure when you push for policies like these and have the audacity you think you're the shining example of liberal and forward thinking think
ing you're not the mask you wear has been off for a long time and everybody fully sees who you truly are do not passionate at this time thank you and welcome welcome to Portland [Applause] the next step we have Jameson Harper uh Emmanuel frischberg Kate Kennedy oh wait I'm sorry hang on a second I think we have Jamison Jameson you're muted Jamison can you unmute [Music] okay they might have dropped off let's uh move to Kate Kennedy also online okay you're muted okay can you unmute all right let'
s move on to pikake kaha nooni welcome Nui hey oh my yeah oh my oh my [Music] oh my [Music] God honorable people I pray I pray too and with and four are ancestors the future Generations please guide all of us into Humanity love integrity and compassion please protect us in the streets please help us know our place position role and responsibility in service to each other Earth and this time we share please blink it our black native queer trans disabled Leaders with good potent protected power as
we work and play together toward total Destruction of white body Supremacy and these people who enforce it I pray we the people are able to live in a society does that does not coerce nor control a society that does not legalize and monetize our deaths let's go back to Kate Kennedy we'll try Jameson Harper okay Emil Phillips angelao Katie Brown Mary Nichols welcome thank you my name is Mary Nichols I am sick by the idea that you might be doing this on purpose or that at least you have conflict
of interest and some of it if we could tease it apart maybe if you take some time postpone this and say hey we have a lot of people from the community who are telling us things that we don't know and we see a lot of conflict of interest here and monetary interest that's pulling us in the wrong direction it would be great if you just postpone this you can't do a militarization and and destabilization of human beings like this um but those those uh the conflict of interest one of the reasons is is
we're subsidizing inflated housing with services instead of bringing the cost of housing down and those services are landowners and rent so they're actually a vested interest in keeping rent too high the opposite would be to turn downtown into something where you have a sliding scale rent and Revitalize these buildings because if we don't it's going to rot from the inside out because people are losing their ability to work just more and more we're losing the property they're just going to be a
ghost town so if you Revitalize the City by putting housing there apartments and even in the in the businesses above the shops to turn that office space into workable housing on a sliding scale you will put people together grandmas you know all the people together whatever their income is on a sliding scale and I would also suggest that since some people have not rented and there's a learning curve that you give people four hours of some help once a week to make that possible good luck thank you
[Applause] Johnson [Applause] welcome well it's not the state land board like 12 years ago but it'll do so although that's somewhat relevant um considering the monetary problems we're having it's uh I don't know what the little political finesse of y'all rushing to pass this is because uh you're probably committed to domestic terrorism whether you use this law or another law and um I think you're really I just build spaces for people to go and they can't just be one kind of urban Alchemy Camp u
h I don't you know we gave 3.1 million dollars to a slum Lord so that we could have Central City run a place across from pear I don't know if that's succeeding wonderfully or not you know Central City Concern is a large program some people have helped been helped from addiction there two people were victims of homicide there in Central City concerned properties so I don't know if that's a good path or not um but look at what you're doing this insane idea of saying we're going to have a law sayin
g that the one percent of the local population that doesn't have housing has to carry their stuff around for 12 hours and we have no idea where they're going to go They're not going to come in city hall because we've got a security guard to protect us here but uh you know they'll go somewhere um it's it is ridiculous there's I mean you know it's it's and it's tragic to think that some kind of urban Alchemy magic is going to exist at the beginning or end of July and we're going to be able to pers
ecute 6 000 people with a stick we had a little prophetic piece uh recently uh Prophet Winston Ross more normally known as just a guardian publisher as the world looks at us adding some sticks and apparently you all think that the solution here is to craft a new special ordinance law even though you're not using any of the laws that exist to protect people already you're only interested in an occasional anecdote about a business that's having a hard time but that business owner if they came here
and testified would say you have laws you could use but you're not using them so we're just creating this as many people have said this selective persecution which is going to disproportionately impact people who are homeless which we've been told and know it's a population that disappointed represents people of color queer folk where the hell are the pride Flags you had in storage I want freedom for Ukraine but last Pride season because it's not the first of July 1st of June yet you can't put
the 12 Pride Flags back in the window sidebar sorry about that the point is is you're not really serving yourself or anybody by passing some more smaller paper tiger laws when all you need to do is effectively work with the county that mismanaged millions of dollars of shs money and get people into camps and shelter and housing we even with the governor saying oh this County plan isn't good enough okay a week later this County plan is good enough we haven't seen honesty about numbers of the poin
t in time count and how you're going to address this the other thing is like you particularly in the mayor's office have been triaging homeless people with hooker for years so you know where the problems are and you're saying you don't have an effective stick to get people to work on improving their lives to end addiction now that's partially not just a stain on the city council we have the OHA and the gross failure of elected officials to handle the 110 uh decream where we thought we were going
to have Services Charles thanks yes thank you stop don't persecute people build Solutions thank you appreciate you thank you next up we have Emily Emily Emma Fox Katrina malikowski Ren Ronin oh sorry welcome thanks uh my name is Ren Ronan I'm the director of services for Portland Street medicine I think this code is a dressed up version of other policies that have already failed it doesn't really meet the minimum requirements of Martin and Boise decision and a lot of the data shows that cities
who respond to these rulings with sweeps and over-reliance on large-scale shelter units without immediate policy changes um really uh and extending the long-term housing options worsen the conditions in public spaces uh the conditions in those who are utilizing the shelters so stays are short and services are watered down Pathways to housing are reduced we have one of the highest rates of long-term unsheltered housing in the country which means that we have one of the highest rates of complex He
alth needs in the country people aren't saying no to Services they are excluded or denied access to support punitively addressing these concerns and barriers to engagement simply or simply not enough beds whether a peer model or an Outreach group or a police officer still will only serve to harm the community and increase the severity of the human rights and Public Health crisis that we have in front of us people entering shelter must meet a required activities of daily living if you don't meet
these requirements you're deemed beyond the shelter's level of care and so then you're discharged out of the shelter without support um ADLs include uh independently using the restroom independently showering independently dressing uh and feeding oneself these requirements frequently lead to discharge from shelter of our most vulnerable clients I've watched a lot of people pass away this year incontinence lack of adult briefs spending too much time in their bed too many 9-1-1 calls for medical c
oncerns are all reasons people have been discharged from shelter these issues are common and systemic there are very few resources for individuals who fit within this demographic but nearly 40 percent of the people that we serve would fit within that group these policies will serve to criminalize those who hesitate to repeat traumatic experiences from being discharged from a shelter for medical needs and serves to criminalize individuals with disabilities and put them at greater risk tactics to
remove autonomy serve to decrease adequate Services congregate settings have a significant physical and mental health risk for individuals with chronic health conditions and those folks need long-term Solutions this plan will only do an unexcusable amount of harm and I hear that you all have an interest in serving all in the community and criminalization is not the way to do that but support and infrastructure could be thank you foreign Mills good evening now hi my name is Larry Mills uh I've Be
en a North Portland resident for 75 years I had a couple notes Here on my shopping list found out today about the meeting thought it was important to come down uh one of the things that I really do like about this whole idea is that we're really trying to one of the things that really bothers me more than anything at all is the total lack of accountability and also uh you know kind of the consequences that happen uh to the neighborhoods regardless of whatever is going on with the homeless Commun
ity there are a vast majority of the population of Portland is impacted and impacted directly and so I guess what I'm asking for uh as a as a citizen is that you know we have safety concerns safety issues that never were part of my thought process are there all time we have sanitation issues that are going on and one of the other things I said you know uh you know really equal treatment under the law because it seems like it's everything is concentrated on the people obviously they're the people
that are most impacted but it does have an impact on the communities too if there's a Common Thread I've seen here is that the you know my history with the city is that it's it's it's pounded it's drum really hard for housing this is not a housing issue this is a this is a mental health drug treatment alcohol all mixed together in your face and we gotta start doing something so I'm I'm really happy you're taking a step in at least one step in the right direction thank you thank you Larry next u
p we have Caitlin m m s welcome hello all right so I'm just gonna jump into it so I actually want to focus on talking about HB 3115 which is the reason this is happening in the first place um so for those unaware HB 3115 was legislation introduced in 2021 by Tina kotek and this was on behalf of the Oregon League of cities with negotiations with the Oregon Law Center and today I specifically want to focus on the league of cities because the league of cities is an organization who basically Advoca
tes on behalf of elected leaders in Oregon so that includes Mayors and City commissioners I know all of you know that so to emphasize though for those who don't know they are basically a lobbying body for elected officials um and one of the board members is Ted wheeler so I can't say for certain but I assume you had some involvement with the crafting of this legislation so to me how it kind of comes across is that a bunch of Mayors and elected officials came together and we're like hey we keep g
etting sued for obvious human right violations um so how do we get those pesky homeless people and activists and lawyers to leave us alone and stop suing us and to me that's where HB 3115 came into play and that's why it was designed in the first place um so it was promoted as a means to decriminalize homelessness and it got a lot of progressives on board and I feel like people file for that scheme and it worked and for that I'll give you credit for um and at the time maybe you remember we were
running right to rest which would have actually decriminalized homelessness and its hearing was pulled and we were told it was because HB 3115 would address all the issues that right to rest was but that's not what it was doing and so I'm not surprised that this ordinance being introduced today um is specifically to be in compliance with HB 3115 because in my view that's what this law was designed to do it allows cities to avoid lawsuits while continuing to criminalize homelessness and the cherr
y on top is that now you can say that you're decriminalizing it because you keep invoking Martin vs city of Boise which also has a lot of issues I know a lot about that case law and it had a lot of good intentions but we've seen how it's continued to be backfired um so I want to emphasize that this is what happens when you introduce poor legislation without input from those who are directly affected and instead are crafted by the very people whose goal it is to remove homeless people from public
space and I don't know I'm just I'm really tired because we were telling people this two years ago and now it's actually happening and to me this is just like one giant racket foreign [Applause] next up we have Sarah Sams Ren Simmons welcome oh I I don't feel welcome um first I'd like to say that uh this is indigenous land that was not seated that was stolen so firstly anything here decided as null based on that alone um secondly I'm an ecological artist and climate change researcher I Echo eve
rything that's already been said and ask you to listen with intention and also um Mr Gonzalez I've been frustrated with your lack of full attention that you've given a lot of people I feel that right [Applause] right now however white CIS men have gotten full attention and would like to continue to bring attention to our systemic privilege that we enable which this ableist criminalization policy um is based upon and secondly as a climate researcher uh we should know that we have one of the hotte
st Summers coming this summer which also includes climate migration and drought issues that many unhoused people are currently having to face outside that includes wildfire that includes asthmatic breathing issues which by not giving them shade not continuing to enforce shelter not giving water as these conditions continue you are basically saying that you agree with the way that we continue to look at climate change and those are most impacted which are indigenous people of color those who expe
rience disabilities I experience a disability it's a degenerative neuromuscular disease I've also experienced mental illness from the time of age 11. I went to pnca I have over fifty thousand dollars of debt invested in this community going to school to learn about these policies and these issues and making work because I believe in the power of collective healing I don't hear that from anything any of you have to offer I hear violent since I would like you all for the last 15 seconds to sit in
Shame of the amount that you continue to bring to our community thank you I'm asking you to to listen for the last five seconds uh next up we have cheeky carbon [Music] prison zamarsla hello hi you were put here by the people to serve the people not just your friends and the privileged alternative Solutions have been presented to you by numerous organizations and individuals willing to help with this problem that you seem to have deemed unsolvable other than this ban and you're sitting on your p
hones um the youth my peers are here witnessing this today future and present voters you will not be representing us again um we will remember this and we will rise against you will not stay in power this is not the first or the last time we will fight against this and we will continue fighting this ban will fail us and will crash and burn figuratively and metaphorically or sorry and anyways um approve this ban but know this when the system collapses we will remember your name and your face and
we will eat the rich invite I implore you to invite all of these houses people that you seem filthy and disgusting and undeserving of basic human rights invite them to dinner give them a hug show them love but none of you guys are able to look at them in the face you see houses people as filth if you even see them at all I am looking in the face of Filth right now you guys are disgusting and you make me want to throw up thank you [Applause] I'm George Bautista Edward k right technically my boss
as I work for parks and rec uh good evening my name is Juarez the county as a counselor clerk said I'm a student leader in McDaniel high school and a community leader in Cooley which are both located in northeast Portland um I just want to say basically like I urge you all to vote against it but um now I understand that in reality this is almost like a certainly forgotten conclusion like it's gonna happen either way um but I'm here to speak in front of you all just like everyone else here did um
so you could hear our voices and our opinions the policy that you propose would be like chaotic expensive difficult not impossible to enforce and will create constant conflict within our community um the real the resources that will be dedicated to this policy whether they are money time attention or headline should be going towards the things that can have a real and meaningful impact on our community I would like to ask you all something first um should we be focusing our energy time and atte
ntion and resources on this problem rather than others what about the more simple and Direct Solutions that our city can provide that are not the result of Nationwide system system failures that Portland really cannot address on its own should we be should we not be focusing on solving things that we can make a direct and positive in fact for example improvements in public transportation infrastructure public housing Public Safety are all things more deserving of the resources that will end up b
eing consumed by this policy there are the one there are ones that you as city council actually have the power to do like the ones I just mentioned you can make our streets safer add more security to places that actually need it and build more affordable homes for people to live in um this is uh this is what every person here in Portland needs from you all during these difficult times and with that I yield thank you [Applause] Todd Littlefield Todd Littlefield you're muted let's try one more tim
e Dan orney online you're muted and finally Kate Kennedy Todd I see your hand raised Todd's racing are you able to unmute it looks like you're unmuted he did can you hear us yeah can you hear me yep now we can thank you um I live in the neighborhood that is 90 maybe 95 non-white uh uh economically for a working class with the majority of Section 8 housing we live in fear chaos and oppression 24 hours a day well the drug dealers and criminals are 90 Plus White we have all been threatened assaulte
d our property has been stolen damaged at one point we are woken up or capped up every 20. this is Todd you're you're breaking up can you hear us I think you might be having some audio issues are you there oh okay it looks like Todd all right well we can we can still accept written testimony correct since this is a first reading yeah yes yeah yes okay so uh for those of you who are online there's a couple of you who we could not hear we can still accept your testimony uh written testimony so tha
t's still an option and we would encourage it okay um and then just want to make sure Edward k hi how's it going um so um Portland is losing people according to the latest statistics and I recently just moved to Portland um less than less than half a year ago six months ago somewhere around there um and my testimony of this is that within three weeks of moving to Portland uh my car was stolen first time that's ever happened to me in my life uh the police found the car a few weeks later in an uns
anctioned camping area and then beyond that um I was going to the grocery store the other day trying to just get some groceries I passed someone who was smoking crack or fentanyl or something on the way and you know passing it being like really um and then after that too um there was someone defecating in a pizza box on my way to the grocery store and so you wonder why people aren't wanting to stay in Portland like I found I visited Portland in 2018 and I fell in love with the place and I loved
it so much I'm like yeah I want to move out here and and you know when when the time came and I did and now that I'm here I'm really concerned um and it's you know I understand it's an issue everywhere but the the thing is like I'm you know trying to pay taxes and you're taking you know pay my part of the city as well and if I call someone to try and help out saying hey there's you know someone doing something outside of my home that makes me feel unsafe the police don't do anything they don't h
ave power to do anything so given this given this here hopefully gives some power to actually help out the situation if I need to call someone and feel unsafe and you know there's a reason why people are leaving there's a reason why people don't want to be here like does that sound like a city you want to leave in where you're going to the grocery store you have to watch someone defecating into a pizza box and you can't call anyone about that like it's it's I I agree like I would I would love to
give more of my tax money to give them housing I would love to do that but I also want to have some kind of protection so I can also feel safe as a citizen in the city thank you thank you thank you that complaints testimony all right we did it success thank you everybody for your testimony um colleagues we could keep staff longer we've been in session since 9 30. I would recommend we put a pin in it for tonight bring it back for a second reading and have q a then unless people want to do it now
but we've honestly I I feel like we've we've kept our staff here long enough for one night and it has to go to Second reading anyway does the amendment have to be closed today oh it would okay so commissioner Rubio's amendments on the table any further discussion on commissioner Rubio's Amendment call the rules Mr bear Could you um hi how are you um could you remind us of what the amendment uh does again I'll defer to the sponsor so it wouldn't enact um the proposed of Amendment until two sites
of the tasks are completely set up and equip [Music] ment which sites do safe rest Villages count or are we talking about something different yeah the the task sites uh thank you any further discussion seeing none please call the roll Ryan yes um after hours of heartfelt passionate testimony I'm reflecting and I've heard a lot of powerful testimony thank you I did my very best to stay focused on each person who testified I respect commissioner Rubio's perspective and your heart on this amendmen
t my life experience and professional experience in the last two years developing the safe rest Village program which is having success moving chronically homeless people to stable housing allows me to understand Clarity and structure as necessary especially in the most complex situations I'm very proud to be part of a council's commitment to services and hiring the right providers as we work towards temporary temporary shelter solutions that provide an on-ramp to stability we are committed to h
elping people I believe that commitment will keep us in Integrity as we move forward to support our community and those in need of services shelter and safety I vote no Gonzalez no Maps no Rubio again I'm I'm introducing this because we all agreed that we needed that we would not seek to criminalize a Community member solely for being homeless back in November 22 and in the spirit of that conversation I wanted to make sure that this aligned with our timelines and this will also increase that thi
s will match match up our timelines with the increase in available shelter sites and addition give our officers time to be adequately trained and also the providers to need time to understand what this new ordinance will mean as well as our other Advocates as well to work with community so that's the intention of this I vote I wheeler yeah I just want to first of all thank the many many many people who testified from all perspectives on this I appreciate it I appreciate it when people show up an
d take a direct interest in their local government I also want to highlight where I heard some common ground just because it was divided testimony and a lot of it was was personal and heartfelt emotional I heard broad consensus that the core underlying issue here is housing I could not agree with you more that's a yes I heard a lot of consensus around we need to do better around Behavioral Health and and one person testified that we are 49th I believe in terms of need in 50th in terms of our abi
lity in this state to deliver those services that is accurate and that's not an accident that is willful neglect that happened over a period of four decades it happened many many years ago when we closed our state facilities and there were reasons for doing that or state hospital that was 600 beds that were closed with the expectation that those beds would then be distributed across the state at the local level but that never happened the funding never followed I also heard a lot of people talki
ng about the scourge of addiction which is demonstrably worse today than it was previously we have synthetic opioids like P2P meth by the way Oregon is the number one state in the country in terms of of meth use and now Fentanyl which is Insidious stuff we have the highest rates well our addiction rate for fentanyl went up 588 percent over the last two year period we unfortunately have the highest death rate for youth age 15 to 19 from fentanyl that rate has gone up 988 percent over that same ti
me period And there are other issues I was impressed with the people who mentioned just basic health care that's accurate unfortunately um we do have an obligation at the local level to do what we can do and we've actually expanded our purview into those Services when we passed the original enabling legislation for the tasks the temporary alternative shelter site it also included an effort to redouble our efforts around affordable housing to work with our state Partners included efforts around s
upporting Behavioral Health Services and continuing to advocate for that and I sense the frustration and the anger of people who are here in this room today and you might be surprised uh to hear that I share a lot of that frustration and anger we went to the legislature to Advocate collectively for more services the legislature isn't meeting right now and the clock's ticking down on the session and the governor warned us that that session May adjourn with these issues remaining unresolved I'm no
t blaming the state I'm just noting that federal dollars that come in through Medicaid from HUD that could help with housing Behavioral Health substance use disorder treatment those dollars go through the legislature before they get to the county before they get to us and so I feel like there's a role for us even if we this early disagree on this piece and I heard a lot of visceral disagreement and and that's fine but I think on the things where we agree I wish we could be better coordinated to
continue to fight for those Services where I heard just broad consensus in this room so that's sort of an aside to commissioner Rubio's Amendment for the reasons I described earlier I'm a no vote I appreciate the effort you made on that the amendment fails this is a first reading of a non-emergency ordinance it moves to Second reading thank you everyone yes and we're adjourned [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you thank you [Music]
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