As a part of President Trump’s takeover of policing in the nation’s capital, he has pledged to remove homeless people and encampments from the city. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said homeless people who don’t leave the city will face punishment in the form of fines and jail time. Cities across the country are struggling with how to regulate homeless camping, including in the Pacific Northwest. We take this moment to listen back to several conversations we had with people living on the streets of Portland and Vancouver about how they think homelessness should be regulated.
Back in 2022, then Portland mayor Ted Wheeler pledged to create several huge sanctioned homeless camps at the edges of the city and threatened to send people who wouldn’t go to those camps to jail. OPB’s “Think Out Loud” spent a day on the streets of Portland asking people how they felt about the plan.
Earlier this winter, OPB’s “Think Out Loud” spent a morning with staff and volunteers of the Council for Homeless as they participated in the Point-in-Time count in Vancouver, Washington. The Point-in-Time count is a federally required snapshot of how many people are experiencing homelessness in a given area.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. As part of President Trump’s takeover of policing in the nation’s capital, he’s pledged to remove homeless people and encampments from the city. This comes at a time when jurisdictions all around the country are still struggling with just how to respond to homelessness. So often in these debates, we hear from law enforcement or service providers or policymakers or elected officials. We’re going to spend some time today hearing from the people who are most directly affected.
Back in February of 2022, then Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler issued an emergency order to ban camping near busy roadways. He also said that he had plans to create large outdoor sites for sanctioned camping. So, on a chilly and rainy March day, a team of us went out to talk to people. It was me, TOL producer Julie Sabatier, and OPB’s Emerging Journalism Fellow, Chris Gonzalez. We started in Old Town at what was arguably the epicenter of homelessness in the city. Tents lined the entirety of some blocks. There was trash everywhere. We had to watch where we were walking so we didn’t step on human waste or hypodermic needles. We went outside the Street Roots office on Northwest Davis. It was a Wednesday, which is when vendors can pick up their new papers for the week. Here’s Chris.
Chris Gonzalez: Some guys were hanging out at the outdoor seating area for CC Slaughters, the bar next door. Douglas Marcks, also known as “Wookiee,” was one of them. I asked him what he sees on a daily basis.
Douglas “Wookiee” Marcks: I see tents that are being destroyed by people that either they’re the police or the other homeless people. There’s way too many drugs on the street. There’s way too many shootings in the street. I had shots right behind my tent. Heard a car take off and four more shots. These so-called camps that Sam Adams wants to do that are Guarded by the National Guard ‒ I am ex-National Guard myself ‒ would be the equivalent of a concentration camp.
Gonzalez: Can I just ask what you’ve see change around here recently?
Marcks: It’s gotten worse, by far. I mean, like I said, there’s shootings all the time. They’re … you got way too many drugs, people coming up to your tent and asking you for blues or white, “do you have black,” which is heroin. They’re like, “no.” I lost my wife to that crap. Some idiot got her hooked on meth and gave her a heroin hotshot. So, yeah, I can’t stand that crap. I get very, very, very irate, actually.
Miller: That truck that passed was pretty common. It’s one of the realities of living outside. You basically have to deal with the sound of traffic all day.
Gonzalez: It’s also worth noting that that language Wookiee used calling large encampments “concentration camps” has gotten a lot of pushback from city officials and community groups. Many people have been offended that places with food and hygiene and social services are being compared to death camps where millions of people were killed. But it was striking. We kept hearing the phrase throughout the day.
Miller: Nick McMann was standing nearby. His eyes were only half open during most of our conversation. At times he’d close them for a few seconds and I thought he might actually fall over. He told me he was originally from Seattle and has been in Portland for about 10 years.
Nick McMann: So I’m pretty much sleeping on the streets of Portland with the very, very rare exception that I get into a mission around here for a night. The majority of my time is spent in a wet sleeping bag in some kind of makeshift shelter that I put together every night.
Miller: What do you feel like you need right now? What help would help you?
McMann: I think just like more easy available access to tents would help for people in general. And then more tent city type places with oversight by staff. Like, you could build a pretty large one, I’m sure, in an empty lot, and it would cost far less than incarcerating half of those people for the amount of time that you would otherwise.
Miller: Some folks in the city are talking about big tent cities that are allowed by the city. That’s something you’d be interested in?
McMann: Yeah, well, I mean, it doesn’t matter whether there’s a ban or no band. Where do they … where do these people who have this utopian idea think that the people who have nowhere to go essentially after a certain date are going to go. They’re gonna go deeper and closer to your backyard then, even before. That’s what I would say.
Miller: The first thing you said in terms of which help you’d want is better access to tents. Do you see a path forward for yourself where you wouldn’t be sleeping in a tent?
McMann: Yeah, like the unique thing about Portland is all the recovery-oriented services that they offer. I’m currently enrolled in a methadone clinic, so I’m trying to quit using heroin altogether and other drugs. And then once I get to a certain point, then I’ll be able to go to an inpatient treatment place that accepts people that are on methadone. Hopefully one of these days I’ll just have a normal life, you know? I’ll go to the clinic once a day. And I think a big part of it is gonna be carrying that message that you can be successful on medically-assisted treatment, and you don’t have to be a zombie. You can work just as hard as anyone else does. Yeah, the stigma’s not true.
Gonzalez: Over the course of the whole day, the model was that we’d go up to people and ask if they wanted to talk. Only one person came up to us. His name was Daniel Toole.
Daniel Toole: I heard you around the area interviewing people and I sit and think about homeless issues a lot. I get really frustrated being a homeless person and knowing that there are resources, there are solutions out there. There’s just not a willpower to go along with that, because the people that it affects, they don’t really … They don’t have family ties. They don’t have social ties to homeless people, so they don’t really think about their issues too often. Being a homeless person, I’m very boots on the ground, very well aware of all the issues, well aware of both sides where homeless people can be kind of hard to serve sometimes, too. But it’s unfortunate because the average homeless person is mentally ill and/or a drug addict. And they also were probably victims of people that didn’t have much money their whole life, so they were used to getting evicted from their homes, their families were shuffled around. They didn’t get good structure. You know, their parents were using drugs in the house when they were kids. I don’t have that personal story myself, but I am mentally ill, and I have paranoid schizophrenia. I have bipolar disorder. And it’s rough, because there’s that saying that “well, just get a job.” That’s rough to get a job when you don’t have anywhere to shower. You don’t have clothes to change into. You don’t have ID. You can’t get your social security card. You can’t get your birth certificate. Can’t buy a phone. I can’t get an email account because they need a phone number, you know?
It’s just … there’s so many barriers and they just … They say, “well, just get in touch with some resources.” And resources put you on waiting lists for like six months. But you got to check in, and it’s hard when you don’t have any electronics like a phone or anything like that to help you get by.
Gonzalez: And I’m not sure if you’ve heard about the plans to put people in 1,000-person camps that the mayor and others have been talking about recently.
Toole: Well, I think that, as a homeless person, you do get empathetic to … You know, you live outside, and where else am I supposed to go? But you also get resentful towards the fact that the people who it seems to be like most time your biggest bothers you’re just an eyesore to the people who pay the taxes. And they don’t wanna see a homeless person, and they don’t want to deal with them begging for money. They want …
But personally, I do understand that as well where I’ve been walking down a sidewalk and there’s a tent in the way and you can’t get around it, or people’s trash is just sprawled all over the ground. So I kind of see it both ways where there could … In some parts of the city, I definitely understand the sweeps and just moving the people if they have nowhere else to go.
But like Old Town, it just seems like it’s … I don’t see how that could happen. There’s just so much, so many people camping out on the streets in Old Town. But I think that what the biggest issue is, whether it be state, local, or government, federal, you know, large, is there has to be an acceptance that drugs are not going anywhere.
Miller: The last person we talked to in front of Street Roots was Keith McEntire. He told us that everyone on the street calls him “Max.” He’s originally from Amarillo, Texas and has lived in Portland off and on since 1986. He’s living in a tent on Burnside right now. I asked what would help him.
Keith “Max” McEntire: A vehicle, then I could go out to farms and ranches and do more work. During the spring and summers, I go out and I travel and I do jobs for farmers or ranchers. It’s just labor work. If I had transportation to get around, then I wouldn’t be walking down the highway. For instance, I have a job in Yakima I have to be at on the 30th, and I have to find a way of getting there.
Miller: And once you get there, there’s a place to live.
McEntire: Yes, they have bunk houses with showers in them and a bed and because I’m cooking …
Miller: At this point, a really agitated guy was getting close to us. Earlier in the morning, the guy had walked down the street screaming about wanting to kill someone and wanting to die. Max was able to calm him down a bit.
McEntire: Come on, Tex. Tex. Tex.
Anyway, they have bunk houses with showers in them and because I’m cooking, I don’t pay for anything that I ate. I just cook myself a burger or eat a slice of pizza, or for the most part my food stamp card carries me.
Miller: What do you think of some of the city’s ideas of big tent encampments or mass shelters?
McEntire: I think it sounds kind of like a concentration camp where you’re forcing people to live in a certain place. I don’t like the idea at all. If I was gonna be here after the 30th, I would protest it. I’d lead a protest against it, because you’re taking people away from where … Call it what it is. You’re taking people away from their hustle. You’re taking people away from their livelihood. And when you take people and force them to stay in one place, it’s like a concentration camp. I don’t approve of it at all. I’ll stand by that. Print my name on that, and publish it. I don’t approve of forcing these people …
Some of them, yeah. Some of the dope fiends, take them and put them in it. But the people that are out here trying to work like me and Wookie who are out here trying to make a living, don’t send us all the way out to Troutdale where we have to spend an hour and a half to get back to town so we can work and then an hour and a half to get back and if we work late, miss the bus getting back … You know, no. It’s a concentration camp.
Miller: You’re saying that you’d be OK with it for some people but not for you.
McEntire: Not for me.
Miller: How should the city, or whoever, figure out who it’s OK for?
McEntire: The ones that ain’t working and ain’t doing nothing. They’re sitting there flying a sign or panhandling. Shoot them out there, because that’s not living, that’s bumming. That’s all that is. That’s bumming. You got people who are burning down homeless people’s tents. You got people walking by and kicking a homeless person’s tent and breaking it.
Miller: It’s happened to you?
McEntire: Yes, it happened just the other day. The tents broke. I have a tent inside of a tent, luckily, but my outside tent is busted. And it’s borrowed, so now I have to make $89 and replace that tent to its owner. And you’re forcing people to go to a place …
Now these people that are all doped out like that, take them out there and dry them out. And these other tent cities that got the safe tents? I don’t approve.
Miller: A safe tent?
McEntire: A safe tent is a tent inside the camp that, if they’re on heroin or they’re on dope, they can go inside that tent, do their drugs and be safe if they nod out or get too zonked out they could just lay right there. You’re enabling. You want the dope problem to stop? You want the violence problems to stop? Dry them out.
Miller: After this whole conversation about addiction, Max told us about his own addiction.
McEntire: I’m not gonna lie to you. I got two habits: I smoke cigarettes and I drink beer. I’m a bona fide beeraholic, but I don’t drink while I’m working and I don’t smoke while I’m working. And I don’t let it control me. When I was a kid, homelessness, we call them bums. They lived under bridges. They lived out at the stockyards. They lived out at the rail yards. It’s not gonna go away. What you have to do is try to curb it. You have to curb the things that cause the homelessness.
Gonzalez: For Max, that includes the cost of housing.
McEntire: If you go out … If I went out right now and try to get an apartment, I better have $1,200 in my pocket just to get in the place. How am I gonna get into a place? How? I had a good week. I made $100 some odd dollars off of Venmo on top of the cash money I made.
Miller: That was from being a vendor for Street Roots, and that was a good week?
McEntire: That was a real good week. You’re not gonna cure homelessness. What you can do is you can curb it.
Gonzalez: We headed over to the nonprofit Blanchet House, which is a few blocks away. A line was forming outside for their lunch service.
Miller: Glenna Williams was around the corner. She’s originally from Seattle. She’s been in Portland for about 10 years. I asked how she was doing.
Glenna Williams: I’m in a shelter, but I don’t know how long it’s gonna last. They may close it, but they may move to another place. I don’t know. It’s up in the air. They may close it.
Miller: And before the shelter, where were you living?
Williams: Homeless. You know, there’s absolutely no shelters for women.
Miller: What’s the shelter like compared to when you’re on the street?
Williams: Very, very nice. Yeah, I’m very fortunate that I’m in a shelter.
Miller: What would be most helpful for you right now in your life?
Williams: Well, I’m on disability, so low-income housing. You know, there’s just absolutely no low income housing. Yeah.
Gonzalez: It was a short conversation, but Jennifer Coon and Todd Wright, who are peer support specialists for Blanchet House, were amazed.
Jennifer Coon: So for Glenna to take the time and speak with you, that was remarkable, as Todd just said. Because she, for a long time, as long as I knew her for six months, she never said a word to anybody. She would come every day for meals, but she would just point to what she wanted, and very seldom did she even say hello. So for her to talk with you folks, and that really warmed my heart. I was so pleased to see that.
Miller: What do you think made the difference exactly?
Coon: Well, she’s in a shelter now, and it’s really changed things for her. She’s able to eat meals. She’s able to sleep better. She doesn’t have to sleep with one eye open. And just, on the streets they [experience] sleep deprivation and malnutrition and, you know, just the anxiety of being on the streets. So yeah, she’s just in a much, much better way. And that like I said, that warmed my heart to see her talk with you. I think that’s awesome.
Gonzalez: In the afternoon we went up to an area near Delta Park in North Portland. It’s a grassy and muddy gully along a busy road with a lot of truck traffic. Highway 99E is above the gully. The area had tents, abandoned campsites, trash, and some stripped down cars.
Miller: Christian St. Peter was there. He told us he was originally from Reno and that he arrived two years ago. I asked what brought him to Portland.
Christian St. Peter: Family. Even though they ditched me here, you know? That’s why I’m homeless, so you know how it goes.
Miller: When we showed up, Christian was pounding a stake into the ground. He wanted to put up a tarp to cover his generator. I asked him what an average day is like.
St. Peter: Pretty much just trying to clean up my area and stay out of everybody’s way. But you know, I had somebody try and set my tent on fire last night, so yeah.
Miller: Were you sleeping?
St. Peter: No, I was not. I was waiting for my wife to get home from work.
Miller: What happened?
St. Peter: It was actually the cops that notified me that my other tent was on fire, so they saw it smoking and they said, “hey, is there anybody in there?” And I came out here and they’re like, ‘you know your tent’s on fire?’ And I was like, “oh, I do now,” and I yelled for my brother and he came out with two gallons of water and we put it out.
Miler: And as far as you could tell, somebody did it on purpose.
St. Peter: Yeah, definitely. You can definitely tell because people have been doing that to everybody lately and it’s just becoming ridiculous and they knock their stuff off, but you know they’re never gonna do that because they’re immature little children. And they think that being homeless is a big joke or something like that. But it’s not.For some of us, it’s a way of life because we don’t want to live under the thumb of the government and everybody else. And you know, the way I see it is if I live in an apartment, because I’ve been to jail so many times, that’s like a little prison cell for me that I can leave whenever I want. But I just can’t do the four walls. It just drives me up a wall.
Miller: If someone said, “hey, we have some kind of affordable apartment, affordable housing we can put you in tomorrow,” what would you say?
St. Peter: I’d ask him if it didn’t have a roof and if I could put up my own roof, and I’d put up a tarp, so... Because it would make me feel like I was at home. Because I was homeless in Reno too, but you know, just is what it is. But I don’t see it as a curse. I see it as a blessing, because I get to get back to nature and be who I want to be. You know, and most of us out here get stereotyped as drug addicts or whatever and we’re not drug addicts. Like a pothead is not a drug addict. It’s somebody who just wants to be relaxed and live like they did back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, be one with nature and stuff, so that’s just how it goes.
Miller: Do you want anything from city officials right now?
St. Peter: Honestly, I wish that they would give us like a piece of land that we can do whatever we need to, maybe build up or build some houses, whatever, and just let us do our thing. And if they need to, they can swing by and make sure that everything’s going OK, whatever, whenever they want and make sure that we’re not doing stupid stuff and that we’re taking care of business.
Because as you can see, I’ve already started making a path and everything and because it rains a lot here and so I had to make a drainage jet so we wouldn’t get flooded out. It’d just be nice if the government could see it from our perspective instead of trying to force us to move every God knows how many months, and just stereotype us like the rest of everybody else. Because not all of us steal stuff, you know? Like most of us do, but I for one am not one of those people. Either as my brother, my old lady, or his old lady, so …
Miller: How are you getting by these days?
St. Peter: I have a Social Security check. I make like $1,500 a month, so yeah. And I just choose to be out here, you know? I’m not really suffering out here. None of us are. Well, most of us are suffering, but that’s only because of their own mistakes of stealing people’s [expletive] and thinking that they can just use that to whatever advantage they can. And that’s not fair to the rest of the world and that’s why we get the negative stereotype from the public and all that other stuff. But that’s not even close to who we are.
Miller: What do you think about the idea of having some kind of high capacity encampments, places like big tent cities where the city would say, “OK, you can actually, you can be here,” but meaning you can’t be other places?
St. Peter: Well, depending on where it was like. Yeah, I wouldn’t want it to be in a residential park or something like that. That would drive me up a wall because you always hear the traffic and stuff like that. And you always hear the traffic here too, and honestly some of the public around here are really screwed up and they just need to [expletive] off and leave us alone. Because we’ve had stuff thrown in our tent. And my lady had a car drive past her the other night when she’s walking back from Walmart, and they had frozen eggs and they pegged her in the face with them.
She notified the police and police said they couldn’t do anything about it. That’s just honestly ridiculous. Just because we’re homeless, they won’t even help us, and that’s not fair to us. At one point or another, we paid our taxes too. My wife’s paying her taxes right now because she has a job, and I’ve been looking for a job and hopefully I’ll work over Jubitz because they’re really needing help with the gas and the propane and stuff like that, and I know how to do that.
I was actually raised a mechanic, so I have the tricks of the trade and stuff, but just because of my status, nobody wants to hire me, and they think “oh if I hire him, he’s gonna steal from me,” but that’s just not even true. They need to start being more open minded and be more passive than aggressive with us, that would probably make our lives a lot easier.
Miler: That conversation was from April of 2022.
Every year or two, on one day at the end of January, outreach workers fan out in local communities all around the country to count the number of people who are homeless. It’s called the Point-in-Time count, and it’s required by the federal government. Given just how central homelessness is to regional conversations about nearly every topic, we thought we should see what these surveys are actually like.
So, in January of this year, we tagged along with a group of workers from the Clark County-based Council for the Homeless. It was below freezing, about 28 degrees, and still dark at 6 a.m. when we started out. We drove to a parking lot near I-205. I asked Daniel Rivera, a member of the outreach team, where we were going.
Daniel Rivera: So this is one of the bigger encampments that kind of formed up maybe a few weeks ago. With a lot of encampment cleanups, everybody kind of migrates to an isolated area, and so what you have is three different areas on the freeway that are kind of isolated away from … not really from the public view unless you’re driving.
So we’re gonna walk down there and there’s a little cut underneath the trees, so it’ll be the initial encampment where maybe you have one or two tents. And when we’re gonna break left, we’re gonna cross over the freeway side when it’s safe, and there should be an encampment of like seven or eight tents. In the middle, you probably have about another six or seven, and beyond that on the other side there’s about six or eight tents on that side.
Miller: And these are places that you’ve gone to before to make some kind of outreach?
Rivera: Yeah, we’ve attempted to make engagement. We’ve met a couple of random folks out there just, you know, providing them services and asking them if they’ve ever been connected before through the system, and seeing if they’re interested in getting connected with us.
Miller: So why start here in the morning?
Rivera: It’s a good spot [to] catch people before they head out for the day. I mean, you have people that panhandle, you have people that get up and do whatever they have to do in regards to what they need out here.
Miller: When we got to the first set of tents, Daniel and the rest of the team went to talk to people but asked us to hold back to give them some privacy. After a few minutes, Daniel came back. He told us two people responded in the first tent.
Rivera: And the other one, I’m not really sure if they’re here or not. We’re obviously not going to go inside and invade their space, but we’re actually conducting one of the surveys there. Nina’s making contact with a couple of folks. We’re going to get them some gloves and stuff like that. They were kind of iffy on more people around, but yeah, we’re getting a lot of the information and stuff, getting them connected to our Homeless Connect day, too.
Miller: I asked Daniel what they say when they get to a tent.
Rivera: Just saying “good morning,” asking if they were OK with us talking to them. You know, kind of just feeling out the vibe, if they were OK with us having a presence here. I mean, this is their home, so we want to be very respectful and mindful of that and just asking them if they’re interested in talking to us. And if they are, then we kinda gauge the conversation that way and continue to ask them how comfortable they feel with questions, if they’d like some resources like items, and just kind of figuring out a plan when we can connect the following time to better serve them with whatever they need.
Miller: Do people ever ask you why you’re doing this? Like, what the point of this count is?
Rivera: Yeah, we get that a lot. I think that when you’re experiencing homelessness, especially in Vancouver of all places, it’s very cold. And you know, not many people come out here. I think people feel intimidated and they kind of want to make sure that who they’re talking to is somebody that they feel they can be trusting of, they can feel comfortable with somebody that actually cares enough to ask them what they’re going through. But we do get that question a lot out here, yeah.
Miller: At this point, are there people that you recognize and people who recognize you?
Rivera: Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of familiar faces that come in between each of the encampments. I mean, this is like its own little community, so you’ll have a bunch of people that come in and out and kind of do that word of mouth for you. They’ll be like, “oh, Danny, Jason, Nina.” They’ll come out here and get some stuff. So they’re very appreciative, yeah.
Miller: And they’ll sort of vouch for you a little bit.
Rivera: Yeah, so it’s kind of like a street code kind of word of mouth thing, but yeah, everybody’s pretty cool for the most part, especially because we’re respectful of their space. We’re not coming in here to try to push any agenda. We’re just really here to come and better understand what their situation is to see how we can get them connected.
Miller: How’d you get into this work?
Rivera: I’m actually an LA native, but the way I got into this work is I do care for people. I think growing in a low-income neighborhood when I was younger, I was definitely more interested in understanding ways that I can give back. And I just kind of … Something I dove into working about seven years ago, so just fell in love with it and this is why I’m here today.
Miller: Yeah. What did you fall in love with?
Rivera: I think meeting people just exactly how they are, regardless of whatever they’re experiencing, and talking to them and giving them a space. Connecting is just what I love about this work, because you just… there’s a different story every day, and being there for one another in a community definitely helps get stronger, you know? When people are people and they care for each other, this is just what we do, so it’s exactly how I fell in love with this.
Miller: Charlene Welch, the chief advancement officer for Council for the Homeless, was with us. As I mentioned, it was really cold when we started, 28 degrees. That was a lot colder than the previous year. I asked Charlene how the weather can affect these surveys.
Charlene Welch: I could go either way. People might be more open to services because they’re struggling so much, but there also might be folks who are really deeply hiding because they’re trying to stay warm.
Miller: Charlene told us more about the back end of the count.
Welch: We won’t be able to count everyone in Clark County who’s outside. As Danny said earlier, many people are hidden. So the other strategy for the count is we have the survey Danny was talking about being distributed at meal sites, food banks, and other social service agencies like Clark County Veterans Assistance Center, things like that. And we also count people at Project Homeless Connect.
So then our staff who manage the countywide database for homelessness services will take all of those surveys that were collected on paper, all of the data that these folks are collecting on their special counting app, and then spend a couple of months deduplicating it so that everyone is only counted once.
Miller: Is it hard to deduplicate if you don’t have people’s names? I mean, do you have people’s names?
Welch: We have a confidential database called the Homeless Management Information System, and in that system are names, and then everyone has a confidential identification number. So they spend time doing all the cross referencing. And it’s really important if somebody is not in the system that we follow up to make sure we do circle back.
Miller: So Danny just said that there were two tents there at that encampment, and at one of them there was no answer, and at the other they were able to engage with, I think, two people who were in one of the tents. If you see a tent there, do you assume that someone is living in it unsheltered?
Welch: We only count the people that are interacted with. But now that tent that we’re assuming somebody might have been in is on their radar. Because they’re out every day. So they’ll follow up with that location to ensure that anybody who wasn’t connected, they didn’t get connected to, they’ll circle back.
Miller: When outreach workers do their interviews, they ask a lot of demographic questions as required by the federal government. One of them is the zip code of the last place you lived before you were homeless. Over the years, these counts have shown that the majority of homeless people in Vancouver last had a home in Vancouver. I asked Charlene if that’s a surprise to the general public.
Welch: Yeah, there’s a myth that, because we have relatively great services, or at least a strong system to deliver services, that people will flock to Clark County. And the data does not bear that out. There’s the people who come from Portland, it’s much less than one might assume. And the reason is that people want to stay in the community that they know. They have jobs here, they have kids here, they are going to school here. This is where they grew up, and nobody wants to leave their community to go find help someplace else.
Miller: Oh, but if you ask the average person here about the homeless situation, a lot of them would say it’s Portland. People are coming from Portland.
Welch: Thankfully, there’s a growing awareness in the general population of the impact of the economy, COVID, and the cost of rent are impacting more and more people. There’s a saying that people don’t become homeless when they run out of money, they become homeless when they run out of social support. So if you don’t have a family to lean on who is stable, or friends, then you are much more quickly going to go from house to couch surfing to car to tent. And that’s what we’re trying to interrupt, is that cycle. But it’s like the degrees of separation are shrinking, because I think most people can point to someone in their sphere of who I know that has been impacted by homelessness one way or another.
Miller: Later in the morning, we followed the survey team to a cul-de-sac near a McDonald’s. Three cars and an RV were parked there. Brian Starbuck, a member of the outreach team, started talking to a woman named Hailey who said she didn’t mind if we recorded their interaction.
Brian Starbuck: Have you already been interviewed today for Point-in-Time count?
Hailey: Uh uh.
Starbuck: OK. But most nights you’re sleeping in your vehicle.
Hailey: Yeah.
Starbuck: And what’s your nationality?
Hailey: White.
Starbuck: OK, and is this your first time being homeless?
Hailey: No, I’ve been fighting it ever since my mom passed away when I was 16. I started at 17. But it’s gotten to the point where I can’t, it seems like I can’t move anywhere because of my domestic violence that I’m in. So I don’t know how to get out.
Starbuck: OK, so you’re currently fleeing domestic violence?Hailey: Yes.Currently he is actively in jail.
Starbuck: So how long have you been in your car without a place to live?
Hailey: I’ve been in ‒ this is his car ‒ for 4 years.
Starbuck: And have you stayed in shelter at all in the last three years?
Hailey: No.
Starbuck: And how long have you lived in Clark County? Hailey: Going on six years.
Starbuck: And the zip code for your last permanent address?
Hailey: It was literally right down the road, so I think it’s 98682. It’s literally right where where state patrol is right over there on 48 Circle.
Starbuck: This is… uh, some of these questions are a little touchy. Are you actively in addiction or anything like that?
Hailey: No.
Starbuck: Do you have any health conditions, chronic health conditions or anything like that?
Hailey: I mean, so-so. I have a weak immune disorder, so if somebody’s sick and comes around me, I’m [expletive]. I’m screwed.
Starbuck: So, autoimmune?
Hailey: Yeah, I have a really bad immune system.
Starbuck: Do you have any mental health disorder?
Hailey: Yes.
Starbuck: How about physical disabilities, anything like bad knees, legs, back?
Hailey: I have a bad back, but other than that, no, not really.
Starbuck: Are you receiving any disability benefits, something like that?
Hailey: No, not currently, but I do go to my court date for that next month.
Starbuck: And you said the reason you’re homeless right now is because of domestic violence, correct?
Hailey: Yeah.
Starbuck: If you had to pick two things that would be your biggest barrier to housing, what would those two things be?
Hailey: Two? I honestly … I can’t answer that.
Starbuck: Maybe lack of affordable housing, something like that?
Hailey: Yeah.
Starbuck: OK, so I’ll list some stuff off and just tell me if any of those match this. Okay, criminal history, eviction record, or money owed to a landlord?
Hailey: No.
Starbuck: Finding a place that will also accept pets?
Hailey: Yes.
Starbuck: Lack of income?
Hailey: Yes.
Starbuck: No affordable housing?
Hailey: Yeah.
Starbuck: Mental health or...
Hailey: Yeah.
Starbuck: Medical problems?
Hailey: Yeah.
Starbuck: OK, and you said no substance use. And so no income right now at all?
Hailey: No, no. Not right now.
Starbuck: Are you getting food stamps?
Hailey: Yeah.
Starbuck: Yes, you have a kitty. You’ve got one cat.
Hailey: I mean, my ex-partner who’s the one that’s in jail, he found him behind Once Upon a Child back there just laying in the middle of the parking lot at three days old. Starbuck: So if you need cat food …
Hailey: I need cat litter and cat food.
Starbuck: OK, are you gonna be here?
Hailey: Yes.
Starbuck: So I can either bring you some later this afternoon, it’d be way later, or you could go to the ReTails on 4th Plane. I don’t know how your car’s running.
Hailey: Like [expletive].
Starbuck: OK, so then I can bring you some. They also give away free cat food and dog food. So I’ll bring you some later this afternoon. Send me a text with your name and everything.
Hailey: OK.
Starbuck: It’ll go to this phone and then just say, ‘hey, cat food for me later’ and that way I remember.
Hailey: OK, thank you.
Starbuck: Yeah, no problem.
Miller: After that survey, Brian told me that Hailey was new to him.
Starbuck: Yeah, I’ve never met with her before. I came by here yesterday and there was literally just one tent here. So all these vehicles are new as of last night.
Miller: And they might not be here tomorrow.
Starbuck: Yeah, it’s kind of … you got to chase people down, you got to kind of drive around town to find them sometimes.
Miller: How’d you get into this work?
Starbuck: Oh, well, I grew up in this community. I’ve spent a number of years actually on the streets, these streets here, as a youth myself. So, I eventually got into this work starting working at a shelter, and I just progressed from the working in a shelter to direct street engagement. I’ve been doing this the last five years, so it was something that was pulling on my heart, I could go … I had the chance to give back the same population that I once was a part of. So, I got to this work because this is where my heart is.
Miller: How much do you draw on your own experience when you’re talking to people?
Starbuck: All the time.I think it’s more valuable than most books, honestly, because you can’t learn the stuff that you learned out here in a book. You can read about it, but you can’t learn it and actually go through the things that a lot of these people are experiencing, like living in a car, or fleeing domestic violence, not having nowhere to hide from the abusers, being in the open. It’s hard.
Miller: At one point, we drove to the edge of Pacific Community Park where we found a few cars along with a big RV connected to a generator that was rumbling loudly. Danny, one of the outreach workers we heard from earlier, knocked on the door of the RV and was invited inside. After a few minutes, he came back to give us an update.
Rivera: Yeah, there’s about five people staying in there. I think they’re all helping each other out and staying in the vehicle where it’s warm, but yeah, we’re conducting about four or rive surveys right now.
Welch: Do you think they’re really … Are they family or are they just…
Rivera: It’s just a community, yeah. So, usually in this area we have the cars that you see, and lately there has been some movement where some of them don’t feel as comfortable staying out here because usually you have the public kind of pointing it out. They kind of like trying to just keep to themselves. But the communities inside, they’re all helping each other out, staying warm. Yeah, they’re really interested. They never made contact before, so we’re going to connect with them, get their names and information, see what they’re in need of, and then go from there.
Miller: While we were waiting for those surveys to be completed, a police officer named Jordan Rasmussen pulled up next to us and got out of his car.
Jordan Rasmussen: How’s it going?
Welch: It’s going OK.
Rasmussen: Good. What’s going on?
Welch: We’re with Counsel for the Homeless.
Rasmussen: OK, so, you guys are working on the situation?
Welch: Yeah, we are.
Miller: Charlene explained that she and her team were there as part of the Point in Time count.
Rasmussen: Yeah, you have any luck with contact here?
Welch: Danny has been in the RV.Rivera: Hi, how you doing? Rasmussen: Danny, I’m Jordan. Nice to meet you. Rivera: Nice to meet you. Rasmussen: Did you have any luck with these folks? Rivera: Yeah, we’re, we’re talking to them inside and stuff.Rasmussen: OK.Rivera: Yeah, we’re gonna start working with them... Rasmussen: Is that Derek? Rivera: I can’t really …
Rasmussen: He’s a black male with dreadlocks.
Rivara: I mean, given our HIPAA regulations, we can’t really provide any of that information.
Rasmussen: OK.
Rivera: Yeah, but we are working with the folks in there.
Rasmussen: OK. Well, I’ll let you keep that information. Am I gonna interfere if I step in front of you or go around you?
Welch: We have a staff member in there right now talking to them, so it would be best if they weren’t interrupted.
Rasmussen: OK. Hm, cause I’ve talked with him a couple of times about camping out in the street. This is probably gonna be number four for him. So it would be best if he would take advantage of your services. Is that where he’s, or that his family’s leaning, or…
Rivera: Yeah, we’re making contact and we’re gonna connect them to the resources that they’re in need of and then we’ll continue working with them, yeah.
Rasmussen: OK. And then, are these all your cars?
Welch: These three.
Rivera: That’s my car right there.
Rasmussen: I’ll leave that one alone then. OK, you guys need anything from me?
Welch: Oh no, but thank you. I appreciate you.
Rasmussen: OK. Have a wonderful day.
Rivera: Yeah, thank you.
Miller: Officer Rasmussen walked toward the RV and I asked Charlene some questions. And so do I understand correctly that basically police are gonna do what the police are gonna do, but you don’t want your outreach folks to be associated with the police? Like, you just got some trust, they went in there, they’re talking with him, and now the police officer, if he goes in, all of a sudden you’re the dynamic.
Welch: It will change the dynamic significantly.
Miller: And next time you come by to try to offer services, they’re gonna be like, wait, aren’t you guys you’re just working with police?
Welch: There could be. Yeah, there could be.
Miller: Eventually a second police officer showed up leading to a conversation between those officers, outreach workers, as well as the person from the RV that they seemed to be looking for. Later, Officer Rasmussen told me that he was not authorized to speak, so I asked Danny to sum up what happened.
Rivera: So, I think you guys saw we were engaging with some folks and trying to get their information for how we connect people, and I think a police officer arrived on scene and began to ask certain questions. And when we engage with folks, we’re always covered by HIPAA, which is the Health Information Privacy Practice Act. So we can’t really share information of who we’re working with and what we’re doing unless we have consent of the individual that we’re working with. A lot of people don’t know that.
So you know, when we come out here to outreach, whatever our affiliation is with the person that we’re working with, as much as, whatever privacy and stuff they have going on in their own lives, we are very respectful of that and making sure that their rights are protected while we’re serving them. The police officer was trying to ask certain questions, could not give it, and we connected with him letting him know that we are the outreach workers that come out to this area, so if there’s anybody that you find that hasn’t been connected before you can reach out to us so that we can make some engagement, see how we can get them connected and get them the stuff that they need, as opposed to just kind of like letting them drift off into stuff.
Miller: And then at a certain point, the officer went over there and then one of the people inside the RV came out and they talked and you were there. Can you tell me anything about that conversation?
Rivera: I’m not sure if he was comfortable with me talking about whatever that conversation was, but it was just more about their past conversations that he’s had with the police officer in the past. Then we just communicated to the officer that we would help advocate for their placement into the Road to Home shelter, and we will continue to follow up like that.
Miller: Do you have a sense for how that whole thing would have gone down differently if you hadn’t been there?
Rivara: I have an idea. Yeah, he said they might have probably been arrested, because this is not the first time that they’ve met and encountered. But I think that when we’re here, it’s important for our positions to be able to advocate that we are engaging, that they are willing, that they would like to receive services because that does make the difference. I think there is some sort of public opinion that they might not want to. But sometimes that can be far from the truth.
Miller: Gemma Somol was the other member of the team we followed over the course of the morning. She’s a case manager at Council for the Homeless, and she was one of the people doing the surveys in the RV when the police showed up. I asked her what it takes to do her job.
Gemma Somol: The work that we do is just caring for people. When you get into this work, it really just requires you to have that compassion. And you can find this kind of work everywhere as long as you have compassion, whether it’s just being outreach or working in the office doing other things. I don’t think just anyone will talk to you if you don’t. They can feel that, people who are struggling can feel if you have compassion or not, because they’re already used to being treated or being dehumanized.
And I think that happens so often because we’re so comfortable just processing things too quickly and not being in the moment to understand who we’re talking to. And I think… Even now I’m just angry a little bit still about how our people get treated. I say ‘our’ because everyone should feel like they’re your community. But getting into this work, it’s really because I care. But I keep getting surprised here and there about how people treat each other. I still get surprised. I get angry on the spot. In fact, my team was trying to make me smile on my way here because I’m in every community, and we learn about how we treat each other based on our race, based on our background, and honestly all you really need is compassion to know you can love just anybody and care about them.
Miller: Before we finished, I asked Charlene when the data they were collecting would be released publicly.
Welch: We typically release the Point in Time data and analysis in early March after all of the background work is done to deduplicate the data, and then spend some time as our team looking it over and and putting together all of the report.
Miller: That’s not that long.
Welch: No, it’s not, yeah. It’s a priority because it’s such an important piece of data and then we’ll shift our attention immediately into our annual report of all of 2024 data.
Miller: Thanks very much.
Welch: Oh my gosh, thank you so much. It’s just an honor … it’s an honor to do this work. It’s an honor to know folks who are touching the lives of people in need every day. And even though my job is fundraising and education and planning, I’ve never wanted for anything in my life, and I’m keenly aware of that. And to be part of a community that’s trying to lift others up is just a real privilege.
Miller: Charlene Welch is the chief advancement officer for the Council for the Homeless in Clark County. We talked in January of this year. We also heard from outreach workers Daniel Rivera and Brian Starbuck and caseworker Gemma Somol.
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