This text was produced for ProPublica’s Native Reporting Community in partnership with Road Roots. Join Dispatches to get tales like this one as quickly as they’re printed.
As the town of Portland, Oregon, clawed its means out of the pandemic, it confronted a brand new set of crises: Town’s homeless inhabitants was rising. Tents lined some metropolis blocks. Excessive-powered enterprise associations held press conferences demanding the town take away homeless individuals and touted self-funded surveys saying that with out motion, companies and residents would flee the town.
By late spring 2021, the town dedicated to a brand new technique that then-Mayor Ted Wheeler mentioned would “reprioritize public well being and security amongst homeless Portlanders,” finally allocating $1.3 billion by the top of 2024.
However though the town spent roughly $200,000 per homeless resident all through that point, deaths of homeless individuals recorded within the county quadrupled, climbing from 113 in 2019 to greater than 450 in 2023, in keeping with the latest knowledge from the Multnomah County Well being Division. The rise in deaths far outpaces the expansion within the homeless inhabitants, which was recorded at 6,300 by a 2023 county census, a quantity most agree is an undercount. The county started together with newly out there state demise information in its 2022 report, which added about 60 deaths to the yearly tolls.
Homeless residents of Multnomah County now die at the next charge than in any main West Coast county with out there homeless mortality knowledge: greater than twice the speed of these in Los Angeles County and the Washington state county containing Seattle and Tacoma. Virtually all of the homeless inhabitants in Multnomah County lives inside Portland metropolis limits.
These deaths got here throughout the identical interval that Portland started a two-pronged response to public strain over homelessness. Metropolis leaders started shifting homeless individuals out of public view by eradicating tents at a charge far surpassing these of its West Coast friends. Since 2021, it carried out 19,000 sweeps, and it dismantled over 20 encampments per day in 2024, in keeping with metropolis information.
On the identical time, the town diminished cash for secure everlasting housing whereas dramatically growing its funding in non permanent shelters. Town spent $19.4 million to accommodate previously homeless Portlanders in 2019, in keeping with the town finances. By 2024, the town budgeted $4.3 million, which housed 391 individuals.
These strikes have been echoed in Trump administration coverage, which has prioritized the compelled removing of homeless individuals from encampments and public areas. For many years prior, the federal authorities’s place emphasised secure housing.
Researchers from 4 universities advised Road Roots and ProPublica that sweep-heavy ways like Portland’s injury security quite than enhance it, putting homeless individuals at higher threat of hurt or demise. Present and former employees members at six native service suppliers, like Rose Haven Govt Director Katie O’Brien, say the town’s method didn’t do what was promised.
O’Brien mentioned extra persons are in disaster after they arrive at Rose Haven, a daytime shelter serving girls and transgender individuals.
“It’s including to the complexities and the challenges that they’re already coping with, mentally, bodily, safety-wise,” mentioned O’Brien.
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Cody Bowman, a spokesperson for the town, referred to as the rise in deaths throughout the latest efforts “heartbreaking and deeply regarding.”
He advised the information organizations the town takes “a multifaceted method to saving lives and supporting people in disaster.” The steps the town has taken embody offering new shelter beds, investing in outreach, sweeping encampments in areas with accidents and floods, and dispatching emergency personnel as a part of the town’s life-saving measures, he mentioned. Bowman additionally mentioned the town skilled sweep crews to make use of medicine that may save somebody who’s overdosing.
Elevated Threat From Sweeps
Homeless residents in Multnomah County die, on common, greater than 30 years sooner than the common U.S. life expectancy of 78, in keeping with the latest Multnomah County homeless fatality report.
Some 1,200 homeless individuals died in Multnomah County from 2019 by way of 2023, in keeping with the Multnomah County Well being Division. Of these, 659 died of drug- and alcohol-related causes, 323 died of pure causes, and 142 died of murder or suicide — a charge about 18 instances increased than among the many normal inhabitants in Portland.
Forcibly shifting homeless individuals can improve overdoses, in keeping with a 2023 peer-reviewed examine printed within the American Medical Affiliation’s journal JAMA. The authors estimated that amongst homeless individuals who inject medicine, those that face repeated sweeps are 10% to 22% extra prone to die from an overdose than those that don’t. They have been additionally far much less prone to acquire medicine for opioid use dysfunction.
“We all know that the extra persons are swept, the extra they lose entry to their drugs,” mentioned Dr. Josh Barocas, a doctor and co-author of the examine. “They lose entry to their neighborhood. And so they lose entry to hope, and due to this fact they really are at elevated threat of overdose and demise.”
Maybe nobody is aware of the dangers to Portland’s homeless inhabitants higher than Dr. William Toepper, a volunteer doctor working to cut back Portland’s rising homeless mortality for the previous seven years. And for the reason that surge in sweeps after 2020, Toepper sees an more and more scattered inhabitants.
“I don’t know why they’re spending this cash on destabilizing individuals and displacing them,” Toepper mentioned of the town of Portland. “I don’t know why anybody thinks that will assist. It’s not like they’re being swept to providers.”
Toepper leads one among 4 crews at Portland Road Drugs, a nonprofit he co-founded in 2018, every crew masking a unique a part of the town. Toepper’s workforce makes weekly rounds in North Portland in and round Delta Park, the place industrial districts and strip malls converge on one of many metropolis’s largest parks. The workforce goes from tent to tent — alongside bike paths, sidewalks, waterways and freeway overpasses — treating wounds, infections and post-operative incisions, and serving to individuals monitor and handle power well being situations. Whereas they’ll’t dispense prescription medicine, they write prescriptions and assist coordinate pharmacy journeys.
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Toepper mentioned medically weak and disabled persons are particularly susceptible to extreme outcomes from sweeps. That was the case with one among Toepper’s sufferers, Debby Beaver, 57, who died in 2019. Beaver had seizures, hypertension and diabetes. She lived in an encampment on the intersection of Southeast thirty fifth Avenue and Yamhill Road, a residential space one block faraway from a bustling procuring district, when metropolis contractors dismantled the encampment and took her drugs, in keeping with a wrongful demise swimsuit filed by her household.
John Mayer, former govt director of a homeless providers nonprofit throughout the road from the place Beaver slept, described her as a “very candy, type of aged stateswoman of the place.”
Beaver died every week after the sweep because of dropping her medicine, in keeping with the lawsuit. In court docket, the personal, for-profit firm employed to take away homeless individuals dwelling within the space mentioned it by no means swept Beaver’s encampment or took her medicine. The corporate maintains its employees didn’t seize Beaver’s medicine, nevertheless it settled the lawsuit for $45,000 in July 2024, with out admitting any wrongdoing.
“It was somewhat little bit of a way of, , this was sure to occur to any individual, and right here it’s,” Toepper mentioned of Beaver’s demise. “Even with this story and with the publicity it gained, and a fairly respectable quantity of witnesses to it, so far as I can inform, nicely, nothing’s modified.”
In an electronic mail to Road Roots and ProPublica, the town acknowledged sweeps may be traumatic or dangerous however mentioned it really works to reduce the dangers. Bowman mentioned the town labored in session with Oregon Justice Useful resource Middle, a civil rights regulation agency, to reduce hurt.
The agency mentioned it represented homeless plaintiffs in a lawsuit in opposition to the town and agreed to a settlement. Whereas the town posts notices saying its contractors will sweep an space within the subsequent three to 10 days, the settlement required the town to offer extra discover the day earlier than a sweep and supply extra exact sweep places and descriptions of things it will discard or save.
“Sweeps in and of themselves are traumatic, dangerous experiences for these experiencing them and are merely not vital to unravel homelessness,” mentioned Alice Lundell, the agency’s communications director. The group “doesn’t endorse or assist the town’s present sweep insurance policies,” she added.
When requested if sweeps led to extra deaths, the town mentioned the connection wanted extra examine.
“We hold detailed information and make our camp removing knowledge publicly out there,” Bowman mentioned. “We’d welcome analysis utilizing that knowledge as a part of a complete evaluation exploring this query.”
Neglecting Housing
The opposite prong of the town’s method to homelessness was a pivot towards shelters and away from long-term housing — one other transfer every of the 4 consultants mentioned may contribute to the growing demise charge amongst homeless individuals. Case narratives from the county report on homeless deaths usually cite a scarcity of secure housing as an element.
Matthew Fowle, a College of Pennsylvania researcher who’s studied homeless mortality, mentioned knowledge reveals cities with strong shelter programs like New York Metropolis and Boston nonetheless have excessive homeless mortality charges, however they’re significantly decrease than Portland’s.
“All options to homeless deaths start and finish with housing — with secure, secure and inexpensive housing,” Fowle mentioned, including that supportive providers typically have to accompany that housing. “It’s a completely vital situation to cut back homeless deaths.”
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In Portland, the choice to concentrate on short-term shelter got here after Wheeler needed to implement a public sleeping ban within the metropolis. A federal court docket had dominated cities couldn’t effective or arrest homeless individuals for public sleeping if the town couldn’t provide shelter. Though the Supreme Court docket has since reversed it, on the time, the federal court docket ruling meant Portland wanted hundreds of shelter beds to implement its ban on public sleeping. Town greater than quadrupled its annual sweep and shelter spending — from $16.3 million in 2021 to $72.5 million in 2025 — including as much as almost 1 / 4 of a billion {dollars} throughout the 5 years. It added 826 shelter beds since 2021.
Multnomah County’s native public shelter system now has roughly 3,000 beds and operates close to capability every night time, in keeping with the county. Though the county homeless census reveals 6,300 homeless individuals on any given day, as many as 15,245 use homeless providers in a month. Some could also be quickly homeless.
Town says emergency shelters are an vital instrument for connecting homeless individuals with providers like dependancy therapy, however critics say shelter restrictions push individuals again to the streets. Shelters are sometimes first-come, first-served, and will prohibit or restrict pets, romantic companions and belongings. Strict in-and-out instances can also preclude homeless Portlanders with jobs.
Town has additionally positioned 651 shed-sized single-person pods with warmth and electrical energy in a number of elements of the town away from the downtown core. The pod cities are managed by contractors, a few of which have confronted criticism for heavy-handed administration, overly strict safety protocols and a complicated referral course of.
Bowman mentioned the town doesn’t view the trouble to handle homelessness as a alternative between shelter and everlasting housing. In an electronic mail to Road Roots and ProPublica, he referenced the town’s inexpensive housing program as proof of a continued funding in everlasting housing. Town spent greater than $1 billion since 2019 to extend inexpensive housing provide to low- and medium-income individuals through the town’s Inclusionary Housing program.
A lot of that housing is out of attain for homeless individuals. Metropolis information present landlords may cost a minimum of $1,229 per 30 days for 95% of the models created beneath this system in 2024, which native and federal requirements deem inexpensive solely to individuals incomes $49,560 or extra.
The shortage of accessible everlasting housing for homeless Portlanders is cited within the county’s annual report on homeless deaths.
Of the 17 narratives printed within the final 5 reviews about people who died, 10 embody some reference to a scarcity of constant entry to housing, shelter, providers or some mixture of the three. A number of narratives talk about emergency shelter not offering long-term options.
Nancy Lee Charlotte Hill, 35, grew up in foster care with bodily and studying disabilities. Hill labored onerous to get by way of highschool with good grades whereas working a job, her sister Loraine mentioned. It was round that point Hill started utilizing medicine and alcohol. She utilized her penchant for onerous work to sobriety, accessing therapy on a number of events. However with out housing, she had nowhere however the streets when she left therapy and struggled to remain sober, her sister advised the county.
She died on a sidewalk July 5, 2023, in downtown Portland close to the Tom McCall Waterfront Park after taking a mixture of fentanyl and methamphetamine.
“Nancy had a robust want to stay her personal path,” her sister mentioned in a story. “However she was solely in her 30s when she died. She had a complete life left to stay.”
John Ellstrom, 54, was one other resident who wanted stability he by no means discovered, mentioned his sister Tamara. Ellstrom first grew to become homeless as a child after operating away from abusive foster houses. He spent years with dependancy and tried to get assist. He managed a yr of sobriety and started renting a spot and going to high school for engineering. He and Tamara have been shut, and she or he did every thing she may to assist him. However he relapsed and was again on the streets. A driver in an SUV struck and killed Ellstrom whereas he walked throughout the Morrison Bridge on Mom’s Day, Could 8, 2022.
“He wanted a spot the place he may’ve stayed and gotten assist,” Tamara advised the county in a story.
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Leah Nash for ProPublica
Knowledge sources for graphic: Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Workplace, Multnomah County Homeless Providers Division, San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Workplace, San Diego Regional Job Power on Homelessness, Los Angeles County Division of Public Well being, Los Angeles Homeless Providers Authority, Public Well being — Seattle & King County, All House — Seattle/King County, Santa Clara County Medical Examiner, Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey, U.S. Division of Housing and City Improvement.
