Report #15 Protect The Commons
“The Commons” includes streets and sidewalks, parks, libraries, public transit, community gardens, libraries, public restrooms and shared neighborhood spaces. It is where we walk to work, take our children to a park, library or school, wait for a bus, and use and enjoy the city. It is critical to the success of small businesses and is a key part of a city’s livability.
The Commons is also where the homeless sleep, wash, keep warm and dry, store what they own and are found by an outreach worker if they are found at all. And it is where they are disproportionately victims of theft, violence, and trafficking.
Homelessness degrades the commons in many ways. Those who are housed, of course, also contribute to these problems:
- Tents on the sidewalk, public drug use, loitering and litter don’t just look bad, they make the street, library, transit, parks, even your building entryway, feel unsafe.
- Car break-ins and shoplifting impact residents and businesses.
- Poor livability drives out businesses and residents, reducing the tax base.
- Portland Voice estimates the annual public cost of homelessness in Multnomah County conservatively at $838 million. Others have arrived at different figures, but all agree that the spending is huge. That money could have been spent on education, mental health and medical care for all residents of the County.
- And the homeless suffer disproportionately from crime, filth, and poor services.
Protecting the commons often gets framed as a contest between compassion for homeless people and order for everyone else. It is not a contest. The people who suffer most from a degraded commons are the people who live in it.
How We Got Here
Three decisions since 1980 produced the streets we have now. State mental hospitals closed without the community care that was promised. Urban renewal and zoning eliminated a million single room occupancy units, the housing of last resort for poor single adults. And federal housing expenditure was cut.
From the 1990s onward the old charity model to address homelessness gave way to Housing First, which in its original conception included robust treatment for addiction and mental illness. As with deinstitutionalization, the treatment component was ignored or underfunded, and Housing First became, in practice, Housing Only.
Combined with the shift from opioids and cocaine to methamphetamine and fentanyl, the result has been failure. Reports - 5 and 7. Housing without wrap -around services for someone suffering severe addiction or psychosis produces crime, fires and property destruction in the buildings where they are housed, which drives out other tenants and bankrupts providers through soaring insurance costs.
Law of the Commons in Oregon
Oregon House Bill 3115 (2021) requiring any Oregon city or county law that regulates sitting, lying, sleeping or keeping warm and dry on public property be objectively reasonable as to time, place and manner, judged on the totality of the circumstances as applied to all stakeholders, including unhoused people.
Portland’s ban prohibiting camping on public property when reasonable shelter is available began November 1, 2025, with penalties of up to $100 or a week in jail. There are also specific restrictions for public spaces, regardless of shelter availability, that prohibit
obstruction of pedestrian use of the sidewalk and interference with adjacent businesses.
Deflection into treatment as an alternative to fines and jail is prioritized. To date, there have been no convictions, no one was jailed, and no successes, if defined as helping the individual achieve stability and housing. Enforcement is functioning almost entirely as a shelter referral system because the deflection pathway is not effectively implemented.
Federal Policy
Executive Order 14321, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Street” (July 24, 2025) redirects federal homelessness policy from housing toward treatment and enforcement. In its emphasis on treatment, the order names a real failure, but it reverses Housing First policies in favor of treatment programs.
As a practical matter, this will result in many places enforcing camping bans while underfunding treatment programs, driving many homeless to move to more “compassionate” cities like Portland. We already have 10x the homeless rate of neighboring counties, and service providers report 30% or more of the homeless are from out of county. We are unable to treat our own homeless; we cannot become the last refuge for the homeless of other places.
Capacity
The underlying problem is capacity. We can write laws and issue Executive Orders, but homelessness will not be adequately dealt with until there is enough funding for both treatment and housing, especially in an integrated wrap-around package.
In 2026, combined closures by city and county have resulted in 1,566 fewer shelter units. Thus, we are trying to enforce an ordinance which under state law turns on reasonable shelter being available, while removing 1,566 shelter units.
The lack of housing units in the Nation and in Portland is well documented. Portland’s 2023 housing needs analysis reports that 6,000 new units are needed in the city each year until 2045.
The situation is even more acute when it comes to mental health and addiction treatment. Central City Concerns’ President Andy Mendenhall told Portland officials in September 2025 that the region is short 40-50 acute psychiatric hospital beds, 150-200 secure residential treatment beds for step-down care, and about 1,000 outpatient substance-use-disorder slots and roughly 500 transitional recovery housing beds.
On the enforcement side, low-level offenses such as car break-ins, shoplifting, public drug use, and threatening behavior are usually ignored by the police due to staffing shortages. And due to insufficient jail space and judicial system capacity, when a low-level suspect is arrested, they are often released before the policeman has finished the paperwork. This encourages general lawlessness, which harms the taxpaying citizen, businesses, and the homeless.
What Protecting the Commons Would Require
1. Build sufficient shelter, mental health and addiction treatment, and transitional housing capacity for deflection and diversion to be effective.
2. For those who cannot care for themselves, provide stronger intervention including court-mandated treatment and long-term supported/institutional housing.
3. Enforce laws against unsanctioned camping, public drug and alcohol use, and other harmful behavior with an emphasis on diversion/deflection, treatment and referral to services. But jail must be a real alternative.
4. Properly fund all parts of the justice system: police, courts, and jails.
6. Audit service providers against outcomes. Measure success rates, retention and cost per person stabilized, not activities funded. Reports # 13 and 14.
7. Treat public sanitation as necessary infrastructure and staff it.
8. Fund Portland Street Response, an unarmed response to mental health crisis, to 24-hour coverage and evaluate it annually.
9. Publish a report quarterly reporting on dollars spent, work performed and outcomes achieved, for all programs addressing homelessness in Multnomah County.
Conclusion
If the divide between those who prioritize compassion and those who prioritize public order continues to widen, taxpayers and governments will tire of funding programs to address homelessness and settle for sweeping people out of view without moving them toward stability. More people will live and die on our streets, and taxpayers will face higher costs for a problem left addressed ineffectively.
Source Notes
Portland Voice Report #2, A Flood of Money / A Dysfunctional System
Portland Voice Report #4, Further Thoughts on the Spending on Homelessness in Multnomah County
City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, June 28, 2024
League of Oregon Cities on House Bill 3115
OPB, Portland camping ban enforcement records, January 21, 2026
Street Roots, 1,566 fewer beds, May 27, 2026
Executive Order 14321, July 24, 2025
HHS funding announcement, June 17, 2026
Treatment Advocacy Center on psychiatric bed capacity
Cochrane review of compulsory community treatment, summarized
Central City Concern Clean Start
Street Roots on Ground Score and GLITTER, May 28, 2025
City of Portland basic sidewalk cleaning, November 3, 2025
Portland Impact Reduction Program dashboard
City Auditor Report #529, Enhanced Services Districts, August 2020
Multnomah County deflection annual report, 2024 to 2025
Multnomah County board resolution on deflection, February 26, 2026
Washington County deflection year one report
City of Portland, five years of Portland Street Response, February 17, 2026
Portland State University, Portland Street Response evaluations
“Somewhere to go,” BMC Public Health, 2022
KGW investigation into Portland public toilets
OPB on Project Sanitation Justice, Eugene, March 12, 2026
Reporting on the Multnomah County Shigella increase, 2022 to 2025
City of Portland on the GLITTER partnership, November 26, 2024
National Low Income Housing Coalition on the vacatur of the funding criteria
About the 2045 Housing Needs Analysis and Housing Production
Other Posts
Report #14 Why Portland Needs the Five Principles and Accountability Criteria
Report #14 Why Portland Needs the Five Principles and Accountability Criteria A framework for moving from managing homelessness to measurable results Introduction Portland and Multnomah County do not lack compassion, effort, or money. What they lack is a disciplined system that connects those resources to measurable outcomes. For years, our…
Report #13 ACCOUNTABILITY: Measuring Activities OR Results?
Report #13 ACCOUNTABILITY: MEASURING ACTIVITIES OR RESULTS? Accountability is a foundational principle in governance and organizational management. It can be defined as the obligation of individuals or institutions to explain, justify, and answer for their actions, decisions, and use of resources. It means being responsible for one’s conduct and facing…
Report #12 TURNING THE TIDE Reducing the Number of the Homeless
Reality: Inflow Exceeds Outflow Despite immense spending, the Homeless Services Department’s (HSD’s) monthly dashboard reveals a sobering trend. During 2025, the number of people falling into homelessness consistently exceeded those exiting the system. On average, 295 more individuals became homeless each month than those who found a way out. In…