Portland homeless face seemingly endless street to jail cycle

All images courtesy The Oregonian

Posted November 2020

Staff Reporter

The Portland homeless are on a ceaseless route to jail, a notable increase since 2016.

Portland Police has arrested and booked into jail more homeless each year. In 2018, Portland Police made more than 8,000 bookings, the majority of whom committed low-level crimes. Analysis found that 87% of the homeless arrested in 2016 ended up in a familiar cycle of arrest.

According to The Oregonian, 2% of individuals who are booked into jail per year lived in makeshift housing that showed “connections in mental health, addiction, employment or other services.” Emergency shelters alongside with apartment buildings with substance use recovery had to turn away thousands of homeless Portlanders. In 2018, more than half of the arrests in Portland were homeless individuals, reported The Oregonian/OregonLive. The numbers have only escalated, according to booking statistics in February of 2020.

“With a roof over your head, I think it’s a lot easier to try to get clean and sober,” Justin Sawtelle said to The Oregonian.

“With a roof over your head, I think it’s a lot easier to try to get clean and sober.”

-Justin Sawtelle

Justin Sawtelle is comforted by his 2-year-old dog Stella. He spent 20 years homeless and addicted, in and out of jail and prison, before getting into treatment and housing. Photo courtesy The Oregonian.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler queried for an audit for the arrests, but the Independent Police Review discovered bad tracking, which made it impossible to tell if arrests were due to deliberate targeting. In 2019, a program was funded by the city called Portland Street Response to lower interactions between police and the homeless, but the program has yet to be launched. A similar case happened when county officials planned on constructing a resource center for the homeless: money was not secured for the center.

“Oregon ranks near the bottom of nearly every mental health and addiction treatment metric,” reported The Oregonian. The Oregon Health Authority positioned to give a cut to the budget of mental health services due to COVID-19, considering the fact that both homelessness and mental health have worsened with the pandemic.

“If there was more suitable and available treatment, as well as more affordable housing for people who are ready, willing, and able to be off the streets, I believe it would mean that police could have more time and energy to address the things that our community needs them for, like intervening in domestic violence situations, child abuse and sex trafficking, drug and alcohol busts, safer streets, equity, and building bridges to the greater community," said school social worker Caty Buckley.