The City of Portland has halted all homeless camp clean-ups while officials debate whether to authorize a new contract for the work. According to a memo, the city has not responded to complaints about camps for at least a week now.

City Council was supposed to vote on the new contract in mid-December, but it was pulled from the council agenda the day of the meeting. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty criticized the contract for some of its new additions -- changes the mayor’s office says will make the clean-up work more humane and useful to the city.

The contract is back on the Jan. 8 agenda, and Monday, it seems the commissioners found a compromise that will enable clean-ups to start after the Wednesday vote.

The stakes are reminiscent of a six-month stretch under former Mayor Charlie Hales, who ordered a stop to homeless camp sweeps under what he called a “safe sleep” policy. It was roundly criticized by Portland residents, business leaders and police for what they said resulted in rampant trash and tents near shopping districts, pedestrian paths and neighborhoods.

Currently, through the city’s hotline, One Point of Contact, every complaint about a homeless person, camp or RV is vetted by a team of people who rate the site on a variety of metrics, such as the appearance of drugs and needles, how many yards of trash are visible and if there is obvious criminal activity.

If the camp scores above a certain threshold, a crew of biohazard cleaners are dispatched to move the people living there, then go through the remaining belongings, sorting it into trash and useable property, which is stored in a police facility.

The system has undergone significant changes since it was first implemented. In the last fiscal year, the program cleaned 3,122 campsites, removed 8,400 gallons of human waste, 1,300 tons of garbage, and removed 28,909 hypodermic syringes.

Those numbers have generally increased since the program started in 2014.

City officials have long said that the clean-ups are necessary to make conditions more safe and sanitary for people living outside and to appease business owners and neighbors who are upset about homeless camps.

But the people who clean up have also clashed with people living in camps. They’ve also been the first to find three people who died from drug overdoses in the last six months, according to the mayor’s office.

Officials with the mayor’s office say they have listened to homeless people, advocates and workers to make the scope of work in the new contract more compassionate and effective.

The new contract adds language that says clean-up workers “must be polite, diplomatic and professional at all times, and treat all persons with dignity and respect. Discrimination and harassment shall not be tolerated in any form.”

It also requires that they be trained to administer the drug to reverse opioid overdoses, commonly called naloxone or Narcan, and CPR.

When the weather turns freezing and snowy, those clean-up crews then become outreach workers who are supposed to check on campers’ safety and well-being, distribute hand warmers and trash bags and help them get to shelter.

“We can effectively address public health, environmental, and public safety issues in problematic camps while also being compassionate in our approach," said Mayor Ted Wheeler in a statement Monday. "This contract achieves both goals. This is the case that I will make to my City Council colleagues on Wednesday.”

These duties would all fall to Rapid Response Bio Clean, which has been doing the city’s camp clean-ups for the past five years. The city had a second contractor, Pacific Patrol Services, but let that contract expire at the end of November without renewing it.

The city was only authorized to spend $5 million on clean ups for the past five years. During that time, the city absorbed the clean-up responsibilities of the Oregon Department of Transportation. While that work came with an extra infusion of money, the city has still spent more than was allocated.

When City Council approved drafting a new contract with the intent to sign it at the end of December, another $5 million was set aside for the next five years.

But when Wheeler pulled the new contract from the December agenda in the midst of criticism from Hardesty and homeless advocates, the city spent down the rest of the money.

Lucas Hillier, the program manager for the city’s clean-up coordination system, wrote in a memo dated Jan. 2 to the council that Rapid Response employees had been told to stop working, and can’t resume until the council decides what to do.

The council could also choose to temporarily extend the current contract, but that would mean Rapid Response employees would not be beholden to the additional stipulations.

Few have taken issue with the changes to the contract. Instead, criticism focuses on those doing the work.

Hardesty said that she doesn’t think one company, created around cleaning up biowaste, should also be entrusted to act as outreach workers and medical first responders.

She said she is also concerned about the trauma homeless people experience from constantly being moved and often losing their belongings during the moves.

She joined Street Roots Executive Director Kaia Sand in calling for a reconsideration of the contract. Sand, a homeless advocate with the newspaper of the same name, asked for a six-month delay before approving a new contract to allow advocates and others to figure out an alternative to the One Point of Contact system.

While the contract stipulates that Rapid Response workers carry naloxone and refer people to services, this money would be better spent on actual naloxone-carrying outreach workers from those services. — Kaia Sand (@mkaiasand) December 17, 2019

However, that would likely mean no clean-ups would happen for six months.

But Monday, after a meeting with Wheeler, she announced that she was willing to vote for the new contract -- for the time being.

The contract only covers one year, after which it must be voted to be renewed for the following four years. Hardesty said she is willing to let the work happen for that first year as laid out in the contract, because the new stipulations make it more palatable than extending the current contract.

In the meantime, the commissioners will discuss the camp clean-up system in a work session and hold community meetings to get feedback. She also said she got assurance from Wheeler that he is open to splitting up the Rapid Response contract into smaller ones that assign some of the tasks the biohazard company performs to other groups.

“There is no easy solution to this issue, but I do believe we can and should address it with compassion,” Hardesty said in a statement. “I remain committed to working on a long-term solution with the Mayor and my colleagues that minimizes trauma and public health concerns that ultimately is rooted in our city’s housing crisis. As always, I know that complex problems are best addressed with many voices and I thank those of you that have reached out or met with me to have your voice heard. I am always willing to change my mind and we are best able to address problems when we listen to each other and work together.”

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com | 503-294-5923 | @MollyHarbarger

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