Portland City Council Candidate Stuart Emmons Claims Homeless People Asked Him to Run

Emmons put out some fear-mongering literature about tents coming to your street but says he's running to be the voice of homeless people.

RVs parked on Lombard Street in St. Johns. (Daniel Stindt)

City Council candidate Stuart Emmons is running for office on the issues of housing and homelessness—and striking and unusually confrontational tone.

Emmons, an architect, has received some notoriety for mailing out personalized and fear-mongering campaign literature about "homeless tents" coming to a street near you. (Emmons says that was aimed at creating a sense of urgency.)

Stuart Emmons (Walker Stockly)

But in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting, published May 7, Emmons says his message has met with support from the homeless community.

"People on the street urged me to run," Emmons told OPB. "I feel a calling from those people. I am their voice."

As reporter Amelia Templeton noted, however, in last week's OPB Politics Now podcast, Emmons doesn't have official endorsements from any homeless advocacy groups to back up his claim.

When contacted by WW to ask for specific endorsements from homeless people and advocacy groups, Emmons declined to give names but said he's been canvassing the streets:

"I have talked to over a hundred people experiencing homelessness in the last year, and many more before that. You are welcome to look at my facebook feed for more details. From Old Town, to the Central Eastside, to Lents, to the Springwater Corridor, to St. Johns, to my own neighborhood. I listen. Everyone's stories are different. What I learned from people living on our streets was incorporated into The Portland Home Project [his proposal for ending street homelessness in two years]. After talking for awhile, I tell people living in tents and doorways that I am running for City Council, and almost always a smile comes on their face. And they say they will support me, and will tell their friends. They know I care. And yes, I absolutely will be their voice. No, I am not going to give you their names, that would be disrespectful to a lot of good people who have had a hard time recently."

It's true that Emmons' social media feed has been full of tents and references to homeless people, but he hasn't always gotten the response he was seeking. In a post from October:

Last year, Emmons also Tweeted a photo of his hand with money in it, with the promise that it was the first of many cash handouts he provided the homeless people.

That tweet was met with a vocal backlash, accusing him of poor taste. He deleted the tweet and has since deleted his Twitter account.

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