Lents Leader: Police Homelessness Plan Ignores East Portland

Jesse Cornett blasts Chief Mike Reese for displacing homeless camps east of 82nd Avenue

BAG IT AND TAG IT: A Multnomah County inmate work crew, under the watch of deputies, bags possessions of homeless people evicted from a camp on Oregon Department of Transportation property Oct. 21. State officials say evicted campers can reclaim their belongings.
By AARON MESH

Portland Police Chief Mike Reese roused the sleeping debate over homelessness for another year Tuesday by announcing a new initiative, "Prosper Portland," to clear downtown sidewalks.

He also awakened the ire of East Portland residents, who say police are just shoving homeless camps to the edges of the city.

Lents Neighborhood Association chairman Jesse Cornett sent Reese a blistering letter Tuesday, saying the new police plan only displaces a downtown problem to East Portland.

"From my vantage point, you might as well have launched the 'Prosper PBA' initiative," Cornett writes. "As long as the problem doesn't exist so long as it is just pushed out to the Springwater Corridor, we can barely begin that discussion."

Cornett points out that homeless sweeps in Lents, conducted by the Oregon Department of Transportation, have merely shuffled camps around. WW reported in October how one of those sweeps simply moved campers a few hundred yards to another piece of ODOT land.

"The difference was they were in East Portland," Cornett writes. "It didn't make headlines. And they weren't given a place to go. Just simply displaced."

Mayor Charlie Hales last summer launched a crackdown on homeless campers downtown. He suggested during a press conference that sidewalk sweeps could extend into East Portland.

"There's other places in the city besides the central city where the problem is acute," Hales said in August. "We're not interested in chasing people around."   

But Hales has abandoned any effort to revive the sit-lie law in Salem during the February legislative session.

Here's the full text of Cornett's letter to Reese:

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