One-Third of Portlanders Killed by Cars Last Year Were Homeless

One-third of people killed by cars last year in Portland were homeless, according to the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s yearly report on traffic deaths, released on Wednesday.

2021 was a record year: 63 people from car crashes, the highest number in three decades. Twenty-one of those people were homeless.

That’s a factor in Portland’s spike in traffic deaths first identified late last year by Ashton Simpson, a walking safety advocate running for Metro Council. In December, Simpson said people living next to highways were at greater risk of being killed by cars.

“They’re just trying to get to the corner store right across from their camp, and there’s no clear crossing,” Simpson tells WW. “What happens when someone’s having a mental breakdown at 3 in the morning and they get struck on [Interstate] 84? Because they’re right there.”

Simpson, who’s the executive director of an advocacy group for safer streets called Oregon Walks, elaborated on that observation in an extensive interview with WW to open the new year.

“Number one, we have to grapple with our homeless situation. A third of our pedestrian fatalities this year and last were folks living on the streets. We’ve got to take care of them. Second, east of I-205 is almost a forgotten land,” Simpson told WW. “I’m tired of seeing downtown being fine-tuned. We need to absolutely make sure every corner down there is Americans with Disabilities Act accessible, for example. But you can get around pretty well downtown. In communities out here where there is no sidewalk at all, people are dying.”

Now the Portland Bureau of Transportation has offered a firm number that corroborates Simpson’s finding. And it goes further: 19 of the 27 pedestrians killed by traffic were homeless. That’s 70%.

“PBOT has not tracked the housing status of victims in the past, but these numbers in 2021 stood out and represent an alarming pattern we’ll track more closely in the future,” the report says.

In its report, the transportation agency identified speed and impairment by drugs or alcohol as two of the biggest factors contributing to increased traffic deaths—but said the high number of hit-and-runs clouds clearer data.

The same number of people died on foot, scooter or skateboard in 2021 as people who died in their vehicles: 27.

The city has identified what it calls “high-crash corridors,” or the most dangerous streets in the city where the most people are killed every year. Similar to previous years, 60% of this year’s deaths occurred on just 8% of the city’s streets.

This article was published with support from the Jackson Foundation, whose mission is: “To promote the welfare of the public of the City of Portland or the State of Oregon, or both.”