A Portland city commissioner banned tent, tarp distribution. Then it snowed 11 inches.

A tent is partially collapsed near Northeast 82nd Avenue Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023. Nearly a foot of snow fell Wednesday in Portland.

A day after a late winter storm slammed the city with record snow and cold temperatures this week, Portland Commissioner Rene Gonzalez defended his controversial proposal to temporarily bar Portland Street Response employees from distributing tents and tarps to unsheltered Portlanders.

Gonzalez, elected in November after a campaign that took a law-and-order, centrist approach to homelessness, crime and policing, said the policy change would "save lives" and prevent "life-shattering injuries" from tent fires.

He said data showing more people die from hypothermia on Portland streets than from tent fires doesn't deter him from standing by the policy.

In remarks Thursday to The Oregonian/OregonLive, he also appears for the first time to cite a lawsuit filed in September against the city over tents on sidewalks as part of his reasoning for his decision. And he said reports of "heavy drug use" and crime inside tents were important context behind the policy change.

He said his office is working on developing a permanent, "more nuanced" version of the policy, but is waiting to see how the lawsuit "shakes out" first. The suit alleges the city failed to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act by allowing tent encampments to block sidewalks.

The residents are asking that the city be required to remove tents and related items from all city sidewalks and to construct, buy or make available an adequate amount of shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness forced to move from their makeshift homes. The city currently lacks shelter for an estimated 3,000 or so individuals.

Gonzalez said his office is considering some exemptions to the ban on handing out tents, but won't decide until the lawsuit is over.

In the current frigid snap of lows in the 20s and up to 11 inches of snow in some parts of the city, more than 800 people have used warming centers in Multnomah County and one person is suspected to have died from exposure. The county's medical examiner is investigating if the person, who died Wednesday, succumbed to hypothermia. Authorities have released no other information.

In 2020 and 2021, 11 homeless people died in Multnomah County from hypothermia during colder months. Some of those people died when temperatures were in the 30s – too high to meet Multnomah County's and the city's threshold of 25 degrees for opening emergency warming centers, said Jennifer Vines, Multnomah County health officer.

Two homeless Portlanders have died and 30 people have been injured in 1,277 fires involving tents at homeless encampments since Portland Fire & Rescue began tracking them in 2019, according to the agency's data.

Firefighters couldn't determine a cause in almost 80% of those fires, the data shows. Just 60 of the reported fires – or less than 5% – were caused by a heat source being too close to a combustible, such as a fire too near a flammable material like a tent or tarp, according to the figures.

Gonzalez cited the deaths of so many unsheltered people from the cold as a sign that distributing tents and tarps isn't keeping people warm. Instead, they can put people at greater risk of being seriously burned or dying in a fire, he said.

"We have been distributing incredible numbers of tents and tarps in the region and that's still not preventing hypothermia deaths," Gonzalez said. "I think there's real evidence that it's been a failure in protecting against hypothermia in a material way."

His decision drew immediate criticism from advocates for homeless people worried about the risk of exposure and death in the winter, especially during this late-season plummet into frigid weather.

He and fire officials acknowledged the risks of exposure. But they said they want to focus instead on distributing items that they said pose less of a fire risk, such as sleeping bags, blankets, gloves, hats and coats, and taking people to shelters.

"We’re putting all energies into facilitating – when shelter or warming spaces are available – getting folks that will take it to accept that space," Gonzalez said. "And for folks that won't or for whatever reason can't, then to focus on other warming tools that we deem less dangerous and potentially more effective."

Gonzalez has pointed to what he understood was the distribution of more than 20,000 tents and 60,000 tarps in the last two years to 3,000 people by Multnomah County's Joint Office of Homeless Services.

Denis Theriault, a spokesperson for the Joint Office, said those numbers reflect tents and tarps purchased by the agency early in the pandemic. The bulk of those tents and tarps were distributed about three years ago, when indoor shelters hadn't yet reopened, he said.

The Joint Office these days distributes items from its inventory like gloves, blankets, personal hygiene products, menstruation products and water more often than tents, he said.

But the office continues to distribute tents and tarps, particularly during severe weather events, because they see them as providing potentially life-saving protection from rain, wind chill and snow, Theriault said.

Gonzalez also cited data from the Oregon Burn Center at North Portland's Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, which he said showed an "exponential increase" in the number of hospitalizations of homeless people in the burn unit.

That data, which doesn't reference tent fires or other possible burn causes, shows those hospital stays peaked in 2021 and decreased the following year. The burn center admitted 18 homeless patients for 294 days in 2017. In 2021, the center admitted 93 patients for 1,803 days. Last year, the center admitted 65 people for 1,292 days.

Portland Street Response, the city's emergency response team that sends trained mental health professionals instead of police to people experiencing mental health crises, handed out 463 tents and 193 tarps last year.

Robyn Burek, Portland Street Response program manager, has said that tent fires are a safety concern – but so is the possibility of people succumbing to hypothermia and frostbite. The team will continue distributing winter coats and blankets, Burek said.

Gonzalez said he didn't learn Portland Street Response members were distributing tents and tarps until after taking office. Gonzalez oversees Portland Fire & Rescue, which manages the Street Response program.

Portland Fire & Rescue officials told him that giving away flammable materials presented the fire agency – which is tasked with both preventing and responding to fires – with a "particular challenge," he said.

Fire officials also said they were responding to an increasing number of tent fires.

Isaac McLennan, president of the Portland Fire Fighters Association, said the way to prevent hypothermia and tent fire deaths is to get people into warm, ventilated shelters – ideally permanent housing, which the city has struggled to provide.

"People in the houseless community, they’re trying to keep warm and lighting fires, as anyone would to stay warm. I would," McLellan said. "But there are no smoke detectors in a tent, there's no sprinkler system or mechanical hardware you’d see in a building or a house – we’re using things in ways that are not safe."

Scott Kerman, director of homelessness nonprofit Blanchet House, said earlier this month that he understands the dire need to address the dangers that tent fires pose to unsheltered people, first responders and others in the community. But he said it will leave the city's most vulnerable neighbors even more exposed.

Warming shelters are transitory fixes, Kerman said.

Gonzalez said "ongoing discussions" continue within the city's Bureau of Emergency Management, which he also oversees, about whether to open warming centers at higher temperatures or when weather conditions are less severe.

"The concern becomes that if we have too easy a threshold to trigger emergency response … when things get really, really bad, we won't have the resources and volunteers won't sign up," he said. "It's one thing when that's one or two times per year. It's another if we’re doing this dozens of times or dozens of days in a calendar year."

READ: 6 hours at a SE Portland warming center: ‘This is what we do. We help people’

Multnomah County and the city opened seven warming shelters this week. All the shelters except Lloyd Center closed during the day Saturday, but they will reopen at 8 p.m. More snow is expected in Portland Saturday night.

-- Catalina Gaitán, [email protected], @catalingaitan_

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