Oregon bill would allow homeless people to sue residents if they are ‘harassed’

 Tents line the sidewalk on SW Clay St in Portland, Ore., on Dec. 9, 2020

    Oregon Democrats have put forth a bill that would allow homeless people to sue residents for “harassment.”

House Bill 3501, also known as the Right to Rest Act, would allow aggrieved parties to sue for $1,000 for each incident of harassment. It would also decriminalize homeless camps. The bill comes after several years of a worsening homelessness crisis, and many residents complain of harassment and improper behavior on the part of the homeless population in cities such as Portland.

The bill blames homelessness on “economic hardship, a shortage of safe and affordable housing, the inability to obtain gainful employment and a disintegrating social safety net system.” It argues that decriminalizing homeless encampments would allow the state to redirect resources toward the “root causes of homelessness and poverty.”

“It is declared to be the public policy of Oregon to guarantee persons experiencing homelessness participation in the social and economic life of this state, remunerative employment, use of and free movement within public spaces, participation in and receipt of the benefits of the services, programs and activities of state government and local governments and housing accommodations of the person’s choice, without discrimination,” the bill reads.

It defines harassment as a “knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a person experiencing homelessness that a reasonable person would consider as seriously alarming, tormenting or terrorizing of the person experiencing homelessness.” It does not consider the vice versa of homeless people harassing residents — something many have complained about.

Meanwhile, local residents have complained of increasing crime and harassment from the homeless populations of Oregon’s main cities, especially Portland.

In December, a homeless woman was arrested after shoving a 3-year-old girl onto the Gateway Transit Center train tracks in Portland. The girl was waiting for a train with her mother.

Many residents have reported feeling urged to move for the first time, saying the homelessness crisis makes life unbearable.

“It makes you not feel that great about living here. It makes living in the neighborhood harder, not as congenial as it could be,” 30-year-old Portland resident Greg Dilkes said of the homeless encampment along the Peninsula Crossing Trail near his home. “It’s the first time in a long time that we’ve actually seriously thought about moving.”

“Every day if you go from one end of the street to the other, you’re confronting some very difficult situations, people in really dire straits,” one Portland resident said in August, adding that people there felt unsafe.

“Most people don’t want to have to worry about if they can leave their car parked in their driveway overnight without maybe having it broken into. It’s a pretty testy subject,” another said.

Homelessness has surged in Oregon over the past several years, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the course of 2020, the state’s three largest counties experienced a 65% increase in homelessness.