A homeless encampment known as ‘The Pit’ in downtown Portland has been cleared and private security guards are patrolling the area in the latest effort to clean up the seedy metro.
The tent neighborhood has long been an eyesore in the city, where large crowds of homeless have been set up under the Steel Bridge at the Willamette River.
But local residents praised removal teams and biohazard teams who descended on the site this week, forcibly moving 19 people into a mass-sanctioned campsite in the southeast of the city on Monday.
“They finally got their eviction notice, thank God,” said resident Aaliyah Mays, who told KGW that she has been reporting the encampment to the city for two and a half years.
The latest push to clear the area appears to have stemmed from a fire that broke out in an underbridge section of the camp, with contractors working on the burnt area hiring private guards to patrol the area and their equipment protect.
Long rows of tents have plagued downtown Portland for years, angering residents and leading to seedy, open-air drug use
Drug users smoke fentanyl, a powerful opioid, in once-thriving downtown Portland near ‘The Pit’ camp
Local resident Aaliyah Mays celebrated the move, saying she had been complaining about The Pit for more than two years, saying: ‘They finally got their eviction notice, thank God’
“We’re finally getting our neighborhood back,” Mays added, with the community finally seeing progress after years of Portland’s homeless crisis.
The pit has been a persistent problem for the city center, where previous attempts to clean up the camp have seen the tents quickly return.
This dynamic, which has also seen San Francisco residents beset by the issue, has led Mays to temper her expectations about The Pit staying cleaned up.
“It would be naive of anyone to trust a system that has failed you so many times in the past,” she added.
Portland officials say homeless individuals will be given a two-week deadline to move before clearing the area.
Large rocks were also placed under the bridge to prevent people from having space to pitch a tent.
Multnomah County’s homeless population reached 5,228 last year — an increase of more than 1,200 over 2019
A section of ‘The Pit’ under the bridge caught fire earlier this year, with contractors tasked with clearing the area hiring the security guards who patrol the camp
Homeless individuals are given a two-week deadline to clear the area before they will be forcibly removed
The camp was littered with tents before the latest push to clear the area, with 19 homeless people relocated this week and security guards stationed to ensure they don’t return.
Armed security guards roaming the area and forcibly stopping any new tents being set up are also seen by some as a stronger show of force against the homeless crisis than the city has taken in previous years.
Brandon Schandler, a guard tasked with keeping the area clean, said his role was to ‘enforce’ the camping ban. He said that if a homeless person refuses to leave, he files a report and a city authority unceremoniously removes them.
“They will have a response unit come here to help remove the individual if they have been defiant and not complying with the request to leave,” he said.
“The city is doing the best they can in my opinion, it’s just a really big problem.”
Tents line the sidewalk on SW Clay St in Portland, Oregon
An investigation by KGW found that Multnomah County, the Oregon Department of Transportation and the city of Portland all denied paying for the security.
The contractor tasked with the burnt out section of The Pit was apparently the reason for the security guards, with construction companies often leaving their equipment on site as an industry norm.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation said the contractor was hired “to repair the wall casing under the Steel Bridge ramps.”
‘It is common practice for construction contractors to keep materials and equipment on a job site 24 hours a day and to hire security personnel to monitor the area to keep their materials safe.
“That’s what the contractor did in this case as well.”