In their Aug. 2 commentary, Anne Pringle and Rosanne Graef demand answers from city leaders for a plan to “deal with” unhoused residents who “refuse services and housing.” Their privileged demands spark important questions.

To start, what is actually on offer to people sleeping rough? Affordable housing is virtually nonexistent. Shelters present barriers and hazards for many. It is seemingly beyond the authors’ imaginations that encampment residents have good reason for refusing services (if this is happening). People do not choose to live in tents because they want to be homeless, or whatever absurd thing the housed and indifferent might claim. What is being offered is clearly not meeting the needs of campers, so let’s figure out what would.

It is amazing the dehumanizing way that people who are privileged to be housed – indeed, to own homes – speak about those who lack consistent access to potable water, toilets and safe shelter. People camping out are neither detritus to be swept up nor outsiders to be denied an “open door.” Perhaps it is denial that drives a lack of compassion so pervasive among Portland’s privileged. Denial that the vast majority of us are closer to finding ourselves in a situation of choicelessness than we are to wealth and security.

In the words of the great organizer Grace Lee Boggs: “We must ask ourselves, what time is it on the clock of the world?” The time for compassion and justice is always right now.

Cait Vaughan
Portland