Never Again, Again
PHP’s Jewish Bloc Condemns Portland Mayor’s Proposed Concentration Camps
Last week, the Portland mayor’s office proposed one of their worst ideas: concentration camps. PHP, and specifically the Jewish bloc of PHP, condemn this plan. The three of us: Breeze, Jorah, and Zave felt it was necessary to lend our voices as Jews in opposition to the mayor’s attempt to garner votes by pulling on fascist tropes. We all acknowledge that the housing crisis has resulted in massive amounts of people being displaced, evicted, and priced out of their homes, thus ending up on the streets. We’ve met several people whose rents skyrocketed in their affordable housing units and now face the risk of becoming or are currently houseless. This plan punishes people for being houseless– not a crime– while ignoring the underlying housing and economic crises. The city has no plans for funding, nor a cost estimate, demonstrating that this announcement is an insulting, disgusting political stunt heading into elections.
The city government uses this tactic whenever they want to appeal to “moderate” voters. The city’s attempt to sugar-coat this plan by saying it’s a means of moving the “…vulnerable homeless population closer to the services that they need…” is disingenuous. While they talk about needing to centralize houseless folks, the city spends $2500 every time they sweep people, which costs taxpayers over $4 million per year. Houseless people are scattered because the city scatters them. And now they want to spend even more of our money “fixing” the problem they create daily.
The proposed plan has two components. The first part is a complete ban on camping, and the next creates an intimidation tactic. Folks get the “choice” between being concentrated with hundreds of others experiencing mental health and addiction struggles or being thrown in prison. The options are:
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1) being forced into a traumatizing and confined environment because they’re houseless or
2) being forced into a traumatizing and confined environment because they’re houseless.
We talked with our friends on the streets about this idea. One man we work with said simply: “This plan won’t work. You can’t force people to get better. People respond to how you treat them. People know if they’re being treated like people. This city plan treats people like dogs–” A nuisance to be hidden out of sight, corralled and kenneled, and silenced.
Addiction is an illness, not a crime. Being unhoused is not a crime. Houselessness results from a for-profit capitalist system that privatizes basic human necessities and punishes people for being poor and often for being a minority. Throwing hundreds of strangers with extensive traumatic histories and various physical and mental health needs that require specific and culturally competent care and are in different stages of addiction is inhumane and it will. Not. Work.
Whether you like houseless people or not, this plan is a gross human rights violation that WILL NOT WORK. When has concentrating populations of people into ghettoes ever helped? Have hundreds of people confined to one area, under surveillance, with restricted freedoms and mobility ever resulted in positive outcomes? Why doesn’t the city just fucking house people instead of wasting our time and money on ridiculous, fictitious, fascist ideas that they know won’t work?
As Jews, we say “Never Again” to concentration camps in any form, with any sugar-coated label, for any reason. As Jews, we ask for compassion in responding to the housing crisis. The Torah teaches us to think deeper and to dig below the surface when examining the world around us. We need rent subsidies and grants to keep people housed. We need trauma-informed, individual care for our vulnerable neighbors who fight to survive on the streets daily. We need HOUSING-FIRST models implemented in our city.
We have the research and evidence to show how housing-first approaches drastically reduce houseless and addiction recidivism. We don’t have a city government that cares about people over profits. Our class government caters to the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and working class. How we treat people at the bottom shows how we value human life. 40% of Americans are one paycheck away from poverty. As a society, do we want to continue to head toward concentration camps for the poor?
