Portland's Mission to Reduce the Impacts of Urban Campsites the Right Way

Homelessness is a human crisis that constantly calls for solutions in local communities. This crisis means that people displaced from their homes are forced to set up campsites around public areas, which can be unsafe and impede access to city amenities for others. Like other cities across the country, the City of Portland, Oregon, is experiencing the need to clean up shelters in its community that pose a risk and do so in a fair and unbiased manner. This past year, the city turned its urban campsite removal into a process based on a geographic approach, which has resulted in a streamlined automated workflow between government, nonprofit, and private entities and provides transparency to all residents on the city’s efforts.

Portland’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program (IRP) coordinates campsite cleanup on public property and rights-of-way owned by the city. Before implementing geographic information system (GIS) technology into its workflow, the city was processing all intake forms via email first and then using a custom form on PDX Reporter that feeds a database. The city was also using spreadsheets as a means of dispatching mobile workers and storing campsite photos as hyperlinks. The terabytes of data being delivered and stored through email made the work chaotic, and it took an immense effort to manage and keep records up-to-date. In addition, with the number of cleanup requests coming in, there was no easy way to see if multiple reports of the same campsites were submitted, which resulted in duplicated efforts.

The lack of data visualization also made the workflow hard to manage for the three-person team, with team members having to take turns working on weekends to ensure that there was not a massive pile of reports that needed to be taken care of come the start of the work week.

“Our team worked weekends to ensure that our residents’ inquiries were handled in a timely manner. The bandwidth of our team made it difficult to process these requests through our old intake processing system,” said Lucas Hillier, IRP program manager.

Although the city was actively responding to all incoming requests, constituents had no insight into the progress being made, which at times led to heightened tensions among community members and neighborhoods. The city realized it needed a way to not only organize its efforts and workflow but also provide transparency to residents in real time. 

To demonstrate to residents that the city was listening and responding to their requests to the best of its ability, Hillier teamed up with the city’s Corporate GIS (CGIS) team to incorporate a geographic approach into every step of its workflow.

Using the city’s existing 311 app, all urban campsite cleanup requests are automatically extracted and moved to an ArcGIS REST web service where duplicate entries are identified and consolidated into one work order. Using ArcGIS Workforce, a mobile app solution that coordinates mobile workforces, requests would trigger the work order as an assignment for Clean Start, a Central City Concern program. Central City Concern is a nonprofit organization serving people experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness through employment programs (like Clean Start), housing, health care, and recovery services. 

Once they receive the work order, Clean Start staff use ArcGIS Survey123, a form-centric data collection solution, to assess the campsites for the city. Since the staff have lived a shared experience, they can address the situation with more empathy and come off as less confrontational to those experiencing homelessness. The field workers collect key information about everyone at the campsite.

In addition to collecting assessment information, Clean Start staff engage with campers to offer to clean the space around their camps and leave garbage bags on-site. Meanwhile, the city will send trained outreach workers who will offer additional services and resources.

A prioritization score is given to each campsite based on the information the field staff input into the ArcGIS Survey123 form. This score helps the city identify which campsites need to be cleaned up first. Once each campsite has been prioritized, IRP staff also analyze campsites that are located near schools or on streets where there are historically high traffic collision rates. This analysis helps the city further prioritize cleanup requests. Despite a campsite’s initial score, if it is within a school route or dangerous street corridor, staff will raise its priority level.

ArcGIS Workforce consolidates site assessment information collected by field staff that displays priorities for removal. This feature makes it easier for staff to address the higher assessments first, saving time and effort for the IRP team. 

The highest prioritized sites are then issued a legal notification. Using ArcGIS Workforce, this generates a task for a city-contracted cleaning company that removes unhoused people’s items and tents from Portland’s public spaces. The task is to post a legal notice near the site of an upcoming scheduled cleanup effort. The city's contractors use ArcGIS Survey123 to collect additional on-site information and take a picture of the posted notice. 

Once the required amount of time has passed before cleaning up a site, a work order is again generated through ArcGIS Workforce to initiate the cleanup process. Throughout the cleanup process, the city contractor documents personal property taken from the site and placed into storage, takes before and after photos, and documents the types of waste collected (biohazards, sewage, drug paraphernalia)—all through Survey123.  

After the completion of each step of the workflow, the information collected is reflected in real time onto the IRP dashboard, using ArcGIS Dashboards. Using the interactive web app provides instant feedback and status updates about the urban campsites. At any given time, Hillier can have a clear understanding of the program’s operations and ensure all stakeholders involved are addressing the requests on time. 

“I now have full insight on what the program’s progress is on a daily basis, and our program can relay that information to the public without any additional effort on our part,” said Hillier. “The amount of time that was once spent on tracking who was doing what and taking citizen requests can be allocated toward other aspects of the IRP’s objectives.”

Since the city implemented GIS, staff can now streamline report intake processes and deploy mobile workers to a campsite quickly. Since campsite reporting is now displayed on a dynamic dashboard, community members can proactively monitor the campsites in the area as well as their requests. By leveraging GIS, Portland has been able to increase safety and transparency for community members. As of this year, the city has assessed approximately 20,000 campsites and cleans up an average of 97 sites per week. 

“The IRP team can visualize its data much clearer and continue to analyze with additional context,” said Diego Portillo, Corporate GIS manager for the City of Portland. “We’ve streamlined the way the city engages with those experiencing homelessness while maintaining an authoritative system of record. We are now set up to support future initiatives around homelessness and provide the transparency that the city has needed for quite a while.” 

For Portland, GIS facilitated the coordination among several entities with each supporting entity playing a key role in tackling the complex human issue of homelessness. Given that the city is cognizant of the ongoing need for unsheltered Portlanders to have access to safe shelter, sanitary services, mental health, and substance misuse recovery services, GIS will continue to allow the city to take proactive action.