REBROADCAST: Homeless people in the Pacific Northwest talk about their experiences

As a part of President Trump's takeover of policing in the nation's capital, he has pledged to remove homeless people and encampments from the city. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said homeless people who don’t leave the city will face punishment in the form of fines and jail time. Cities across the country are struggling  with how to regulate homeless camping, including in the Pacific Northwest. We take this moment to listen back to several conversations we had with people living on the streets of Portland and Vancouver about how they think homelessness should be regulated. 

Back in 2022, then Portland mayor Ted Wheeler pledged to create several huge sanctioned homeless camps at the edges of the city and threatened to send people who wouldn’t go to those camps to jail. OPB’s “Think Out Loud” spent a day on the streets of Portland asking people how they felt about the plan.

Earlier this winter, OPB’s “Think Out Loud” spent a morning with staff and volunteers of the Council for Homeless as they participated in the Point-in-Time count in Vancouver, Washington.  The Point-in-Time count is a federally required snapshot of how many people are experiencing homelessness in a given area.