Homeless Portlanders Report Ongoing Issues Retrieving Personal Items After Sweeps

Although it’s a chilly 45 degrees out, Garrett Troupe and Mackenzie B sat at a metal table outside the Starbucks in the Portland State University Urban Center because their dog, Luna, would not handle the sights and smells of the coffee shop with any moderate amount of excitement.

As Troupe lets out a sigh of exhaustion, Luna, a husky and Cascadian timberwolf mix who works as Troupe’s service dog, whimpers — which Troupe says is Luna telling him to “calm down,” as she often does.

Troupe and Mackenzie, who preferred not to use her last name, have been awake for many days. They are tired.

Troupe covers his eyes as the MAX light rail and fire trucks roll by loudly, cringing at the flashing red and white lights. He has epilepsy, which he said makes being homeless even harder than it would usually be. He said epileptic fits seem to always come at the exact wrong time.

“He was about to have a seizure, the dog was freaking out, and that’s when (Rapid Response Bio Clean) showed up,” Mackenzie said. “Then they took all of our stuff.”

Troupe and Mackenzie said Rapid Response Bio Clean, commonly referred to as Rapid Response, swept their encampments twice in 2023. Each instance was uniquely traumatizing for the family — Troupe, Mackenzie, Luna and their two cats, whom Mackenzie lovingly refers to as “her boys.”

Mackenzie said Rapid Response, a private biohazard and waste removal company contracted by the city for a recently-upped total of $22.9 million, largely to carry out city-ordered sweeps of homeless encampments, first swept their encampment in June 2023.

Increase in sweeps

Sweeps increased dramatically alongside the growing homeless population during Mayor Ted Wheeler’s time in office, with an unprecedented 5,000 sweeps carried out since November 2022 — a daily average of 19 sweeps.

The most common type of sweep, which the city refers to as a “campsite removal,” begins with a posted notice the “campsite will be cleared no less than seventy-two (72) hours after and within ten (10) days of” the posting date. The notice explains, “all property confiscated from this camp will be maintained by Rapid Response Bio Clean, at their storage facility, for a minimum of thirty (30) days.” Rapid Response is then supposed to return in that three-day to 10-day time frame to remove all remaining possessions, trash and debris from the site.

These common sweeps are carried out based on referrals from the city’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program, or HUCIRP. HUCIRP uses a scale of immediate threat for individual encampments, which are graded from 0-100. Encampments meeting a certain threshold are then designated for a sweep.

Rapid Response’s contract requires it to follow certain city-approved procedures. These policies and procedures, laid out on the city’s website, include posting the 72-hour notice, a prohibition on discarding usable personal belongings and storing confiscated items in a warehouse, the address for which must be available to unhoused residents.

When a homeless Portlander is not present for a sweep, Rapid Response is then required to determine what is or is not a usable personal belonging, a process which, as covered by Street Roots in recent years, is not standardized and has led to numerous complaints and litigation. Homeless Portlanders frequently accuse Rapid Response of improperly disposing usable items as trash.

While the city maintains a complaint form for Rapid Response, filing a complaint requires access to a device or computer with an internet connection.

The city of Portland did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication. Mike Casey, Rapid Response operations specialist, said Jan. 12, the business could not respond to questions by the time of publication with staff “in the field and engaged in outreach due to the inclement weather.” Casey referred Street Roots to policies listed on the city’s website.

Per city policy, Rapid Response is to itemize and organize all confiscated usable items in its warehouse so as to make the item retrieval process as simple and effective as possible.

Troupe and Mackenzie, however, did not have the smooth experience described in detail by city policy.

The couple said their 10-person tent contained a couple of three-tier rollaway toolboxes, hundreds of dollars in cash, and a variety of other personal belongings.

Troupe is a self-proclaimed “jack of all trades,” and most of his work is contracted carpentry and other construction jobs. Those tools, to him, represented thousands of dollars of work.

The couple, Mackenzie says, were in the process of getting back on their feet. They both had steady work for a good amount of time and were looking at getting into long-term housing, which made the sweep — and losing their savings and belongings — all the more devastating.

What typically happens during a sweep, in Mackenzie’s experience, is Rapid Response arrives and tells homeless Portlanders they have 10 minutes to remove all of their belongings from the area. As a result, many people end up having a majority of their belongings taken by Rapid Response employees because they can only carry so much in the allotted time.

While Rapid Response posts the 72-hour notice, and is supposed to return in that three-day to 10-day window, the city or its contractors commonly return late in the 10 day window and rather than sweeping the encampment, post a new notice, effectively extending the window for when contractors will return to sweep the encampment.

The city re-posted more than half of all encampments included in a 2022 Street Roots analysis.  The practice creates uncertainty and lulls people into a false sense of security, as does the broad three-day to 10-day initial window, service providers told Street Roots at the time. It also increases the risk that people will be absent or unprepared to remove their belongings when Rapid Response shows up.

Troupe and Mackenzie weren’t prepared when Rapid Response came knocking, and that’s how the couple says they lost the toolboxes and other valuables. Troupe said losing the tools cost him his job and any other work opportunities in the near future.

Troupe and Mackenzie made the trek to the Rapid Response warehouse in Southeast Portland and found what Troupe described as a “free for all,” with a giant pile of belongings open to anyone who cared to come to the warehouse.

Troupe and Mackenzie said they didn’t find any of their things in the warehouse. They did say, however, they found their items in the possession of other people on the streets, who presumably found the couple’s belongings in the warehouse and took them for themselves.

The second time, Rapid Response posted a notice, and eventually acted on it, telling the couple to move their belongings again.

“They said, ‘As long as you go a couple blocks that way, you’ll be fine,’” Mackenzie recalls being told.

The couple moved their tent, pets and belongings to where Rapid Response employees told them they’d be safe to stay. However, the employees didn’t stay true to their word. Street Roots covered a similar situation in 2022, when Rapid Response instructed a homeless Portlander to move their belongings around the corner to avoid being swept, only for the same crew to return hours later to sweep the area they previously said was safe.

“A couple days later, they came back with the cops and told us we had five minutes to get our animals and what we needed and move, or else we’d get arrested,” Mackenzie said.

Police, according to city policy, are not to be involved in common sweeps unless all non-confrontational and de-escalation efforts made by city contractors have failed. This is true except in the case of abatement sweeps, a different procedure intended for emergencies in which little or no notice is given. Police often accompany Rapid Response in their initial contact with homeless Portlanders and remain during the remainder of the abatement sweep.

Not an isolated incident

Troupe and Mackenzie aren’t the only homeless Portlanders who say they were unable to retrieve their belongings after a sweep. Far from it, in fact.

Liz Starke, Rose Haven development director, said Troupe and Mackenzie’s accounts are not rare.

“I’ve heard stories daily about interactions with Rapid Response,” Starke said.

On the streets, the prevailing narrative about Rapid Response is that of confusion, disruption and uncertainty among homeless Portlanders in response to what is essentially an eviction on the streets.

Denise Engall, a frequent Rose Haven visitor, said when Rapid Response swept her camp, she did as the posted notice dictated and called the number associated with Rapid Response in an attempt to retrieve her belongings. After telling them her name and the location of her camp, she said Rapid Response told her they had no recollection of ever collecting her belongings.

“It’s the Rapid Response way to say, ‘We don’t know about that,’” Engall said.

Eventually, she said she was able to track someone down at Rapid Response who remembered the sweep, and made an appointment with Rapid Response to retrieve her items. She was also asked to provide identification, which, according to outlines set by the city, is not standard for Rapid Response.

Once she got to the warehouse, all that was left of all her belongings was a rain fly and a rollaway bed. Engall said she lost jewelry, medication and a variety of other valuable belongings.

Kelli McBride, another regular at Rose Haven, found her interactions with Rapid Response to be similarly disconcerting.

McBride says she was roused out of her tent at 6 a.m. by Rapid Response employees, which was an enormous surprise as, according to McBride, Rapid Response had never posted a sweep notice at her campsite.

“They either don’t post a sign for a sweep, or they post, don’t show (at the time listed on the notice), and come five days later,” McBride said.

In 2023, the Street Roots ambassador program staged an experiment that corroborated much of the confusion and disarray described by other homeless Portlanders. The ambassadors set up tents in a soon-to-be-swept location to gather a better understanding of the belonging retrieval process.

After a process described as “far from smooth” in the project’s subsequent report, the team members were unable to successfully recover the majority of the belongings left to Rapid Response’s mercy.

When asked why so many of their things went missing, Rapid Response said other homeless Portlanders had stolen the items from the encampment, according to the report.

After Rapid Response asked the ambassadors to leave their camp, Rapid Response was unable to clean the entire encampment in one day. It then left the team’s tent out in the open overnight, unoccupied, and returned in the morning. This meant people could have easily gone into the tent and taken things since the residents of the area had left as instructed.

Starke said chaos and confusion are the norm for Rapid Response. As a whole, she said, the way Rapid Response is doing things is not working, and it’s not helping to end homelessness in any capacity.

“The system to get belongings back is challenging and confusing,” Starke said. “The information told by workers isn’t always accurate, the time and place they’re supposed to pick up their things isn’t always actually there, and people’s things aren’t put in safe places.

“There’s a general theme of discontent. It seems like they don’t want people to get their stuff back.”

Michael Fuller, a pro bono attorney who works with low-income clients, nicknamed the “Underdog Lawyer,” said the manner in which Rapid Response carries out the city-sanctioned sweeps is flat-out illegal.

Fuller refers to the taking of people’s property by Rapid Response as “conversion,” the legal term used for theft of personal property in civil cases.

Fuller successfully sued Rapid Response on multiple occasions, claiming conversion. But he said it’s difficult to sue Rapid Response and achieve any tangible change in its behavior.

“Rapid response has a sense of entitlement because (it’s) dealing with a population who is unlikely to have access to lawyers or the courts,” Fuller said. “They’re dealing with a population unlikely to be treated or viewed favorably by law enforcement.”