The Portland City Council rejected a woke lawmaker’s plan that would have cut $4.3 million from the city’s homeless-camp-removal program that aims to find housing for unsheltered people.
An amendment to the fall budget was proposed by Councilor Angelita Morillo, a progressive member of the council who says she was once homeless in the city.
‘The key thing we are trying to get at with this amendment is to simply reduce the number of sweeps that are happening. We have had a pretty aggressive uptick in the number of sweeps,’ Morillo said at a Wednesday council meeting that dragged on more for than nine hours as members harshly debated one another.
‘And while we know that there are some cases where it’s needed, this has become an exorbitant cost for the city where we’re just funneling millions and millions of dollars and we’re not actually resolving homelessness,’ she added.
Dozens of citizens showed up to the meeting to give public testimony, a process that lasted for three hours, according to the livestream of the meeting.
As of this month, a total of 12,034 people are experiencing homelessness in Portland’s tri-county area, according to a report by Portland State University (PSU)’s Homeless Research & Action Collaborative.
That number has risen 61 percent from 2023 and is spread out across Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties, per the report.
Morillo pointed out that the city’s Impact Reduction Program (IRP), which is responsible for cleaning up encampments, is on track to remove 8,000 camps this fiscal year. The IRP projected it would remove 6,500 at most.
Angelita Morillo, a progressive member of the Portland City Council, proposed a budget amendment that would have cut the $14 million budget for homeless encampment removals by $4.3 million
Pictured: A homeless encampment in downtown Portland on October 10, 2025
The IRP is described on the city’s official government website as aiming to ‘minimize the impacts of homelessness today while partner programs expand access to safe, affordable housing.’
‘We provide garbage removal, hygiene access, resource referral and job opportunities – and remove campsites that pose the highest risk to health and safety,’ it says.
At the meeting Wednesday, City Councilor Steve Novick offered the most criticism of Morillo’s amendment.
‘Councilor, you said that in some cases…you think that camps should be removed,’ Novick told Morillo, who was seated next to him.
‘We are not cutting the full program,’ she responded.
Novick continued to press her on specifics, wanting to know precisely how much of a decrease in camp removals Morillo was targeting.
‘You know that budget decisions force policy choices, and I’m just saying that I would have expected before presenting a budget amendment that you would have had a discussion with the Housing and Homeless Committee about…what it would mean for what types of camps are removed,’ he said.
‘We are asking for fewer sweeps, we are asking for more upstream solutions,’ she replied, suggesting more rental assistance for people trying to escape homelessness.
‘So just fewer? Not fewer by X percent? Not fewer based in a certain criteria? Just fewer?’ Novick pressed.
‘Right, you can do as much as you can with the amount of money that we are giving you,’ she said of the IRP team.
Councilor Steve Novick repeatedly asked Morillo pointed questions about her amendment during the Wednesday meeting
Business owner Emily Stutzman told KGW she was against the cuts to homeless sweeps.
‘There are people who put their camps up around my businesses, and it deters my employees from coming in because they are scared,’ she said. ‘I also have clients that are uncomfortable coming to my business because there’s been violence and there’s fires and there’s scary things.’
John Collins, who used to live under a bridge in Portland, told KGW that he supported Morillo’s amendment.
He said that his encampment was swept at least three times by city crews, and all that happened was they moved across the street.
Collins argued that if the government does not spend money on actually getting homeless people into homes, clearing the encampments is ‘just a waste of money’.
Morillo’s amendment had five votes in favor and three votes against. Because because four councilors were absent, their votes were de-facto No’s, leading to her proposal failing.
