Hygiene4All

Thank you to Mitch Green for sponsoring an amendment that saves the tax payers $$, reduces 911 calls, and enhances the safety, health, and wellbeing of all communities across the housing divide.

And thank you to Councilors Avalos, Dunphy, Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, & Pirtle Guiney for voting for collaboration over division - paid work / place to p*e, wash, & throw out trash over displacement and dispossession.

We can do this. Right now the City does not ensure those who've lost their housing with trash service, safe/clean toilets, and water to wash with. Right now one has to have a house or apartment to enjoy basic public infrastructure that supports keeping their places clean and healthy. Inequitable access to hygiene and sanitation infrastructure steepens the path to keeping or getting a job and enjoying the dignity, hope, and public acceptance needed for securing an apartment. While serial displacement from support networks of neighbors and organizations and having your belongings confiscated - prolongs and deepens trauma and time spent on the streets. Access to hygiene and sanitation keeps messes from happening, provides income and the joy of helping others - and it costs less that cleaning messes after they happen.

In 2024 the cost of cleaning up one p**p was 310 dollars a pop! No one wants to p**p in the street, no one wants to step in it, and no one enjoys cleaning it up. We can do better for and by our neighbors ! All of them!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Koethv0AqM

PORTLAND, Ore. – May 21, 2026 – Portland City Councilor Mitch Green's Sanitation, Hygiene and Workforce Development amendment (Robert Green 3) passed with a 7 – 5 vote at City Council Wednesday night.

The Sanitation, Hygiene, and Workforce Development amendment redirects $1 million from the City's $14.9 million homelessness sweeps budget into public bathrooms, free laundry services, litter collection and tent side waste collection services, and low-barrier job opportunities that meet people where they are. The amendment includes details that require cuts only be made to funding for camp clearances and exempts cuts to programs this amendment is designed to fund.

"I'm not proposing the defunding of the sweeps program," Councilor Green shared at last night's council meeting. "[But] I can't, in good moral conscience, vote for another budget that maintains this level [of funding for sweeps] without trying to reduce the level of harm by some small measure, and invest it in things that provide dignity."

Green made the case for his amendment on Wednesday by presenting quantitative data and referenced stories from his constituents whose lives are upended by regular contact with the City's sweeps apparatus. This isn't the first time Green has discussed the problem with sweeps and offered solutions to his Council p*ers.

"Constantly displacing and dispossessing traumatized people doesn't solve homelessness, it prolongs it," shared Councilor Green. "Instead of layering trauma on top of trauma, we can redirect these dollars to help people wash their clothes, use a bathroom with dignity, and take the first steps into work. We can address basic sanitation, and we can do it in a way that respects our shared humanity."

Councilor Green spent the last year in consultation with service providers, experts, and constituents who have long advocated for increased investments found in the amendment, as they have been shown to ensure the health and dignity of people experiencing homelessness, alleviate environmental impacts, and benefit local businesses.

https://youtu.be/1Koethv0AqM?si=BMhAFYCJX3Wt6lTw

Where do you go when people say no? Equal access to toilets is about dignity & basic human rights Why Hygiene4All: People are denied access to cafe and restaurant ba...

“You’ve had this job for well over a year. I just want to know, did you get the number down?” [Gillibrand] asked.

“Do we have 700,000 homeless or is it a million?”