The Homeless Camps’ Disease Trifecta
13th January 2024
The Portland, Oregon, area is currently experiencing an explosion of shigellosis, a highly infectious, often antibiotic-resistant intestinal disease caused by contact with human feces.
Most of the outbreak—at least 218 cases in 2023, 45 of them reported in December—has taken place in Old Town, a once-lively restaurant and shopping destination near downtown Portland that’s now the site of numerous homeless encampments whose residents often use sidewalks as restrooms.
The Portland City Council, alarmed at a surge in the area’s homeless population, now estimated at about 6,000, in June 2023 passed severe restrictions on camping in public places. Tents and campsites are now technically banned during daytime hours and limited to certain designated areas at night. But no one in famously progressive Portland tried to enforce the legislation until the fall, when this latest infestation of shigella bacteria (there had been a similar outbreak among the homeless in 2021) began to generate headlines.