A coalition of business interests and Oregon cities are moving toward the November 2026 ballot with an initiative that would allow cities to broadly criminalize homeless camping.
On Dec. 19, the chief petitioners for Initiative Petition 2026-054—Salem Mayor Julie Hoy; Portland attorney John DiLorenzo; and Preston Mann, external affairs director for Oregon Business & Industry—received a ballot title from the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. That title tells voters that a “yes” vote “repeals ORS 195.530, which requires city and county laws regulating sitting or lying on public property to be objectively reasonable for homeless individuals.”
The genesis of the ballot initiative is a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the summer of 2024 that struck down a long-standing federal circuit court decision, Martin v. Boise, that limited how strictly cities and states could restrict sleeping on the streets, especially when those cities didn’t provide sufficient shelter beds. Many local jurisdictions would now like the freedom to move people along without having to prove they have an “objectively reasonable” place for those people to go…