A New ‘Sanitation First’ Pilot Borrows from a Portland Program that’s Moved Most of its Workers into Permanent Housing
Oakland’s new “Sanitation First” policy, unveiled by Mayor Barbara Lee earlier this year, will offer payments to homeless individuals for cleaning up areas surrounding encampments.
“I established the Office of Homeless Solutions so we’re looking at out-of-the-box solutions that are working in other areas to try to put pilots here in our own city to see if it works,” Lee said. The proposed pilot program draws its inspiration from Portland’s GLITTER project, which operates similarly.
Portland’s Successful GLITTER Program
GLITTER, which stands for Ground Score Leading Inclusively Together Through Environmental Recovery, is an innovative program led by the Ground Score Association.
The program focuses on hiring people who are currently experiencing or have recently experienced homelessness to provide specialized waste management services tailored to the needs of their homeless neighbors. Each worker is paid between $20 and $29 an hour to pick up waste along designated routes within the city and provide tent-side trash collection for people living outside…