Portland under fire for 'enabling' homelessness, drug use by allowing activists to put up empty tents

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Portland drug counselor says activists are putting up tents to encourage homelessness

Portland drug counselor Kevin Dahlgren says the activists are not helping homelessness because one tent 'attracts 50 tents.'

A Portland drug counselor is speaking out against activists placing empty tents around the city, warning the move is encouraging homelessness and drug use as Oregon struggles with one of the highest rates of homelessness in the nation.

Kevin Dahlgren joined "Fox & Friends First" Tuesday to discuss why the tents are the wrong approach to handling the crisis.

"It's become more of a common occurrence where we see activists as simply erecting tents, not for anyone specific, but just for anybody who would like to enter that tent. Sadly, these tents are oftentimes used for drug use and other types of negative behaviors," he said.

"It just makes our jobs harder, the people out there working hard every day to end this humanitarian crisis."

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Dahlgren, who has 27 years of experience in social services, noted the placing of tents is a "West Coast phenomenon" seen in other cities such as San Francisco and Seattle.

"That's really what it comes down to, is they say capitalism has caused homelessness, addiction and everything else," he said.

"What we've seen is sometimes these activists will go back to this perfectly restored park and put tents back up because guess what? It's just looking too good. If the blight is seen, it proves their point in their own minds that capitalism is the root of all evil."

Kevin Dahlgren, a drug and alcohol counselor, looks into an empty tent erected near occupied tents on a Portland sidewalk on Feb. 17, 2023. (Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News Digital)

Dahlgren's day job is reducing homelessness in the City of Gresham, but he spends most of his free time talking to those who live on the streets of Portland. He often posts videos of his conversations on Twitter, hoping to shed light on the West Coast's "dysfunctional system" for addressing homelessness.

Dahlgren argued Tuesday the way to help this crisis is through outreach, not money. 

"It's real outreach. It's real connections with the homeless. It's spending time with them. It's empowering them, not enabling them. That means not bringing needles and fentanyl, foil and straws to them and allowing to continue to use, but empowering them to take control over their own lives and to become self-sufficient."

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"This enabling has created this dependency. And now the homeless, many of them, went from wanting food to needing the food, waiting for the food."

Oregon has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the nation. An estimated 17,959 people were homeless in the state during the nationwide count last year, 11,000 of whom were unsheltered, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Fox News' Hannah Ray Lambert contributed to this report.