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ATIIM BOYKIN
Your Advocate for Portland City Council, At-Large.
Welcome. I'm Atiim Boykin. I live on Spruce Street. My wife and I planted roots in Portland's West End in 2018. Our daughter was born here in 2020. Portland is not a chapter in my story. It is the ground I stand on.
I'm a mental health clinician, community organizer, and artist — with 20 years of working at the intersection of mental health, housing, public safety, and the arts. Not because it was a career path, but because those intersections are where real people live. That's where I live too.
I've spent two decades sitting across from people the system forgot to hear. The decisions made in that chamber are not abstract. They land on real people. On your street. On mine.
I'm running for Portland City Council At-Large because the work doesn't stop at the clinic door or the studio door. It walks home with you.
I'm ready for that responsibility. And I'm asking for your trust.
Every voice deserves a seat at the table. Especially the ones that have been waiting the longest.
Portland is not a chapter in my story. It is the ground I stand on.
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The decisions made in that chamber are not abstract. They land on real people. On your street. On mine.
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Every voice deserves a seat at the table. Especially the ones that have been waiting the longest.
·
Portland is not a chapter in my story. It is the ground I stand on. · The decisions made in that chamber are not abstract. They land on real people. On your street. On mine. · Every voice deserves a seat at the table. Especially the ones that have been waiting the longest. ·
My Priorities
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Housing That Works
Portland should be a place people can stay — not just visit. We need streamlined permitting, responsible density, and housing that people actually need, so Portlanders can remain in Portland.
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Caring for Our Coast
We can't claim to love this place and keep treating it like a trash can. We need cleaner streets and shorelines — starting with smarter trash collection, bins instead of torn-open bags — stronger stewardship, and real accountability for protecting Portland's coast and ocean.
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Keeping Us Safe
Safety starts with connection — knowing whom to call, feeling heard, and getting help before things break down. We need stronger community response systems, safer streets for walking and biking, well-trained crisis response, and better support before crisis becomes harm.
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Building Our City
A strong city depends on the people who keep it running. We need to invest in workers, families, artists, small businesses, and the everyday systems that make Portland livable.
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Growing Our Community
When neighbors know each other, the social fabric gets stronger. We need neighborhood connection, civic participation, and public spaces where people can gather and truly belong.
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A Place for the Arts & Artists
Maine's creative economy supports more than 18,700 jobs and generates $2.5 billion annually — but artists can't afford to stay in the city they help build. We need a self-sustaining Arts & Culture Fund that keeps creatives in Portland.
Homelessness · Addiction · Mental Illness
Portland already has the pieces.
They're just not standing in the same room.
I've spent twenty years inside this work — a first-of-its-kind collaborative court in San Francisco, forensic case management for Maine DHHS across York and Cumberland Counties, and now as Clinical Liaison for Maine State Forensic Services.
Preble Street and MaineHealth do medical coordination. Greater Portland Health runs a health center built for people without stable housing. Commonspace runs recovery housing and jail reentry. Avesta has proven Housing First works here.
What's missing is one door — with a plan waiting on the other side of it — and the honesty to publish whether it's working.
I won't tell you I'll end homelessness in a term, or two. Nobody will, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.
What I can tell you is that Bakersfield and Kern County — a community fourteen times Portland's size — cut chronic homelessness to fewer than three people at any given time. It took them two decades and a system that finally worked faster than the crisis did. I was a young case manager there at the beginning of it.
Significant reduction is real, it's measurable, and it's been done. That's the work I'm asking for a seat to do.
You'll notice this isn't a seventh priority.
That's deliberate. Homelessness isn't a separate problem sitting next to public safety and community — it's what happens where those two meet. A crisis at 2 AM is a safety question. A person with nowhere to be at 2 PM is a belonging question. Same person. Same day.
Pull one thread and it leads to another. Treating them as separate is how we ended up with a system that's dis-membered — good organizations, real effort, no shared door.
So you'll find this work in both places:
Who I Am:
I live in Portland's West End. My wife and I bought our home here in 2018. Our daughter was born here in 2020. Portland is not a campaign stop for me. It is home.
I am a mental health clinician, community organizer, and artist with more than 20 years of experience working at the intersection of mental health, housing, public safety, and the arts. I've spent my career sitting across from people the system forgot to hear — and building systems that actually work.
Before co-founding the Young Adult Court, I directed the Family Support Services program at FACES SF in San Francisco — developing Father Rootz, a 12-session Men's Circle curriculum for court-involved fathers that achieved 96.3% client satisfaction. That work laid the clinical foundation for everything that followed.
As Director of Clinical Case Management at Felton Institute — working in collaboration with the San Francisco Superior Court, the Office of the District Attorney, the Office of the Public Defender, the Adult Probation Department, and Goodwill Industries — I helped found San Francisco's Young Adult Court, the first of its kind in the nation. I led the clinical team responsible for assessments, individual therapy, DBT and life skills groups, and courtroom coordination — creating the conditions that made accountability meaningful for young adults ages 18–25.
In Maine I have supported individuals and families through reentry after incarceration, criminal mental health cases, and parenting capacity matters. I currently serve as Clinical Liaison for Maine State Forensic Services in the Office of Behavioral Health.
As founder of A Thousand WordZ I have produced community events from Oakland to Portland for over two decades. In 2020 I led a team of artists to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.
I serve on the boards of Portland Ovations, the Cultural Alliance of Maine, and Avesta Housing, and on the Circle of Advisors at Indigo Arts Alliance. I am a graduate of Leadership Portland 2022.
The decisions made in that chamber are not abstract. They land on real people. On your street. On mine.
I'm running for Portland City Council At-Large because the work doesn't stop at the clinic door or the studio door. It walks home with you. I'm ready for that responsibility. And I'm asking for your trust.
Every voice deserves a seat at the table. Especially the ones that have been waiting the longest.
