The homeless crisis is the most urgent issue facing our communities, and we need some serious radical acceptance of what it takes to see that people can be successful.
We are all in favor of humane treatment for every human being. Treating the homeless like irresponsible children is not an answer to the problems we face as a community. We are suffering from an awful combination of homelessness, drug addiction, and completely inadequate government leadership.
The complaints that have overwhelmed you and the rest of our Public Officials have “not” been about inhumane treatment of the people living on our streets. The complaints that have been consistently, and loudly, begging for action, are crimes committed by these individuals, the unsafe and unhealthy conditions that they are exposing the public to, the trash that flows from every “camp” and the trashy unsafe vehicles and boats they live in creating a third world impression of poverty in our once beautiful City, and the vandalism that is being committed by more than a few of the criminals that are hiding among
Criminals Hiding among the unfortunate honest and otherwise innocent victims of poverty and mental illness. The vandalism of graffiti that is making us look like Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, and Washington D. C.
Unlike you and compatriots from the City and County, I personally donate my time working directly with our homeless population, and I spend 24 hours a week driving through every neighborhood you are supposed to be helping. Every week I hear the stories of mental illness and drug addiction in my volunteer work, and I see the places where hidden camps and streets full of illegal motor homes and trailers have moved after you have swept them from more visible locations.
It is so disappointing to me and everyone I come into contact with (at least 30 new people each week) to see easily identifiable illegal trailers, cars, and motor homes being moved from one place to another and returning to their original location after a few weeks or months. How can we have any confidence in you to solve these problems when you have a 3 1/2 record of complete incompetence at enforcing the laws that create a safe, clean, and livable environment. Laws that have been agreed upon and enforced for over a hundred years in many cases.
Don’t stand up there and regurgitate statements of things you are going to do, be quiet and work smarter and more effectively to solve the problems that have ruined our town, and when you have actually done something then you can come to us with a list of your accomplishments, until then don’t make any more speeches.
Why should we believe any of your promises, especially those that require the participation of Multnomah County, when the City of Portland and the County have such a dismal track record?
Here's the operative expression insofar as the City and County's homeless policies and practices are concerned: "Credibility Gap." Most Portlanders believe that the City of Portland and the County care more about the homeless than they do about the residents, neighborhoods, businesses and visitors who are harmed by unchecked homelessness that has ballooned in the past five years.
What's missing here is any acknowledgement of what's gone wrong in the past. For example, it is widely acknowledged, even by some County commissioners, that Multnomah County's management of the nonprofits to which it outsources so many of the services it has pledged to deliver is abysmally poor. Nobody tracks what the contractors are being paid to and when; they don't know whether the contractors have complied with their contractual obligations; and are not holding nonprofits accountable for falling short. Please give me the names of the people who are going to reform this mess and what their deadline will be.
Also missing from this high level summary is any mention of deadlines or of a plan to assess how well the various parties are meeting their obligations.
History shows that whenever the City and County attempt regulate the homeless in order to improve the quality of life for the Portlanders who have managed to remain housed and employed a small but very vocal and connected contingent of activists and their allies in the press do everything in their power to obstruct it. That has got to end. Portland's voter/taxpayers have had it with activists running the show.
Since this plan seems to rely heavily on shelters, are the elected officials at the City and County aware of the withering criticism homeless shelters routinely receive from activists and activist reporters? If not, you should be. Find out what they're objecting to, determine whether or not they have a valid point, fix the parts of the shelter system that need fixing and tell the activists and the press to shut up about any complaints that weren't substantiated.
But that's not all. It is very likely that some of the activists and homeless object to shelters because they have rules they do not like. The County needs to listen to critics, change any rules that need changing, and then defend the other rules that are essential for keeping shelters peaceful and safe. Again, you have to push back when activists and the press make untrue statements about shelters or demands that are unreasonable.
Ollie, right on the mark! It’s beyond my comprehension how so many completely unprofessional people have been elected to Office in Portland and Multnomah County. My biggest fear is that they and the “social warriors” just like them will continue to be elected. Portland has fallen over the precipice and is on a downhill slide into the lower echelons of American Cities.
Replacing something that doesn’t work with an identical component is insanity and will only reproduce the failure! There is no contention that we do not have serious mental health problems among the folks on our streets. My biggest fear however, is the undiagnosed mental illness of the majority of Portland’s voters. You know them as your friends and neighbors who have forgotten that it is insane to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Both common sense and the laws of physics dictate that this can never happen.
So many left leaning voters here have eschewed the timeless wisdom of the 10 Commandments and the similar rules to live by found in every religion. The actions of an individual who breaks these rules (regardless of their religious origins) are unacceptable, and if they become widespread they eventually destroy the community that created them.
Sadly the passivity of our community has allowed the acceptance of unacceptable behavior to become an art form, and we are suffering the results and the losses these violations cause on a continuously increasing downward trajectory.
The new form of government we have adopted has the potential to ruin our home even faster than the current system because many voters will vote for single social issue candidates, and we have recently and consistently suffered from the poor performance and lack of common sense these individuals have displayed. The poster child for this type of dangerous politician is JoAnn Hardesty who single-handedly destroyed the ability of our Police Officers to respond effectively to the crime wave that has personally affected a large and diverse population in our community.
I have attended a dozen events in the past few weeks introducing the candidates for the 12 newly created City Council positions. I have seen way too many people like JoAnn and Chloe Eudaly among these potential candidates. If my intuition is correct, the election of more than two or three of these candidates will only increase the likelihood that Portland is not salvageable.
The people who will be hurt the most if we elect these people are the very people that these “warriors” say they care about! The need for a Public Safety Net grows as a community becomes poorer, as we indisputably are becoming, and a poor community provides far less resources for the poor and ill because of their lower Tax bases!
I hope that more people continue to realize what is happening, and that they will no longer vote not for feel good candidates, but for the individuals who can restore the law and order that we must have if we want to survive.
You sound like you’re trying too hard to appear “perfect.” I mean, you can’t smooth out the rough edges of every single issue that is plaguing our city. There comes a point where we simply must put stiff boundaries in place in order to maintain a standard of living that we have come to expect.
I’d like to see less of the rosy, insubstantial language, and more standing up for a clean, orderly city. Shelter first - housing EARNED. We find you camping on the sidewalk? We’re taking you to a shelter to get cleaned up and connected to a regular, entry-level job. This process will just keep repeating if the individual is found camping again.
We cannot just sit by and let people turn sidewalks and riverbanks into camping sites.
The allowance and enabling of unsanctioned street and RV camping is not compassionate. In fact it is cruel. It’s past time to end the inhumanity on Portland’s streets. Offer shelter and enforce our no camping laws.
I very much agree! However, we cannot discount that debilitating drug addiction stands in the way of any individual being able to maintain a housed state...if we simply house addicts while allowing fentynal and meth to continue to ravage our streets...we are only setting these poor souls up for failure, and wasting money that could be better spent with a more honest approach to the problem.
Sounds good, but like most like most proposals, implementation is key. I've seen so many great ideas die because there was no follow through. For example, let people sleep on the sidewalks Willy nilly , with no thought/funding for security and sanitation or no regard for city permitting requirements effecting the building of low income housing.
I also noticed that there was no mention of how to deal with the drug problem which is a major reason for failure of many plans to deal with homelessness.
The simple action to restore Portland is to vote for René Gonzales for mayor. Rubio is just another one in the long line of failed ideologically driven far left progressives that have brought Portland so much dysfunction. People such as Joanne Hardesty and Chloe Eudaly and similarly minded individuals in Multnomah County such as Deborah Kafoury Jessica Vega Peterson & Mike Schmidt. Electing those who only virtue signal has been a mistake.
Good job. Keep at it. Our feckless corporate mayor has done NOTHING for these poor people while he opened every door for developers. I’m glad you’re making that idiot see sense.
We are all in favor of humane treatment for every human being. Treating the homeless like irresponsible children is not an answer to the problems we face as a community. We are suffering from an awful combination of homelessness, drug addiction, and completely inadequate government leadership.
The complaints that have overwhelmed you and the rest of our Public Officials have “not” been about inhumane treatment of the people living on our streets. The complaints that have been consistently, and loudly, begging for action, are crimes committed by these individuals, the unsafe and unhealthy conditions that they are exposing the public to, the trash that flows from every “camp” and the trashy unsafe vehicles and boats they live in creating a third world impression of poverty in our once beautiful City, and the vandalism that is being committed by more than a few of the criminals that are hiding among
Criminals Hiding among the unfortunate honest and otherwise innocent victims of poverty and mental illness. The vandalism of graffiti that is making us look like Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, and Washington D. C.
Unlike you and compatriots from the City and County, I personally donate my time working directly with our homeless population, and I spend 24 hours a week driving through every neighborhood you are supposed to be helping. Every week I hear the stories of mental illness and drug addiction in my volunteer work, and I see the places where hidden camps and streets full of illegal motor homes and trailers have moved after you have swept them from more visible locations.
It is so disappointing to me and everyone I come into contact with (at least 30 new people each week) to see easily identifiable illegal trailers, cars, and motor homes being moved from one place to another and returning to their original location after a few weeks or months. How can we have any confidence in you to solve these problems when you have a 3 1/2 record of complete incompetence at enforcing the laws that create a safe, clean, and livable environment. Laws that have been agreed upon and enforced for over a hundred years in many cases.
Don’t stand up there and regurgitate statements of things you are going to do, be quiet and work smarter and more effectively to solve the problems that have ruined our town, and when you have actually done something then you can come to us with a list of your accomplishments, until then don’t make any more speeches.
Why should we believe any of your promises, especially those that require the participation of Multnomah County, when the City of Portland and the County have such a dismal track record?
Here's the operative expression insofar as the City and County's homeless policies and practices are concerned: "Credibility Gap." Most Portlanders believe that the City of Portland and the County care more about the homeless than they do about the residents, neighborhoods, businesses and visitors who are harmed by unchecked homelessness that has ballooned in the past five years.
What's missing here is any acknowledgement of what's gone wrong in the past. For example, it is widely acknowledged, even by some County commissioners, that Multnomah County's management of the nonprofits to which it outsources so many of the services it has pledged to deliver is abysmally poor. Nobody tracks what the contractors are being paid to and when; they don't know whether the contractors have complied with their contractual obligations; and are not holding nonprofits accountable for falling short. Please give me the names of the people who are going to reform this mess and what their deadline will be.
Also missing from this high level summary is any mention of deadlines or of a plan to assess how well the various parties are meeting their obligations.
History shows that whenever the City and County attempt regulate the homeless in order to improve the quality of life for the Portlanders who have managed to remain housed and employed a small but very vocal and connected contingent of activists and their allies in the press do everything in their power to obstruct it. That has got to end. Portland's voter/taxpayers have had it with activists running the show.
Since this plan seems to rely heavily on shelters, are the elected officials at the City and County aware of the withering criticism homeless shelters routinely receive from activists and activist reporters? If not, you should be. Find out what they're objecting to, determine whether or not they have a valid point, fix the parts of the shelter system that need fixing and tell the activists and the press to shut up about any complaints that weren't substantiated.
But that's not all. It is very likely that some of the activists and homeless object to shelters because they have rules they do not like. The County needs to listen to critics, change any rules that need changing, and then defend the other rules that are essential for keeping shelters peaceful and safe. Again, you have to push back when activists and the press make untrue statements about shelters or demands that are unreasonable.
Ollie, right on the mark! It’s beyond my comprehension how so many completely unprofessional people have been elected to Office in Portland and Multnomah County. My biggest fear is that they and the “social warriors” just like them will continue to be elected. Portland has fallen over the precipice and is on a downhill slide into the lower echelons of American Cities.
Replacing something that doesn’t work with an identical component is insanity and will only reproduce the failure! There is no contention that we do not have serious mental health problems among the folks on our streets. My biggest fear however, is the undiagnosed mental illness of the majority of Portland’s voters. You know them as your friends and neighbors who have forgotten that it is insane to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Both common sense and the laws of physics dictate that this can never happen.
So many left leaning voters here have eschewed the timeless wisdom of the 10 Commandments and the similar rules to live by found in every religion. The actions of an individual who breaks these rules (regardless of their religious origins) are unacceptable, and if they become widespread they eventually destroy the community that created them.
Sadly the passivity of our community has allowed the acceptance of unacceptable behavior to become an art form, and we are suffering the results and the losses these violations cause on a continuously increasing downward trajectory.
The new form of government we have adopted has the potential to ruin our home even faster than the current system because many voters will vote for single social issue candidates, and we have recently and consistently suffered from the poor performance and lack of common sense these individuals have displayed. The poster child for this type of dangerous politician is JoAnn Hardesty who single-handedly destroyed the ability of our Police Officers to respond effectively to the crime wave that has personally affected a large and diverse population in our community.
I have attended a dozen events in the past few weeks introducing the candidates for the 12 newly created City Council positions. I have seen way too many people like JoAnn and Chloe Eudaly among these potential candidates. If my intuition is correct, the election of more than two or three of these candidates will only increase the likelihood that Portland is not salvageable.
The people who will be hurt the most if we elect these people are the very people that these “warriors” say they care about! The need for a Public Safety Net grows as a community becomes poorer, as we indisputably are becoming, and a poor community provides far less resources for the poor and ill because of their lower Tax bases!
I hope that more people continue to realize what is happening, and that they will no longer vote not for feel good candidates, but for the individuals who can restore the law and order that we must have if we want to survive.
You sound like you’re trying too hard to appear “perfect.” I mean, you can’t smooth out the rough edges of every single issue that is plaguing our city. There comes a point where we simply must put stiff boundaries in place in order to maintain a standard of living that we have come to expect.
I’d like to see less of the rosy, insubstantial language, and more standing up for a clean, orderly city. Shelter first - housing EARNED. We find you camping on the sidewalk? We’re taking you to a shelter to get cleaned up and connected to a regular, entry-level job. This process will just keep repeating if the individual is found camping again.
We cannot just sit by and let people turn sidewalks and riverbanks into camping sites.
Do not ignore the need for drug treatment. Our sidewalks need to be kept clear and clean for all to use.
Carmen,
The allowance and enabling of unsanctioned street and RV camping is not compassionate. In fact it is cruel. It’s past time to end the inhumanity on Portland’s streets. Offer shelter and enforce our no camping laws.
I very much agree! However, we cannot discount that debilitating drug addiction stands in the way of any individual being able to maintain a housed state...if we simply house addicts while allowing fentynal and meth to continue to ravage our streets...we are only setting these poor souls up for failure, and wasting money that could be better spent with a more honest approach to the problem.
Sounds good, but like most like most proposals, implementation is key. I've seen so many great ideas die because there was no follow through. For example, let people sleep on the sidewalks Willy nilly , with no thought/funding for security and sanitation or no regard for city permitting requirements effecting the building of low income housing.
I also noticed that there was no mention of how to deal with the drug problem which is a major reason for failure of many plans to deal with homelessness.
The simple action to restore Portland is to vote for René Gonzales for mayor. Rubio is just another one in the long line of failed ideologically driven far left progressives that have brought Portland so much dysfunction. People such as Joanne Hardesty and Chloe Eudaly and similarly minded individuals in Multnomah County such as Deborah Kafoury Jessica Vega Peterson & Mike Schmidt. Electing those who only virtue signal has been a mistake.
Good job. Keep at it. Our feckless corporate mayor has done NOTHING for these poor people while he opened every door for developers. I’m glad you’re making that idiot see sense.
Please list examples of how Mayor Wheeler has "opened the doors for developers." Names, dates and places, please.