Speaking of the Homeless. (Portland, Lake Oswego: apartment, condo, chapel)

[angelbug]

There's an interesting article today in the San Francisco paper this morning about how Portland officials are talking to SF officials about how they've been handling the street people situation in PDX:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl.../BA2LTV163.DTL

Both cities say that most of the apparently "homeless" actually do have a full time home, and the issue is more one of public inebriation and loitering. Anyway, interesting article...

[Tesaje]

I don't know about Portland, but here in DC area, there was a series done a few years ago by the Wash. Post that found the majority of our panhandlers have houses and mortgages they go to every day and rake in some $50-60k per year tax free in alms to pay for it. I think the true homeless are in a terrible pickle, but this kind of thing is hard to take. I'd rather give to an organized shelter or food kitchen because of it. At least you know your gift is going to people who truly need it.

[oldtintype]

Originally Posted by angelbug

There's an interesting article today in the San Francisco paper this morning about how Portland officials are talking to SF officials about how they've been handling the street people situation in PDX:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl.../BA2LTV163.DTL

That's funny because I just read on the Gate the other day that SF officials were just talking to Giuliani about how they handled it in NYC! I guess everyone is kind of lost.

[angelbug]

Originally Posted by Tesaje

I'd rather give to an organized shelter or food kitchen because of it. At least you know your gift is going to people who truly need it.

Same here. It breaks my heart in downtown SF when I see a disheveled woman with a couple small poorly-clothed children sitting in front of the expensive department stores begging, but I'm always suspicious that the kids are bait and that they wouldn't be helped by anything I give her. Awful to be so distrustful, but I can't help it when you read about these scammers who pretend to be disabled, etc.

Though I did once give a dollar to a guy standing on a street on South of Market. He was holding up a sign that said, "Need money for psychedelics." At least he was being honest.

[2austin]

I see homeless people in Austin as well, specially on Ben White interesections under the bridges. I also see homeless people in the more upscale 360 corridor. The stories they write on the cards they are holding are heartbreaking and I feel really sorry about their situation.

I must agree with most folks on the thread that this is a national problem but seems PDX is becoming the poster child for it -- and dont know why.

[oldtintype]

Because people seem to overexaggerate it in my opinion! The homeless population here is WAY WAY smaller than other cities such as San Fran, but since the downtown area is so compact, and the homeless people here seem to stick to a very small visible area, it looks larger than reality.

[nancy thereader]

That's funny because I just read on the Gate the other day that SF officials were just talking to Giuliani about how they handled it in NYC!

Giuliani is the last person that anyone should ask for any advice. We New Yorkers know his petty ways very very well and are in awe that he is even being considered for any office.

[oldtintype]

He basically said, from what I got out of the article, that you have to more or less just force people out of sight and make things unpleasant for them. While I get bugged by panhandlers sometimes, too, I prefer actually SOLVING the problem, not just pushing it out of sight!

One thing that needs to be said again about homeless people and Portland, is that you see homeless people in a small area, where as Portland is HUGE geographically in comparison. Because most of Portland is made up of neighborhoods, many suburban in nature, most of the services tend to be located in a small geographic area (such as Old Town or directly downtown). These are also the areas that most tourists tend to hit so they see the homeless population and make the distinction that Portland is full of homeless people, when it's like 5% of the city they're seeing. San Francisco has similarly concentrated areas, but you will see homeless people pretty much EVERYWHERE in the city (well, maybe not Pacific Heights but it's way more spread out as a whole in comparison). The funny part is (to me) that the people you hear complaints about are in reality not the true face of homeless people, they're the drug addict and/or mentally ill population (or street kids) that are VISIBLE, where as the homeless population people don't see are the ones that are the most distressing, such as homeless families. The local church by us has a homeless shelter for families in the winter and I watch the people come and go. 1. You would never recognize there's even a shelter there. 2. You would never realize these people are homeless as many have cars and kids in tow and look "normal." I think what people are complaining about are mostly people who can't get homes because they're an addict, mentally ill, just out of prison or whatever. And like other people said, some probably do have places to stay, they just have nothing to do so they hang out. I don't know what the solution is but it's not a problem to Portland specific.

[Bjr7573]

Would anyone happen to know where I can find statistics on substance use/abuse by the homeless here in the Portland area? I'm doing some research on it but I'm having trouble finding anything

[zig28zag]

By Anne-Marie O'Connor
TIMES STAFF WRITER


Every night more than 1 million children in America face the dark with no place to call home. They are hungry, anxious and often exposed to violence. They shuttle between shelters and fall behind in school. (That is, where there are shelters with empty beds. WFI Editor) They are the vulnerable new face of the America homeless. Experts say that there are more homeless children in America than at any time since the Great Depression. About 40% of America's homeless are now women and their children - the fastest growing homeless group. (Women and children have been the fastest growing group of homeless for most of the 1990s. But when the Democrats won back the White House, it became less fashionable for the media to run news items on the homeless crisis. WFI Editor)

These are the conclusions of an unprecedented study unveiled Wednesday (30 June, 1999) that shows that this transient childhood on the mean streets of America is shortchanging children, robbing them of education, health and emotional stability. The study's report, presented Wednesday at a women's conference in Los Angeles, documents how children are being scarred by the kind of trauma that ravages survivors of war and natural disasters - condemning some to mental illness. "The face of homelessness in this country has changed dramatically," said Ellen Bassuk, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and president of the Better Homes Fund, which produced the report, "Homeless Children: America's Newest Outcasts."
The fund is a national nonprofit group that uses research and fieldwork to recommend policies and programs to benefit the homeless. It derived its figures for the study from national homeless organizations, the U.S. Department of Education and the census. "Young children are without homes in the largest numbers since the Great Depression," said Bassuk. "We must act now to halt this epidemic before we lose another generation." (Apparently, Ms. Bassuk has already written off the last generation of homeless. WFI Editor) In the early 1980s, the number of homeless children was negligible, Bassuk said. Since then, divorce and the growth of female-headed families - about a third of which live in poverty - have conspired to turn growing numbers of women with children into the streets, even as the nation enjoys one of the longest sustained economic booms in history. SOURCE: Excerpted from the 1 July, 1999, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "Ranks of Homeless Children in the U.S. Is on the Rise, Study Finds." Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.

(WFI EDITOR: The homeless crisis is not only a source of national shame for the richest country in the world, especially since the Federal Government has properties across the country that reverted to its possession upon the fall of the savings and loan industry, which it has never really put to the use of resolving this crisis; it is also a crisis that threatens the public safety of every American citizen who is not homeless, to say nothing of the safety of property. Homeless people have nothing to lose, and the very experience of homelessness is one of feeling abandoned and rejected. The forces that are exerted on homeless people, both by government and the citizenry, and even the non-profits that are supposed to be addressing their problems, all work to the effect of reducing the self-esteem of those individuals who become homeless, ultimately putting the great majority of them at risk of developing mental illness and drug addiction.
The end result are people who are reduced to the level of animals determined to survive, who will resort to desperate means such as crimes which cross the thin veneer of what it means to be civilized. The bottom line is that this is something that could be avoided, if local, state and the national governments all recognized the crisis at hand, and took it seriously enough to handle it. There is more than enough money to build new sports stadiums, and new freeways, and new offices for government bureaucracies. There should be money for SOLVING the homeless crisis, especially since the real cost, in terms of money, is virtually pennies a day. The next time some local atrocity is attributed to "transients," just remember that it could have been avoided, if the leaders of the community would do their job, and lead.)