Why is Portland so infested with homeless? (Ashland: 2014, schools)

[KJoe11]

Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell

That assumes that you use all your money to buy stuff, which is a poverty mentality. Once your basic needs are taken care of, money becomes a tool to make more money. In a sales tax state I would not be paying any taxes on my timber harvest. I find it ironic that you would prefer to let me shirk my responsibility while taxing poor people who don't have two nickels to rub together.

I don't agree with your argument but I will say you have been at least a little civil. I can't say about the other poster who saw poverty in another country and thinks it is o.k. to be an ass.

Working people will still incur an income tax but when everyone pays a portion, whether large or small, for services it gives everyone a vested interest in the system.

As for a moral responsibility to help the poor, this should be left to the individual(mostly). And since you don't know me, this is not to boast but I had volunteered in a church soup kitchen for some years. I am well acquainted with the indigent and their plight

[Woof]

I wonder if a soup kitchen would help someone dying of cancer?

[GeorgiaTransplant]

Originally Posted by KJoe11

I don't agree with your argument but I will say you have been at least a little civil. I can't say about the other poster who saw poverty in another country and thinks it is o.k. to be an ass.

Okay. I'm an ass. Judgemental much? Point stands: I don't think you really understand what taxes buy. Simply not liking how I highlight it doesn't really justify your own attitude, which is a little priggish (look it up).

[GeorgiaTransplant]

Originally Posted by KJoe11

not to boast but I had volunteered in a church soup kitchen for some years. I am well acquainted with the indigent and their plight

That would be called a 'boast'.

[2bpurrfect]

right now, i don't think the new law in washington state is going to help portland's/ oregon's state of homelessness. i think the numbers have risen or will rise because now all the car sleepers have to leave washington. so where will they go? probably not canada, so , probably oregon. first stop, portland. I don't have anything against people sleeping in their cars- i think washington is doing something heinous and endangering their drivers by not allowing people to even pull over to take a nap. They're also being irresponsible toward their own poor, and throwing them out to our state to take care of. They may have been born there, they should be able to stay there even if down and out. But, you see what i mean, we may now have more of an influx of people homeless who sleep in their cars. And who need to access the system for help. So they will drain Portland and Oregon 's homeless and housing programs even further than normal. pretty simple.
Washington, please get rid of that law, that says no one can sleep in their car on the side of the road! that's inhumane, endangers tired drivers, and is a problem for your neighboring states.

[2bpurrfect]

well you're very right to compare Oregon to Toronto- because that is exactly what the state did way back sometime in the 1980's. Oregon decided to turn out the mentally ill from the hospitals, into the streets to "free" them. Of course it was not so much a lib mindset as a fiscally tightwad approach- that is, "no need to waste money on them".
Recently there has been some push to provide some " supervised living" apartments, but even they are pretty impossible to get any mentally ill street person into- they have "requirements" that basically amount to the person hardly being mentally ill at all (maybe on meds and other forms of health management). Certainly their lives have to be under control and they have to be doing well in a therapy program. So it doesn't cover the real needy people who are not taking care of themselves or are marginal.
This is where Oregon and the Metro counties need to somehow step in and build good residences that can actually deal with the rangy mangy unwell street people who just need to come in out of the cold long-term; help them get their disability benefits, and have their bills paid by auto-pay to make sure they stay housed and utilites kept on. With some kind of worker checking on them briefly, daily, just to make sure things aren't out of hand.
These units could even be just a tiny room with kitchenette and shower or similar. At least it would be right for some. Others need the more controlled environment that is residential and nice but more like a care home.

excellent post Oleg... the way our system treats homeless disabled really is like sending 10 year old kids outside to try and survive... hit that nail right on the head. We can't let this stuff go on.

Originally Posted by Oleg Bach

Forget the jails for a moment- I am sure that the west coast of America is very similar to the liberal and supposed progressive Toronto- The left was all about human rights and freedoms...at one time in Toronto there was a facility on Queen Street West- it was a large and sprawling mental hospital...yes it was abusive in part...and yes it was backward- and yes the needlessly drugged and tormented our most vulnerable...........but- they tossed out the baby with the bath water.

The left insisted that the mentally ill or the emotionally damaged had the right to total freedom and should not be contained - even for there own good...and the good of the community- So what the left did was open the doors and push the mentally ill into the streest as if being "free" was the right thing to do. THAT was the beginning of obvious homelessness in Toronto- Now the sick are "free" to wander about and eventually die in the street like abandoned dogs. Instead of intelligent reformation of our mental hospitals and the improvement of these facilities- they took the easy way out and simply - set them free.



It is a lot like managing a child and protecting them....Would you take ten thousand 10 year old children who are orphaned - and abandon them? That's what homelessness is akin too. These people are not as lucky as you and I- they simply do not have the tools to survive....Liberalism is the cause of homelessness...............Looking back a few decades the only persons you saw who were on the street were the "winos" those who choose drink over shelter....the common homeless drunk is rare now...in fact they are almost all in public housing.. where as the broken mentally ill and hopeless are now the common sight.

[Kid Ashbury]

Originally Posted by 2bpurrfect

well you're very right to compare Oregon to Toronto- because that is exactly what the state did way back sometime in the 1980's. Oregon decided to turn out the mentally ill from the hospitals, into the streets to "free" them. Of course it was not so much a lib mindset as a fiscally tightwad approach- that is, "no need to waste money on them".
Recently there has been some push to provide some " supervised living" apartments, but even they are pretty impossible to get any mentally ill street person into- they have "requirements" that basically amount to the person hardly being mentally ill at all (maybe on meds and other forms of health management). Certainly their lives have to be under control and they have to be doing well in a therapy program. So it doesn't cover the real needy people who are not taking care of themselves or are marginal.
This is where Oregon and the Metro counties need to somehow step in and build good residences that can actually deal with the rangy mangy unwell street people who just need to come in out of the cold long-term; help them get their disability benefits, and have their bills paid by auto-pay to make sure they stay housed and utilites kept on. With some kind of worker checking on them briefly, daily, just to make sure things aren't out of hand.
These units could even be just a tiny room with kitchenette and shower or similar. At least it would be right for some. Others need the more controlled environment that is residential and nice but more like a care home.

excellent post Oleg... the way our system treats homeless disabled really is like sending 10 year old kids outside to try and survive... hit that nail right on the head. We can't let this stuff go on.

Holy 2 year thread bump!

[2bpurrfect]

Originally Posted by Kid Ashbury

Holy 2 year thread bump!

yes, that's how it is. thanks for the compliment . I like holiness, it's great. and besides, this is an important and worthy subject.

[Mini-apple-less]

Originally Posted by 2bpurrfect

excellent post Oleg... the way our system treats homeless disabled really is like sending 10 year old kids outside to try and survive... hit that nail right on the head. We can't let this stuff go on.

That's an excellent point. Nobody would allow children to be exposed to the elements like that, yet apparently it's OK to treat adults that way, even though some of these mentally ill adults are just as vulnerable as children.

I understand the homeless in Portland can be very threatening, but refusing to help them is not going to make them go away, and persecuting them and driving them out should not be an option.

[Woof]

Homelessness is not caused by "liberals". During the Reagan era, there were court decisions (I suppose Supreme Court) that determined that committed patients had to be kept in the least restrictive environment possible for their individual status. Due to the advent of astonishingly effective psychiatric meds, most patients no longer needed to be kept in the often abusive, filthy state hospitals - there was a vision that they would be moved to less restrictive "halfway houses" and get treated at community mental health centers.

At the same time, court judgments made it much harder to commit people - it used to be quite easy, and there were many tragedies of essentially normal or retarded people being held in hospitals for decades. So the pendulum swung from one extreme to the other.

Unfortunately the states were breathing a sigh of relief at the cost burden of state hospitals being mostly lifted, and were in no particular hurry to spend a lot of money on establishing community mh centers and funding supportive housing. So the patients were given some clothes and a bus ticket to another state, and dumped out into the streets.

Resources are generally better now, but street people still need to be committed to get into the system, as they will rarely choose to get into it and persevere.

I'd say that nowadays homelessness is more about young people not wanting to work at a steady job, or who don't want to pay high rents so they afford drugs ..... and not paying rent of course leads to eviction. Then they find the lifestyle isn't so bad with their new stoner buddies. There are still plenty of nutters, but a lower percentage than before.