Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I suspect that if you believe measure 97 funds will be used to solve the homeless problem, you are going to be sadly disappointed.
I'm not really that naive, but you have to admit that if tax revenue, all tax revenue, was used properly (nod to cc rider), then the rising tide would lift all boats. Since the recession, the countries economy has grown 13%! That's amazing, and all of that growth has been in the 1% and better income and wealth sector. It has remained unchanged for the next 50%, and is declining for anyone further down than that. When billionaires can finesse the Tax Code so as not to pay any taxes at all... and we defend that. That's why I shrug. Because you can't have it both ways. If you want to cheer the 1% on and champion their right to make insane profit, then there will continue to be collateral damage, as evidenced by the growing number of homeless and indigent. And they are annoying, sometimes dangerous, and they hoard, and they litter, and they don't really care who doesn't like it, because they have no self respect left. I don't know what percent of the homeless were downward bound from birth, but I don't think its all of them. I don't even think it is a majority of them.
So we had this exact problem between 2012-2015. Homeless was going out of control, streets were getting littered, and it didn't seem like there was an end in sight. But then this year, the city did a homeless "sweep". It had a lot of controversy, and upset a lot of people. But over night, it seemed like the city had transformed. The homeless moved away from the streets, and more towards the rivers and secluded areas. We still have a homeless problem, it didn't actually get any better, but the city was able to sweep it under the rug, and it really has made a major difference.
Now, I'm not saying what Denver did was the right thing to do, but it was the only thing they really could do. And it's a total NIMBY point of view, but the average citizen probably isn't going to do anything to help the issue anyway, but now they at least don't have to put up with the problems.
The other upside to Denver's situation was that our rental/housing costs started to level out early this year thanks to all of the new units being built. This could be another contributing factor to why the homeless doesn't seem as visible anymore.
To be honest, a sweep might be Portland's only chance to really help the issue. If nothing is done, I could see the demand/value of Portland plummeting the second we have a hiccup in the economy (which I guess some people may be OK with). Cities go through cycles, we all (Denver, Portland, Austin, Seattle, SF) have been riding out a good 5 years of explosive growth, but it puts us in a dangerous situation if all of a sudden these cities no longer become desirable.
The "White Flight" days were a result of increasing costs of city living, and an increase of crime and homelessness, creating a sad decline of dirty cities that no one wanted to live in...It would suck for it to happen again.
I think part of the problem is the Portland culture which loves the edgy and hipster look... feel to their streets and buildings. There are only a few parks in Portland that I go to and don't see homeless, methheads with their pit bulls, people letting their dogs poop in kids' play areas. I am sure it's so much worse now. I now only go to Washington Park and SouthWest Waterfront when I am in the city. Considering the property values and the property taxes... it's just sad. I live in Beaverton where there is quite a bit of police presence everywhere. People out here are more corporate and not so crunchy though we have several New Seasons and Whole Foods. It's a different culture. People are pretty open minded but less cliquey and trendy. People don't care about being trendy... for the most part. In Portland nobody wants to call the police or complain about that abandoned car in front of their house. People find out there is a convicted child predator on the block and there is very little concern from parents. I am not surprised that Portland is getting dirtier because the people, with money to afford the high home prices, are loving the graffiti near their bungalow which has overgrown grasses in front. Instead of removing the beer cans in their grasses... they leave them there for a few days. They like the street cred. It's the culture of Portland. These are the same people that sent their kids to school without immunizations. I had to get the hell out. People may be more bland out in Beaverton but I can take my kids to just about any park or green space here. And the police come in minutes when called.
I don't know... pass Measure 97? Couldn't hurt I don't think... <shrug>
Actually, I believe there are thousands of tenuously housed Portlanders who are one rent increase, one job loss, or one disability from becoming homeless. The marginal increase in COL of M97 will be sufficient to push at least some of these people into homelessness.
Lots of Portland does look like crap, and the homeless/camping situation has gotten much much more visible. The mayor announced that camping on our streets was okay. He may not have meant it to sound so permissive, but that is what people heard. The "out of the way" homeless problem instantly came out of hiding across the central city. If the mayor didn't think that homeless and traveling people from across the west wouldn't hear the public camping is allowed in Portland he as a fool (hint: he is.)
We'll see what a change of majors does, if anything.
To be honest, a sweep might be Portland's only chance to really help the issue. If nothing is done, I could see the demand/value of Portland plummeting the second we have a hiccup in the economy (which I guess some people may be OK with). Cities go through cycles, we all (Denver, Portland, Austin, Seattle, SF) have been riding out a good 5 years of explosive growth, but it puts us in a dangerous situation if all of a sudden these cities no longer become desirable.
The "White Flight" days were a result of increasing costs of city living, and an increase of crime and homelessness, creating a sad decline of dirty cities that no one wanted to live in...It would suck for it to happen again.
My wife works at 12th and Stark in SE Portland. It has a persistent presence of homeless encampments. We've only been here a year, but in that time there have been several "sweeps". They clear them out and pick up all the trash which must take days because one homeless individual can bring hundreds of pounds of trash to their encampment. But in a few weeks you have a couple of dozen encampments. There might be more because in that area is also the phenomenon of driveable vehicles being used as dwellings.
It might be urban legend, but, as I understand it, one of the reasons there are so many homeless in Portland is that cities like Boise, S.F. and Denver 'deport' their homeless by busing them to Portland under cover of darkness. It also doesn't help that Portland has more hospitable winters than Boise or Denver. But, really, all big cities have homeless, and I don't think the answer is to sweep the problem under the carpet anymore. There is nowhere on this planet deemed a really nice place to live that has so much wealth concentrated in so few individuals. I get that if Nike had to make their products using American workers that Phil Knight could not possibly become a Billionaire. Well... he could possibly become a billionaire, but he probably wouldn't have 25 billion, maybe just one or two.
But if Nike and tons of other companies like it, big and small still had to use American labor, you would not have the homelessness crisis that has all of you so upset. What does the immense wealth of a few hundred people do for a city of large size when they aren't deemed responsible for helping to maintain it? Got news for you, in the next decade anything known as a big box store will be totally automated. There will be tens of thousands of unemployed Target, Best Buy, Kohls, Ross, etc. employees with no chance of alternative employment. It is past time to seriously think about a guaranteed Basic Income that can maintain a jobless individual at the Federal defined poverty level.
My wife works at 12th and Stark in SE Portland. It has a persistent presence of homeless encampments. We've only been here a year, but in that time there have been several "sweeps". They clear them out and pick up all the trash which must take days because one homeless individual can bring hundreds of pounds of trash to their encampment. But in a few weeks you have a couple of dozen encampments. There might be more because in that area is also the phenomenon of driveable vehicles being used as dwellings.
It might be urban legend, but, as I understand it, one of the reasons there are so many homeless in Portland is that cities like Boise, S.F. and Denver 'deport' their homeless by busing them to Portland under cover of darkness. It also doesn't help that Portland has more hospitable winters than Boise or Denver. But, really, all big cities have homeless, and I don't think the answer is to sweep the problem under the carpet anymore. There is nowhere on this planet deemed a really nice place to live that has so much wealth concentrated in so few individuals. I get that if Nike had to make their products using American workers that Phil Knight could not possibly become a Billionaire. Well... he could possibly become a billionaire, but he probably wouldn't have 25 billion, maybe just one or two.
But if Nike and tons of other companies like it, big and small still had to use American labor, you would not have the homelessness crisis that has all of you so upset. What does the immense wealth of a few hundred people do for a city of large size when they aren't deemed responsible for helping to maintain it? Got news for you, in the next decade anything known as a big box store will be totally automated. There will be tens of thousands of unemployed Target, Best Buy, Kohls, Ross, etc. employees with no chance of alternative employment. It is past time to seriously think about a guaranteed Basic Income that can maintain a jobless individual at the Federal defined poverty level.
My parents worked for the City and County of SF in the 70's and 80's. I heard back in the mid 70's from my dad, who worked in the medical field, that cities on the west coast "sent" their mentally ill to US, IN SF. This has been going on for decades.
I think part of the problem is the Portland culture which loves the edgy and hipster look... feel to their streets and buildings. There are only a few parks in Portland that I go to and don't see homeless, methheads with their pit bulls, people letting their dogs poop in kids' play areas. I am sure it's so much worse now. I now only go to Washington Park and SouthWest Waterfront when I am in the city. Considering the property values and the property taxes... it's just sad. I live in Beaverton where there is quite a bit of police presence everywhere. People out here are more corporate and not so crunchy though we have several New Seasons and Whole Foods. It's a different culture. People are pretty open minded but less cliquey and trendy. People don't care about being trendy... for the most part. In Portland nobody wants to call the police or complain about that abandoned car in front of their house. People find out there is a convicted child predator on the block and there is very little concern from parents. I am not surprised that Portland is getting dirtier because the people, with money to afford the high home prices, are loving the graffiti near their bungalow which has overgrown grasses in front. Instead of removing the beer cans in their grasses... they leave them there for a few days. They like the street cred. It's the culture of Portland. These are the same people that sent their kids to school without immunizations. I had to get the hell out. People may be more bland out in Beaverton but I can take my kids to just about any park or green space here. And the police come in minutes when called.
This is a really interesting perspective, about the whole "street cred" thing and tied to the anti-vacc crowd. Is this a millennial thing? I'm not in that generation, so it's really a foreign concept to me.
When we first moved here I worked downtown and I would have loved to live in a more close-in neighborhood from a commute standpoint. But we couldn't afford the cost of a close-in home unless we wanted a fixer and that was off the table. Now I'm glad that we landed where we did, because I would be constantly annoyed at the freakshow that wanders those neighborhoods. I saw on the news a couple of weeks ago a homeowner took video of a couple that he told couldn't park their van in front of his house and live out of it and their response was the typical meth-addled anger directed at the homeowner with some extra racial nastiness because he is black. That would be it for me.
Yankeemama, I recall posts from you from months ago about people going through your trash to find recyclables and leaving the trash all over the street. I'll just never understand how that enriches or brings joy to the lives of people who live with that, but that's me.
This is a really interesting perspective, about the whole "street cred" thing and tied to the anti-vacc crowd. Is this a millennial thing? I'm not in that generation, so it's really a foreign concept to me.
When we first moved here I worked downtown and I would have loved to live in a more close-in neighborhood from a commute standpoint. But we couldn't afford the cost of a close-in home unless we wanted a fixer and that was off the table. Now I'm glad that we landed where we did, because I would be constantly annoyed at the freakshow that wanders those neighborhoods. I saw on the news a couple of weeks ago a homeowner took video of a couple that he told couldn't park their van in front of his house and live out of it and their response was the typical meth-addled anger directed at the homeowner with some extra racial nastiness because he is black. That would be it for me.
Yankeemama, I recall posts from you from months ago about people going through your trash to find recyclables and leaving the trash all over the street. I'll just never understand how that enriches or brings joy to the lives of people who live with that, but that's me.
I watched my SE neighborhood become that way over the decades. It was sad. I wouldn't be tolerating it today if I still lived there. I feel sorry for a friend who has a duplex in that area, the things she says people do in her backyard are just disgusting. But other than putting in an electrified fence, there's nothing she can do about it.
This is a really interesting perspective, about the whole "street cred" thing and tied to the anti-vacc crowd. Is this a millennial thing? I'm not in that generation, so it's really a foreign concept to me.
When we first moved here I worked downtown and I would have loved to live in a more close-in neighborhood from a commute standpoint. But we couldn't afford the cost of a close-in home unless we wanted a fixer and that was off the table. Now I'm glad that we landed where we did, because I would be constantly annoyed at the freakshow that wanders those neighborhoods. I saw on the news a couple of weeks ago a homeowner took video of a couple that he told couldn't park their van in front of his house and live out of it and their response was the typical meth-addled anger directed at the homeowner with some extra racial nastiness because he is black. That would be it for me.
Yankeemama, I recall posts from you from months ago about people going through your trash to find recyclables and leaving the trash all over the street. I'll just never understand how that enriches or brings joy to the lives of people who live with that, but that's me.
I am actually a GEN-XER! Whoot! And most of the hip, cool parents I met were either older Gen- xers and youngish gen- xers. I didnt meet Millineals until my kids had younger teachers and therapists that are in the Gen Y. My generation was a huge part of the urbanization movement but the Millineals are having a larger impact on cities based on their population size, it seems. And yes, I had to shred anything with personal info to put into recycling as the local " collectors" would go through our recycling bin. We also had a drug addict( female) hiding near our porch at the back of our house and driveway, we had drinkers that would throw their beer cans onto our property, we had abandoned cars across the street, unmoved by the city, for well over a month. Oh, the privileged bike riding hipsters who called me and my husband some " nice" names when we asked them not to " hang" on our front lawn on our property. Yeah, they pulled out food and wanted to picnic. They called US, elitists! Yup, just because you know, we were homeowners. What a crime!
I couldn't take it anymore.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
