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I don't know if most of these folks are necessarily "homeless". I think it's a trend here, and Eugene too, where its a lifestyle option.
And in San Francisco. There is a subculture of campers / gutter punks / homeless-by-choice, most of whom are young and able-bodied and on one drug or another, who migrate up and down the West Coast in search of handouts and warm weather and bicycles to steal. There are several places here in SF that they have colonized; when they are kicked out of one neighborhood, they just move to another, or else they hitchhike to Arcata or Eugene or wherever.
The homeless industry here in SF refuses to acknowledge their existence, instead spreading the lie that every single sidewalk sleeper is a hapless victim of gentrification. Of course some of them are, particularly those who are over 50 and/or African-American. The young white ones, not so much.
It is not a scary situation at all, x2zy, it is just disturbing and sad to run into so much untreated mental illness on a daily basis. Obviously, this is a low priority for the US.
It was scary for me when a wild eyed young man demanded money and wouldn't take no for an answer. He wouldn't get out of my face with his threats. I was waiting for a bus on 12th and Salmon in a quieter part of downtown next to a large Unitarian Church. Fortunately for me, the cops patrol that area and they saw what was happening and jumped out of their car and grabbed the guy.
It was scary for me when at that same corner, a panhandler walked past me, demanded money and walked away when when I said no but then came back and shook his fist in my face and said "I'll remember you!"
I must have been having a bad day because I was scared but I was angry at the the same time. I yelled back, "I'll remember you too!" He slunk back off.
These are but a few incidences I encountered while working downtown. Scary? You bet! Mine was certainly not the only tale to tell. Other friends had similar encounters. To be fair they were few and fair between but to say downtown is never scary I think is a misstatement.
The street kids form gangs in some areas. The ones who attacked the elderly man in front of the Outdoor Store may have not had a name to their gang but they were known to have run the streets in groups. The store owners knew who they were.
Every year a gang of young people called The Travelers descend upon Portland to camp out and cause trouble. Then they move on to California for the weather. They are not mentally ill or in need. They are thugs and nothing more. There are other transient gangs as well. They are all referred to as "Campers." Then there are the individual druggies, such as the one who approached me, are not far behind as well as your usual garden variety low-lifes. They bother people trying to go about their daily lives and it's disturbing when they do this but there isn't a city where it doesn't happen. Portland doesn't have a monopoly on things of this nature.
Those are the scary ones. The young groups became the biggest threat. They latched onto the Occupy people who in their naivete accepted them as their own. Outsiders supported them. Interviews by the local news media discovered just who was camping out in our parks during the long siege of Occupy Portland.
I am not talking about the mentally ill, the people who have fallen on hard times or the infirm. They are not the scary people.
I don't know how this has affected tourism in any way. I think one would have to check with the tourism bureau to determine whether or not the situation has had an impact on it.
Your experiences do sound scary, Minervah. But don't you think that a person has to be mentally ill to even entertain the thought of voluntarily living on the street? I am sure that many of the travelers, especially the female ones, experience all kinds of trauma and abuse. They do not seem mentally "well" to me. You could also say that the sociopathic subset is probably mentally ill.
As for people who fall victim to the economy and are forced to live on the street, it is a long uphill road back into society. If you aren't mentally ill when you land on the street, the vagaries of street life can bring about mental instability.
Add comorbid substance abuse and I'm amazed that some of these people survive as long as they do.
No. I do not believe The Travelers are mentally ill. Anyone who is clever enough to plot out a migration system from one city to another and how to live along the way by stealing, attacking, taking advantage of a welfare system that is meant for people who are really in need, is not mentally ill. They are sort of like the gypsies of Eastern Europe only less violent and more visible.
I wonder if they are really homeless throughout the entire year. They look pretty darn healthy and well-fed. Their clothes are nice. Many have expensive looking tents and camping gear. Not all, but I have seen enough of them to wonder. All we know is that when the weather turns nice, they appear here in Portland on their way to California as the weather here becomes less desirable. They come from all over the country according to reports and who is to say they do not have homes there?
Very good posts here. It is a complicated problem, and expanding. The west coast cities do have milder climates than east coast cities, but on the east coast it's a problem too. Unfortunately, the truly down and out get mixed in with thugs and a criminal element as well as hard core drug users, which changes the whole equation. I've been reading about Portland's issues in the news outlets. I saw some photos of tents on downtown streets on oregonlive.com which prompted my questions to those of you who live there.
How bad is it for visitors or residents to walk around downtown? Here in SE MI, we have lots of homeless and some are aggressive (panhandling, following people, etc), but police don't do much about it. Is it the same there? Is is affecting tourism?
Thanks for the article. Some cities are taking a harder stand, such as mentioned in the article re: NYC putting these people in jail. I don't know if those who are jailed in NYC have committed crimes such as assault, etc., but taking a harder stand is one approach. I personally don't recommend jail for the homeless, but weeding out the criminals and putting them in jail would go a long way toward getting a handle on the problem. Hangers on who are not homeless add to the problem.
I appreciate this good discussion on a complex topic. I would hope that visitors to the beautiful city of Portland are not hassled by homeless and their hangers on to the point where they stop visiting. I would personally worry about strolling in the urban city parks, even during the day, given that they could be anywhere and in a park, there might not be anyone around to help if a situation arose.
How about the surrounding towns such as Beaverton, Tigard, etc? Are the homeless migrating there to panhandle?
Your experiences do sound scary, Minervah. But don't you think that a person has to be mentally ill to even entertain the thought of voluntarily living on the street? I am sure that many of the travelers, especially the female ones, experience all kinds of trauma and abuse. They do not seem mentally "well" to me. You could also say that the sociopathic subset is probably mentally ill.
As for people who fall victim to the economy and are forced to live on the street, it is a long uphill road back into society. If you aren't mentally ill when you land on the street, the vagaries of street life can bring about mental instability.
Add comorbid substance abuse and I'm amazed that some of these people survive as long as they do.
"But don't you think that a person has to be mentally ill to even entertain the thought of voluntarily living on the street"
No. Not at. I am sure that most of those folks suffered abuse or some kind if trauma. But diagnosed mentally ill? Suffering from a condition they could receive treatment for? Doubtful. It's a lifestyle for these folks, mostly kids/young adults who get into it via the drug culture and prostitution.
They are sort of like the gypsies of Eastern Europe only less violent and more visible.
It's interesting that you mentioned the gypsies. I've read several articles about how bad they are in large EU cities such as London, Paris, Rome, etc. In Paris, for example, the workers at the Eiffel Tower went on strike to get more help because of the overwhelming number of gypsies hassling and stealing from tourists. From what I've read, the gypsies are both violent when they need to be and very visible since they work in packs, surrounding people on trains, buses, at ATMs, at tourist attractions, etc.
The gypsies, especially from Romania, are part of large organized crime rings where an adult male has a crew of young children trained to steal passports, wallets, purses, money, etc from travelers. The laws are written so that even when kids are caught, they are too young to be arrested (based on EU laws in some countries) and released back to the streets to continue. The adults collects the loot, and send most of it back to Romania where the "bosses" are living large in mansions with stolen property.
It's a massive problem in London and Paris. They are camping out in Hyde park and other tourist areas as well as squatting on farms and public land in towns in England without permits. England is contemplating big changes to their immigration policies to keep out the expected deluge of more gypsies starting in 2014, due to a prior change in immigration policies at the EU level that will allow more immigrants from recently added EU countries to move freely in Europe. Some in England want to withdraw from the EU because of the influx of criminals (organized crime rings) primarily from Eastern Europe, and in particular, Romania, which is a poor EU country. Anyway, it's a huge problem.
Regarding gypsies, I have an Eastern European background so I know a bit about them. When I lived in Chicago, an enclave bought an apartment building across the street. Talk about scary! If you weren't of their tribe, they spit at you when you walked by their building on their sidewalk. I never walked on their side of the street after encountering them just once. They were outcasts in their countries and carried over the things they did best as you mentioned, thieving, to the US. Just ask the local store owners. They also made a living by fortune telling which is also what they do in Portland.
They were a very superstitious lot. My neighbor who was from Russia hated them with a passion and they hated her because she was considered "high class" in her country, warned me to keep my black cat away from them as they were very superstitious and would kill her if they caught her. I believed the neighbor.
Ironically, one of the many names to which they were referred in Eastern Europe was "Travelers."
Back to my original question, is the increase in homeless numbers downtown creating a problem with tourism? Also, if someone goes for a walk in a city park, are they hassled by panhandlers? If so, that might be more scary since parks can be more isolated once you are inside. Just trying to get a feel for what it's like to walk around Portland as a tourist and trying to enjoy the city which prides itself on "walkability."
There are urban parks and regular parks in Portland--by urban I mean small plazas and the "park blocks"
which are strips of parks thru downtown, etc. Then there are the large city parks that have playgrounds, off leash areas, fields, etc. You will see some homeless people in some of the plazas or downtown parks. For the most part you won't notice them because they won't bother you or they might ask for change as you're walking by. Not a big deal. In the large city parks you don't see many homeless people or if you do (not in most parks) they're not bothering anyone and have no interest in what you're doing. In some of the plaza areas such as Pioneer Square, which is a big transit hub, you'll see the teen aged homeless kids--the ones that everyone complains about because they're obnoxious. This is because the services that provide assistance to the kids are both not far from there and because tourists feel sorry for them. Some of the kids are homeless because they ran from something bad, some are just slumming and are really annoying.
Most homeless people leave you alone or just quietly sit trying to sell Street Roots (local paper put out by homeless organization) or panhandle. The street kids are the ones who occasionally bother people.
I'm originally from San Francisco where the same stuff happened there. So the homeless don't bother or scare me, it's just unpleasant to see if that makes sense. I've travelled in many cities and in Europe and it's the same type of thing everywhere, but some cities, particularly west coast cities, get more because of the weather. Portland is not anything different than San Francisco or Berkeley or Seattle or many other cities. It's a national problem.
Last edited by oldtintype; 09-10-2013 at 12:17 AM..
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