Do the homeless truly bother you? (Portland, Burns: brokers, houses, buy)
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I haven't lived here very long, so maybe I will feel differently after more time has passed...
In my day to day life where I live and spend most of my time, no the homeless don't bother me. The homeless are on every freeway exit, but that is true in most cities these days. I live on the east side near 60th and division and have never had anyone actually speak to me and ask for anything while I am out walking or biking. Maybe because I usually have my kids with me. When we go downtown there are homeless everywhere, but even then we have never been harassed. We have been followed for blocks while being screamed at by a homeless man before while visiting San Francisco.
Location: Bmore, The cursed land of -> Hotlanta -> Charlotte
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyAMG
1. They are usually fairly aggressive, which is what I hate about them. They have nothing to lose and let you know that up front.
2. It's worse than people say in the summer, but it calms down in the winter when the weather gets harsh.
My thoughts.
It's terrible.... more terrible than in recent years, I'm embarrassed to take friends downtown anymore. So I just don't.
Some friends came up from Arizona and we took them to downtown three weeks ago. We were asked for money not even 3 minutes after we parked. It was hot so we went to a 7-11 to grab some drinks and outside. They want to go to the food carts so i took them to the ones on Washington or Oak? and 5th. Anyway, we got some salmon burgers and gyros and were eating on the side walk when all of a sudden two ass hole kids on skateboards coming flying through, they both dart out across 5th st into traffic one jumps off his skateboard and throws it at the other one and yells something about raping his mom. The skate board doesn't come anywhere near the kid and instead hits the hood of a Honda driving through. Then were walking to Paddy's and as were crossing the street there is this guy crossing with us who is yelling....at someone or something? and goes over and kicks some ones car and starts yelling "dirty c%$t, dirty c&*t, d*(y azz ****." This lady is terrified. So my friend says "come on friend, lets just go this way." Get your hands of me you filthy white satan, yall people all the same"... and then he starts yelling something about the NSA genocide and experiments.... We go to Paddy's it's fun we take a picture of the big liquor wall and then when its' about they ask about Ira Keller fountain so we go there through Lownsdale and Shrunk Plaza and literally every park bench has someone sleeping on it with a cart and bunch of cans or just random crap. My friend says "I think you guys have a bit of a homeless problem, I don't even see the police." Can they do that. I sigh and tell him "They are protesting...or something I don't know the real story why our cops allow it." The icing on the cake was when we were at Ira Keller fountain and we caught some one crapping in the fountain. There were tons of homeless sleeping everywhere in the upper park the lower park there was like a homeless hippie drum circle up top. Some guy came around the corner all jacked up looking "You guys got smokes?" You better have smokes, I need smokes." I tell him "we have no smokes." "Well, ^%^& you then!" Better than me..shh sppt, %$# you, you azz licking $@g boy, i'll choke your bi%$# with my %$#k."
.....I give him points for creativity.
Portland in general just has this filthy... I don't know the word for it. People just act really dumb in public here, even the ones with jobs. I have never heard so much swearing in front of children in public as I have in Portland. People are just generally foul mouthed cretins. So many potbellied tattooed imbecils swearing at their kids all the time, I just don't understand.
Seriously, going downtown has become torturous for good citizens and an embarrassment to anyone who visits.
My concern is the fact that these recalcitrant vagrants are now camping along our greenways. Springwater corridor now has tons of these dirt bags camping along Johnson creek and the Willamette river. Now joggers and bicyclists are starting to be accosted and mugged even out in the suburbs.
It irritates me to no end that people still support them and feel sorry for them and welcome them with open arms. Portland has always been homeless friendly but things are getting really out of hand. Hales and Fritz have no cajones. If they did something about the homeless plague then they wouldn't look progressive they would look like the elitists they actually are.
Something has to give, all of these functionally homeless are bad for public safety and bad for business and tourism.
Regarding the post from ANDYAMG, yes unfortunately a lot of the observations do seem true.
This summer, on a few occasions, we have tried going out to enjoy the nice weather and have a few drinks in downtown Portland. We have found the experience to be lacking and not enjoyable as the cretins, scum and losers seem to be everywhere now. While not scary, (I always pack and am not afraid to use) we don't need to experience this crap, especially on our leisure time. We have decided that we will take our business and $ elsewhere.
There are tons of options out there, why support a city that encourages crap holes to hang out?
As an example, we were sitting in an outside courtyard. A filthy, young white girl is sitting just outside the entrance with a sign reading "***** need a dollar." Great Marketing campaign!
I live in L.A., and I've read that the homeless population is one of the few negatives of Portland. Well, I visited Portland for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and, while my experience is obviously a small sample size, I was pleasantly surprised how little the homeless population bothered me. In downtown L.A., you have high end restaurants on one street, with really sketchy areas on the next street, so it's easy to feel uncomfortable just walking to your car. Heck, Skid Row in L.A. is actually an officially recognized area of the city. I personally didn't see a single area of Portland's downtown that competes with the homeless areas of downtown L.A., although I guess that should be expected, considering the difference in population between the two cities.
It may just be that I'm so used to being asked for money that it never bothers me, and simply saying "Sorry, not today" does the job. I'd definitely take that over the feeling of potential attack here in L.A. Many people I know have stories of terrible homeless person confrontations in the Hollywood area.
p.s. my close friends are involved in helping the homeless here, and I've gone with them to take a census of the homeless populations of some L.A. areas, so it's not as if I'm unusually afraid of dealing with the homeless. You just have to watch out and be ready for the loose canons.
Last edited by douglasf13; 08-25-2014 at 11:14 AM..
1. They are usually fairly aggressive, which is what I hate about them. They have nothing to lose and let you know that up front.
2. It's worse than people say in the summer, but it calms down in the winter when the weather gets harsh.
My thoughts.
It's terrible.... more terrible than in recent years, I'm embarrassed to take friends downtown anymore. So I just don't.
Some friends came up from Arizona and we took them to downtown three weeks ago. We were asked for money not even 3 minutes after we parked. It was hot so we went to a 7-11 to grab some drinks and outside. They want to go to the food carts so i took them to the ones on Washington or Oak? and 5th. Anyway, we got some salmon burgers and gyros and were eating on the side walk when all of a sudden two ass hole kids on skateboards coming flying through, they both dart out across 5th st into traffic one jumps off his skateboard and throws it at the other one and yells something about raping his mom. The skate board doesn't come anywhere near the kid and instead hits the hood of a Honda driving through. Then were walking to Paddy's and as were crossing the street there is this guy crossing with us who is yelling....at someone or something? and goes over and kicks some ones car and starts yelling "dirty c%$t, dirty c&*t, d*(y azz ****." This lady is terrified. So my friend says "come on friend, lets just go this way." Get your hands of me you filthy white satan, yall people all the same"... and then he starts yelling something about the NSA genocide and experiments.... We go to Paddy's it's fun we take a picture of the big liquor wall and then when its' about they ask about Ira Keller fountain so we go there through Lownsdale and Shrunk Plaza and literally every park bench has someone sleeping on it with a cart and bunch of cans or just random crap. My friend says "I think you guys have a bit of a homeless problem, I don't even see the police." Can they do that. I sigh and tell him "They are protesting...or something I don't know the real story why our cops allow it." The icing on the cake was when we were at Ira Keller fountain and we caught some one crapping in the fountain. There were tons of homeless sleeping everywhere in the upper park the lower park there was like a homeless hippie drum circle up top. Some guy came around the corner all jacked up looking "You guys got smokes?" You better have smokes, I need smokes." I tell him "we have no smokes." "Well, ^%^& you then!" Better than me..shh sppt, %$# you, you azz licking $@g boy, i'll choke your bi%$# with my %$#k."
.....I give him points for creativity.
Portland in general just has this filthy... I don't know the word for it. People just act really dumb in public here, even the ones with jobs. I have never heard so much swearing in front of children in public as I have in Portland. People are just generally foul mouthed cretins. So many potbellied tattooed imbecils swearing at their kids all the time, I just don't understand.
Seriously, going downtown has become torturous for good citizens and an embarrassment to anyone who visits.
My concern is the fact that these recalcitrant vagrants are now camping along our greenways. Springwater corridor now has tons of these dirt bags camping along Johnson creek and the Willamette river. Now joggers and bicyclists are starting to be accosted and mugged even out in the suburbs.
It irritates me to no end that people still support them and feel sorry for them and welcome them with open arms. Portland has always been homeless friendly but things are getting really out of hand. Hales and Fritz have no cajones. If they did something about the homeless plague then they wouldn't look progressive they would look like the elitists they actually are.
Something has to give, all of these functionally homeless are bad for public safety and bad for business and tourism.
I was happy that the OWS people had their camp because the bums were in tents, or at least I didn't see them n my downtown travels. That was a welcome respite for me.
During my recent three month stay, I was startled by the number of homeless people.
Then again, it's tough to get the numbers down when cities like San Francisco, San Diego and St. Petersburg, Florida are using their tax dollars to bus their homeless to Portland.
Your post contained one or more words in the banned-word filter at City-Data. Words are added to the banned-word filter when they are considered obscene by the management. By typing the word in a way that the banned-word filter couldn't detect, you posted obscene material on the forum and violated this rule
All right city-data mods you win. No more obscene characters.
I was pretty tired after an ALL DAY softball tournament when I made that post. I realize now how atrocious the post was it makes me look pretty dumb.
but... the story is 100% true, what little of it could be understood. The part of the story I failed to finish was outside the 7-11 A young copule got into a shouting match with 2 homeless? street kids. And since the mods have told me I can not use I can not tell you what they said although. It had to do with female anatomy and an act in which one forcefully copulates with another. This was all about a pack of smokes.
Another issue is are they really homeless? Well that's a gray area. There are different definitions of being homeless and no one can agree on any single one.
This Mercury article is really good. Ill just give you some cliff notes.
28% of Portland homeless have been in Portland less than year and less than 11% have been in Portland longer than 5 years.Reasons for being homeless: Chronic substance abuse, drug abuse, and alcohol abuse...61%
Developmental and Physical Disability?.... only 22%
In my opinion, others are free to disagree. I think the problem gets worse when the weather is hot, HOT, like 90+. I think the homeless folksget hot and cranky and start mouthing off to people and getting more brazen and start doing things they wouldn't normally do.Also, I have noticed they are less active at festival times because the police "harass" them and move them along. They also seem more brazen during weekdays because again, in my opinion, police are less active.
I have noticed the worst areas now days are city hall/Chapman/Lownsdale/Shrunk area. An of course Old Town/Burnside. Also, under bridges is a risky proposition after sundown.
Just so you know, Seattle is not any better especially between downtown and Seattle Center. I have seen a lot of the same type of stuff there. Fist fights, HL people flipping cigarettes at people who don't give them money, a guy kicking the side of cars as he muttered incoherently.
One thing that really surprised me is a man who tried to force himself on a volunteer at a certain homeless shelter, they blamed her for his behavior, witnesses all told the same story and they were escorted out like they were the criminals. I just don't understand some people, are they so blinded by compassion they no longer have common sense? I'd say the majority of homeless I have worked with are con artists, good actors, and able bodied slackers, who love to behave badly and do drugs. Those who are straight laced and really need housing usually find it.
I'm trying to find a you tube documentary that starts out with these two vagrants with a dog complaining that they just came from California and they are mad that no one will help them and then he goes into the tricks of trade about sign making and them bragging about making 100 dollars a day and then he flashes his weapons and takes a swig of juice. Then the director of the video sides with them and goes on a tare about how Portland should do more. They came from California a month ago... they don't deserve a darn thing!
This shows common street scenes in Portland, the homeless are literally everywhere. KOIN 6
This video, I find funny. This Canadian guy goes on philosophical rant about how America doesn't help anyone. Great, since Canada has all the answers we will tell our homeless about the wonders of Calgary and Vancouver, the Canadians can help them.. or at least try, then give up. I think they will find our homeless are a bit different than theirs.
Has anyone here ever been homeless? Had to eat in a soup kitchen because they were flat broke and had no food? Lost their job because of layoffs, and found no one would hire them because they were over 55? Gotten sick and found that they no longer had a job?
What I see here, the prevailing attitude of privilege, is a million times worse than any homeless person I have ever encountered. You people have problems folks. I would rather be around the homeless any day. Better quality of people.
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