More than 5,000 people are homeless in Oregon’s Multnomah County, most of them in Portland, and Oregon has the fourth-highest rate of homelessness in the nation. According to community-service worker Kevin Dahlgren, the problem is that the bureaucracies and non-profit groups that work on the homeless issue spend their time enabling people to remain homeless, rather than trying to rehabilitate them so they can get a job and housing.
The homeless crisis is making parts of Portland unlivable, yet the social service groups “are part of the problem,” says Dahlgren. Instead of getting people permanently off the streets, Portland and other cities are now giving away tents, blankets, and other materials that allow homeless people to remain on the streets. What they should be doing, says Dahlgren, is “ending homelessness by empowering, not enabling” homeless people.
Dahlgren attracted media attention this week when he told Fox News that left-wing groups put up tents in front of businesses, the homes of politicians, and others in order to attract homeless people to those places and justify the groups’ anti-capitalist message. While that may be true, the real problem is that these left-wing groups demonize any politician who considers real solutions to the homeless problem.
Dahlgren uses the term homeless industrial complex to describe the bureaus and non-profit groups that are thriving on the homeless issue without actually helping the homeless. These groups advocate for more subsidies to dense housing, which doesn’t help people who are addicted to fentanyl.
Instead of spending billions building so-called affordable housing, cities need to help individuals get off drugs, get jobs, and find housing, says Dahlgren. This, however, is too much work, so it’s easier just to throw more money at housing.
Portland’s failure to adequately deal with homelessness is one reason why Portland’s downtown recovery since the pandemic is third-to-the-bottom of a 52 U.S. downtowns. As of September, downtown Portland had just 37 percent as many workers as it did before the pandemic. Only Cleveland and San Francisco are worse, while four cities have seen more than a 100 percent recovery and five more have seen 90 to 100 percent.
While the homeless are highly visible in downtown Portland, downtown isn’t the only place they can be found. They don’t seem to be attracted to the hills on Portland’s west side, probably because it’s no fun pushing shopping carts full of belongings up a steep hill. But they are found near the light-rail lines on the relatively flat east side.
Early this month, WalMart announced that it is closing both of its stores in east Portland. The company said the decision was due to “many factors” but CEO Doug McMillan admitted that “shrinkage,” that is, shoplifting, is a growing problem. Several other Portland stores closed in 2022 due to theft problems, and Bank of America has announced it will not reopen an east Portland branch that was damaged in an arson fire that was probably set by either homeless people or Antifa activists.
Increasing numbers of Portlands are simply leaving town. The city’s population fell by 1.7 percent between 2020 and 2021, and Portland State University estimates that Multnomah County lost another 0.3 percent in 2022 (Portland may have lost more than 0.3 percent if some Portlanders moved to more rural parts of Multnomah County).
The pandemic temporarily emptied downtown Portland. The homeless crisis may make that permanent. To solve that crisis, Portland needs to help individual homeless people, not build a lot of subsidized housing that few of the homeless will ever use.
Wikipedia has an interesting take on Portland …
During the dot-com boom of the mid-to-late 1990s, Portland saw an influx of people in their 20s and 30s,[citation needed] drawn by the promise of a city with abundant nature, urban growth boundaries, cheaper rents, and opportunities to work in the graphic design and Internet industries, as well as for companies like Doc Martens, Nike, Adidas, and Wieden+Kennedy. When this economic bubble burst, the city was left with a large creative population. Also, when the bubble burst in Seattle and San Francisco, even more artists streamed into Portland, drawn in part by its relatively low cost of living, for a West Coast city. In 2000, the U.S. census indicated there were over 10,000 artists in Portland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Portland,_Oregon
I will comment, sarcastically, “It’s the artists, stupid.”
As far as I know, and from my experience handing out free food, this analysis is much to simplistic. Community workers would readily agree that getting the homeless off drugs, getting them work, etc. is the best thing to do, and most homeless will agree. However, many poor people are poor because they are not very competent at running their own lives. Thus it is very difficult to rehabilitate them, and this costs money. It is additional expense to treat a homeless person for drug addiction, counseling on budgeting, etc. Many homeless are mentally impaired and really might be better off institutionalized, but may not want to be. So if money is not spent on these issues, should the homeless be denied tents? Certainly wealthy neighborhoods will have the police pick up any homeless in their area and take them to a homeless support center, usually in an area that already has a homeless problem. Is this the right thing to do? A church going Christiaan man I complained to about the homeless being moved from his city to a poor city just replied “But they like them there! We don’t like them.” Is this really the way to deal with the problem? I suggest that anyone who has strong opinions on this should volunteer at a homeless shelter before they critique the problem, before believing the analysis of just one person.
This guy actually became “homeless”:
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman spent seven days and nights posing as homeless on the streets of Aurora and Denver to gain insight on the metro’s homelessness situation.
From Dec. 26 to Jan. 2, Aurora, CO Mayor Mike Coffman spent three nights sleeping in encampments and four nights in different homeless shelters, relying on resource centers and donations from passersby for meals.
“I thought that the encampments were a lifestyle choice. They chose not to go into shelters because of the rules and I think drug use was a common denominator that I saw,” Coffman said. “It’s not a choice that they’re addicted to drugs, maybe at that point it’s not a choice, but it seems to me they have the option to go to a shelter and chose not to.”
cities need to help individuals get off drugs, get jobs, and find housing…
That’s easier said than done.
Drugs….. do permanent long lasting damage.
I said before suddenly treating them is not same as rehabilitation. Addiction freezes all emotional development…if youre an alcoholic by 16 you’re gonna behave like a 16 year til give it up. That’s why addicts live in the past….”This happened, that happened to me” years ago…..
There’s very little we can do with them anyway… because we imported 3rd world to-do the jobs we don’t wanna pay these guys. Turning addicts into productive members of society at cost of hundreds thousands per person. It costs less to keep em in prison 5 years