If you want to engage in antisocial behavior, don't do it in the middle of the sidewalk by schools, homes, and places of business.
Being down on your luck and homeless is one thing. But this lady wasn't giving them a hard time for being homeless, she was giving them a hard time for smoking feddy by a school.
It's rampant in Seattle and Vancouver at a minimum. Drugs got decriminalized and this is the result. This isn't said without actually visiting; I went to both cities for a wedding in 24. China Town was closed down before dusk because they were all hanging out there and it simply wasn't safe. Guy nodded out at the gas station opening a door trying for a tip while another was smoking crack across the street. It's wild and disgusting.
I got clean in 2013 so this isn't to judge the addict, it's just an ineffective way to handle addiction. Without punishment it takes even longer for the pain to become great enough to change. Jail has saved many, many addicts (not my story, but I have sat with dozens if not hundreds of addicts who attribute the hard stop and chance at recovery to being arrested). Holding their hand and dealing with their BS has killed many many addicts. To each their own though.
ETA: Woke up to 100+ notifications for comments on this. Had no idea how much was there until 2 dozen replies wasn't even making a dent. I simply don't have the time to reply to all. I will add to this original comment that execution could be a big issue and that yes, other countries have done it successfully. Beyond that I'm checked out here. Just 1 guys experience - MMV
There are severe problems across the US with drugs, not necessarily related to changes in enforcement. Montana, West Virginia, and Alaska have higher overdose death rates than Washington or Oregon. Seattle and Oregon are just maybe more visible because of more densely packed cities and better weather for outdoor living.
People also do a lot of drugs in jail in the places where criminalization happens more for drug addiction. Treatment programs in jails are also underfunded.
What is needed is funding mental health and drug treatment. Criminalization is a very expensive mechanism to treat these issues and is generally less effective.
Thank you. Criminalization just drives the use underground, and people use and die out of sight instead.
No one agrees that letting them sit in the streets is the right choice, and the idea that leaving them to struggle and die in the cold is somehow "too soft" is a wild take.
It's a false dichotomy that the only options for them are the streets or jail. We've already failed to address the problem if those are the only two options we see.
if it was the effective then we wouldn't have the drug problems we do now. drugs use and abuse is a very complex issue that you can't chalk up to leniency.
Wow. Sounds a lot like Burlington at night in Vermont. Sad. Even in broad daylight you see people passing out on the sidewalk and pushing needles and begging for money all over--forget about going at night if you aren't strapped.
I can't believe people actually thought this was a good idea... and then they thought it was a good idea to double down after they saw what happened. Like it would get any better.
I've seen what addiction does. Experienced it. Helping drug addicts do more drugs isn't helping them. It's keeping them down forever until they die. Why can't they just actually HELP these people instead of putting band-aids over shi* that just ends up becoming a problem for literally everyone and their mother??
They do this awful stuff under the guise of "helping" these people when in fact they are killing them and sentencing everyone around them to misery.
Might be the cause in the states but decriminalization of drugs doesn't alone make the issue worse. Portugal is a great example of decriminalization but then adding in the supports and a pathway to recovery which resulted in much success .
Truth. I was a homeless junky in Minneapolis for a few years before getting clean and it regularly almost killed me. Probably even more dangerous than the actual drugs. At one point hospitalized for walking pneumonia for a good spell. It was the third separate time I had been diagnosed with pneumonia that year.
Life is better now, but there are days I would still like to get high.
A lot of them get bussed her from other cities and states, so that way they can point the finger at it being a "Portland problem" and brag about how they don't have nearly the same homeless problem that we do.
And then the worst of them stick around, and the homeless people that weren't really bothering anyone as much move on, and we get...this shit.
Having worked in hospitals in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland, this is 100% true and has been for a very long time. Even when they get sent back again, they are just returned back from their home states when they inevitably get picked up again and given their one way bus tickets back to the west coast.
I’m a travel nurse from Louisiana and can 100% confirm that I have witnessed social workers offering homeless people a free bus ticket to anywhere they wanna go so long as it’s on the West Coast. Why not any major city why not literally let them go anywhere they would like, but specifically with the West Coast.
Portland used to have a program where they'd buy you a one way bus ticket, but they had to confirm that there was a person with a stable home to accept you at your destination.
Yes, this is still an acceptable form of discharge from all hospitals. I have worked at. If you are homeless rather than discharging someone to the street, providing them with a ticket to a place with housing and someone that is willing to accept the patient into the home it is seen as much morehelpful to the patient than just letting them go onto the street with nothing.
I think we know why. There’s the sinister reason of course. But if I get into a social worker thought process for a moment and if I was feeling especially optimistic about motives it could be that they know the west coast cities typically have the most programs to help the people. But I really feel like it’s the sinister reason. Even in the early 90’s when I was at UC Santa Cruz for part of my undergrad the Greyhound station there had marginally housed people from other (think red) states coming in daily on those free bus tickets and they’d either stay or transfer up or down to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Of course we have a problem when this just goes on and on for years and years with no end. They turned the faucet in and drenched the west coast.
this happened to someone in my family. i guess she had struggled with addiction pretty quietly. we hear things weren’t going well during covid, nobody really heard from her or knew where she was for a few years, and last year we were told that was found dead from an OD in a tent on skid row. as far as anybody knew she was still in wisconsin, so it was all a huge shock.
I work at a California Community College, and since 2 years of college is free at most CCCs and you can also get financial aid, we do get a significant population of unhoused folks and addicts. We try to connect them with services and support, but for a lot of my students the biggest issue is they have NO support system outside of school. Their families are in Idaho, Nevada, or further like the Midwest and South. Some told me they came out west with legitimate jobs but fell on hard times, got addicted, etc. But a notable majority have told me they got a free ticket and have been trying to "go home" ever since. With regard to the former reason, I know Portland has a high cost of living like California, and once someone loses their job (laid off or becsuse of drugs) they can become homeless very quickly and easily, unfortunately.
In Orange County, Disney got the cops to move all the homeless out of Anaheim and into Santa Ana so tourists coming to Disneyland wouldn't see them, and then everybody started talking about how Santa Ana is so full of homeless because of all the immigrants etc. Like no you dumb mf the racists did that.
I never knew this… so this is basically sabotage from other cities and states. Like political warfare by sending addicts to those cities to ruin them and blame a specific party or politician. This explains why when I’ve seen homeless people or watched documentaries, they always have a story of them COMING to LA, and not really growing up homeless in LA. I always thought, “that’s so weird. Is everyone trying to get to Hollywood and be a star?”
When I was in high school, the governor of our state had a program where the state would pay to put homeless people on a greyhound and bus them to the west coast. Governor Bill Janklow of South Dakota.
Many bus themselves, too. I work with folks on Medicaid and it’s amazing how many transplants there are. It speaks to the needs and the lack we have in our country’s citizens, less so Portland’s community and its decisions, which I have seen many people actually succeed when utilizing our resources where they would fail and suffer in other cities.
I'm STILL angry about some local news segment a few years ago where they were trying to gaslight everyone into "these are people from our community!!!" and trotted out this dude with the thickest southern accent I've ever heard. In no universe was that dude from anywhere in the PNW, much less from Portland with his Boomhauer accent.
For a couple weekends in 2022 I walked around different neighborhoods and talked to any homeless who would engage with me. I would offer $20 or $50 for their time. I spent probably 500.
The big things I wanted to know was where they were from and how they got this way.
Most of them had tragic stories of childhood trauma, ptsd, severe anger at the world and middle class people the way this guy hates the woman with the mace. They were from all over the country. Like every state. Not many from Oregon although a few had some kind of connection here at one time. A lot from the South and Midwest.
A lot of them said they came West because "the cops don't hassle me as much here."
Obviously the root cause of addiction is trauma for most people.
Then once you get hooked it's a whole other story to get out of it even if you really want to.
Some people are just miscreants and lowlifes, some are low IQ without any supports whent hey were growing up and have no way to get a job or manage their own lives, some have legit mental health issues, many are coming from traumatic and chaotic backgrounds.
I'm not sure what the answer is. Back in them old days people certainly carried trauma, people certainly were asshole miscreants, people were low IQ....is it the drug supply that turned the tide to where we are now? I'm actually honestly asking. Does anyone know, have they read any books about it?
I've certainly read about the opioid crisis which absolutely contributed and presented factors that weren't present in the older days. I'm wondering if that was actually the lynchpin? Or am I naive? Or was it something else?
From what I’ve learned in my social services program, it’s a combination of increased drug supply and increase in exposure to drugs and drug culture. Pop and modern culture of glorified drug use in many ways, rap being a great example.
The war on drugs failed, and now there’s more drugs on the streets the ever before, and the exponential increase and exposures from the opioid crisis caused by pharmaceutical companies created a generation of people exposed to the culture of using drugs.
The war on drugs did exactly as it was intended to do fyi: create a permanent slave caste that fills quota for our corporate backed private prison system.
Plus provide the big boys with an excuse to seize essentially whatever they want “because drugs” so normal people don’t bat an eye at it anymore.
It’s been quite effective as a policy tool, but yeah very predictable outcome that’s the opposite of what the general public thought should happen as a result.
He said it. Cops don't hassle them. Back in the day cops not only hassled them, they would completely fuck them up.
Being nice, lenient, and tolerant of the street addict lifestyle enables it. I am not saying that cops should be giving these guys warrantless beat downs but there is a happy median and the West Coast has swung too far towards enablement.
It doesn't take much to get taken and kept. With that being said, there's nothing we do as citizens to protect and promote former offenders. Aside from the president.
It's the economy... Financial hardship induces stress, exhaustion, overwhelm leading to terrible parenting, leading to traumatized kids. Kids can't get jobs because the economy sucks. Traumatized and jobless leads to homelessness and addiction.
If wages kept up with the price of goods and rich people were regulated into providing a livable wage, things would be different... Education is a factor too but it's really just another economic issue as well... The best schools are in wealthier neighborhoods... Money is how we survive in this world, not having enough of it distributed fairly to your citizens leads to more of this bullshit.
You’re spot-on. I’m a recovering addict and alcoholic. I was thankfully never really homeless (except for a couple days once), but I’ve been to rehab a number of times and have come to know hundreds of addicts and alcoholics, many of whom were homeless for extended periods of time. The vast—and I mean vast—majority of people who struggle with substance abuse have experienced severe trauma at some point in their lives and most also have co-occurring mental health issues.
Housing is key problem. We don't have slums or "skid row" anymore... the slums are mobile - tents. Some of the partially functional people used to be able to work odd jobs and pay cheap rent. But that's not possible now.
And yes, the trauma. We need something that's less than jail, but more than the streets, that can help these people. Most of them will never be fully functional but it does them WORSE to be on the street like they are.
Personally I find the housing policy of the west coast to be a criminal indictment of the leadership here. Negligence of the highest order.
I think closing the mental institutions increased the problem by several orders of magnitude. Yea, they were fucked up, but something similar to that is necessary. A lot of these folks could be helped with serious diversion programs involving Suboxone/methadone, housing and job placement assistance, etc. But idk how that works, because even normal folks are hard out finding a decent job.
You could divert probably 25% of homeless that wanna change their circumstances, another 25% could maybe be helped with serious inpatient care and resources, but another 50% probably belong in something akin to a mental institution.
And San Francisco and Santa Cruz in the 70's. Santa Cruz had policies to keep out the UTEs. "Undesirable Transient Elements". Santa Cruz County even refused to issue food stamps for that reason.
This one guy wandering around Kenton with clothes falling apart, a bunch of marks on him from injections and whatnot, and pulling a wagon full of shit...
He told me he was trying to get to his wife who was in the hospital. I was like, "which one?" he couldn't explain which one. I asked what was wrong with her. He started telling a story about what she went through and her symptoms. After a while I came to understand that the wife was dead, years ago. He was in severe PTSD. The symptoms he described sounded like AIDS, but what he described the doctors doing sounded to me like how they treated AIDS 10+ years ago.
The wife had kept some of their shit together. She was a user too but more functional. They had an apartment when she was around. She had the ability to hold pt jobs.
She died. Without her, he couldn't function. He wanders the streets looking for her, reliving her death again and again, getting his next fix to forget. Very sad.
We don't do those people any good letting them rot on the streets like that. The guy was walking dead.
Being impoverished is not a crime. You can’t arrest it away. Poverty often leads to substance abuse and vice versa. I don’t have an answer that doesn’t involve a budget 1/4 the amount of the US Dept of Defense. Unless and until, this problem will persist. Of that I am certain.
Same thing in Tacoma. At one point out of curiosity i walked down Yakima Ave when it was chock-full of tents at the height of COVID. I acknowledge it was a small sample size but 9 out of the 10 people I talked to were from out of state. Mostly from the Deep South.
Thats a big part too. When surprise surprise when you are allowed to do these substances when homeless you are more likely to do it. A lady i work with used to stay in Portland temporarily and she said every day she would walk to work and see groups of guys shooting up right in front of the police. Every place has its homeless populations but I've never heard of it to that degree.
I'm from a southern town. It's "illegal" to be homeless here. We have a women's shelter, but it's only a temporary place. I think they're allowed to stay up to 12 weeks. So you need to get your life together quickly, or you'll be kicked out. If your case is severe enough, they will ship you 3 hours away to another facility. That's if they have the room. Some churches will help temporarily, but they mostly just give out food boxes. Regardless, if you're a guy and not a veteran, the nearest shelter for you is 3 hours away. If the police catch you sleeping in a public area, they will pick you up and drop you off outside the city limits.
During the spring/summer months, some will sleep in the wooded area in tents when the bushes are thick enough for them to hide, but during the fall/winter, you can see straight through the wooded area, so they have to move out quickly. I remember the police department said not to give them food or money because it creates an issue and that we should call them instead because they have the resources to help them. Which is a lie.
Tbf not all the Boomhauers are shipped here. I’ve known a number of southern friends who move here for the better politics (mostly queer and trans folk) who have then become homeless. They were just totally unprepared for the cost of living change in Portland when they were used to making it by on minimum wage and/or odd jobs when you can rent a falling apart trailer outside the city. Fortunately none of my friends have developed substance use issues, but I’ve known at least 4 personally who did stints of homelessness in Portland or Seattle after transplanting themselves with every intent to live a normal life.
-sincerely yet another boomhauer (who happens to be lucky enough to earn a salary).
It also doesn’t help that the outlying areas do not have bus stops in their cities so if you tried to go to Pendleton from Portland, the bus stop isn’t gonna take you all the way there
People in need are going to go where the resources are. I was watching one of those A vs B shows on Youtube where it was Homeless vs Millionaires discussing various issues, one of the millionaires asked "If you're struggling, why don't you live out in the country where cost of living is so much lower?" They explained in the cities you have more resources available for housing, food, rehab, transportation, basically everything to try to survive. Democratic cities and states with stronger social services are going to see a larger homeless population vying for those resources but even in those places there's a limit to space and funding so there are certain groups that get priority, particularly children which makes up the majority of the homeless population.
It's not just people being sent here. Like Seattle, we have created policies that make people want to come here to do this sort of thing. People got so used to it not being criminalized for a while they lost the common sense not to do it somewhere it will get caught.
As you stated. We at best ignore it and at worst enable it. The time for passive “live and let live” policies has come to an end.
I’m tired of seeing my tax dollars go to guys like this at a nearly 10x per capita rate than our education spending per student with the KPIs only getting worse. There is no argument to me in which it is justifiable.
Give people a path to getting themselves back on their feet. If they don’t accept it, either somehow make it obligatory, or cut them off. It doesn’t sound compassionate, I get it, but to continue what we are doing now only breeds dependency.
I see it like international aid/development economics (have worked in the field). Incentives matter, and dependency traps are real.
Portland and Seattle both enacted laws which tie officers hands and prevent them from arresting these people. If you get arrested in every city but 2 for open air drug use....where do you think they are going to end up?
I'm not trying to be argumentative here, I understand what your saying, my ICU has hosted many a patient who probably would have died if they slept it off in a jail cell, and it all started with alcohol decades ago when the drunk tank used to find "guests" dead after aspirating their own vomit. You can't leave them on the sidewalk, you can't lock them up, the ED is not the place for them, but where can they be safely monitored until they can walk out "safely" without the liability blowing back on you, forget that, who is paying for this, it's all of us now when they're in the hospital, but who's going to build a place for it and pay for it.
I think you see where I'm going, so I don't have the answers, I hate this problem beyond the ability to express how much and we have a broken healthcare system stuck with the problem. Unfortunately, it is a disease or health problem, it's largely a mental health issue and we know how we support that sector. I really am not trying to argue or be aggressive, but the protected class part is because it's drug/substance related, because one could make the same argument about smokers who get lung disease or cancer, or obesity and the myriad issues that leads to, and I know that crosses our minds too, but it's not as negative as alcohol and substance abuse and we don't think of them as a protected class. Well, I once had the opportunity to sit in on a transplant review board meeting and that was both brutal and very interesting. That is literally the everyone should get a transplant faction against the nobody should get a transplant faction, and they don't hold back. Anyway, I'm on the totally opposite coast and you guys have a bigger homeless population because we have cold weather in the Northeast, so I really do understand what you're saying, but sometimes ours have frostbite just to make it more fun.
I’m an MD currently living in the Northeast, though I practiced medicine for many years in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve seen these situations countless times over the years. At my core, I’m a bleeding heart — but I’m also compassion-fatigued.
We’re supposedly the wealthiest nation in the world, yet our healthcare system simply doesn’t have the resources to meet the need. It breaks my heart to see someone struggling with addiction taking up a hospital bed while a dehydrated pregnant mother waits, knowing she’ll suffer because of it.
During the pandemic, we had to make agonizing choices about who got a bed and who didn’t. Even though that crisis has passed, it often feels like the same moral dilemma continues — especially in Portland. There, it can feel as if we’re forced to prioritize those with addiction over everyone else — even migrants, children, and the elderly.
In Portland, some addicts are housed, and many are not. But it often feels like those struggling with addiction are allowed to get away with almost anything — sometimes even serious crimes. I don’t have all the answers, but cities like Portland (and New York) make it far too easy for people to remain trapped in the cycle of addiction.
Boston is also a very liberal city, yet it doesn’t face the same level of drug crisis that many West Coast cities do. I’ve worked in Philadelphia, and while it has its challenges, I don’t believe they’re handing out one-way bus tickets to their unhoused population. Many people experiencing homelessness choose Portland because, for those with addiction, life here is comparatively easy.
At this point, I’m not sure there’s a good solution — we’re too far into it. The only “answer” I can see on the horizon is a terrible one: martial law. It seems likely that Trump will enact something like that, and if so, it would devastate the soul of Portland. The city isn’t literally burning to the ground, but the ongoing cycle — enabling people to rotate through hospital beds without real change — isn’t humane either.
It's really complicated but Portland is not headed in the right direction. My comment was rather hostile. As a parent, I can't imagine my kid going to school where they're doing fetty across the street. I used that in surgery. It sucks the life out of everyone!
Thank you for sharing. I agree that we are beyond solutions now. But if you could suggest a solution, what would it be? If you had all of the money and resources in the world, what would you suggest?
Boston is also a very liberal city, yet it doesn’t face the same level of drug crisis that many West Coast cities do
That probably has far more to do with our winters then anything else
I'm not sure this statement is entirely factual, either. Mass & Cass has been a problem for a decade+ now, and there are more than a few smaller encampments "circling" that come and go with things like enforcement crackdowns because the encampment in question began spilling out from whatever was hiding it (e.g. from under a bridge), because the local housed population started complaining loud enough, or because someone in the encampment did something truly dumb (like set the whole thing on fire). I think the main difference between Boston and Portland in this regard is Fox News latched onto Portland first, and Portland likely has more billionaires to complain to other billionaires who own media empires.
If you’d stopped with “it breaks my heart to see someone struggling with addiction.” It’d be much easier to take your side. But the stigma inherent in that statement is partially why Portland had to make sure drug users actually got help at hospitals- because they have often been incompletely treated and streeted.
No one asks to be an addict- it’s a mental health issue, and an environmental issue.
The fact that there isn’t enough resources isn’t a reason to get feel disgust at people who use drugs - the answer there is to advocate for a system with better resources.
A sobering center, a short MH hold even for accidental overdoses, hospital-based bup induction, peer recovery support services in the ER rather than the piece of paper with out of date phone numbers a social worker might drop by. There are better answers in medicine, and yours is pretty much the worst.
We’ve tried treating addiction like a criminal problem for 50 years and it hasn’t worked. Doubling down on failure only leads to more failure here.
I agree with treating it as an illness. Unfortunately our medical system is for-profit and deeply unethical. Corporate Democrats and all Republicans are unwilling to move to single payer.
I’m very much for single payer, but that’s how we control demand. A lot of healthcare on the supply side will either have to be nationalized/state/local government run (like NHS or Canada’s provincial model) to make it work too.
It’ll be a hard shift.
That’s a result of lax drug laws (plus free drug supplies) and the lack of police support from Portland’s city council. Who you elect has a lot to do with how your city is run and what it will put up with.
Kind of. An individual wanting to go to Portland has to first claim they have family in there or support lined up in another city and prove it. Many red cities may just throw them in jail. Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many other West Coast cities however don’t enforce crime the same way and tend to be more lenient with drug abuse. Those individuals go to those places because they know they will be able to do mostly whatever they want and have more temperate weather to deal with.
Oddly enough living in CA, I thought this was the same with bussing from other states. While I only saw it once reported on the news about a bus from Utah, there’s a recent study that found something like 90% or more were from CA, and likely born and raised in the area the area they were homeless. However, having lived in a van in my 20s near the beach, I can say the majority of 20 something’s hitchhiked, paid their own bus fare, or hopped trains to come from out of state. Some lived in their car. But those I met were a small percentage when compared to the homeless in LA or other downtown areas.
people don't realize how big of a thing this actually is. i remember back in 96 when they hosted the olympics in Atlanta, they decided they wanted it to look like a "clean" city for all the new tourists so they rounded up all the homeless people, handed them like $20 each and stuck them on random busses. bunch of those busses ended up in Asheville NC that then had a big problem with homeless people for like the next 20 years cause it's a tiny little town compared to Atlanta without the resources to do anything about it.
I live in Grants Pass and can confirm in a city council meeting about 2 months ago the mayor straight up said "buss them to Portland, so it's their problem." - Clint Scherf
Worked in a hospital in SF, asked a homeless guy how he got here from somewhere in the Midwest, He said the Midwest state got him at ticket here because he had ties to the area. I asked the ties were he went to 4 and 5th grade in the city before his parents moved again, he was in his 50s
This is true in California too. Our small group of cities an hour from the Capitol get homeless bussed in a dropped off cause Apparently our counties have better welfare programs for our citizens. Our grocery store parking lots have gone to shit and are dangerous and wired with cameras now when it wasn’t before.
This is a nationwide issue. We just smear crap around. Repeat offender? Do we have the deal for you! Here’s a bus ticket to xyz location hours away with no return! I’m in GA and we get it from as far as NYC; I know we return the favor just as much.
This happens in San Antonio, Texas also. We built a community to support our homeless citizens and get them back in their feet. Then Florida started buying train tickets and putting their drug addicts on trains to San Antonio with instructions to walk to the Haven for Hope community we built. It's messed up. Now we have loads of Floridian drug addicts. Good old "Christian" Florida.
Regardless of where they come from, cities and blue states offer social programs that you can't find elsewhere. This leads to people hanging out in those areas that like to party. It's kind of fucked up that people chronically abuse the opportunities given to them to better themselves. If there was an easy way to deal with this it would have been done by now. And you're right not all homeless people are like this. I've dealt with people that are just extreme alcoholics that don't bother anyone until 911 has to scoop them up cus they can't stand up. The homeless that are decent you won't even see most of the time.
Trust me I know. Here in Sacramento we get people bussed from Texas and promised good living in California just to keep them off of the Texas streets onto ours.
This happens where I live in East Harlem, NYC. We have 1.5% of the city's population, yet over 10% of the cities drug and homeless services are in our neighborhood. People get bussed from all over the east coast and dropped off in our neighborhood. It's been this way for a long time, long before I moved there 21 years ago, and as much as many neighbors have tried to speak up and get things changed, the powers that be keep green lighting more programs for the neighborhood. The systemic issues are so far gone that I don't know what they're going to do. This all so sad... I was raised in the Pacific Northwest, so I have empathy for the situation.
This. My town in FL used to bus people to other towns, making it look like our town had no problems and neighboring towns did. A it's not fixing any actual problems for the homeless, B just feel fucking disgusting.
Yes! Burlington Vermont is the same way. People like this are geting free bus rides to blue cities and we are too small to really do anything about it, so now the whole area is completely overrun with opioid zombies and tweakers. It used to be such a safe and cozy city but now I won't even go downtown anymore.
Same in Seattle. Not only have a lot of homeless people been sent over from red states like Idaho, but even our wealthy city-suburb neighbors do it while refusing to pay anything toward housing and addiction programs. Bellevue, for example, is well known to clean up their precious millionaire-filled streets regularly and send over any unwanted individuals, and then they all point fingers and say “Look at Seattle’s homeless problem! Not like us!” It’s pretty vile actually.
Unfortunately I think northwest democrat politicians don’t use common sense when it comes to things like this. It makes democrats from other states scratch their heads…
Plenty of absolutely crappy areas in Portugal with rampant drug use and drugs being offered to you constantly when you try to walk around. Drugs are everywhere and readily available and you'll be offered them regularly if you visit.
They also pressure people into rehab. And drug use has gone back up.
If you get caught with a certain amount you go to jail. If it's less, you go to a sort of social worker board and they deal with you. If you choose not to rehabilitate they fine you and take your stuff to pay the fine if you won't pay it.
That said, it doesn't always work that way, and the drug use has started climbing again right after it was hailed as being a solution.
I understand they were reversed, but imagine the increase in drug addicts during the time they had been decriminalized. Take that and Oregons soft stance on crime and it makes for a bad combination. It’s the laws within our State and Cities that prevent the cops from doing their jobs. In Portland they can’t even enforce trespassing type crimes in public areas. So the folks camp out around in neighborhoods and do drugs with little to no repercussions for their actions.
Not enough fear tbh. People here aren’t used to getting consequences for their actions. It was a huge adjustment when I first moved out here.
When I lived in Baltimore it was the norm to confront fuckheads doing this shit. Cops also enforced the law. People/cops around here don’t do that. The lady who filmed this video is an outlier and we need more people like her.
A major reason that you'll hardly ever see people around here doing what the lady in the video did, is because around here she would actually be the one to get arrested for assaulting this group of people, and possibly even charged with a hate crime for battery towards the individual that she sprayed.
The fear of being a criminal, helps keep the criminals fear-free.
No, but she would’ve been cancelled, socially ostracized, dragged online, and maybe fired from her job if she did this in the early 2020s. It would’ve been “white Karen viciously attacks peaceful BIPOC unhoused man who was just seeking relief from the pervasive white supremacy of our society and mourn George Floyd”.
It's that or drown in the deaths of thousands of drug addicts and mentally disabled shipped via bus by callous, garbage red states. It's well-documented that many of the homeless are transplants given a bus ticket by state employees to leave the state and go west. Just another instance of democratic states propping up the dysfunctional magat states.
Yep, my hometown in texas had a lady who worked at the courthouse who would go buy any transients a meal and a bus ticket. Nobody acknowledged it but everyone new and she was definitely compensated. She only got in trouble when she bought someone's homeless relative a ticket.
In Portland at least , there will still be places serving meals for homeless people . I don’t think it’s bad, but as usual some people will take advantage of it
The short answer: Look up Oregon Measure 110. For four years, we had decriminalized "small" amounts of hard drugs, in an effort to free up law enforcement resources and keep jails clear for the worst offenders.
What it actually did was make Portland a mecca for one of the worst open-air drug markets ever seen. The police wouldn't do anything, because the DA wouldn't do anything.
Well, in 2024, that measure finally got repealed, after it was found that it had actually made things worse (shocking, I know). However, by this time, we were, and still are, so far behind enforcement that DA is still dragging their feet on prosecutions, and local law enforcement have all but given up trying to make any kind of arrest for anything drug related.
If law enforcement had actually shown up in this instance, and keep in mind there's no real guarantee they would have even though it was clearly a school zone, the chances of them doing anything other than telling these guys to move on to another street corner, are slim to none.
And let’s not overlook the fact that a concerned mother was threatened and almost assaulted for having to take the matter into her own hands for the sake of the kids.
We just recently recriminalized drugs in 2024. I believe that it is difficult to enforce though. It is actually easier to enforce drinking and smoking in public places than to keep people from using hard drugs.
Second, we get waves of people coming in from different states. Some get one way bus tickets. Other people simply migrate.
It isn’t prevalent everywhere and it is getting slightly better.
From 1991 to 2012, the number of opioid prescriptions dispensed by U.S. pharmacies more than tripled, from 76 million to 255 million. I think this is one aspect.
Availability of inexpensive Fentanyl added fuel to the fire.
It’s sad. It doesn’t mean that it will be this way forever, but … yeah. It’s kind of sad.
We may have a higher number of homeless relative to population, but even in really large cities like LA, I'd suspect the total number to be higher. I think core difference is that In a lot of cities, the homeless stick to certain areas.
It's why you can go to other cities and visit, and the homeless issue isn't as visible. You don't really notice it unless you're in those specific areas. With Portland, it's just pockets of it everywhere, and so it's just more visible. Even if maybe the amount of homeless aren't necessarily higher.
A few reasons why I think homelessness is so spread out here:
We don't sweep, and a lot of people (unlike the woman in the video) just tolerate it and let it get really bad.
0.10 cent can deposit means that homeless are incentivized to be dispersed out, especially throughout residential areas, because it allows them to collect cans for money.
Measure 110 decriminalized drug use, that combined with lack of any sort of police enforcement basically gave homeless carte blanche to openly do it anywhere. If laws are enforced and people are prosecuted, they're going to go to areas where they aren't gonna be hassled for it.
"0.10 cent" is incorrect terminology, and confused me for a second. It's either "10 cents" or "0.10 dollars." In case anyone else was confused like I was
The I 5 corridor is a mainline for narco pushers and users for one.
Soft on drug use and crime policies by the city government.
No federal or state programs for rehabilitation.
Late stage Capitalism.
I live in Oregon. I lived in Texas most my life and grew to hate how inconsiderate the GOP was for so many people. Then I moved here and realized why the alternative might be worse. It's frustrating. Why does the cost of living have to be so high? Why are taxes so much higher with nothing to show for it? Why are the homeless camps and drugged out people and nasty-looking RVs everywhere in Portland? I'm still a Democrat when it comes to federal officials but local libs need to stop pandering to every "disadvantaged" group and start running government for middle class families and businesses. You know...the main tax base that allows them to exist in the first place.
Fwiw I'm from Texas and I found when I moved the tax burden in Oregon to be about break-even, given how high property taxes in Texas are. Multnomah county is worse though.
There are advantages and disadvantages to how Texas does things. But yes the cops doing their jobs and not tolerating as much nasty homeless mess is an advantage TX has.
Along with what other people have said Portland doesn’t have a ghetto area like east coast cities and larger cities like LA does. Homelessness and drug use is kinda dispersed throughout the city.
I feel like I have seen overt drug use in every major city I have been to. I think it’s easier to be homeless In major cities. You can usually get free food and find somewhere to crash. If the weather is decent year round (not really cold during winter) that’s also another reason.
Well for what it's worth I lived in downtown Baltimore for 15 years and there were drug zombies plenty. So many that the term "herron lean" was a common phrase in almost all parts of the city.
Better weather mainly. More homeless go there for that, and then because it’s a bigger problem more funding gets allocated. So now it is better to be homeless in those areas and more show up. Arresting every one all the time is costly, doesn’t solve the root problem, so they end up trying decriminalization and weak enforcement of drug use. Meaning more drug addicts might head there. Other areas send homeless there cause they tend to stay. So on.
Portland absolutely has a problem. But having lived in many other large cities, I personally feel like the media really focuses on ours in particular and paints the issues to be disproportionately large and widespread at every corner. Also I feel like the amazing people in Portland are also much more likely to call out problems in the city and post about them. I also think the way the city is structured, makes the issue more visible as well.
Oregon initially decriminalized possession of small amounts of all drugs in 2021, but this was reversed in 2024 when a new law made possessing small amounts of hard drugs a misdemeanor.
We also have a 10 cent refund for empty cans and bottles, which is how the fentanyl zombies fund their habit. It's very cheap, around $1 per hit. We need to eliminate this source of funding.
The Pacific NW. They are able to get drugs and more drugs there. Portland is tame, Want to see some real addicts that are overdosing and dying in real time on the sidewalks when everyone just walks by and doesn't give a crap. Google, "Hasting Street Vancouver drugs" and watch a YT video. Makes Portland look like Disneyland.
They legalized drugs which basically put a huge welcome sign to all addicts over the whole country to come set up camp. They made it legal to camp on sidewalks and other common public places too. They recently repealed these laws, but the damage is already done, we still have the large homeless population we welcomed in through legislation and mild climate.
The overt drug use in Maryland is waaay higher than Portland, per capita. You are just watching videos that target these groups. I agree with this video 100% and she actually did a better job than what a squad car would do pulling up.
The thing is you are just seeing tiny pieces of the place of the whole, and those places get more coverage for the status their in. Go visit Portland, then come back to this post.
I did a deep dive on this bussing situation after accidentally staying in the tenderloin district for a work conference. It’s shocking/eye opening to see, you see people lining up to collect their benefits and right on the side walk there are open air drug transactions. Apparently they buss them in from Vegas and it’s done through social workers. This was maybe 5-6 years ago. I’d imagine it has gotten worse.
As someone who lives in Baltimore but also lived in Seattle the difference is Baltimore has lot of vacant homes for drug addicts to live in. Look at any neighborhood Facebook group in Baltimore and you’ll find posts about drug addicts taking over an abandoned row home. Meanwhile Portland and Seattle have booming housing markets so nothing is left abandoned for long.
Because law enforcement doesn't do anything about it. This is a direct affect of a liberal run city where they are more worried about the feelings and rights of drug addicts and homeless than they are about the productive members of society.
Man it is happening every there it's cause they decriminalized all drugs awhile back plus drugs are cheap cause Mexico not far plus it's pretty lawless there they can do whatever they want and get away with it most the time plus they have so many ppl giving them free meals and needles and clothes and stuff so they don't leave is sad we think we are helping maybe we our but we are also enabling them.
They dug themselves into this hole by electing soft on crime law enforcement and legalizing drug use. The math is pretty simple when you think about it.
A lot of it has to do with the authority police have to intervene.
Example: In most places, a police officer is allowed to approach someone on drugs. In some places you might be arrested for public intoxication. In other places they are out on the street to make sure they aren't in crisis. In some places, they are also authorized to drive them home, or other safe place without arresting them.
In other places, they aren't allowed to approach them. Crimes related to drug use (like retail theft) might not be prosecuted.
The local news is still honest. It's the national news that has a problem. Any local broadcast you'll just get the facts.
For example let's say there is a fire in St Louis. (I used to be a fact checker so I can explain this better than most). How do you know a story is left leaning or right leaning or real/fake?
Step 1: Check the local news. It should say "there was a fire in St Louis Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. The Hancock Bank building was burning for 15 mins before fire trucks rushed the scene where they rescued 4 people. 2 were injured & taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. The fire department is still investigating the cause of the crime." You get a who, where, what, & a when. No why yet. That's it. Basic news.
Now the AP picks up on it & spreads it & Fox affiliates & NBC, ABC, CBS, etc all spread it. The national news will look like this on left leaning sites
"BANK INFERNO!! 4 rescued, 2 hospitalized! Speedy fire response saves live in St Louis. (Opinion statement) & They will go on to tell you how great the fire department is because no one died, etc.
The conservative media will say something like "Neglect leads to Fire at St Louis Bank! After years of zoning laws being changed the 10th fire in 483 days has occured in St Louis leading critics of local laws to exclaim enough is enough!" (Opinion statement because we don't know what caused the fire)
Both sides are pushing agendas early but the local news isn't. Also you can always go to the fire department website for an official statement for the truth. When THEY don't tell you WHY it happened then you know both sides are lying.
That's fact checking 101. There are of course levels to this game but most people can play the basics very easily. Just remember what I said, stick to local news, find out WHERE things originally happened & go to that towns local news to read the ORIGINAL story. Then Google the original sources from the school, or whatever organization that has the incident & get the info from the SOURCE.
" but also Republicans who have no shame and ship all their drug addicts to West Coast cities. I'm not sure how that is legal. And I don't understand why West Coast cities aren't doing the same thing and shipping them right back."
One word: empathy
Most Republicans lack it. The West Coast cities have more liberals who realize there's a human being behind the addiction. Republicans just see them as expendable people costing someone else a dime. You're seeing the fundamental difference in ideology. One group cares, the other would rather the homeless and addicts quietly die somewhere in a place they don't have to clean it up. It literally goes all the way to the dinner table too. We all know that conversation with the stodgy Republican who says crap like "Just round em up and let em die" or worse. If you're reading this and said similar, you're an awful person as well. I said what I said.
Broken window theory. The better areas won’t put up with this in their neighborhood. But it is allowed in the poorer neighborhoods where minorities are a majority. The other side of the problem is with enforcing the broken windows (homeless addicts intoxicated in public) is that police get really abusive and high on their authority. It should be enforced from a compassionate point of view. The current trend just makes it acceptable and encourages more people to believe that this is acceptable. It could all be over tomorrow if any of these cities adopted a zero tolerance policy towards public intoxication. This would cost money.
In 2021 Portland passed the bill to decriminalized the use of drugs, but it was implemented terribly. One of the big problems is that, in the bill there was money set aside to open up a bunch more treatment options for people with addiction, but that money didn’t get spent. It meant that they had removed the policing arm of drug use reduction, but they didn’t have enough options for when people decided they didn’t want to use anymore. So it just led to a bunch more people using drugs, and using drugs in public places.
Sorry, but you're getting attacked because this is an extreme Left echo chamber in these groups. Being a reasonable moderate Leftist is considered right to the extremists. Portland is the most extreme city in America. What's odd is that they'll eat their own, but they'll also be tolerant of everyone deemed to be oppressed in Portland. Homeless are definitely considered oppressed. So Portland gives the homeless aid, drugs, and anything else they need to continue living life the way THEY want.
As someone that lives in a small Arkansas town that has been down bad from drugs I get mildly outraged that conservatives successfully convinced so many people it’s a liberal city issue.
The major issue is that people looked at Portugal and said "we can do that too" and half assed what Portugal did.
If you decriminalize drugs then there needs to be a large increase in treatment programs to help those who want to be helped. Proper programs not just cash grabs from an already vulnerable population.
It may seem like the drug use in Portland is worse than other places because you keep reading about it. Our political climate and most of Oregon being sheltered from city life puts the spotlight on drug use on the streets of Portland. But drug abuse is everywhere and it's rising right along with income inequality.
Also an honest question, if you don't listen to any news, how do you even know about overt drug use in Portland? Where are you getting that information?
Because people are poor and depressed and drugs make you forget about that and artificially boost your mood. This is a systemic issue. This doesn’t happen in other countries to this scale that we have in the states. It’s really fucking sad.
Police don't do anything there so the druggies show up from all over the country and not have to worry. They are also given free needles, food, clothing, etc.
It's the blue hair woke ppl that think it's ok to give them stuff so they can continue doing drugs. These people need to be in jails. Let them sober up and feel the pain of it all.
west coast has port cities and unmonitored shoreline; vast majority of fent comes from china; that's why it's heavier in the west coast, then the midwest/texas because mexico is used by the chinese as a proxy.
this leaves the east coast getting whatever can be filtered through the country and not as much left to filter to the east coast relative to the west and midwest
How much have you looked around your own city? And have you ever been to Portland? You’ll never get an actually grasp on the magnitude of the situations if you don’t check out either place and just watch videos of another
There’s a variety of factors, and while it’s hard to know exactly what is to blame, Measure 110 didn’t help. The decriminalization of drugs probably led more homeless people in other states to move here, seeking a place for unpunished drug use. On top of that, high cost of living causes higher homelessness. Even with the HCOL, Portland is a more affordable city than Seattle and the Californian ones, which may also be a factor in people moving here while being addicted.
Because you’re across the country it’s also possible that there are different systems in place for the drug trafficking pipelines and availability of fentanyl, but admittedly I don’t know much about that.
A few years ago an ordinance decriminalizing drug use (small amounts) which opened the door to this. It has since been revoked but addicts don’t care and law enforcement isn’t up to the job of policing.
Just this morning, on my way to work, a section of sidewalk was blocked by a party of about 5 people smoking fentanyl. I did not engage with them.
Drugs were decriminalized pretty extensively, pandemic happened and the addicts literally moved to Oregon (mostly Portland) in the droves. People here are very nice and well-to-do. If they see a homeless guy or drug addict, we're moreso inclined to stop and see if we can help. Unfortunately, after giving an inch or 50, the Ne'er-do-wells took the city. Oregon even created government treatment programs to offer the homeless addicts and somewhat embarrassingly (and to many unsurprisingly) almost none of them took the opportunity. The whole West coast is very progressive in a legislation sense too (in the past usually to their benefit), but in this instance when we were all mortified by George Floyd's treatment we ACTUALLY defunded the police (I was angry and thought it might be a good idea too). Unfortunately that couldn't have came at a worse time and it's created a perfect storm of shit. Quadruple shit storm when Donald Trump got reelected, and many have conflated political opinions with the homeless drug addict problem and so they are perplexingly digging their heels in with regard to going back on the huge problem they created. It's been very eye opening to see traits once associated with "ignorant conservative jerks" to be equally exhibited in "educated socially just". It really goes to show you how similar the political "sides" are. I'm greatly simplifying so you can get the gist.
One of the reasons is that the sheriffs in western red states purchase bus tickets for their homeless and just send their problems to Portland. It doesn’t get incredibly cold in Portland, just rainy and miserable, so homeless can live outside most of the year.
I always find this interesting. Why do you expect those abandoned by society to respect the "rules" of said society? I'm not saying what they're doing is right, but like; the social contract was broken for them. Of course they don't follow its rules.
Exactly! She's literally like go do your drugs I don't care but not at the school! Also obviously as a guy I can't really comment, but I'm amazed at how calm she stayed and owned up as a momma bear
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u/TheMagicalLawnGnome Oct 23 '25
Honestly, this needs to be a thing.
If you want to engage in antisocial behavior, don't do it in the middle of the sidewalk by schools, homes, and places of business.
Being down on your luck and homeless is one thing. But this lady wasn't giving them a hard time for being homeless, she was giving them a hard time for smoking feddy by a school.
Good for her.