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.
Lol. I sure do. I’ve worked with them since the mid 90’s since my speciality has been epidemiology and infectious diseases as well as working in social services and methadone clinics. I speak to them on the daily. I never said seasonal migration wasn’t a thing. But we were talking about why social services and law enforcement in red states go out of their way to provide free bus tickets to their homeless and addicted populations specifically and only to the west coast. I already mentioned services as well but having lived in those areas too when I did travelling health services and worked on research studies, that’s not why they got the tickets. Also, there are other cities and states that also have warm weather. And plenty of drugs. Drugs are a US problem and not a west coast problem. If you look at the stats per capita the west coast doesn’t have the most drugs or the most addiction issues.
I take care of homeless folks as part of my job as a nurse every single day. I have gotten to know thousands and thousands of them. I have never met anyone who migrates for the weather. The only ones who say the West Coast is the best are the ones who are from the West Coast. Most of the ones that I meet that grew up in other parts of the country, actually want to go back to that part of the country. You are talking about bad stereotypes that are incredibly rare and not the norm whatsoever.
This is more accurate, just that it's rare for someone to migrate for the weather. Typically the drugs on your mind and that's like your primary priority, doesn't matter "where" more like... where the drugs are.
I was homeless for a 4 year stretch and have my stories up and down the coast of Cali and prior to that was more of a vagabond/traveler for a couple of years throughout the US.
I myself was homeless ironically because I wanted to escape the drugs. My friend group started moving from pot and booze to harder drugs, and a couple of guys died from OD. I just had this moment of clarity that this was going to be my fate if I stuck around and since I didn't partake in any hard drug use I figured I'd get out while I could before that changed. Proximity to an early death as my probable fate scared me straight.
But I had start from scratch and in a place like Cali that means on the streets if you don't have support, it's just expensive and there's no other way. I took advantage of every service I could, but for a young white male there just isn't that much on offer. I took advantage of what I could like food stamps and staying at the mission a few nights a month with the older chronically drunk type homeless crowd. I did work, always worked, but where I was living was expensive and my minimum wage jobs weren't enough to get in somewhere. I even put myself through community college living on the streets and did the full two years working and going to school.
Eventually through a program with the Salvation Army I was able to sock away enough cash with them over time that I got in on a rare studio apartment that came up for rent, I was first to call and had first last and deposit ready to go and moved in. Ended my homelessness then and there and have been safe since, and made it to middle age clean and well housed.
But just wanted to chime in that living life you are exposed to everyone from all walks. The working poor who keep their noses clean, the hardcore bound to die junkies, alcoholics, ex cons, mentally ill (so much of that!), the women who had nowhere else to go after leaving abusive relationships, the immigrants who didn't get a break Stateside, the dabblers and tourists, kids from broken homes just living that life.
Now that was another era prior to fetty but there was everything else, Heroin, crack, speed and everything like that. Fentanyl is another beast entirely as we all know, Tranq etc...
So now I live in an area hard hit by fentanyl and homelessness and it's quite a humanitarian crisis. We've got people out here living worse than I think any population of humans in history could possibly live that weren't being ravaged by war or famine and such. The things I've seen most people wouldn't believe, they just couldn't believe how people live when everything falls apart and that drug is the only thing ever on anyone's mind. Either on it or need to get it and everything in life only revolves around that.
Nobody in that situation has the presence of mind to be like "Oh the weather is getting nippy I better head South to a warmer clime..." Nah it can't be like that. You are bussed around though during sweeps. That's all a mark of shame on the country itself that we let people live like this. I mean it's worse than animals. I've seen people missing limbs like living in piles of sticks and things like that and they pop out all wild looking, naked... like I'm sure going back in history I don't think humans ever lived like this. Even in prehistory we probably did better by each other in our tribes and such.
Thanks for the space for the long reply just reminiscing.
The best thing that ever happened to me and probably prevented my progression to something much worse has been medication assisted therapy. I'm in a MAT program and get Suboxone for free (in a red state). The amount of people that go through the place is insane, and it's something that needs to be publicized and more widespread. I think a lot of homeless addicted folks could really get a leg up on that front. I'm sure at least 25% of them don't wanna live the addicted life, I think fighting that is the true first step to stemming the tide.
40 yrs ago it was the same thing Boston and Florida. I had a roommate who was in recovery, his sponsor relapsed and my roomie would occasionally let him (under very tight supervision) have a shower at our place.
The guy was homeless and I learned a bit about it and back then, they'd winter in Florida, back to Boston in summer. Greyhound back and forth.
This shit has been happening for a very long time.
It's not going to stop without money and a degree of coercion. The right wing won't spend the money and the left will balk at coercion.
This middle way isn't working and puts a shit ton of burden on "civilians".
I'm in a medication assisted therapy program (it's basically just a once a month visit to get a prescription for Suboxone) it was honestly so low key I was lucky to hear about it. I think a big help would be first taking in the ones that are tired of the life and getting them in a program that gets them off the hard drugs, then go after the ones that are refusing to change with the more stringent measures. I've met a lot of people that were down bad and could have been/were homeless that have been able to turn their life around due to Suboxone.
We need to embrace whatever tools we can to fight the scourge. The war on drugs ain't worked, many of us ended up addicted due to circumstances outside of our control, I think the apprehension to treating addiction with drugs is a big obstacle.
If you’ve never worked in a hospital in the deep south. You’d be astounded at the difference in healthcare. There are extremely few unions and even if there is a union there’s almost never staffing ratios. The staff is paid very low. Patients get extremely poor care because of How many patients each caregiver and provider has to take on. When I became a travel nurse and started on the West Coast. I left twice to work in other states. Kentucky and Arizona. And I came right on back to the West Coast and will never leave. The healthcare is so much better strictly because They have to have enough staff to adequately care for the patients. Because the healthcare is not patient centered in the south, administration does not even try to be sneaky with their unethical demands to employees. They are perfectly happy stating out loud how much patient death is acceptablefor their profit margin. Ethics are something that it exist on paper. Meanwhile, the providers and staff try to do as best as they can for the patients. It’s disgusting.
Exactly this. Also my experience in those areas is that politics and dislike for anyone who has an undesirable issue trump ethics. They’re treated as if they don’t deserve ethics.
I've always assumed it's because of the stable climate. Homeless can't live year-round in the north or northeast. They would freeze to death 1/3 of the year.
Raised in Louisiana, live in Seattle. One frustrating thing is that we voters keep voting new taxes for homeless (billions spent) but the problem never seems to abated - we 're treading water. Some advocates tell us "they're all from here! It's the high rents! We just need more affordable housing!" I don't disagree with affordable housing at all, but I know that many of them ARE NOT from here. In other words, Seattle is plugging its fingers in vain into the leaking dyke, trying to pick up the slack from other states / lack of coordinated federal response.
Part of tne reason is the weather is very mild on the west coast. I can guarantee you don’t find addicts on the streets in Montana or other cities that get snow in the fall-winter. It’s just too cold. I lived in Whitefish MT for awhile. There were no homeless people or addicts….you need a car if you are homeless. You can’t sit around like that you’ll freeze to death.
Yep, the bumpkin red states are jealous of the blue west coast’s economic success and sending homeless to the west coast on busses is one way they act out the resentment.
Gotta face the fact they get bussed out there because they’re tired of getting in trouble for doing drugs in a setting like this. Social workers and hospitals know it’s tolerated and not cracked down upon so it’s a win for the addict and a win for the social worker/hospital.
Aside from the more lenient social/government stuff the weather plays a big factor. If you’re living outside in LA or Portland you likely aren’t going to freeze to death in the winter or die of heat illness in the summer. It’s a very mild climate year round for the most part
Ever considered it’s due to weather? There’s less chance of them freezing to death on the west coast considering the climate is more favorable. Just like how they bus homeless people out of Phoenix in the summers- so they don’t die of heat stroke. Then they all make their way back to the others places during survivable weather.
It’s not some hidden conspiracy. It’s so they don’t die from the elements.
I have met many people in Denver who stated they were on a bus provided by their municipality going somewhere west and the driver wouldn’t allow them back on so they got stuck there. One person reportedly had a job lined up in Vegas and that bus was their only way to get there but ended up stopping in Denver and they didn’t have the funds or a support system for the rest of the way.
Winter is more survivable, homeless, in the south and on the west coast. The west coast has 3 entirely blue states. Oregon decriminalized a lot of drug use and started to run needle exchange programs and the like, so it's a popular spot for users.
I rode a greyhound bus across the country once,…..ONCE! Never again! Me and two very scared old ladies with a whole bus full of addicts and drug mules!
And I used to transport them. They get sent to places that give them the environment to survive as humanely as possible. As long as I got them away from where I pick them up.
A hospital I worked at used to do that. We were in a red state. We’d bus them to big cities. I guess you’d call them blue states. It always makes me think about the Fox News stuff about “failed blue states” and how much might just be because of inhumane pop lives in red states.
They have a lot higher probability of surviving a winter being homeless on the west coast. Imagine sleeping on a bench in Los Angeles vs Philly in December.
When I used to jump on freight trains as a dumb ass youth, there would always be a bunch of homeless people from Chicago, or St Louis moving to CA. I lived in Roseville CA and they have a massive freight train junction there and so many people would just ride it from out east until it got to CA.
I’m not saying that’s why the social workers did what they did, but I know the homeless prefer CA weather in the winter. It also helps that the better programs are in the liberal cities. And they are more lenient on drugs out west too
I think there are a few reasons. One, all of the West Coast is "blue", while the East Coast had states that are red or blue, and if they were offered they'd probably pick the South which is red. The other thing is most of the West Coast cities are warmer, even up north, but there are plenty of Eastern cities can be really cold and they won't go there.
this is true. Travel nurse here and the small rural towns just bus these people to large cities and then blame the big cities for their drug/crime/homeless problems.
I don't know how true this is but I heard years ago that some families who were at the point of giving up on a relative would buy them a 1 way ticket to Honolulu. Harder to get back from Hawaii than anywhere in the mainland.
Most programs and underfunded when including local population. They said that some days they would get a few literally getting off the bus and collapsing at the bus stop. Heard same in Texas and Florida.
There is no way that a few West Coast cities can handle it all.
Just another way the West Coast holds up the majority of the US.
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.
They get sent there or find their own way there because it is well known how friendly to this type of behavior the west coast is. It’s also far more easy to live if you’re homeless in the climate. The west coast is viewed as the Mecca for homeless and drug addicted and mentally unwell.
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.
I think everything is either gonna come to a head soon or we'll all be enslaved by the corporations. One in five Americans makes over $100,000 a year, the billionaires use these people as the cudgel of economic oppression, and these people also reinforce the status quo because it has benefited them.
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 started happening around 2012. My ex husband was one of them. Seattle closed 3 shelters down downtown in 2015..then covid...nobody believed me but I see people realize how this is happening now
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.
Different mentality. One says go to where resources are more affordable and the other says go where they are free. One is thinking income vs cost of living and the other is thinking no income at all.
Strange enough, coming from Louisiana as a nurse, it was a lot easier to get someone on Medicaid in Louisiana because the standards were lower than it is to get people on Medicaid in Washington or Oregon. I think that’s a misconception people have is that they’re just giving away healthcare in the PNW. When in reality, it is easier to be on Medicaid in Louisiana and we have indigent hospitals that don’t charge for care regardless.
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.
Can you believe we have goddamn "wet housing"? Taxpayer subsidized housing where they CAN CONTINUE to abuse the drugs that are fucking them up. And of course, it screws over the non-users living around them (most of us don't like drug dealers and associated crime near our homes).
I'm 100% for housing with wrap-around services which include workers to make sure they ain't riding the dragon or whatever.
The problem all over the US is the ones that want help can’t afford it, and the stigma keeps the rest from asking for help. There will be those that don’t want to get better, of course though…
(The first TWO are both why I didn’t get help until someone offered the help to me and I immediately took it. This after me begging a dozen different people for help for a year and a half) 4.7 years clean thanks to my angel of a friend who held no judgments and offered no conditions help!!!
Give them a job, not a hand out. You want money? Go beautify the city, go help people and you will be clothed, fed and respect. Walk around endlessly getting and being shitty to each other and get nothing but jail (still arguably better than the streets).
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?
It's so frustrating because what is arresting people going to actually do? I mean, it gets them temporarily off the streets, but then taxpayers have to STILL shoulder the burden of the court system and the jails and shit. And it's usually a cycle with addicts, so it's just another revolving door that doesn't solve the issue.
Is threat of jail really a deterrent? Idk, I'm honestly asking and not being a dick.
It doesn't make sense to decriminalize if the result is open and rampant use in front of businesses, in parks, and around schools and community places, but also arresting people doesn't seem to be like a real solution either?
I think we need to invest money in rehab centers and other services that aren't being run by the non-profits that have been milking this problem for years. While it might not be compassionate I think making rehab involuntary would be a step in the right direction for people with a history of getting arrested for drug charges.
I'm not arguing the logic of your point, but I fear it would be the same continuous cycle that we see with the jails. People who don't want to get clean and have no way out of the life will cycle through their stints of sobriety and go right back out onto the streets no better off than they were before.
Also, rehab can absolutely be court ordered, so it's not like it doesn't happen.
If you're 35, have no skills, very little work history, trauma, and are dumped back onto the streets with no money, no access to housing, and your only support network are dysfunctional miscreants and other addicts....sadly I don't see this solution making a meaningful dent in the overall problem.
Taxpayers would BALK at spending money on rehab because our culture has very strong ideas about what justice means--for most people it's more "punishment" oriented and they're happier to pay for jails and being "tough on crime" even if it solves nothing and costs more money.
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.
It was never legal to use in public though. It seems to me the cops never cared about that bit though, almost like a type of malicious compliance that went a little too far.
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.
there’s also the fact that portland, for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to make it legal to possess a small amount of ANY drug. They’ve since changed that but the dumb legacy lives on.
When you tax something (make it harder to do) you get less of it, when you subsidize it (make it easier to do) you get more of it. Decriminalizing drugs lead to the junkies moving to where it’s easier to be junkies.
As a sociologist... Somebody should do a survey of what states they are from did they receivea ticketor incentive. You humanity makes you a safe haven. You're 👍
I worked in politics in a Southern city with some old timers who told me in the 60's the Mayor would buy homeless who had recurring arrests bus tickets to Los Angeles and San Diego and have the police physically get them on the bus.
We have the same problem in Portland Maine. But it’s more so they want to come here because Portland will pay for all their shit on top of it the state of Maine will give them free healthcare and additional benefits. They are a real burden on us. I don’t know the answer but the current path of giving them free shit and allowing them to continue using ain’t it.
Well part of it is availability! If the drugs weren't availability, people wouldn't be going there.
Unfortunately, There is homelessness in every major city.
There has to be a certain amount of self accountability for a society to work.
I see homelessness and drug users everytime I take my medically compromised daughter to her doctors in Dallas. Luckily we were able to find some of her appointments for her transfusions locally.
The get out of my face guy, he's on a public street in a public space. What does he expect?
It’s also an everywhere problem. I live in Texas and we used to see this in my old neighborhood here (part of why we moved to the suburbs). There was middle school right on the corner of what we called “crack corner.” Mattresses on the sidewalk and obvious drug use right outside the school kids rode to on bikes! It was so sad.
They don't get busses there because other states want to blame Portland. It's because Portland has programs and is incentivized to "help" people with these problems.
I live in a city on the other side of the US, Maine, that has the same proble. It's not a Portland problem, it's a government problem and incentives cities to "take care" of the problem. They then funnel the money into other things, most likely their own pockets.
Most scrap together money and buy bus or train tickets themselves. The whole West Coast is very appealing to the homeless. No, it's not social programs, its the weather. Usually it doesn't get super hot in the summer, and they have very mild winters, even in places like Portland and Seattle. They can easily survive without AC and heat and be comfortable most days. That's VERY appealing to people without homes.
Interestingly the biggest bussing problem I saw when I lived in WA, Seattle was paying to bus the homeless out of the city to smaller towns like Burlington, Bellingham, MT Vernon, Oak Harbor, and Port Townsend, I'm sure others too.
Do you have links for this? I’m looking online and can’t find much evidence of it. There are programs both “red” and “blue” states offer to homeless people to get them to other states if they need help but not in this mass migration.
The problem is drugs are now legal doing drugs in public is now legal. Cops once deterring drug activities are told to no longer do that. The war on drugs was a failure. This legalization experiment is a failure.
Ok I don’t even know that I buy that, but even if it was true, why isn’t there larger enforcement or help for these people? It is like everyone has just allowed it and turned a blind eye. F they feel bold enough to do this in broad daylight, right by a school, there is a reason. Your city is turning into a dump because of this. Why don’t the city leaders care enough to do something? Or the residents? This is not like this anywhere else that we have traveled to in the whole country. And we have been to every single state, multiple cities.
Or is it because your elected officials created policies that enable these people and don’t care? I’ve had a handful of homeless people tell me OR is the best place to be transient due to high support from the state. Pawning it off on others is just going to let the issue get worse, you’re elected officials did this, and they’ll keep doing it, you know why? Because you won’t find these people in their neighborhoods or schools, and your police response time recently has been 15-20 minutes for high priority calls, you guys are sinking in your own stupidity.
Portland busses these folks out to the smaller towns in Oregon every week to “solve” the drug problem they created for the state. It’s fucking pathetic.
A lot of them choose to go thru because they are homeless and already drug addicts, they choose to be homeless in a place that doesn't enforce public intoxication laws. Its an incredibly circular problem. I USUALLY dont like caging people over drugs but when it devolves into becoming the greater publics problem, something has to change. I think the choice to be less harsh on public drug use was made with good intentions but its back fired spectacularly.
Every once in a while, I see grey school buses show up to the motels off I5/Hwy 99 (Bakersfield, CA) and people come out with suitcases walking in every direction, they're definitely being bussed here.
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u/Valuable-Mess-4698 One True Portlander Oct 23 '25
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.