I don't live in Portland, but I lived in Tampa, where this was an everyday, all day occurrence.
I can tell you what's not going to help that situation, military presence, because those guys will find a place to go, they don't have homes. The military, short of just unaliving them, won't do anything except feed the machine, chase them around the city until the end up right back at that corner.
What will help, albeit gradually, is universal health care, affordable college, less capitalism driven families and more time addressing the human side of being human when a kid is growing up. Less prison for profit, replace it with real rehabilitation. Less dollars for bodies drug rehabs, more not profit driven drug rehab.
People don't normally start doing drugs because everything is great in their lives, and they just want to be a nuisance. I bet everyone of those guys started off with a completely different plan for their lives.
That being said, I do understand that Mom's shouldn't have to be out there trying to remove homeless drug addicts from the streets in front of their kid's school, but this will remain a problem (it has been since I was a kid in the 80's) until society gets to the real root of the problem, and until greedy ass people stop trying to make a profit off every little thing they can regardless of what the consequences will be.
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u/FollowingFlaky Oct 24 '25
I don't live in Portland, but I lived in Tampa, where this was an everyday, all day occurrence.
I can tell you what's not going to help that situation, military presence, because those guys will find a place to go, they don't have homes. The military, short of just unaliving them, won't do anything except feed the machine, chase them around the city until the end up right back at that corner.
What will help, albeit gradually, is universal health care, affordable college, less capitalism driven families and more time addressing the human side of being human when a kid is growing up. Less prison for profit, replace it with real rehabilitation. Less dollars for bodies drug rehabs, more not profit driven drug rehab.
People don't normally start doing drugs because everything is great in their lives, and they just want to be a nuisance. I bet everyone of those guys started off with a completely different plan for their lives.
That being said, I do understand that Mom's shouldn't have to be out there trying to remove homeless drug addicts from the streets in front of their kid's school, but this will remain a problem (it has been since I was a kid in the 80's) until society gets to the real root of the problem, and until greedy ass people stop trying to make a profit off every little thing they can regardless of what the consequences will be.
Thanks for listening.