Mayor Wilson and the "Boom Loop"

It's not a boom. It's a whimper.

T.S. Eliot once wrote, “April is the cruelest month.” I don’t think he was talking about the weather (how can you beat the weather over the last several days!), or the fact that April is when many of us file taxes. Although in Portland, our tax situation could aptly be called “cruel,” and I would doubt that many of its residents would argue the point.

The line I quoted came from Eliot’s poem, The Wasteland, which has been interpreted by literary critics as Eliot’s perspective of his disillusionment at the close of World War I. I’m not going to hit the hyperbolic throttle and claim that Portland is a wasteland, but I do believe that many of its residents, at least those who were born-and-raised here or who arrived here prior to the last 15 years, feel a certain level of understandable disillusionment. The burning dumpster fires of the 2020 riots are a rather apt metaphor for the state of the city’s current politics.

I remember reading Eliot when I was in my Modern Poetry class in my third year of college at the University of Montana. I liked the guy’s writing a great deal to say the least. He knew how to turn a phrase. I mean, who can argue with the emotional depth of “I should have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas?”

I also enjoyed A.E. Housman – a poet one of my classmates rather hilarious claimed his A Shropshire Lad was “poems to slit your wrists to,” although I’ve always been rather fond of his line, “Malt does more than Milton can/To justify God’s ways to man.” It was ALL pretty depressing stuff really, but it WAS real. I guess I look back at those poems because they aptly describe the disillusionment I currently feel facing the emerging state of the city I’ve called home for 30+ years. And just like Terence in Housman’s poem, I have my own malt to drink – more specifically Joseph A. Magnus bourbon, finished in sherry and cognac barrels. Although, I’m not sure what sort of sordid justifications I can conjure up. I truly don’t know if I can figure out what actually IS happening in this city.

One of the men who claims he has it all figured out is our current mayor, Keith Wilson. Wilson has the kind “aw-shucks” demeanor of a Zig Zigler-trained salesman, but at the same time, when I listen to him, Wilson always sounds like he is trying to sell us something that I never really want to buy. He also has this certain quality of wide-eyed positivity that almost comes off as pathological. He’s not quite Nero fiddling…but you get the idea.

Wilson won the mayoral election because he seemingly had a plan for ending homelessness, and more amazingly, he claimed he could do it in a year. I believe the reason that he won the election was because he was the only candidate who did actually have a plan. His plan was so simple that people bought it, and even more, Wilson appeared to deeply believe within his own soul that he had figured out The Solution to Portland Homelessness.

The plan had a four-pronged approach: 1) create access to thousands of nighttime shelter beds that are low-barrier, using community centers, businesses, and churches. 2) create four new day centers – one in each of the city’s new districts – so the homeless can use them for various supplies and services 3) create storage facilities in each district, which would allow homeless individuals to secure their belongings during the day so they didn’t clog the city’s streets and sidewalks, and most importantly, 4) after creating this homeless infrastructure, Portland could finally enforce the city’s camping ban which would comply with the Martin v. Boise decision.

Martin v. Boise was a horrible decision handed down by the 9^th District Court in 2018 that stipulated that municipalities couldn’t criminalize homeless individuals when they didn’t have adequate alternative shelter available for the community. The decision hamstrung cities all along the Western United States for years, ensuring that these cities couldn’t adequately deal with its ever-increasing homeless populations and the crises that they wrought. Rather than subject their cities to endless litigation, cities chose the hands-off approach, which led to the disastrous results we are all witnessing now.

Martin v. Boise was overturned by the supreme court 2024, which sounds like it would be good news, and it was for other states. But Oregon, seemingly run by the progressive “Idiot Wind,” incredulously, codified the ruling in the state in 2021 with House Bills 3115 and 3124. Which means, while other cities in the 9^th District can deal with the homeless issue without being hamstrung by being required to provide thousands of available shelter beds every night, Oregon, and most importantly, Portland, is still required to follow the letter of the ruling. Never, and I mean never, underestimate the pathological lunacy of Oregon politics.

Much has changed in Portland since Wilson announced his homeless plan during his campaign. Although Wilson claimed his plan could be accomplished with the rather paltry sum of $28 million, at the beginning of his term he was hit with the news that the city’s budget was $100 million in the red. Shortly afterward, Multnomah County announced that it’s constant bumbling of the county budget had come home to roost. County Chair Jessica Vega-Pederson announced at a press conference that the county’s homeless services budget was short over $100 million, and due to this shortfall, she threatened to close multiple shelters. It was also recently announced that three community centers (all in working-class neighborhoods, of course) were on the chopping block and marked for imminent closure. As I stated above, Wilson had planned to use community centers as one of his options for over-night shelters.

Now, there’s even more bad news on the homeless front. Portland electeds have always touted its “tiny home” communities as a pipeline from the streets to permanent housing, but a recent article by Willamette Week found that, just in the last year, placements from tiny homes into permanent housing went from 47% down to a paltry 14%. This means that nearly one out of every two people who had been placed into a tiny home, or a “pod,” prior to 2024, were placed into permanent housing. Starting in 2024, that number went to one out of seven.

One of Portland’s new “Tiny homes.” Photo by Jeff Church

I have yet to mention the absurdity of parts of Wilson’s plan, but I will do that now. The first prong of Wilson’s plan was to provide nighttime shelter beds by using “community centers, churches, and businesses.” Only a person who has never spent any actual time around Portland’s unsheltered homeless would think this would work. Churches and community centers (and businesses!!) are woefully unprepared to deal with the vast majority of these individuals who are either severely mentally ill, in the throes of acute drug addiction, or can be categorized as both. All one has to do is watch the daily videos of street reporters Kevin Dahlgren and Tara Faul to understand the true plight of these individuals. What these people need is acute care from highly trained clinicians. Church leaders and community center employees simply don’t have the training to deal with such individuals, nor should they be expected to.

Portland has already allowed its community spaces to be taken over by its homeless population. The idea that we should secede even more of these spaces to this population is a twisted joke. Also, I can’t even imagine what type of business owner would allow low-barrier homeless people onto his or her commercial property to undoubtedly raise unimaginable havoc. Such businesses would be out of business within 48 hours.

In his most recent interview, Wilson now appears to understand a few unpleasant realities of his homeless plan. A little over a week ago, Wilson spoke to KGW’s Stephanie Domurat on the news station’s “Straight Talk” segment. In the interview, Mayor Wilson appeared to walk back much of his original plan, which took him all of 100 days into his 1^st term.

Wilson told Domurat that he would no longer consider enforcing Portland’s camping ban, saying, “we can’t arrest our way out of homelessness.” He also indicated that Portland Police Chief Day told him that the Portland Police Bureau would be incapable of enforcing the ban. Such is the reality when your police force is staffed at 50% of what other bureaus of similarly-sized cities are.

In another segment of the interview, Wilson claimed that they needed to “offer shelter to those who want it” and then claimed that 35-40% of Portland’s homeless wanted permanent shelter. This may or may not be true, but a much lower percentage of these individuals have indicated a desire to be placed into shelters due to the fact that shelters don’t generally allow drug use and most homeless claim that they are more unsafe in shelters than being on the streets surrounded by people they are, at least, familiar with. A 2022 poll showed that only 11% of Portland’s homeless were willing to regularly stay in shelters.

The final nail in the coffin of Wilson’s plan was how, during the interview, he neatly segued into the same tired Housing First principals which have shown over and over to be an unmitigated disaster. Wilson spoke about how Portland needed to build much more housing, not bothering to mention the fact that just three weeks prior to his interview, Portland housing construction was reported to be at historic lows. The fact is, housing is much too expensive to build in Portland, so developers, who are maligned nearly as much as the Portland Police Bureau, have decided it is simply too much of a risk to build within the city limits. Instead, the city council decided the best option was to build “social housing.”

What the city council socialists mean when they say “social housing” is shoveling piles of public money into bureaucratic and non-profit coffers in order to build “affordable housing” at three times the cost that private developers can. Maybe the city will blow up a few square blocks of downtown commercial property so they can build their own personal Pruitt-Igoe project, or perhaps just throw a bunch of homeless into the unpurchased and unused hotel rooms and condos of the Ritz-Carlton, which is failing so badly that it has fallen into receivership less than a year after construction was completed.

It is sad that apparently Wilson has given up on his plan and given in to the lunatics and politi-thugs on the city council. Just this week, tax-loving, business-hating Stevie Novick announced that with a simple majority vote on council, they could raise the Portland Clean Energy Fund tax on businesses by 33%. Surprisingly, the lone dissenting opinion of this plan came from Candace Avalos, who not only questioned the legality of such a decision, but she also openly wondered if such a tax just might drive away more businesses from the city (Ya think!?). There was a snippy exchange between the two councilors as city spokesman Cody Bowman claimed he believed a city council vote was all there was needed to pass the increase. Jeff Newgard, a local tax policy expert disagreed. He said such a vote would expose the city to litigation, which Newgard claimed, the city rarely wins.

Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos - Photo by Brian Brose

Novick’s attempt to raise the tax on Portland businesses, which have already been exposed to 82% tax increases in the last five years, was supported on the council by Angelita Morillo and Jamie Dunphy. Of course, Novick and his commie cohorts are attempting to increase the tax burden on their favorite fiscal fall guys (Portland businesses) without putting it on a ballot, where Portland’s residents, who have become weary of ever-increasing taxes, would undoubtedly vote it down. Wilson, as usual, had no thoughts on the matter.

I now return to our wide-eyed, lispy Mayor Milquetoast and the end of his KGW interview. Wilson said that we need to re-imagine (Portland politicos favorite new phrase) the economic doom loop as a “boom loop,” as if one could turn around the city’s economic trajectory simply with positive vibes and clever slogans. The nutty leftists on Reddit’s r/Portland page just loved his positivity. Those of us in the real world, I imagine, had difficulty not rolling our collective eyes.

A week after Mayor Wilson gave this interview, Multnomah County released its findings from a study of the true numbers of homeless in Portland. While Wilson regularly spouted 5000 as the number of unsheltered homeless, this new study indicated that the actual number was closer to 7000, with an increase of 26% in just a little over a year. The study also reported that there was another 5000 homeless who are defined as “sheltered” and another 3000 the county wasn’t able to determine their actual status, which means that the true number of unsheltered homeless in the city could be as high as 9000.

When Wilson was asked about the new study, he said, “The mission is still the same.”

The same as what, exactly?

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Occasionally, we get strangers or acquaintances who come over to our house unannounced to make what I call “The PDX Real Pilgrimage.” They are all well-meaning and frustrated as many Portlanders are, and they see Angela and I (mostly Angela) as a solution to their political malaise. Often, they want us to cover a story of their choosing. When this first happened, being Midwest kids, we would invite them in, and they would give us their presentation. Many of them had “the receipts.” We looked at their hopeful faces. We went through what they had brought over to us, and often, they were proud of their work. Then, I would do the math in my head, computing the total amount of time it would take us to adequately develop the story. It was generally too much for two people with no newsroom and very little funding. What would we ultimately get from the story, a few proverbial slaps on the back? It’s difficult to think in those terms, but such considerations must be made. Like so many in Portland, the businesses that we run have suffered in the last five years, and part of that is due to dedicating nearly full-time work in order to “save” this city. Of course, the main issue is the collapse of the Portland economy.

Two such couples came over in the last week. One couple we know from the neighborhood. They aren’t friends so to speak, but they support what we do. They wanted nothing more than to tell us to not give up, to not move, to not give up the fight. Honestly, we appreciated it. These types of people are what make this community strong in the face of so much challenge. Such people DO give us hope.

Another couple came a day earlier. They wanted us to cover the I-5 bridge boondoggle, which neither of us know anything about, although I’m completely convinced that there is government grift, waste, and even fraud involved. After they knocked, I cracked the front door of our house, peering out while holding back my two Golden Retrievers, who truly believe that anyone coming over is there to visit with them. After all, they love company! I was less enthused with these two. They meant well, as such people always do, but it was in the middle of a workday, and we were both under the pressure of deadlines. I dismissed them as politely as I could. I felt bad about it, but actually, I was rather annoyed. What can we do what we haven’t already done? Sometimes, I want to tell such people to go out and get an audience and report the story themselves. Instead, I stood there and listened to their pitch, which lasted more than five minutes. I told them that it would be better to send us an email, and I gave them our email 4 or 5 times, which they didn’t bother to write down.

Again, I understand, people are frustrated. They are confused. They feel exploited, unheard, and abused. I get it. And because of pure rage and humor - two things you must possess in equal measure if you live in Portland - we probably won’t quit. Perhaps it is because Portland and Multnomah leadership evidently appears to be ruled by fascinating dark triad personalities (We are looking at you, Mitch Green!) And perhaps it’s because Portland still holds some promise.

Mitch Green looking all supervillain on the dias. Photo by Mark Graves

One of my favorite songwriters, James McMurtry, wrote a song in response to the ill-advised presidency of Bush II, which he entitled “We Can’t Make it Here.” I love the song, but I have trouble listening to it lately, because, although it is now 20 years old, it hits too close to home:

Empty storefronts around the square

There’s a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere

You don’t come down here unless you’re lookin’ to score

We can’t make it here anymore

There’s a high school girl with a bourgeois dream

Just like the pictures in a magazine

Can she live on faith? Live on hope?

High on Jesus or hooked on dope

When it’s too late to just say no

You can’t make it here anymore

Dust devils dance in the noonday heat

There’s rats in the alley and trash in the street

Gang graffiti on a boxcar door

We can’t make it here anymore

April is indeed the cruelest month. Perhaps it is because we all have recently escaped winter, and the promise of the growth and glow of Spring is upon us, which will soon flow into summer, forgetting the rains of May and June. Unfortunately, we realize that this promise is Mayor Wilson’s lie. It is meaningless. It is sold to us like cheap suit in a second-hand store, its seams unraveling in slow decay, only meant to be worn at a drunken Halloween party. Zig Zigler is looking on, and while he speaks about firm handshakes and a steady, forlorn gaze into your eyes, his eyes appear hollow.

Perhaps, this is the way Portland ends, not with a bang, but Mayor Wilson’s whimper.