When Portland attorney John DiLorenzo sued the city of Portland back in 2022 for ADA violations due to the city allowing tents distributed to the city’s homeless to accumulate on Portland’s sidewalks, the most controversial aspect of the lawsuit was that the lawsuit’s discovery found that Multnomah County was spending roughly $2 million per year on 6000+ tents, 27000+ tarps, and other supplies that were being delivered to the homeless population.
"By 2022, the city and its populace were getting more and more weary of viewing the illegal city camps that lined nearly every corner of the city and all of the unsavory aspects that came along with them: drug dealing and use, theft, assaults and other violence, discarded needles, large accumulations of garbage, and the rats and other vermin that generally were attracted by large amounts of waste. Fewer and fewer people, other than the homeless advocacy groups, were finding it acceptable for large scale street camping to be allowed and enabled by our local governments, especially in the example of distributing tents and tarps. Tents were the most obvious and obtrusive example of the city’s failure to deal with the homeless crisis."
Well, there was one other person who sided with homeless advocacy groups on the status quo in 2022, and that was activist journalist Nicole Hayden of the newspaper with two names, OregonLive/The Oregonian. Hayden's October 26, 2022, piece titled "Portlanders offer mixed reviews on mayor’s camping ban proposal" was heavily slanted in favor of the opponents of the camping ban, under-reported the nature and extent of the support for the plan and evinced a very strong anti-business bias. (Portland's hot-headed activists hate business with a fury. They'd be delighted if businesses were prohibited from participating in poltics.) https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2022/10/portlanders-offer-mixed-reviews-on-mayors-camping-ban-proposal.html
With each new story about the failure of Multnomah County and the JOHS to deal with the twin crises of homelessness and addiction, I become increasingly convinced that the cause is not bureaucratic incompetence but an ideology that devalues the County's ordinary voter-taxpayers in favor of supporting and advancing the interests of certain favored marginalized communities who are seen as victims of society.
There must not be much daylight between the homeless advocacy groups that fight every proposal to curb homelessness and some of the county bureaucrats who are supposed to be helping the County's voter-taxpayers and businesses recover from the blight of unregulated street camping but aren't.
Likewise, I believe that the harm reduction activists who insist on letting addicts do whatever they wish in the name of autonomy and who hate the idea that government would ever tell the public that drug use and addiction are wrong have allies within the County bureaucracy who are not the least bit interested in prioritizing detox, recovery and sobriety.
The "homeless"--the crazier the better--are too valuable to be disappeared. Dan the Man makes a $-quarter-million a year running whatever they'll call JOHS; all those nonprofits have payrolls; the new "drop off center" will be staffed by more money-laundering nonprofits (aka kickback city); bureaucracies will grow; Vega Pederson and friends will stuff the "nice" bums into nonprofit motels and itty-bitty housing concentration camps, which need more 24/7 supervision.
The progressive machine in the last legislative session, anticipating a SCOTUS decision, passed "protect the bums" laws. A whole generation of parasites have to pay their rent/mortgages, don'tcha know? The homeless aren't going anywhere.
"By 2022, the city and its populace were getting more and more weary of viewing the illegal city camps that lined nearly every corner of the city and all of the unsavory aspects that came along with them: drug dealing and use, theft, assaults and other violence, discarded needles, large accumulations of garbage, and the rats and other vermin that generally were attracted by large amounts of waste. Fewer and fewer people, other than the homeless advocacy groups, were finding it acceptable for large scale street camping to be allowed and enabled by our local governments, especially in the example of distributing tents and tarps. Tents were the most obvious and obtrusive example of the city’s failure to deal with the homeless crisis."
Well, there was one other person who sided with homeless advocacy groups on the status quo in 2022, and that was activist journalist Nicole Hayden of the newspaper with two names, OregonLive/The Oregonian. Hayden's October 26, 2022, piece titled "Portlanders offer mixed reviews on mayor’s camping ban proposal" was heavily slanted in favor of the opponents of the camping ban, under-reported the nature and extent of the support for the plan and evinced a very strong anti-business bias. (Portland's hot-headed activists hate business with a fury. They'd be delighted if businesses were prohibited from participating in poltics.) https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2022/10/portlanders-offer-mixed-reviews-on-mayors-camping-ban-proposal.html
With each new story about the failure of Multnomah County and the JOHS to deal with the twin crises of homelessness and addiction, I become increasingly convinced that the cause is not bureaucratic incompetence but an ideology that devalues the County's ordinary voter-taxpayers in favor of supporting and advancing the interests of certain favored marginalized communities who are seen as victims of society.
There must not be much daylight between the homeless advocacy groups that fight every proposal to curb homelessness and some of the county bureaucrats who are supposed to be helping the County's voter-taxpayers and businesses recover from the blight of unregulated street camping but aren't.
Likewise, I believe that the harm reduction activists who insist on letting addicts do whatever they wish in the name of autonomy and who hate the idea that government would ever tell the public that drug use and addiction are wrong have allies within the County bureaucracy who are not the least bit interested in prioritizing detox, recovery and sobriety.
Am I all wet here?
The "homeless"--the crazier the better--are too valuable to be disappeared. Dan the Man makes a $-quarter-million a year running whatever they'll call JOHS; all those nonprofits have payrolls; the new "drop off center" will be staffed by more money-laundering nonprofits (aka kickback city); bureaucracies will grow; Vega Pederson and friends will stuff the "nice" bums into nonprofit motels and itty-bitty housing concentration camps, which need more 24/7 supervision.
The progressive machine in the last legislative session, anticipating a SCOTUS decision, passed "protect the bums" laws. A whole generation of parasites have to pay their rent/mortgages, don'tcha know? The homeless aren't going anywhere.