River, My buddy from Texas rode his Harley out here last spring and cruised around downtown and was blown away by the amount of young people standing around doing nothing. They looked like they cold be working if they wanted too and didn't seem down and out.
Maybe they were just gaping at a guy who obviously had nothing better to do than ride his motorcycle around town? Tell your buddy to get a job and a haircut! barfo
I live west of Eugene....there are homeless camps everywhere....here, the homeless I see are not so young, mostly middle aged men who seem to have a daily task of finding cigarette butts and getting enough cans to cash in for the homeless camp booze fund. Sure there are young lazy people all over the Pacific NW...San Francisco was filled with them in the 60s and 70s....young people go to Portland to party on the streets and play hippy until they get bored with that it seems to me. Eugene Oregon is number one in the nation for the ratio of homeless to the population...there are a lot of kids, tweekers, etc...mixed in but by and large I believe it's a middle aged male population...the new welfare is to apply for disability and live in a cardboard box...begging for a living because the 400 bucks a month they get doesn't last long. Local homeless guys in the small town I live near have been on the streets for 20 years at least...same guys...the camp hobo king was an engineer with a masters degree who went to prison for most of his younger years for domestic abuse stemming from his alcoholism...his name is Fred...he told me his story..your friend is correct...many don't want to work at all. A good friend of mine in Portland is a computer engineer and he claims many young people who appear to be on the streets and dress a bit unusually with the pink mohawks and piercings, ets…..he says many of those young people are actually software engineers who make a living with a laptop from home..and actually have money to spare
