OT Three Hotels Approaching Foreclosure in the Heart of Portland Offer a Warning to City Leaders

Because in this, I suggested offering people free rent first. In our discussion I said I'm fine with arresting people who break the law or who refuse housing and choose to live on the street instead.

Which is what I proposed here. Give them an option of no strings attached housing first.

Then I'm fine with it.

 

Only if they refuse housing and break law. People who are deemed a threat should go to more like halfway houses. Their monthly rent voucher can go toward this.

And the metro area governments should be actively scooping up rentals for the homeless and retrofitting empty buildings into housing.

We have plenty of money to do this now. It's time to get it done.

 

Great responses, and I agree that we need to do something beyond allowing them to remain on the street. It is dangerous, inhumane, bad for the city, and bad for the economy. I think there needs to be a multi-pronged approach to this problem, there's a multiple things that need to be addressed. First is getting homeless off the streets and the goal should be to get these folks into being functional members of society to start paying taxes again, hopefully if done correctly they will be productive enough to recoup the investment we put into them and more. Not that anyone asked, but here are my thoughts on the matter.

Homeless problem:

1. Stop allowing/permitting tents on the streets, this has proven to be very bad policy.
2. Provide housing outside of downtown.
3. Definitely increase more social outreach social workers, I think this has proven to be pretty effective and a good first step.
   
4. Provide counseling services in the area we start centralizing these folks with the intent of helping people get back on their feet to start paying taxes again.
   
5. Increase policing, we need more cops especially in drug enforcement.
6. Clean the city up and make people want to move into town again.
7. Spend some money bringing cool events into town and show off how clean the city is and make it more appealing.
8. On a national level the Federal government needs to address the inflow of fentanyl by putting pressure on China to actually police the production of it. I am not sure if this is something the Chinese government is doing intentionally, but for students of history this sure seems like the exact thing that happened in China hundreds of years ago with the Opium Wars. But instead now China is feeding an addiction in the USA instead of the other way around, the parallels are hard to ignore.

Affordable housing - this is a large part of the problem too as housing has become insanely expensive, pretty much everywhere:

1. Have an exponentially increasing property tax after your first home, this needs to be state if not nation wide. Property tax should be multiplied by the number of houses you own, so first house is whatever the normal rate of the property taxes should be multiplied by your quantity of houses (P*1), second house is P*2, third house is P*3, etc. There are ways of getting around this, but it would be a pain in the ass, and for the most part this would dramatically reduce the quantity of houses being consumed by fewer ultra wealthy folks that could otherwise be dispersed across the larger population. IE provide more supply into the market.
2. Fix zoning laws, for example reduce the amount of industrial zoning that is still setup within the city. Why is NW Portland still primarily zoned for industrial at this point? Again provide more supply.
3. Reduce the regulatory burdens for building new homes and getting permits, cut the red tape! It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for zoning permits and other regulatory crap these days just to build a house, for apartment complexes and the like it costs well into the millions. This prices a lot of developers out of the market which means, again, less supply. Fix this issue and it helps create more supply.

I absolutely hate the idea of the government subsidizing housing, it costs tax payers tons of money and then becomes a lottery for whoever is magically selected for the units, see NYC for why this is a very dumb idea. The problem is a lack of supply, you don't fix a lack of supply by making things arbitrarily cheaper for a very very small quantity of people. Reduce the demand and increase the supply, and the affordable housing problem gets fixed.

 

Ahh gotcha.

 

Personally, with the amount of mentally handicapped homeless and addicts, I would think new medical facilities/Camps/whatever you want to call them would be a way to address homeless that need medical help and/or rehab. This gives them assistance a place to live and food to eat. While staying at Fort Stevens Sate Park I thought why cant the State develop parks like this with Cabins and Yurts, modular housing with medical and facilities. Use it for those that want help and are willing to provide some sort of work duty.
We need to separate out the ones that need medical/addiction attention from the others, then address those with housing and food for work.
I went to Harbor Freight yesterday near 82nd & Foster and saw what looked like third world poverty row. And the garbage and filth was incredible, I had a guy approach me as I come out of the store asking for money but was totally out of it. Gave him a couple bucks and left.

 

Dont know much about the place do they offer on site medical clinics/ways to help those with addiction/ handicaps?
Is it more of a shanty type party town?
Oregon has lots of land in different areas of the Sate that could be used as State Run Refugee type camps.

 

I agree with everything you've written @Chris Craig, we need to bring resources to people, reduce housing costs, and help people transition off the system. We don't need more laws, just more enforcement of laws that already exist, the only thing that needs to change is that sleeping in tents on the sidewalk should not be allowed, and that needs to be enforced. But addendum to that, we also need to provide folks with a place to go when they do get kicked off. I don't necessarily think it should be cops that do this alone, there needs to be a service that gets people off the street and to that transitional housing. And to those that don't want to go, then leave that for them to decide where to go, it's not a crime to be homeless, but it should be a crime to setup camp and shit on the street, it's unhygienic, disgusting, and dangerous for others too.

We need to consider other peoples rights other than just the homeless guy, yeah it sucks he's homeless, but others are being affected too, and those people actually pay taxes and contribute to society so their needs should be placed above said homeless person. Give them resources, give them options, but if they don't want to take it, then give them the boot out of town, period. Can lead a horse to water, that kind of thing.

 

The Fed had forest camps under Roosevelt, providing shelter, food and pay for labor.
Those guys built Timberline Lodge.

 

Growing up in the 50'6/60's I remember curfew and vagrancy laws.

 

Yep, but there must be a warm, secure place to take them to. A place where they are not going to be harassed by anybody.

 

Probably literally.

 

Yeah, I agree with you. I think transitional shelters would just happen if there were a guaranteed monthly payment coming from the government. Somebody would just open up their apartment complex to it, because the money would come.

Hell, I'd convert my house into 4 units if I could get $5k per month out of it.

Then the government could send caseworkers a there to help.

There isn't anything anybody could to do prevent it then.

I really don't think the homelessness being "illegal" would be much of a problem either, except for transplants.

People who choose to live outside rather than in their own apartment are likely either troubled and need forced help, or are hiding something and probably should be in jail. Otherwise, a little coaxing will get them off of the street and into a nice new place.

Getting the rest off of the streets will be a huge help to those who want an apartment and will allow us to focus on the others who need more help.

There is MORE than enough money to house everybody (who is here currently) and get them all the help they need.