The value of Portland debate (moved from OT)

[Sunburn74]

I will say portland is a nice place to live but has been totally mismanaged for the last 10 years. The mayor and city leadership are totally inept.
Homelessness and crime are out of control. Outside of neighborhoods, you'll find tents on every corner and lining free ways.
The police situation too. Downtown remains in riot mode (ie all the businesses still have their boards up) even though there aren't any riots simply because crime is so high.
It's mostly a matter of inept city leadership really.

 

[Meghan54]

I will say portland is a nice place to live but has been totally mismanaged for the last 10 years. The mayor and city leadership are totally inept.
Homelessness and crime are out of control. Outside of neighborhoods, you'll find tents on every corner and lining free ways.
The police situation too. Downtown remains in riot mode (ie all the businesses still have their boards up) even though there aren't any riots simply because crime is so high.
It's mostly a matter of inept city leadership really.

Care to share some stats on the "crime out of control"? All I can find is Oregon proper, not Portland as of yet, and outside homicides, which is increasing nationwide, not just in Oregon, is that overall crime, be it violent or property crime, has been dropping over the last decade.

Thanks!

 

[Sunburn74]

Care to share some stats on the "crime out of control"? All I can find is Oregon proper, not Portland as of yet, and outside homicides, which is increasing nationwide, not just in Oregon, is that overall crime, be it violent or property crime, has been dropping over the last decade.

Thanks!

Can start with this

2021 was a record year for homicides in Portland

In 2021, Portland recorded 90 homicides amid a surge in gun violence, shattering the city’s previous high of 66 set more than three decades ago.

www.opb.org

As a city Portland has less or average violent crime per capita than many other cities but the people who live here have noticed a significant uptick. 83% in 2 years when you talk homicides.

Burglaries also up and this is just whats reported to the police. I've had my car broken into twice in the last year and neither reported to the police. This link has a graph of reported burglaries.

Looking at the data: Portland crime during the pandemic

Portland saw a significant increase in the number of homicides in 2020 compared to recent years.

www.koin.com

There was a place in portland that was robbed twice in a month which was on the news for a bit. In fact there were a number of places on the news for being hit twice in short succession by robbers.

Sports bar in Northeast Portland robbed at gunpoint twice in one month

Businesses owners who've been victimized are calling on city leaders to take action after a string of armed robberies.

www.kgw.com

.

I'm not saying it's much worse than other US cities but certainly its much worse than what the city is used to. I would definitely say the homeless situation is spiraling rapidly and crime seems to be following closely.

 

[Meghan54]

I already noted homicides were up....nationwide, as a matter of fact.

From your link:

"However, the latest available data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program show Portland had fewer burglaries in 2020 compared to 2019."


So, not exactly spiraling out of control. And the graphs don't show that, either. True, crime is crappy, but it appears Portland is way better off than places like Milwaukee. And the graphs included show crime is actually on a downward trend, as in most places.

 

[killster1]

I already noted homicides were up....nationwide, as a matter of fact.

From your link:

"However, the latest available data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program show Portland had fewer burglaries in 2020 compared to 2019."


So, not exactly spiraling out of control. And the graphs don't show that, either. True, crime is crappy, but it appears Portland is way better off than places like Milwaukee. And the graphs included show crime is actually on a downward trend, as in most places.

hey its not as bad as Chicago so it must be ok? 5 years ago it was a very nice place to live and now not so much the case.. I know i have traveled through Oregon a few times in recent years. i first hand saw people claiming to be Antifa smashing cars painting and reeking havoc on the traffic downtown. When you call 911 they ask if your currently dying at a rapid pace so they know to put you on hold or not

If you think crime is on a downward trend but murders are up everywhere its only because they dont list anything less than murder as a crime anymore.

 

[NWRMidnight]

Can start with this

2021 was a record year for homicides in Portland

In 2021, Portland recorded 90 homicides amid a surge in gun violence, shattering the city’s previous high of 66 set more than three decades ago.

www.opb.org

As a city Portland has less or average violent crime per capita than many other cities but the people who live here have noticed a significant uptick. 83% in 2 years when you talk homicides.

Burglaries also up and this is just whats reported to the police. I've had my car broken into twice in the last year and neither reported to the police. This link has a graph of reported burglaries.

Looking at the data: Portland crime during the pandemic

Portland saw a significant increase in the number of homicides in 2020 compared to recent years.

www.koin.com

There was a place in portland that was robbed twice in a month which was on the news for a bit. In fact there were a number of places on the news for being hit twice in short succession by robbers.

Sports bar in Northeast Portland robbed at gunpoint twice in one month

Businesses owners who've been victimized are calling on city leaders to take action after a string of armed robberies.

www.kgw.com

.

I'm not saying it's much worse than other US cities but certainly its much worse than what the city is used to. I would definitely say the homeless situation is spiraling rapidly and crime seems to be following closely.

Just a note on your comment about your car being broken into twice, yet you never reported it to the police. How are they supposed to control or try to fix something they know nothing about because you never reported it? Doesn't that make you part of the problem you are complaining about?

Edit: spelling

 

[Meghan54]

hey its not as bad as Chicago so it must be ok? 5 years ago it was a very nice place to live and now not so much the case.. I know i have traveled through Oregon a few times in recent years. i first hand saw people claiming to be Antifa smashing cars painting and reeking havoc on the traffic downtown. When you call 911 they ask if your currently dying at a rapid pace so they know to put you on hold or not

If you think crime is on a downward trend but murders are up everywhere its only because they dont list anything less than murder as a crime anymore.

First, who the fuck said that (the first bolded sentence), you moronic piece of pond scum?

Second, dunno where you're pulling that shit....(out your ass, of course but why is the real question....for another day), but according to the FBI's UCR (Uniform Crime Reporting Program), the crime rate, both violent and property, have been trending downward for years upon years, and of course you know that, but you'd rather be a shitfaced liar.

This is a 20 year graph of property and violent crime in the U.S......notice anything? (From you, probably not....)

Both are taken from the FBI's UCR.......



Glad we've got that cleared up.

 

[Juiblex]

First, who the fuck said that (the first bolded sentence), you moronic piece of pond scum?

Glad we've got that cleared up.

"You're a big poopy head"

That's the liberals response to anything that goes against their narrative. Yup, we cleared that up. Actually, we don't need to clear anything up, the responses are to be expected

 

[ch33zw1z]

"You're a big poopy head"

That's the liberals response to anything that goes against their narrative. Yup, we cleared that up. Actually, we don't need to clear anything up, the responses are to be expected

/Ignores data. The conservatives response to everything: "no u, I got my alt facts here"

Oh, and fuck your feels

 

[IronWing]

hey its not as bad as Chicago so it must be ok? 5 years ago it was a very nice place to live and now not so much the case.. I know i have traveled through Oregon a few times in recent years. i first hand saw people claiming to be Antifa smashing cars painting and reeking havoc on the traffic downtown. When you call 911 they ask if your currently dying at a rapid pace so they know to put you on hold or not

If you think crime is on a downward trend but murders are up everywhere its only because they dont list anything less than murder as a crime anymore.

Were you one of the little green men Trump sent to attack the people of Portland? Because, to be honest, I don't believe you.

 

[pmv]

I visited Portland not long before the pandemic started. Last time I went anywhere, in fact. Chesil beach is quite pleasant. Famous for its fossils, you know.
Not a particularly high-crime area, Dorset.

 

[vi edit]

It's hard to engage in a logical, non-emotionally charged conversation on this. I've lived here for two years. There's just so many things happening in such a short amount of time that you are seeing where the major cracks are in so many areas of society. Most of this isn't a Portland problem. It's an America problem. We're just a good media punching bag and we do some things that don't necessarily help.

Of the list of issues we have....

1) Housing costs
2) Homelessness
3) Drug addiction
4) Mental health
5) Police officers being held accountable
6) A 2 year long pandemic

None of these are unique to Portland. These are all greater social issues that need to be discussed and addressed at a national level.

When I moved here 2 years ago I new about the homelessness. It was a thing and got here and saw it. There would be a tent here and there. Maybe a couple strung together along an interstate wall. But now it's so much worse than I've ever seen it. Some of the routes my wife takes to work are almost impassible because of camps taking over the sidewalk or the piles of trash, glass and debris they leave in the street. We've had record numbers of fires from camps catching aflame and taking out buildings next to it. There's just some areas of town that it's sad to drive by there's just ***so much garbage***.

This isn't a Portland problem per se. It's so many things that lead to it. See the list above. How we address it certainly is our problem and we're just not equipped or funded to handle it appropriately. It's something like $25,000 per campsite to come in and clean it up. A day later they just setup again and are right back at it. It looks awful for the city. It scares away tourism. And frankly it's just a miserable mess to have to deal with daily. There's garbage, buckets of human waste, used needles, and just literal mountains of trash laying around.

The pandemic has certainly made it worse. Particularly downtown. The protests in 2020 shouldered a lot of that blame, but the reality it's Covid. Businesses shut down and went remote. Many will never come back. There's a huge void of foot traffic and that vacuum was filled with homelessness and crime. Now it's a chicken and egg of what has to happen to try and recover. We don't really have the funding, bodies and policy support to try and clean up downtown. Which just makes it less likely businesses and tourism want to come back. So we're just in a deadlock of little advancement.

We recently just matched with Seattle and San Fran as the highest inflation cities in the country. Our housing market is crazy. We are blessed with geography and a very mild climate. We've got mountains and beaches an hour in opposite directions. It's an incredibly walkable/bike friendly city and has some absolutely beautiful parts of town to live in and enjoy. But I'm part of the problem. I brought in two high income jobs and bought an expensive house. Californians are cashing out of that market and coming here and buying in cash and buying up all of the more affordable homes that would be the most comparable to a "starter home". By starter home I'm talking 3br/1ba 1600 sq/ft about 10 miles from city center still costing 450k-500k. The housing market is very disrupted with limited inventory. Work from home jobs displaced by downtown vacancies encouraged a lot of people to move out of apartments and into homes and further disrupted inventory. There just is simply no affordable housing here.

Combine that in the midst of a global pandemic where something like 25% of the people here work in the service industry and shutdowns, sick time, lower foot traffic ect all drive to employment issues. People were already living on a knifes edge of being evicted and Covid just gave that a solid shove over the edge. There's no where cheaper to go. Don't have enough money to relocate. So you liquidate, live in your car or a tent. Figure it out.

And that's not even getting into the meth crisis or mental health issues. Those are just additional confounders that further push people into crisis criminal activity. You've got lots of people that can't afford housing mixed in with those that are simply incapable of working because of addiction of mental health and they are lumped under the same bucket of "homeless".

Now add in sensationalized media of protests and opportunists that come in and take advantage of situations and you have a one giant ass Molotov cocktail of social issues. Antifa is...whatever. It's a thing but it's nothing like Fox news and other right wing rags say it is. It's a couple dozen agitators that come in and stir the pot and bring in a group of other agitators in some sort of primitive chest beating. And you end up with some news clips of Antifa going at it with the Proud Boys. Or some clip of someone in black garb lighting a dumpster on fire. The reality is that Antifa is the least of our worries. It just makes for nice news clips.

The reality is nation wide police are ever so slightly being held more accountable for their actions. And police officers are flipping their shit over it and quitting. The police union is a bunch of thugs and there's not much a venn diagram at this point of domestic terrorists and police officers. It's almost two circles on top of each other. Police departments have some deep soul searching and deep, deep cleaning and rebuilding. Turns out just murdering people is bad. Profiling just on skin color is also bad. Converting your force into a budget special forces division is also not all that helpful. Police staffing is almost 50%. That's *NOT* due to budgets. They have the funding. Just nobody wants to do the job. It's the same issue hospitals are facing. There's beds for Covid patients, just no one to staff them.

This is not a situation unique to Portland or police departments, but when you take into account all of the other social stresses we have it's just pushes things over the edge. There's more crime happening and less police just generally out and about. I dare say the police departments actually sit there smugly watching it and waiting for cities to come back begging for their help.

My neighbors house is 20' from mine and we have fences that go around them. A few days before Christmas they caught someone trying to break into their back door at 5pm on a freaking Thursday. The level of either desperation or intent there is...something. They've got a young kid in the house and are rightfully freaked the fuck out. He tried calling the cops and spent over two hours on hold and eventually just gave up. At that point...what even is the point. There's been endless numbers of business break ins around us. I feel awful for the small business owners with hand made goods that can't just be recovered by insurance. It's hand made goods they put hours of time and energy into. Just to have their windows smashed in and stuff looted and likely dumped some place since there's no real legitimate gray market for handmade stocking caps.

Our car thefts are through the roof. I know people with hybrids that have their catalytic converter cut out and stolen multiple times.

There's some things you can shrug off, a broken window here or there. It's a decent sized city, it happens. But it's just so much so fast that it necessary to discuss.

I just... don't even know where to start. Except at the top and building up better social nets for people that are closer to falling.

 

[sandorski]

FDR was a hero, Reagan is a failure. Until that is understood things will continue to decline.

 

[Muse]

FDR was a hero, Reagan is a failure. Until that is understood things will continue to decline.

Well, I certainly have understood that my whole life.

 

[brycejones]

It's hard to engage in a logical, non-emotionally charged conversation on this. I've lived here for two years. There's just so many things happening in such a short amount of time that you are seeing where the major cracks are in so many areas of society. Most of this isn't a Portland problem. It's an America problem. We're just a good media punching bag and we do some things that don't necessarily help.

Of the list of issues we have....

1) Housing costs
2) Homelessness
3) Drug addiction
4) Mental health
5) Police officers being held accountable
6) A 2 year long pandemic

None of these are unique to Portland. These are all greater social issues that need to be discussed and addressed at a national level.

When I moved here 2 years ago I new about the homelessness. It was a thing and got here and saw it. There would be a tent here and there. Maybe a couple strung together along an interstate wall. But now it's so much worse than I've ever seen it. Some of the routes my wife takes to work are almost impassible because of camps taking over the sidewalk or the piles of trash, glass and debris they leave in the street. We've had record numbers of fires from camps catching aflame and taking out buildings next to it. There's just some areas of town that it's sad to drive by there's just ***so much garbage***.

This isn't a Portland problem per se. It's so many things that lead to it. See the list above. How we address it certainly is our problem and we're just not equipped or funded to handle it appropriately. It's something like $25,000 per campsite to come in and clean it up. A day later they just setup again and are right back at it. It looks awful for the city. It scares away tourism. And frankly it's just a miserable mess to have to deal with daily. There's garbage, buckets of human waste, used needles, and just literal mountains of trash laying around.

The pandemic has certainly made it worse. Particularly downtown. The protests in 2020 shouldered a lot of that blame, but the reality it's Covid. Businesses shut down and went remote. Many will never come back. There's a huge void of foot traffic and that vacuum was filled with homelessness and crime. Now it's a chicken and egg of what has to happen to try and recover. We don't really have the funding, bodies and policy support to try and clean up downtown. Which just makes it less likely businesses and tourism want to come back. So we're just in a deadlock of little advancement.

We recently just matched with Seattle and San Fran as the highest inflation cities in the country. Our housing market is crazy. We are blessed with geography and a very mild climate. We've got mountains and beaches an hour in opposite directions. It's an incredibly walkable/bike friendly city and has some absolutely beautiful parts of town to live in and enjoy. But I'm part of the problem. I brought in two high income jobs and bought an expensive house. Californians are cashing out of that market and coming here and buying in cash and buying up all of the more affordable homes that would be the most comparable to a "starter home". By starter home I'm talking 3br/1ba 1600 sq/ft about 10 miles from city center still costing 450k-500k. The housing market is very disrupted with limited inventory. Work from home jobs displaced by downtown vacancies encouraged a lot of people to move out of apartments and into homes and further disrupted inventory. There just is simply no affordable housing here.

Combine that in the midst of a global pandemic where something like 25% of the people here work in the service industry and shutdowns, sick time, lower foot traffic ect all drive to employment issues. People were already living on a knifes edge of being evicted and Covid just gave that a solid shove over the edge. There's no where cheaper to go. Don't have enough money to relocate. So you liquidate, live in your car or a tent. Figure it out.

And that's not even getting into the meth crisis or mental health issues. Those are just additional confounders that further push people into crisis criminal activity. You've got lots of people that can't afford housing mixed in with those that are simply incapable of working because of addiction of mental health and they are lumped under the same bucket of "homeless".

Now add in sensationalized media of protests and opportunists that come in and take advantage of situations and you have a one giant ass Molotov cocktail of social issues. Antifa is...whatever. It's a thing but it's nothing like Fox news and other right wing rags say it is. It's a couple dozen agitators that come in and stir the pot and bring in a group of other agitators in some sort of primitive chest beating. And you end up with some news clips of Antifa going at it with the Proud Boys. Or some clip of someone in black garb lighting a dumpster on fire. The reality is that Antifa is the least of our worries. It just makes for nice news clips.

The reality is nation wide police are ever so slightly being held more accountable for their actions. And police officers are flipping their shit over it and quitting. The police union is a bunch of thugs and there's not much a venn diagram at this point of domestic terrorists and police officers. It's almost two circles on top of each other. Police departments have some deep soul searching and deep, deep cleaning and rebuilding. Turns out just murdering people is bad. Profiling just on skin color is also bad. Converting your force into a budget special forces division is also not all that helpful. Police staffing is almost 50%. That's *NOT* due to budgets. They have the funding. Just nobody wants to do the job. It's the same issue hospitals are facing. There's beds for Covid patients, just no one to staff them.

This is not a situation unique to Portland or police departments, but when you take into account all of the other social stresses we have it's just pushes things over the edge. There's more crime happening and less police just generally out and about. I dare say the police departments actually sit there smugly watching it and waiting for cities to come back begging for their help.

My neighbors house is 20' from mine and we have fences that go around them. A few days before Christmas they caught someone trying to break into their back door at 5pm on a freaking Thursday. The level of either desperation or intent there is...something. They've got a young kid in the house and are rightfully freaked the fuck out. He tried calling the cops and spent over two hours on hold and eventually just gave up. At that point...what even is the point. There's been endless numbers of business break ins around us. I feel awful for the small business owners with hand made goods that can't just be recovered by insurance. It's hand made goods they put hours of time and energy into. Just to have their windows smashed in and stuff looted and likely dumped some place since there's no real legitimate gray market for handmade stocking caps.

Our car thefts are through the roof. I know people with hybrids that have their catalytic converter cut out and stolen multiple times.

There's some things you can shrug off, a broken window here or there. It's a decent sized city, it happens. But it's just so much so fast that it necessary to discuss.

I just... don't even know where to start. Except at the top and building up better social nets for people that are closer to falling.

Excellent post about why these are complex issues and not a simple “people are bad” need moar cops problem like killster, jublex, and other conservative posters have run with.

 

[vi edit]

Yeah it's not an easy conversation. One of the most American things ever is screaming that there's a problem, throwing a completely half baked/underfunded solution at it and then being angry when it fails. We love to scream about problems but rarely have the conviction to actually fix them. Fixing things is hard.

Portland has issues, some of them are significant (homeless being a primary one). But we're where we are because of a series of decisions and a lack of support structure at a national level. We need better access to physical and mental health care. We need more affordable housing. We need a base level of income available for people in distress to dig themselves out. But it won't come easy and it won't come cheap.

 

[Muse]

Yeah it's not an easy conversation. One of the most American things ever is screaming that there's a problem, throwing a completely half baked/underfunded solution at it and then being angry when it fails. We love to scream about problems but rarely have the conviction to actually fix them. Fixing things is hard.

Portland has issues, some of them are significant (homeless being a primary one). But we're where we are because of a series of decisions and a lack of support structure at a national level. We need better access to physical and mental health care. We need more affordable housing. We need a base level of income available for people in distress to dig themselves out. But it won't come easy and it won't come cheap.

We also need greater support for education. An educated public has a better grasp of the issues and their solutions.

 

[killster1]

First, who the fuck said that (the first bolded sentence), you moronic piece of pond scum?

Second, dunno where you're pulling that shit....(out your ass, of course but why is the real question....for another day), but according to the FBI's UCR (Uniform Crime Reporting Program), the crime rate, both violent and property, have been trending downward for years upon years, and of course you know that, but you'd rather be a shitfaced liar.

This is a 20 year graph of property and violent crime in the U.S......notice anything? (From you, probably not....)

Both are taken from the FBI's UCR.......



Glad we've got that cleared up.

Does it make you feel powerful to call names?

pulling what shit? real life testimony compared to a "FBI UCR!!!" wowowow a graph is better then opening your window and looking outside? sure some things in life can be represented with a graph but crime is not a realistic one, again this is what has happened to me personally and i dont even live there, and again when you call 911 they will not send a police officer to assist you unless the crime is being committed so do you think the reporting is accurate?

 

[woolfe9998]

Does it make you feel powerful to call names?

pulling what shit? real life testimony compared to a "FBI UCR!!!" wowowow a graph is better then opening your window and looking outside? sure some things in life can be represented with a graph but crime is not a realistic one, again this is what has happened to me personally and i dont even live there, and again when you call 911 they will not send a police officer to assist you unless the crime is being committed so do you think the reporting is accurate?

"Real life testimony?" Of whom? You? You don't even live there. You claim "i first hand saw people claiming to be Antifa smashing cars painting and reeking havoc on the traffic downtown." That is way too convenient for purposes of this discussion. You just pass through Oregon and happen to see people defacing property who you happen to hear "claiming to be Antifa."

See, that is the trouble with "real life testimony." Especially online. I'll take charts and graphs any day over anecdotal accounts, even if they happen to be true. Because anecdotes don't prove much of anything even if true. And of course they are often not even true, especially after being filtered through the political bias of the commentator.

 

[killster1]

Excellent post about why these are complex issues and not a simple “people are bad” need moar cops problem like killster, jublex, and other conservative posters have run with.

i like how you said my name they actually had the SAME POINT AS ME!!! "The cops didnt respond to a break in during the day and took 2 hours on hold etc.. sounds like there could be a police issue!!! but maybe the burglar just needed more hugs, and this is really a social issue. perhaps if we just make drugs free there will be no need to commit crimes to get more.. they can die sooner and cause less strain. i think ur on to something bryce, thanks for the shout out.

 

[killster1]

"Real life testimony?" Of whom? You? You don't even live there. You claim "i first hand saw people claiming to be Antifa smashing cars painting and reeking havoc on the traffic downtown." That is way too convenient for purposes of this discussion. You just pass through Oregon and happen to see people defacing property who you happen to hear "claiming to be Antifa."

See, that is the trouble with "real life testimony." Especially online. I'll take charts and graphs any day over anecdotal accounts, even if they happen to be true. Because anecdotes don't prove much of anything even if true. And of course they are often not even true, especially after being filtered through the political bias of the commentator.

you believe graphs but do you believe the moderator who said the same thing about the police not responding to break-ins and that there is indeed actors or real Antifa but they don't cause much issues. ( smashing cars painting and disrupting traffic is not a major worry of mine) they had signs that said Antifa and dressed in all black they could very well be trump himself for all anyone knows but it did happen and i did see it and have it on video somewhere (tho my dash camera is not very exciting to watch)

 

[compcons]

...they had signs that said Antifa and dressed in all black they could very well be trump himself for all anyone knows but it did happen and i did see it...

LOL. Like they really had signs claiming to be Antifa? I don't recall Antifa holding up signs to claim that is who they are.

This makes me think of this sign:

 

[vi edit]

Anyone that talks about antifa being an issue in Portland has no skin in this discussion. There's about 100 other things that are far more important to discuss and address.

 

[Sunburn74]

hey its not as bad as Chicago so it must be ok? 5 years ago it was a very nice place to live and now not so much the case.. I know i have traveled through Oregon a few times in recent years. i first hand saw people claiming to be Antifa smashing cars painting and reeking havoc on the traffic downtown. When you call 911 they ask if your currently dying at a rapid pace so they know to put you on hold or not

If you think crime is on a downward trend but murders are up everywhere its only because they dont list anything less than murder as a crime anymore.

I live there and have no idea what you're talking about. There's a slight uptrend in violent crime that's noticeable but the biggest issue is clearly the homeless situation

 

[ch33zw1z]

I live there and have no idea what you're talking about. There's a slight uptrend in violent crime that's noticeable but the biggest issue is clearly the homeless situation

Well if Anti Fascists would stop burning down all the homes, then people wouldn't be homeless.