Is Portland over?

That's one of the nice things about Portland: very little snow in the metro area.

I enjoy skiing and Mt. Hood is close by, and we often skiied there: Timberline Lodge has the only summer skiing in America, up on the Palmer Glacier.

World class recreational opportunities are neaby, including mtn. climbing, rafting, kayaking, mtn. biking, hiking, boating and of course the scenic beauty of Oregon is wonderful.

Heck, we even have a volcano in our back yard (Mt. Saint Helens).

Hood River, up the Columbia Gorge, is a world class wind surfing / kite surfing mecca.

The wiz is dead wrong however about the restaurant scene in Portland; I don't doubt he reports what he experienced, but he just didn't know where to look.

Portland has a great foodie / restaurant scene, at least pre-Covid, and helped lead the way with microbrewing and quality food carts.

Our restaurants rival and arguably sometimes surpass those in Las Vegas, at least in some ways.

see: The search for America's best food cities: Portland, Oregon

Quote: missedhervee

Surprise surprise, but I agree.

The liberal nature of Portlanders was a positive thing until the homeless problem started getting worse and the spineless politicians refused to effectively deal with the problem.

Even in the suburbs where we live there are homeless bums all over.

My son chased off a bum sleeping against the fence in his back yard: should have sicced his doberman on him.

That is the problem with liberalism. It all sounds so nice, but when it it tried it never works out like people thought it would. Go easy on the homeless and you will have them all over the place. Go easy on the drug users and they will start shooting up right there on the street. It gets to be a problem and the people who had the idea say, "We just wanted to treat them as human beings and look what happens!"

Quote: Evenbob

There is now and always has been an underground gossip line among hobos, bums, Street people, and now homeless people. They tell each other where the most lenient cities are and where the strict ones are.

Quote: Evenbob

I never met a single one that was on the street because he didn't want to be. He wanted to be exactly where he was trying to get something for nothing and scamming the system

These are facts and anyone who ever gives his opinions about the homeless but won't admit these truths into the picture is just kidding himself.

About your second point, I will say I think many are mentally ill and it's hard to say what they want.

Quote: odiousgambit

About your second point, I will say I think many are mentally ill and it's hard to say what they want.

Some are mentally ill, not nearly as many as they would like you to believe. It's an old scapegoat.

When I visited family in NH a few years ago I saw no homeless camping or begging.

So refreshing.

It made me wonder why they get a bye, and the west doesn't?

Yes, I understand the liberal vs. conservative dynamic comes into play but what specifically / legally separates the two?

Yes, I get it that some of them are nomadic and travel all over and will seek out and stay at places that make it easiest for them to get by, places like Portland and San Francisco, but there is another class of homeless, the non-nomadic ones, the locals who for whatever reason cannot qualify for or afford traditional housing and have to live the homeless life.

Many of the homeless in Portland are locals, not the traditional traveling hobos / bums.

Surely there were people like this in NH and other places (e.g. in EB's locale): what do they do?

Are they actually camping in tents or sleeping in cars or RV's but doing so more circumspectfully, flying under the radar?

Or do their families step in to care for them?

Maybe in conservative areas people are more religious and churches help out more?

Which is not say that churches ignore them here: I am in the suburbs and a Presbyterian church a few blocks away has allowed a mentally ill homeless guy to set up his tent on their property and he's been there about a year now.

Quote: missedhervee

When I visited family in NH a few years ago I saw no homeless camping or begging.

So refreshing.

It made me wonder why they get a bye, and the west doesn't?
.

It is so simple it boggles the mind. We will NOT put up with it. You want to ruin our streets and neighborhoods and run our property values down? We don't think so, go elsewhere. We'll even help you to go elsewhere. Liberals always want to remain in good standing with their liberal neighbors so they don't dare look intolerant. And with that attitude you get what you got in the West.

Quote: Wizard

Trivia time! What does the X in the airport code for Portland, PDX, stand for?

Often they put an X on the end to signify it is an international airport. Like LAX. Does Portland have another airport that is domestic only?

Quote: odiousgambit

These are facts and anyone who ever gives his opinions about the homeless but won't admit these truths into the picture is just kidding himself.

About your second point, I will say I think many are mentally ill and it's hard to say what they want.

I don't disagree with your position that those are facts, but here is where Conservatism becomes a problem:

They whine, moan and b**** and never offer any solutions of their own, or when they do, they're impractical.

Okay, so let's imprison the drug users. What does that do? Is it cheaper? Conservatives don't want the Government to fund healthcare and drug abuse programs (I don't want the Federal Government to fund these and don't really care what the states do) and they also don't want users to get off scot free, I assume.

Well, it seems to me that imprisoning them would cost a lot more money than letting them do whatever it is they are going to do. I'm referring to users here, not dealers.

You could also get a lot of the drugs off of the street by more strictly monitoring what doctors are prescribing, but Big Pharma wouldn't like that, no sir.

That brings us to the homeless problem. "Oh my God, these Democrat run cities?" Okay, well what do Conservatives propose? Do Conservatives propose that we kill them? Arrest them for vagrancy and house them in a (more expensive) jail instead...waste money on the entire court process?

We've got EvenBob complaining about them knowing where all of the homeless shelters and soup kitchens are. Aren't the shelters and the soup kitchens people acting of their own accord to show compassion rather than the Government doing it? What's wrong with homeless shelters and soup kitchens? What would it do for crime if these folks had to steal in order to eat? Do you want more people begging passersby?

The problem with the Conservative notion of self-sufficiency is just that not everyone is going to do that. It's the same thing when it comes to religious people who suggest abstinence...yeah, sure, that works if everyone is actually going to be abstinent.

I don't have any solutions and make no claims of having any. I just think the Conservatives bemoaning these sorts of things whilst having no solutions to offer is pretty funny. The best part of the Conservatives complaining is the fact that many of the ones doing the griping don't live in these inner cities in the first place, so should be content to let the cities have themselves.

Quote: missedhervee

When I visited family in NH a few years ago I saw no homeless camping or begging.

So refreshing.

It made me wonder why they get a bye, and the west doesn't?

Yes, I understand the liberal vs. conservative dynamic comes into play but what specifically / legally separates the two?

Meaning New Hampshire?

For one thing, New Hampshire is not particularly densely populated (21st) and is something like the tenth least populous state. A quick Google search reveals that the larger cities in New Hampshire have at least one homeless shelter and/or soup kitchen.

New Hampshire's Winters, however, are absolutely punishing. Also, it's tough to travel from New Hampshire to a more Southern state quickly. A greyhound from Portsmouth to Orlando, FL runs well over $200 (just looking at this week) whilst one from Portland to L.A. looks a bit north of $100. You have also seemed to mention that Portland Winters are less punishing, and comparing average temperatures to a place like Nashua, that seems to be true.

So, I don't know that it has so much to do with the legalities of it as much as it does cheaper travel to/from as well as the N.W. Winters not being quite as brutal as the N.E. Winters to begin with.

It's not as if the East side of the country doesn't have homeless and doesn't offer them anything. Jacksonville is actually a pretty friendly city to the homeless with food, showers and mental health services available during the day. I just think the left coast is generally warmer and perhaps easier to get from place to place.

Quote:

Yes, I get it that some of them are nomadic and travel all over and will seek out and stay at places that make it easiest for them to get by, places like Portland and San Francisco, but there is another class of homeless, the non-nomadic ones, the locals who for whatever reason cannot qualify for or afford traditional housing and have to live the homeless life.

Many of the homeless in Portland are locals, not the traditional traveling hobos / bums.

Surely there were people like this in NH and other places (e.g. in EB's locale): what do they do?

Are they actually camping in tents or sleeping in cars or RV's but doing so more circumspectfully, flying under the radar?

Or do their families step in to care for them?

Maybe in conservative areas people are more religious and churches help out more?

Which is not say that churches ignore them here: I am in the suburbs and a Presbyterian church a few blocks away has allowed a mentally ill homeless guy to set up his tent on their property and he's been there about a year now.

I would imagine that the people who were local to colder areas relocate, perhaps to somewhere like Portland.

San Francisco is a whole different sort of beast just because housing costs are so ridiculously high. As I understand it, many of the homeless in that area actually do have jobs, just not such that they can actually afford housing. I don't know what the public housing or Section 8 voucher scene looks like out there.

I'm not convinced that the churches and that sort of thing help out more in Conservative areas, simply because I think that the homeless would be more spread out if that was the case. It's probably also easier to accept handouts from people who you aren't going to be seeing regularly. You also don't have too many similarly situated people in small rural towns, so you're just kind of the, "Local homeless person." Even if the town takes care of feeding you, they probably don't really talk to you much outside of that, so you don't really have anyone with whom to socialize.

Quote: Mission146

That brings us to the homeless problem. "Oh my God, these Democrat run cities?" Okay, well what do Conservatives propose? Do Conservatives propose that we kill them? Arrest them for vagrancy and house them in a (more expensive) jail instead...waste money on the entire court process?

You roust them. Make it as uncomfortable as possible to be homeless. This can range from making benches in such a way that they are uncomfortable to be on for long periods (don't laugh, the Pittsburgh subway did this when it opened) to knocking their tents off the sidewalks to yes arresting them if they are hassling people for money. Sooner or later the message gets thru that the place they are at is not a place to set up camp.

See, in the liberal cities homeless are shooting up and taking dumps in alleys between buildings, owners have blocked them off. What happens? The locals criticize the building owners! The homeless get the message that they can do whatever they want in SF and other liberal western cities where the same thing happens.

In NYC, Rudy understood this and did "broken window" policing. It worked. But it has to be a permanent thing. In NY the local liberals got used to the city being nicer so they said to stop the "mean" policing. Now they will get to live in a sty again, the way they seem to prefer it. Portland, et al on the left coast seem to prefer it.