Is Portland over?

Looks like they are working on more important things......

Quote: AZDuffman

Looks like they are working on more important things......

Amazing….. I have a friend (I’ll be golfing with him tomorrow) who just came back from Portland a few weeks ago after visiting his daughter who lives there. Another player in our foursome last week mentioned the shitholes that San Francisco and Portland have become. First friend staunchly said that’s not the reality. That Portland still has a nice downtown not overrun by the homeless. Lots of nice suburbs not affected at all by what is portrayed in the media. That it still is a great place to live.

Something like ‘I was just there and it’s not bad’.

I tend to think it is bad.

It's bad ... in places.

Hit or miss with the homeless: bad near freeway access points and parts of downtown.

No homeless in MOST of stumptown, i.e. we're not over-run with these human cockroaches.

But yeah, there's a lot of them, far too many, and the recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision clarifies their right to sleep in public if they've no other place to sleep.

I hope it is appealed to the USSC and that the Trumpies give us some tools to fight this scourge.

City government is worthless: they seem to value the homeless over the rest of us.

Quote: SOOPOO

Quote: AZDuffman

Looks like they are working on more important things......

Amazing….. I have a friend (I’ll be golfing with him tomorrow) who just came back from Portland a few weeks ago after visiting his daughter who lives there. Another player in our foursome last week mentioned the shitholes that San Francisco and Portland have become. First friend staunchly said that’s not the reality. That Portland still has a nice downtown not overrun by the homeless. Lots of nice suburbs not affected at all by what is portrayed in the media. That it still is a great place to live.

Something like ‘I was just there and it’s not bad’.

I tend to think it is bad.

There used to be a thing with Europeans who would come to the USA. They would go to the worst parts of towns to say they went there and it was not as bad as the news made it out. But the news made it out that there was a shootout at the OK Corral every hour on every block. So driving thru in your car somehow said you were tough enough to survive it. Point being, a quick visit does not tell the story.

My brother was in an airplane class with a guy from there. This was a year or two ago. Guy said there are places you do not stop at traffic lights or your car will have the windows smashed. Said stores were just not replacing windows because they got smashed tight out again. Said the place was getting unlivable. Point being, when you live there you see how bad it is.

Portland seems to be a Potemkin village, or even worse, the Red Cross tour of Theresienstadt. Where you were kept from what was really going on. The article I referenced about the pols worrying about pronouns as the place is littered with needles should show that the powers there are not living in reality.

Quote: AZDuffman

My brother was in an airplane class with a guy from there. This was a year or two ago. Guy said there are places you do not stop at traffic lights or your car will have the windows smashed. Said stores were just not replacing windows because they got smashed tight out again. Said the place was getting unlivable. Point being, when you live there you see how bad it is.

I have no doubt there are bad areas but that statement seems a little over the top. What percentage of cars that stop at those stoplights have their windows broken? I would guess it is a very small percentage.

According to this list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

Portland is 77th highest overall crime on top 100. So there's a lot of other choices all over where it's worse. Where Portland finally gets a high 10th position in one area, listed as non-violent is larceny.

Of course, that's the area of crime the average citizen is probably most likely to notice because petty crime is common compared to armed robberies, murder, or rape.

And crime high in larceny fits really well with a high homeless population.

Crime rates really aren’t arms length comparisons given widely varying level of enforcement.

I don’t know that there’s any better data point, but “it’s not that bad” is generally the perspective of upper middle class+ who’ve simply been able to separate themselves from dealing with the fallout on a day to day basis, it’s not that bad for them because they aren’t forced to deal with it. Ignorance is bliss and all.

Quote: rquiredusername

Crime rates really aren’t arms length comparisons given widely varying level of enforcement.

I don’t know that there’s any better data point, but “it’s not that bad” is generally the perspective of upper middle class+ who’ve simply been able to separate themselves from dealing with the fallout on a day to day basis, it’s not that bad for them because they aren’t forced to deal with it. Ignorance is bliss and all.

I think crime rates is reported crimes, not solved or convictions. So, the reported crimes doesn’t reflect how much is being done about it. But if crime rates year to year keep going up one would have to assume, something is not happening or not working.

Other things to consider. Some neighborhoods are fine in the daytime, as long as you don’t go out at night in them. Some may find that acceptable. Others not.

Fair but people generally aren’t going to report things if they already know nothing will be done. A lot of confirmation bias theater around the stats either way to be sure.