Dissecting the Mayor's "Homeless" speech

A dose of reality flavored with wishful thinking and a tincture of political BS.

MayorTed has finally spoken about the city’s most visible problem: the social breakdown on the city’s streets, the tent favelas, RV clumps (which have a propensity to burst into flames), car-campers, drug zombies; and psychotics cruising at will through Portland’s beleaguered streets.

Here’s what he had to say. (And kudos to channel 12 for being the only local media that presented the mayor’s words, unfiltered through our various progressive journos.)

Along with our comments.

“One of the most challenging issues facing Portland today is our homeless crisis. Homelessness is a complex issue with many causes, requiring multiple solutions. I want to talk to you about the intersection between homelessness, behavioral health, and substance use disorder.

The mayor might want to look at this little item from 2016, courtesy of the Oregonian morgue…

And let us recall that Charlie let the toothpaste out of the tube in the first place with a nutty executive order to allow sidewalk camping from 9PM to 7AM.

First, some context. How big is the problem?

According to the 2022 official point in time count, thousands of people are living unsheltered on our streets, and unsheltered homelessness in Portland increased by 50% from 2019 to 2022.

The point in time “count” is notoriously inaccurate, staffed by volunteers, performed in the middle of winter, and as a piece of data is like looking at passing clouds and concluding that that’s the weather for a year.

Far too many in our city are living in dangerous and squalid conditions. This is nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe for our unsheltered neighbors,

They may be your neighbors, mayor; they ain’t mine. That’s why the city has a number, 311, you can call and a website to plead for bum-removal. And why the request to the city sometimes results in the “neighbors” being packed up…

..as we wrote about here.

and it also creates public health, safety and livability concerns for the entire community.

Let me be clear, there is nothing humane about the situation on Portland’s streets. And that’s why 94% of Portlanders identify homelessness as their top issue. Our collective goal should be to eliminate unsanctioned, unsheltered camping in Portland. To do that, we need a workable, and compassionate,

It wouldn’t be Portland if this mushy word wasn’t trotted out. It ignores the fact that “compassion” (and a few $-million tax dollars) created the disaster in the first place.

means to connect people to whatever services they need to get off and stay off the streets. This could be shelter, housing, treatment, workforce training and other services.

Not that the mayor or anyone else will ever tell us what this might, realistically cost when the rubber finally meets the road. Nor does he disclose what we have already, haplessly, spent. Nor will he discuss what the battalions of bureaucrats created by Homelesness Inc. might have learned from their self-evident failures. And how many more will have to be hired.

Currently there are hundreds of unsanctioned camps spread out across virtually every neighborhood of our city,

Oddly, and unmentioned: there are several neighborhoods immune from the contagion. Been to West Hills lately? Nor does the mayor note that “homelessness” isn’t really a problem in suburbs abutting the city. Ya gotta wonder why.

over a massive 146 square mile area. This makes it impossible to hire enough outreach workers to meaningfully connect people to services, including shelter. And due to the current dispersed nature of the homeless population, there’s no way to provide the kind of consistent case management or follow-up required to successfully connect people to the services they need.

This is the first bamboozle: what “they need” may not be what the homeless themselves think they “need.” Three guesses what that “need” might be.

According to the Oregonian,

An unimpeachable source!

95% of the people experiencing homeless they surveyed

Nope; the “survey” was sub-contracted to one of the many Homeless Inc. service non-profits which, if journalists are capable of skepticism, might indicate an itty-bitty conflict of interest. No homeless; no service agency.

indicated that they had never been approached by an outreach worker or offered any services.

And, of course, the Oregonian took them at their word.

The status quo is not a compassionate response. Leaving vulnerable Portlanders to live outside in the elements in dangerous conditions poses issues to both the individual experiencing homelessness and the community.

Whereupon the mayor drops any discussion of what homelessness actually costs the people who live in houses and apartments and pay property taxes—including $-millions in bonds sold for “affordable” housing, plus the infamous Metro “success tax” for more homeless “services,” plus the cream-off of big box profits for yet another homeless nostrum. Say bye-bye to Walmart.

There is overwhelming evidence that the homeless face incredible danger on the streets. A report recently found that 20% of all homicide victims in 2021 were homeless. The Multnomah County Health Department found that at least 193 homeless individuals died in 2021, a 53% increase over the prior year. Furthermore, they found the average age of death among homeless men to be 48, and among women 46. That is more than three decades younger than the average life expectancy in the United States. Between 2019 and 2021, Portland Fire & Rescue responded to over 2,500 fires in homeless encampments. Sadly, 31% of Portland’s fire deaths in 2021 were those in the unhoused population. The safety of both people living on the streets and our broader community is at risk.

What’s driving the homeless issue in Portland and how do we address it? People are homeless for many different reasons. Research

Unattributed, as are most of the “reports” and “research” in his remarks.

suggests that the lack of affordable housing is the key driver, and the provision of that housing cannot be overlooked as a strategy preventing and ending homelessness.

It certainly won’t be overlooked by some of the most politically-active players in Portland and state politics, namely the people who profit by building things. We’ll see more of this rhetoric below.

But the intersections between homelessness, substance use, and behavioral health issues complicates the situation for many.

Substance Use Disorder

Many assume that people become homeless because they use drugs or have untreated behavioral health issues. The truth is much more complex than that.

It is bi-directional. While some people undoubtedly become homeless because of drug use or mental health issues, the vast majority are homeless first, and then begin using drugs or developing behavioral health issues later.

And who says it’s the “vast majority?” And just how muuch is “vast?”

Let’s talk about drugs in Portland. In 2020, Oregon voters passed Measure 110 to become the first state in the nation to decriminalize personal possession of drugs. Measure 110 was also intended to provide significant new resources for desperately needed drug treatment programs. While I support the intent of Measure 110,

How could any rational, sane, halfway intelligent person advocate the effective legalization of all hard-core, psychoactive drugs? There were other people on the other sided of the question, but they were outspent by…well, who knows who was really behind a measure that clearly would benefit drug dealers and the cartels.

But the premise was there for anyone to see: let drugs rip; then pay $-millions to clean up the inevitable mess. Everyone wins!

the funding has been extremely slow to be deployed and the state’s drug treatment infrastructure continues to fail despite efforts of many people in the treatment community.

Baffles one why the mayor couldn’t utter the words, “Oregon Health Authority” along with “failure.”

Making matters worse, two relatively new, cheap, and widely available synthetic drugs are wreaking havoc in Portland and across the country.

The “old” drugs were awfully good at creating havoc. This is another “lemme off the hook because I’m slow on the uptake” argument.

The first is P2P Meth, sometimes called the “new meth.” This is insidious stuff. It can cause severe psychosis, brain damage, and anti-social behaviors including violent outbursts, destructive behavior, and extreme paranoia. Oregon has the highest meth use rates in the United States. In 2021, Meth contributed to nearly half of all homeless deaths in Multnomah County.

Attribution? Was the speech ghost-written by someone at the Oregonian?

The second synthetic drug, Fentanyl, may be even worse, and our community is awash in it. It is cheaper and more potent than heroin. According to the Multnomah County Medical Examiner, fentanyl overdoses in Portland increased 588% over a recent two-year period. Across all age groups, Oregon’s fentanyl death rate grew by almost 500% from 2019-2021. Oregon leads the nation in the growth of youth fentanyl deaths rate, with deaths for kids ages 15-19 increasing over 900% between 2019 and 2021. Yet Oregon only has four youth treatment programs, all with months-long waiting lists.

Astonishing that the mayor, who runs the Portland Police bureau, fails to mention anything about law enforcement…and the failure of PPB to form, say, a “task force” to get serious about the drug cartels and the open sale of drugs.

We’ve seen the damage that fentanyl can cause. Just a few weeks ago a man intoxicated by some combination of alcohol, cannabis and fentanyl attacked a 78-year-old man and caused extensive harm as he was experiencing a mental health crisis reaction to the substances. Recently, the Portland Police and the DEA made an arrest where they confiscated 2 kilos and 30,000 fentanyl pills.

Only the feds have evidenced any real interest in making these cases; the biggest drug trials have been federal prosecutions. Question: who convicted the leaders of the Hoover gang in Portland?

According to experts, this is enough fentanyl to kill 1 million people. And it’s not even the largest amount confiscated. Eugene police recently recovered 8 kilos in a drug operation.

My own personal view is that when outside players transport substances through our communities with the intent to harm or kill millions of Americans there is a name for this. Weapon of mass destruction.

Bad metaphor, Mr. Mayor, if you have any memory about the Iraq adventure.

I appreciate that many in our federal government are starting to see it as such.

Another side effect of these increasingly prevalent drugs worth noting is an unwillingness to be in enclosed spaces. Enclosed spaced like congregate shelters, motel rooms, or housing of any kind. The bottom line is that synthetic drugs are complicating the solutions required to successfully address homelessness.

Behavioral Health

When it comes to behavioral health issues, the story isn’t much better. Oregon is routinely listed among the top states in terms of mental health treatment needs, but consistently ranks near, or at, the bottom of states when it comes to delivering needed services. The last list I saw put us at 49th out of 50 states.

This isn’t a new stat; and—golly! Oregon has been a one-party state for a generation. Wouldn’t this lead you toward a certain conclusion about the progressive experiment? (Don’t worry; it won’t.)

Our behavioral health systems are failing us all, but they hit the homeless population especially hard. 40% of homeless individuals tell us that they have either a significant drug use disorder or an untreated and disabling behavioral health issue. 20% tell us they have both.

And who were they “telling” this to? And why would anyone take self-reported data seriously?

Oregon has an unfortunate history of under-investing in affordable housing,

One could write thousands of words about what is “affordable,” and how that quantity is defined. I’ll be writing about the bogus numbers used by the federal government and endlessly trotted out by locals that purport to define what’s “affordable,” and who gets the breaks. It’s ugly.

Realistically, will even the big “affordable” housing whales being built with county bond money be “affordable” for crazies, druggies, and criminals? In selling these projects, developers are careful to lecture neighbors about how the tenants will be carefully culled; and about how all of the “wrap-around” services (the term is as undefined as “equity”)by non-profit cut-outs will keep the tenants in line. Good luck!

behavioral health and substance use treatment. And now we are seeing the results. The lack of critical services at the state, county and local level is why we have struggled to help people get off the streets.

Better word: failed.

Solutions

Now it’s up to us to act

“Us,” kemo-sabe? This will be yet another progressive set of edicts, “emergencies,” one-size-fits-all laws, written by machine pols, with the usual cabal of “citizen commissions” selected from among the usual suspects to give it a gloss. (See: Charter, district commission of.)

to turn things around, and that’s what I am doing in my capacity as mayor. Continued innovation is the ONLY way we will make progress on the intersection between homelessness, substance use, and behavioral health issues.

Here is part of what we are doing. You have likely heard about the five resolutions recently brought to, and approved by, the city council. I want to explain to you the goals of these resolutions. They serve as a roadmap for the revitalization of Portland.

To put it simply, our homelessness plan consists of three building blocks.

The three building blocks are:

• First, a significant investment in affordable housing,

• Second, moving the unsheltered homeless closer to safety and services,

• And third, the creation of a criminal justice referral system that incentivizes those with a criminal history to seek housing, services, and/or treatment.

Does anyone suspect that a couple of the building blocks are missing? For example: cracking down on the illegal things that homeless people do to maintain their “lived experience?” Plus: in return for free bunches of stuff, why don’t we expect the beneficiaries to pitch in and actually…like, work.

Regarding affordable housing, we are working with our state partners to increase tax abatements and deferrals to make more affordable housing projects pencil out.

You will never hear these words from our mayor: “Do away with System Development Charges.” Want to build a house? Pay the city a bare minimum of $22,669 before you turn over a shovelful of dirt—which has effectively killed low-cost housing, as any honest contractor will tell you.

You might also utter the magic words, “Urban Growth Boundary,” which the mayor doesn’t seem aware of.

We are asking the state legislature to allow us to use urban renewal areas to create more affordable housing.

This from the mayor who greased the skids for the Ritz-Carlton hotel megalith, which was part of an urban renewal district, plus got a massive tax-writeoff.

And locally, we are identifying up to 400 shovel ready sites owned by the city of Portland that could be used for affordable housing.

Might be nice for the mayor to list them. I wonder how many will be located in, say, Laurelhurst.

We need over 20,000 units of housing just in the Portland area to close the affordability gap.

Who says? The building trade unions? Lobbyists for the state’s developers, architects, property-lawyers?

It took years to grow this gap, and we must act now to reverse it.

Does anyone seriously believe that the mayor, who has never held a real-world job, is in any way qualified to effectively socialize the construction/development industry (notoriously complex, and often corrupt). The progressive machine, by the mayor’s own admission, produced this “crisis.” Why would it be able to (1) admit its mistakes and (2) not mess the marketplace up again?

Regarding bringing services closer to people who need them, rather than trying to deploy services to hundreds of unsanctioned encampments, we are creating a limited number of larger Temporary Alternative Shelter Sites across the city that could provide navigation to drug treatment, healthcare, mental health services, job training and other services.

The mayor has already dropped the bomb on a plot at 1490 SE Gideon St., tucked away in an industrial district. How many tents will be allowed seems fungible—might be over 200—and he hired an out-of-state outfit called Urban Alchemy to run the show after locals in Homeless Inc. refused to bid for the job. Note: he won’t tell us what they’re being paid to ride herd on some of society’s most incompetent, troubled, and bad luck types. And the outfit—a kind of McDonalds of homeless services, keeps getting sued and running into trouble…

This is an idea that was created with direct input from people with lived experience.

The city council has already committed $27 million to our alternative shelter site concept, and we hope that the state and Multnomah County will work with us to deliver these critical services.

Mr. Mayor, the county has told you to pound sand. They’re in the “build it and they will come” mode, having just opened a gleaming new $15-million drop-in day center for downtown homeless, tweekers, fentanyl-fanatics, sidewalk sleepers et al, in deeply troubled Old Town.

It’s been open just three months and already Willy Week and channel 12 have run stories about how businesses in the area hate it.

And while we are seeking to reduce and ultimately eliminate problematic unsanctioned campsites across the city, we are NOT seeking to criminalize homelessness.

This is a tip ‘o’ the hat to the ACLU and other bleeding heart non-profits and to the goofy judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and their ludicrous “Boise” decision—classic policy-making jurisprudence. There will be litigation; one can hear the knives being sharpened.

Rather, we are working with the DA and others to create a referral program into services that could allow people to expunge older warrants.

Note: “warrants,” not just “convictions,” unless the mayor is a bit confused about the criminal justice system. The mopes in the legislature will probably vote to deep-six criminal records, yet another favor to landlords and businesses who like to know who they’ll be hiing.

As for “working with,” doesn’t the mayor know that the DA doesn’t take calls from anyone except George Soros? (And should be tossed out of office instead of getting the mayor’s imprimatur.)

Some have criticized this approach. They argue that funds should only go toward the so-called housing first model

Another magic word; “housing first” is a progressive dogma that has many critics and commentators, mostly in cities where the faith has been tried and failed. Such as LA. Google “housing first” and you’ll turn up stuff like this, from The Hill…

and prioritize housing, not the alternative shelter approach. I want to be clear, I support building affordable housing.

“…and I love getting endorsements from the unions and developers and property owners.”

And in no way will I ever endorse a policy that criminalizes poverty.

Another dog-whistle “Please don’t sue us” plea to the ACLU and Homeless Inc. It will fall on deaf ears.

I believe in acting to immediately help those left to linger on our streets. When I say this, I mean today, NOW. Not next year or five years from now.

Every day that people live unsheltered on the streets they are exposed to drugs, potential behavioral health issues, and dangerous criminal elements.

And not just “exposed to,” but they are selling drugs, stealing anything not bolted down (and a few that are) and making the MAX line a rolling insane-asylum. As many neighborhoods could tell the mayor, if he got out more.

Some would have us leave our fellow Portlanders on the streets.

Other than Nicole Hayden, who might that be?

I cannot, in good conscience, ignore people to suffer on the streets.

According to a study conducted by Home Forward, we know that people living unsheltered on our streets are waiting years, sometimes more than five, for affordable housing. We need to act now to save lives and reduce harm. We can both create more affordable housing options AND provide immediate services to those who are struggling to survive on the streets.

Is every tent-camper really “struggling?” Do some of our campers like getting high? Do they think being Porch Pirates is OK? Are some charter members of the “freedom’s just a word for nothing left to lose” club?

Which leads us to the final, most important question that the mayor won’t even ask, much less answer: what if he builds those “affordable” crackerboxes and mega bum-dumps…and the bums refuse to partake of the public’s largesse? What if they opt out? What if they act like free Americans and just say “no?”

What then?

Finally, I must make it clear that cities across America are struggling with these same issues. Portland is by no means alone.

Truth is, outside of, perhaps, LA and San Fran, Portland is the national avatar of civic decay. Live with it.

This means we need the federal, state and county governments to work with us to address the complexities of homelessness. In short, I believe we will offer a bold new direction to Portland. This is what Portlanders want. And no city, certainly not Portland, can wait any longer.”