As city officials begin homeless sweeps, individuals shoot heroin on the streets and needles litter the sidewalks, exposing Portland’s open-air drug industry. Meanwhile, a neighbouring city’s mayoral candidate wants to round them up and house them in “Japanese-style pods.”
New images document the dire condition in Portland, which has long been plagued by homelessness and addicts who openly use narcotics in public.
Discarded needles, human waste, and the stench of urine tarnishes the city’s progressive initiatives, one of which is the passage of Ballot Measure 110, which decriminalizes hard drugs in the Democrat-controlled state.
After voters adopted a ballot proposition in 2020 to legalize personal-use amounts of heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, oxycodone, and other drugs, Oregon became the first state in the United States to do so.
However, according to Fox News, drug overdose deaths in the state reached an all-time high of 1069 in 2021, a 41 percent rise from 2020.
Leslie Wright, a retired US Marine sergeant major and current mayoral candidate in the Portland suburb of Oregon City, has described his plan to repurpose vacant schools for homeless shelters like ‘the Japanese people.’
‘Have you ever seen the way the Japanese people live? ‘They live in these little, close-knit communities,’ Wright explained to radio host Lars Larson. ‘We’re going to give everyone of those (homeless) folks their own tiny area and an address,’ she says.
During the Japanese internment in the 1940s, American people of Asian heritage were picked up and imprisoned in government compounds, which were overcrowded, hurriedly built structures where many died.
Homeless people who stayed at a designated unoccupied school, according to Wright’s plan, would have to receive eye tests and may be sent elsewhere if they have mental health difficulties.
There would be no alcohol allowed on the premises. Wright did not say which former school building it would be, but he did say he would seek approval from a number of local and state entities before moving through with the plan.
‘They will be tested when they first come through the door, much like the military does,’ he said. ‘Every day in this community, I’m going to have a job lottery.’
The community will look after one another. They’ll make certain the yard is free of obstructions. They’ll make sure the barracks are spick-and-span. There will be no drugs or needles.’
Wright was defeated by former Mayor Rachel Lyles Smith in the March 2021 mayoral election with less than 30% of the vote. He has never held an elected job in Oregon City before.
Wright will challenge commission president Denyse McGriff, who has been acting mayor since Smith’s resignation, in a special election in August.
Homelessness and drug usage have remained a problem in Portland, and the situation has only gotten worse since the state decriminalized certain narcotics for drug use.
After voters adopted a ballot proposition in 2020 to legalize personal-use amounts of heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, oxycodone, and other drugs, Oregon became the first state in the United States to do so.
If a person is caught with personal amounts of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or other drugs, they are issued a citation similar to a traffic ticket, with the maximum punishment of $100 waived if they phone a hotline for a health assessment.
The state’s program, which has been pushed as a way to build and fund addiction recovery clinics that would provide people with help rather than incarceration, is being looked at as a possible model for other states.
However, some critics argue that spending more money to combat homelessness will not necessarily lower the number of homeless people.
‘We’re used to saying don’t hold us accountable until there’s enough housing.’ However, we must be able to demonstrate that progress is being done,’ Community Solutions founder and CEO Rosanne Haggerty told KOIN.
Community Solutions claims that through a procedure called Built for Zero, every homeless person should be identified by name, location, and need in real time. For 107 communities, the process is working, and many of them have seen a decrease in the number of homeless people.
A group of residents and property owners in Portland’s Old Town district took matters into their own hands when they asked the city to’reopen’ Old Town with graffiti clean-ups, tent sweeps, and increased police, according to a local news blog.
In April and May, the city reported clearing 343 tents from the Old Town area, with 87 people living in those tents being referred to a shelter bed. However, the exact number of persons that entered a shelter remains unknown.
Officials conceded earlier this month that Oregon’s first-in-the-nation initiative to decriminalize drugs and encourage individuals caught with them to seek medical assistance has been plagued by issues.
Ballot Measure 110, a ground-breaking plan, was adopted by voters in November 2020 and entered into effect in February 2021.
If a person is caught with personal amounts of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or other drugs, they are issued a citation similar to a traffic ticket, with the maximum punishment of $100 waived if they phone a hotline for a health assessment.
Only 91 people, or one percent, of the 1,885 persons who received tickets for personal possession in the first year called the hotline, according to Lines For Life, the hotline’s non-profit operator.
Only $40 million of the $300 million in funds for the program has been spent, according to those behind the scheme, who conceded earlier this month that they miscalculated the effort required to disperse the monies.
‘Clearly, if we had to do it all over again, I would have requested a lot more people much earlier in the process,’ said Steve Allen, Oregon’s behavioral health director.
‘We were just under-resourced to be able to support this effort, misjudged the work that went into supporting something of this magnitude, and partially didn’t really comprehend it until we were in the middle of it.’
Millions of dollars in tax money from the state’s legal marijuana sector were channeled to treatment as a result of the ballot proposition.
However, state officials overestimated the effort required to process the applications and get the money out the door, according to testimony given earlier this month before the House Interim Committee on Behavioral Health.
Portland is just one of several Democratic-led cities where open-air drug use is prevalent.
Recent photographs and videos from San Francisco’s streets reveal loiterers taking drugs in broad daylight, auto break-ins, aggressive stealing, homeless encampments, and pavement fouling with human excrement.
Under the leadership of outgoing Democratic District Attorney Chesa Boudin, things began to deteriorate in the liberal city.
Boudin was elected on a program of criminal justice reform in 2019, but since the outbreak of the epidemic, the DA has been widely accused for increased crime and homelessness in the Bay Area, where brazen thieves ransacking stores and breaking into automobiles has become typical.
Statistics reveal that the crime wave has intensified this year compared to previous year, which was one of the worst crime years in decades, with the city’s murder rate up 11% and rapes up nearly 10%.
During Boudin’s tenure in office, there has also been a significant increase in vagrancy, which has become a standout concern in the Bay Area, where homelessness and open drug use have skyrocketed since the outbreak.
However, even as infection rates fall and limitations are eased, the city’s criminality and unsavory underbelly endure, aggravating residents.
So far this year, San Francisco police have reported 20 homicides, an increase of 11% from the 18 reported at the same time last year.
Meanwhile, larceny theft, which accounts for the majority of recent’smash and grabs,’ has increased dramatically under Boudin, with 13,424 incidents reported this year, up 20.4 percent from 11,151 last year.
Assaults have also increased by 11% this year, with 1,035 cases registered, and rapes have also increased by a disturbing 10%.
The Bay Area has faced a succession of smash-and-grab robberies in the last year, with bold burglars storming stores in the middle of the day, as theft continues to see the highest spike in crime.
In 2018, illegal fentanyl began to appear on San Francisco streets, and it is frequently mixed with other drugs like heroin and cocaine to improve strength.
With the introduction of fentanyl, the number of overdose deaths skyrocketed, rising from nine in 2009 to 230 in 2019, according to a city report. The city reported 474 fentanyl-related deaths in 2021.
According to SFGATE, the city has taken a number of initiatives to combat the fentanyl pandemic, including adding extra drug and mental health beds and forming the Street Overdose Response team to provide care for persons at high risk of overdose.
Mayor London Breed of San Francisco announced a state of emergency in the city, which simplified the city’s permitting requirements in order to open the linking center as rapidly as possible. The center connects persons living on the streets with treatments for substance abuse and mental health difficulties.
The state of emergency was set to expire in April, but the mayor extended parts of it to allow city employees to act as disaster relief workers in the Tenderloin district, which has been particularly badly hit.
In an emailed response, the mayor’s office said, “The mayor agrees that we need to clean up open-air drug dealing in San Francisco.”
‘Every day, police officers make arrests, and an additional 20 officers have been posted to the Tenderloin district in the previous several weeks to support our emergency response strategy.’ Over 10 kilograms of fentanyl have been seized in the Tenderloin neighborhood this year alone, roughly four times more than was seized in the same time period last year. We recognize that more arrests are needed, but we also need responsibility for those who are peddling drugs, committing acts of violence, and putting our communities in danger.’