How sketchy and pervasive is your city's visible transient/drug addict situation?

[LA21st]

Sounds like Canada has their own version of the OP.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by giallo

We can have a serious discussion about these issues without resorting to crazy hyperbole. The highlighted sentence is utter BS.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by niwell

Lived by a couple with no issue other than guys sitting on the step drinking at all hours.

I had to deal with that for many years; what you as a neighbor may not have realized is that these guys can and will drink their entire welfare check if you or whoever manages the place for you isn’t there and persuasive enough, when the welfare money arrives. It’s one of the big downsides of that type of tenant. Nowadays with electronic deposit it’s even worse, as here the govt deposits it at midnight sharp on the last business day before the first, so I’ve often been up at midnight on “Deposit Day” for rent collection purposes. (Not anymore though )

[pdxtex]

Portland is the best its been since 2019 but much of downtown is still a ghost town and attracts super duper crazy ppl. The worst offenders are the rv's. Those are either drug dealers, users or they congregate and form chop shops with stolen cars.

[PhillyRising]

Kensington in Philadelphia is probably the Disney World for the Zombies...they just did a clear out of Kensington and Allegheny but it just pushed them to other streets....

I bet most of the people there aren't even from Philadelphia...they just made their way there from wherever to be near the open drug market.

[pdxtex]

Advocates always refute the claim that some homeless people travel places to continue being homeless. Why not? If people are free to travel with or without jobs, I think its naive to assume people without jobs don't migrate too. They hitch rides, go on trains, take Greyhound, drive their own cars. The first time I ever met a gutter punk in my life was out west, a bunch of guys asking for money in front of a bar in Boulder. This was way back in the 90s. They were funny. They were also from Ohio. I think in general lots of ppl blame big cities for fostering homelessness. Big cities aren’t creating homeless ppl, they are magnets for all ppl, jobs or no jobs. They're literally watering holes for humans. Some cities just do a better job at managing the streets.

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

Advocates always refute the claim that some homeless people travel places to continue being homeless. Why not? If people are free to travel with or without jobs, I think its naive to assume people without jobs don't migrate too. They hitch rides, go on trains, take Greyhound, drive their own cars. The first time I ever met a gutter punk in my life was out west, a bunch of guys asking for money in front of a bar in Boulder. This was way back in the 90s. They were funny. They were also from Ohio. I think in general lots of ppl blame big cities for fostering homelessness. Big cities aren’t creating homeless ppl, they are magnets for all ppl, jobs or no jobs. They're literally watering holes for humans. Some cities just do a better job at managing the streets.

Exactly! Seems homeless people want to be in the desirable parts of the country too.

[pdxtex]

^^^^^ppl overthink it. homeless individuals represent about 1/10 of a single percent of the entire US populous so 99.9 percent of Americans figured out how not to be homeless. the things we need to address most are upstream. mental health treatment, addiction, stuff like that. by the time someone is sleeping in a tent in downtown Portland, a whole litany of shit has already transpired. tons of policy makers try to blame housing affordability but thats just one factor in a complex situation.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by dktshb

Exactly! Seems homeless people want to be in the desirable parts of the country too.

The main downside of coastal Southern California, the mildest and most pleasant average year-round climate available in the country, is the high cost of housing there, so if you’re homeless, it’s a no brainer to gravitate to it, even if your starting location is far away.

[downtownpdx]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

Portland is the best its been since 2019 but much of downtown is still a ghost town and attracts super duper crazy ppl. The worst offenders are the rv's. Those are either drug dealers, users or they congregate and form chop shops with stolen cars.

Agreed, I rarely see tents these days but there are some RV's around my neighborhood, although they're towed (or tagged at least) before too long. As far as open drug use, I feel like overall the city has "cleaned up" in that regard but omg .. maybe they all congregated at the 7-11 a few miles from my house in East Portland. There's a stoop on the side of the building, and a basically empty building adjacent with an awol property owner (who's been threatened with lawsuits by the next door neighbors) that's been inadequately fenced off with a grassy slope hangout area.... so it is a 24-7 fentanyl market. The light rail line runs 2 blocks away and it's just a back and forth scene between the stop and the shop. I don't know how the cashiers stand it every day. The 7-11 two miles away on the same street is clean as a whistle.

[downtownpdx]

Things like this oughta help :

https://www.koin.com/news/portland/o...tion-services/

Portland launches outreach hub for addiction services after pilot program success

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) –

Efforts to create a partnership between law enforcement and outreach workers are ready to launch after a pilot program found success in getting people off the streets and into treatment, according to city leaders.

The Provider-Police Joint Connection Project began as a partnership between the Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon (MHAAO) and the Portland Police Bureau’s Bike Squad, which proved successful after it was launched as a pilot program in December 2023.

Located in the heart of downtown Portland, the leased space at Mercy Corps’ headquarters coordinated efforts to help people struggling with addiction and connected them with services for treatment and housing options while building trust within the community.

However, the hub in question was not client-facing or a place where people could go to receive assistance. The Mercy Corps building was only available for law enforcement and outreach professionals, providing a space for them to operate.

Now the outreach hub is getting a permanent base of operations with funding from the City of Portland, Multnomah County and the state.

...continues

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

^^^^^ppl overthink it. homeless individuals represent about 1/10 of a single percent of the entire US populous so 99.9 percent of Americans figured out how not to be homeless. the things we need to address most are upstream. mental health treatment, addiction, stuff like that. by the time someone is sleeping in a tent in downtown Portland, a whole litany of shit has already transpired. tons of policy makers try to blame housing affordability but thats just one factor in a complex situation.

While "point in time" homeless count estimates have been around 650,000 in recent years (ie. on any given night, there will be that many people without a home to go back to), or 0.2% of the American population; by some estimates there are as many as 26 million people in the US who have at some point experienced homelessness.

In Canada, where the cost of living is even worse, up to 1% of the population will be homeless at some point in the year, and 11% of the population have experienced homelessness in their lifetimes.

While the chronically homeless tend to have addiction and/or mental health issues, there are a hell of a lot more poor & working class people who are just a missed paycheck away from sleeping in their car, crashing at a friend's place, or ending up in a shelter. See the rise of the "working homeless".

[craigs]

Originally Posted by dktshb

Exactly! Seems homeless people want to be in the desirable parts of the country too.

Yep. For example, yesterday's New York Times article about California's changing homeless policies included a brief interview with a 53-year-old military veteran living in a tent on the beach in Venice. He made a thinly veiled threat that he would violently resist being moved from the beach, and that is a legitimate threat considering he has a criminal record back in his home state of Louisiana.

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by craigs

Yep. For example, yesterday's New York Times article about California's changing homeless policies included a brief interview with a 53-year-old military veteran living in a tent on the beach in Venice. He made a thinly veiled threat that he would violently resist being moved from the beach, and that is a legitimate threat considering he has a criminal record back in his home state of Louisiana.

He should be sent back to Louisiana and if he is going to be violent then meet him with equal force. LAPD should be there to assist.

[Acajack]

My city has just under 300,000 people and is quite prosperous with a jobless rate of around 5%. We have a tent city of over 100 tents in our downtown along a creekside bike path, in addition to some seedy RVs and other installations in an adjacent parking lot next to an arena.

[samne]

In Toronto, the homeless encampments have spread and become the norm in the downtown area. Much much different than pre-2020. We have a socialist- progressive mayor now which doesn’t help the situation.

Do see more of the homeless mentally ill or addicted wandering the streets, but not so much the tranqued out zombies yet.

This is coming from a place with universal healthcare and quite substantial public services available for all. Something isn’t working.

[muertecaza]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

In Canada, where the cost of living is even worse, up to 1% of the population will be homeless at some point in the year, and 11% of the population have experienced homelessness in their lifetimes.[/url].

I will say that the 11% figure is largely for what the cited report calls "hidden homelessness," defined as "living temporarily with family or friends without immediate prospects of finding permanent housing." Under that definition I guess I have experienced homelessness in my life. But I do not find it a particularly useful definition.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by muertecaza

Under that definition I guess I have experienced homelessness in my life. But I do not find it a particularly useful definition.

Me too, I guess.

Back in college, I never got on the ball fast enough to find a living situation for one summer. By the time it actually confronted me and I was like a week away from not having a roof over my head, two friends who had an apartment with a screened in back porch were like, "hey man, if you wanna crash on our back porch for the summer, cool with us".

So that's what I did.

It was a very temporary stop gap set-up that had a clear end point when I moved into another apartment on a lease with another friend for the following school year.

Besides, if all else had failed and I was literally sleeping on park benches and shit, I woulda gone back to Chicago for the summer and lived with my parents.


Those kinds of make-shift living arrangements that young people do when they're first starting to live quasi-independently are not the same thing as actually being for-real homeless, IMO.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by dktshb

He should be sent back to Louisiana and if he is going to be violent then meet him with equal force. LAPD should be there to assist.

That's overkill and unconstitutional. In the US people are allowed to be in any public space.

But behavior rules can be enforced. Don't allow camps, open drug use, littering...

And let's get back to involuntary commitment for the disruptive mental cases as well as the fents/drunks.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by mhays

And let's get back to involuntary commitment for the disruptive mental cases as well as the fents/drunks.

Holy crap! Don't necessarily disagree but do you know how much that would cost?

Both our countries really screwed up on that front starting in the 1980s. Now I'm not sure we could afford to do what would need to be done.