Very helpful discussion. I often surmised that the mayor's legal counsel suggested a certain number in order to fend off lawsuits claiming that 'reasonable alternative shelter was not available."
The “aha” moment was when they ran out of money to haphazardly produce more beds and he rightfully started to feel the wrath of residents fed up with his nonsensical refusal to enforce even the camping ordinances that were in effect prior to him taking office. This is easier than just admitting they don’t know what they’re doing.
One wonders why it isn’t an ongoing practice to get people with arrest warrants and guns/weapons off our streets or why they need to wait another month to start doing this.
“Wilson also recently announced plans to begin moving campers off the street Nov. 1,…. first with citations targeting people having outstanding warrants or those involved with current crime, such as drugs or weapons.”
I don’t understand this ..the police give a citation ( a ticket) to someone that has an active warrant or is committing drug and weapons crimes…. Shouldn’t those people be arrested? If someone has an active warrant, that means that they already didn’t show up to a court date, sometimes several court dates, doesn’t it? When will we have a Mayor that says, “If there is a warrant for your arrest, you are going to jail” or “If you commit drug or weapons crimes on the streets of Portland, we will arrest you and you will go to jail”. Citations will be ignored, when do we learn that lesson
Hooray that after Nov 1, no more camping, though wish it had come years ago. I agree with the comment by Rich that jail time is better than a citation. The people being cited aren't going to be dissuaded by a ticket. Such an approach will fill up our jails with severely mentally ill homeless people. After a day or two in jail, they should be civilly committed and transferred to a psychiatric unit at a community hospital locally. We need to begin building our local capacity to insure a short-term hospitalization of up to six weeks max to get these severely mentally ill people cleaned up, sobered up and detoxed, and perhaps medicated. I think that many of the severely mentally ill can't cope with a shelter and may pose a danger to the others in the shelter because of unruly or bizarre or paranoid behavior. They need active treatment.
Golly--legacy media ignored this one. They went for the capon-mayor's 1500 number, probably because their homelessness reporters never bother talking to the "homeless," and because they are mostly stenographers for the machine running things around here.
No one in local media (beyond Dahlgren) has ever dealt with the size and shape of Homelessness Inc.™ and presented a picture of how many are directly employed in "serving" the feral. They have swallowed the Housing First Koolaid, and no one seems interested in the amount of money going to NGO landlords (aka slumlords).
The mayor, who has no real power (except what the socialists allow) will get away with it.
You can find an up to date report on shelter capacity and utilization here: https://hsd.multco.us/data-dashboard/
It looks like in July, 2025, we were at ~90% capacity.
Very helpful discussion. I often surmised that the mayor's legal counsel suggested a certain number in order to fend off lawsuits claiming that 'reasonable alternative shelter was not available."
The “aha” moment was when they ran out of money to haphazardly produce more beds and he rightfully started to feel the wrath of residents fed up with his nonsensical refusal to enforce even the camping ordinances that were in effect prior to him taking office. This is easier than just admitting they don’t know what they’re doing.
One wonders why it isn’t an ongoing practice to get people with arrest warrants and guns/weapons off our streets or why they need to wait another month to start doing this.
“Wilson also recently announced plans to begin moving campers off the street Nov. 1,…. first with citations targeting people having outstanding warrants or those involved with current crime, such as drugs or weapons.”
I don’t understand this ..the police give a citation ( a ticket) to someone that has an active warrant or is committing drug and weapons crimes…. Shouldn’t those people be arrested? If someone has an active warrant, that means that they already didn’t show up to a court date, sometimes several court dates, doesn’t it? When will we have a Mayor that says, “If there is a warrant for your arrest, you are going to jail” or “If you commit drug or weapons crimes on the streets of Portland, we will arrest you and you will go to jail”. Citations will be ignored, when do we learn that lesson
Hooray that after Nov 1, no more camping, though wish it had come years ago. I agree with the comment by Rich that jail time is better than a citation. The people being cited aren't going to be dissuaded by a ticket. Such an approach will fill up our jails with severely mentally ill homeless people. After a day or two in jail, they should be civilly committed and transferred to a psychiatric unit at a community hospital locally. We need to begin building our local capacity to insure a short-term hospitalization of up to six weeks max to get these severely mentally ill people cleaned up, sobered up and detoxed, and perhaps medicated. I think that many of the severely mentally ill can't cope with a shelter and may pose a danger to the others in the shelter because of unruly or bizarre or paranoid behavior. They need active treatment.
Golly--legacy media ignored this one. They went for the capon-mayor's 1500 number, probably because their homelessness reporters never bother talking to the "homeless," and because they are mostly stenographers for the machine running things around here.
No one in local media (beyond Dahlgren) has ever dealt with the size and shape of Homelessness Inc.™ and presented a picture of how many are directly employed in "serving" the feral. They have swallowed the Housing First Koolaid, and no one seems interested in the amount of money going to NGO landlords (aka slumlords).
The mayor, who has no real power (except what the socialists allow) will get away with it.