Comments

1

I'm confused. I've been hearing lately that the reason the homeless shelters need to be in our neighborhoods is because of their proximity to the services the homeless need.

If the proposed Wapato Shelter were to provide all of those services, then what difference would it make if it's 11 miles from Portland?

3

Deborah Kafoury is useless spam. The Wapato facility grift will never be forgotten. How far away from downtown is Dignity Village? Honestly, we need more and more resources all over Portland. And the fumbling, bumbling, dumb-dumbs at Multnomah County can't do anything right, so why listen to them? Remember the shelter that had been a weird restaurant was rented for thousands of dollars per month until the roof caved in? Seriously, delete Multnomah County government and hand their operating money to a coalition that can get people into housing and help them stay there.

4

The Mercury has the interest, audience, and time to explain where it is proposed Portland go on homeless tenters, hard sleepers and RV campers. It is easy to critique point policies. What is the vision, or what are the visions?

The current journalist view that "this solution sucks," "that solution sucks," leaves us with the current situation, which sucks.

The topic could easily fit in a feature or two.

Included would be a discussion of homeless law, mental illness law, and addiction law, including case law.

It's not hard to understand Multnomah County, Portland, state, and federal homelessness-related budget flows, and what would be needed to create "the vision" or various visions.

Olive, the Tribune and WW could do this, but the Portland Mercury could be the first. The first Mercury staffer that really understands and articulates the problem and solutions is perfectly positioned for much better salary and benefits employment by the City or the County, and positions themself to even run for office.

5

What a tremendously bad faith article pulling quotes from bad faith sources.

You couldn't find a single homeless or addiction services person who had positive things to say? You couldn't find a number of homeless folks who would say, yeah, they'd prefer to live in a serviced facility rather than in a tent in the wilderness or on the street?

Also, to tout a 4% reduction as a reason we wouldn't need an option like Wapato on the table in addition to all other existing efforts? A 4% reduction in a population well over 4k? LOL.

I really, really don't understand the objections if it's a voluntary facility. Separation/distance is actually a good thing for addiction recovery, rather than walking out of a downtown clinic and into the radius of a drug dealer. It was designed as a jail? So what? It's not like most shelters are the aesthetic equivalent of a Victorian mansion, and former jails have been converted into luxury hotels elsewhere in the world. And it's not a single-cell style facility, it's more of an open dorm style facility. Very easy to repurpose, especially since it has office spaces, communal kitchen and dining, etc., plus plenty of extra land for mobile office and other housing space.

Incumbent services feel like their funding and status are threatened, that's the basis of the opposition, not anything in good faith. Give it a shot, worst thing that happens is that we spend a little more money on an issue where we're already shoveling piles of it into a giant black hole with very few results to show (a 4% reduction! VICTORY!).

6

Edgefield (out by Troutdale, really far from the city center) was "designed" as a poor farm -- and the Mcmenamins cleaned it up real nice. People pay to sleep there. And oh yeah -- not every person on the streets is a defiant, resistant person. Can we please move people indoors so they can get a good sleep? Multnomah County government is utterly useless, completely failed, not up to their jobs. Wastrels.

9

I have seen it work in Gainesville FL but if the cops are supporting it, NOW I'm not so sure.


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