Spot on! I never thought I would become the kind of person who spends a lot of time writing angry letters to news stations, but I've sent KOIN my thoughts on a couple of their anti-homeless pieces recently. They recently ran a piece about garbage buildup along Foster, and their conclusions were the same as always: "Homeless people sure are a scourge, huh? We'll be back with sports after these messages!"

Empathy is free, you yuppie scum.

Ugh I didn't notice I'd used "recently" twice in quick succession. My morning, nay, my entire DAY is now ruined!

Hey Steven your reference to Portland being 60th in murders is from 2019 and murders have gone up since then quite a bit. You should update this article to be more accurate.

Fuck those guys at KOIN. I've been working hard to bring a new hotel in the Pearl out of the ground since 2019, a process that was interrupted by the pandemic. The amount of time I have to explain to existing and potential investors and lenders that no, Portland has not been destroyed is ridiculous. KOIN thinks they are helping apply pressure to City leaders to "DO SOMETHING" and not realizing that they are pouring gas on a small bonfire. What really gets me is precisely what you point out - that a lot of the conditions we see downtown today are due to the pandemic, not protests, crime, or homelessness.

Rightwing FOX-watchers from Molalla are TERRIFIED of downtown, and our vast army of realtors demands that something be done!

They got the Mayor they wanted, so what are they complaining about? Tell him, not us.

You ever see that cartoon of the dog and his house is burning down around him and he's saying "this is fine"? That is the essence of this article.

Open your fucking eyes. Speaking of downtown, which is absolutely lined with tents and garbage and filled past capacity with homeless people, the majority of which clearly have mental health and/or drug problems, I also wonder where you Portland Mercury writers live. Because I live out on 122nd, and if you don't think there is a problem with trash and homelessness and drug use and crime, then I invite you to come see our backyard, which has been swept multiple times in the past 6 months alone.

You can barely walk down the sidewalks in this part of town because they are blocked by tents and ramshackle huts. Nearly every corner has an "information wanted" poster for someone who was murdered. It's disgusting. It's sad. It's a failure at every level of government. Despite the millions in tax dollars and empty promises Portland's leaders have gifted us with.

The murder rate has skyrocketed. I don't care if we rank 60th in murder. Wow, what a feather in our fucking cap! Everything in the KOIN report is objectively true. You can add in the pandemic and the police response, but at the end of the day, anyone who has lived in this city for any amount of time has seen it decay into a literal dumpster fire.

Sorry, that's not the correct progressive response. Let's attack the business owners, many of whom have simply had enough and packed up shop. And who can blame them. Why have stores downtown when you're worried there will be violent riots and looting after every national news store? Let's just pretend there are no homeless people or that they add a quirky nature to the city. Keep Portland weird, right?

God the Mercury is trash. I cannot even believe this woke, white tabloid masquerading as actual journalism is treated with any respect by Portland's citizens. Just shut your eyes and whistle a happy tune while Portland crumbles around us.

This is fine, indeed.

Okay, the KOIN story is full of shit, but so is this article. That's cool your front yard is clean by my neighborhood is so fucked right now.

This Opinion-Piece reads like it was written by an ignorant tweeny-bopper off her meds...whining and deflecting from facts. Does the Mercury actually pay this simpleton?

Uh-oh... looks like somebody posted a link on Nextdoor.

I understand your being beside yourself. Then again, I don’t see the Mercury doing their part. To act like the BLM crowd is on a mission other than to take a temper tantrum is folly. And the latest “stop the sweeps” folks aren’t any better.

If you have a complaint, great. Then come up with a workable solution. Defunding the police is not a plan. It’s an impossible goal designed so people can forever take out their hate. Neither is enabling large homeless camps. In both cases we need some type of intermediary organization that provides social and vocational training for the “victims” - and I use the term loosely - while making the “perpetrators” accountable.

Believe it or not it’s not wise to mouth off to the police any more than it’s ok to lean on a person’s neck. We need to identify the few bad cops because they won’t.

And it’s not good to allow people to do drugs in tents next to a park with kids any more than it’s ok to keep shuffling a person who’s struggling from block to block week to week.

Let’s see the merc back some group in a neighborhood that creates a plan that is satisfactory to both sides. If you can’t do that then you’re just another ineffective whiney liberal. We got plenty of those. Get something done. Progress is progressive.

“Is Portland Over?” is a completely valid question. Who made your opinion king? Who are you to make such an unyielding accusation that it isn’t a valid question? Too many “far-from-center” citizens in this city tolerate vandalism and looting to their fellow citizens, simply because the vocal minority feels that it’s justified in their subjective view. And why are so many citizens ok with letting squatter camps and drugs run wild on the streets, ditches, and neighborhoods? This city no longer has any sense of itself because it’s in such a rush to embrace anything counter cultural. If you keep on rejecting anything mainstream or traditional, pretty soon you’ll end up just wanting to watch the world burn. I’m all for change in areas we can do better, but you have to do it with respect. That’s lacking in portland right now. The far left makes demands, the far right threatens action against.

Those of us who grew up loving our country, believing in what it stands for even though it has its faults - there is less and less tolerance for people like us who believe America still has many aspects of its history that were honorable and worth preserving. The push to cancel culture in Portland is part of the cancer that is causing the divide in the city that might actually answer the question “is portland over” with a “yes”.

When did snark replace intelligent counterpoint and rational arguments? This article is a missed opportunity to logically refute mis-statements by KOIN, as well as deliver other perspectives, as pointed out by several other commenters. Portland Mercury News - stop being intellectually lazy. Or just admit you write for entertainment (rather thin on that score) instead of enlightenment. You're no better at real journalism than KOIN.

Ugh. why are all these Republican jagoffs commenting on the Mercury?? Go back to Stormfront, you ignorant trash.

On issues of Portland anti-police protests/riots and policing issues in general, some people might enjoy a couple interviews I did on this topic:

Interview with a militant BLM/antifa Portland protester: https://www.readingpokertells.video/blog/understanding-violent-protester-behavior-an-interview-with-a-portland-antifa/

Interview with a retired police captain about policing issues (maybe interest to some, he's politically liberal): https://www.readingpokertells.video/blog/understanding-the-behavior-of-police-who-use-excessive-force-with-retired-police-captain-james-mitchell/

I hate cops too, but your defense of the vandals was weak.

Yes, it was hyperbolic journalism but they pointed-out legit issues.

We need camps for people as well as RV's and cars, but ya gotta me 'em go there and not just be anyplace (which is no good for anyone involved)

"anyone who has lived in this city for any amount of time has seen it decay into a literal dumpster fire"

Actually, some of us remember the meth pandemic of the 90's and early 00's (and heroin before that) and I gotta say this has a warm fuzzy familiarity about it. Some of us prefer our shitty little industrial town covered in moss and humanity, not plastic and tech bros. Don't get me wrong, I don't like to see humans suffering on the street, but we used to wear flannel for layering, not fashion.

Not saying things were better or worse back then, just sorta the same ol' same ol'. Calm down

@13 I've been wondering the same for months, and I think the answer is that they got rid of the comments section on Oregonlive and the trash just sorta migrated here, just like in real life! You think it would make them more empathetic to the homeless crisis! But no.

This article is a joke. I've lived here basically all my life and I've never been embarrassed by it before the last year. Anyone acting like trash isn't a problem must live in the freshly gentrified areas and don't venture outside them, the rest of the city is an absolute mess. I actually used to be involved in many community public trash pickups and clean ups, those stopped last year for the most part, and so did municipal clean ups. You'd have to be literally delusional or insanely insulated in more affluent areas to not see the trash issue.

And the tents... It's not there's juts a few tents, stop trying to minimize it. Many side streets have become campgrounds. And that's actually what the in laws said last time they came down here, after telling me on FB so often that it can't be that bad my MIL finally admitted "driving down I5 after dusk there were so many tents and campfires it really did feel like a campground"... Most areas where there could be a tent there is a tent or the refuse left from a tent being there recently. I spent a fair amount of time traveling to east coast cities in the 90s for business and suddenly our city looks just as bad as those cities did at their worst. I think Pittsburgh and Philadelphia actually look better right now then Portland, which is sad considering we're small relative to such cities and our problems should be proportionately manageable.

Just a thought, but maybe this "pessimism" is fanned when people can clearly see these problems indeed exist yet folks like you constantly minimize them and attempt to excuse them away? Hard to not get pessimistic about it all when so many people won't even admit there's a problem, would be much easier to be more positive if it didn't seem like essentially nothing's going to be done about anything...

Really? This is all you’ve got? Instead of facts and counter arguments you’re coming at it with straight up denial? It doesn’t make you a republican to admit that this place looks way shabbier than it did even a year ago. There are more tents, there is more graffiti, there is more trash. Those are simply the sad facts of our current crisis upon a crisis. Instead you’re all like “I looked under my bed and didn’t see any trash, therefore KOIN is full of shit”. Downtown is hollowed out, which sucks, even if aren’t an evil capitalist business owner. You don’t need to be a Fox viewer to see that MLK is boarded up for blocks and blocks. Even if you’re driving a Prius you can see the exponential explosion of tents, tags, and garbage lining most of our major roads. Average Portlanders who live in average houses in average neighborhoods are being deeply impacted, not the bourgeois California tech bro transplants that are the favorite bogeymen of the Mercury. And don’t even start with how much shittier it was in the 80’s, you didn’t live here then and neither did most of the people pining for the good ole’ heroin days. You wanted so badly to hate the KOIN hit-piece that your knee jerked up high enough to give you a black eye. How about this? How about you try and help clean up this mess instead of fanning the flames with this “Nuh uh, no it isn’t, la la la la la, everything is fine” BS you’re passing off as journalism. You have a giant soap box, use it for something better. The first step is admitting there is a problem.

The premise of the KOIN TV piece deserves ridicule. It’s absurd and they obviously miss Trump not selling ads for them. However, I do think Portland has an issue that is far beyond the scope, depth and scale for this incompetent city council and mayor to address. Like who wants entire gangs of bums living outside your $400,000 home with $5,000/yr property taxes while your kids was thru needles to go to their 1/10 elementary school. This is the literal reality in many areas of Portland when it a) didn’t used to be like this and b) doesn’t need to be like this. Other cities deal with it so much better. Cross the Columbia into Washington and magically there’s no garbage or tents lining the freeway...weird huh!?!?