Here’s Matthew Yglesias over at Vox on a fascinating new report out of Florida analyzing the costs of housing—and not housing—the homeless: A new study is out providing support to one of my favorite ideas in public policy—that the best way to deal with the challenge of homelessness is to give homeless people homes to […]
Homeless
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A Month and a Half In, City “Clean-Up Contractors” Have Only Responded to a False Alarm
Halfway through a three-month contract to clean up illegal homeless camps on city property, local security firm Pacific Patrol Services hasn’t been sent to a single actual campsite. As of Monday, PPS had only been dispatched once, on April 29, to what city records show was a false alarm. Cops had received a tip someone […]
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Anti-Camping/Structures Laws Can Now Be Used to Arrest People
Adam Wickham The Multnomah County District Attorney’s office has formally scrapped a controversial enforcement program aimed at problematic nuisance crimes. But to say the Chronic Offender Pilot Project is dead isn’t quite accurate. Its heart beats on in a robust new enforcement policy unveiled by the DA’s office today, and the consequences might be big […]
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KGW Employee Goes In-Depth On Old Town Poop for Vice
Old Town Chinatown is on everyone’s mind lately. The Oregonian recently published a series looking at its challenges, and the proposed economic development that could take it from dingy and underused to a haven for “workforce housing.” And the city was abuzz last week after Mayor Charlie Hales announced popular vacation listing site Airbnb is […]
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Woman Found Dead at Right 2 Dream Too; Her Worried Husband Says He’d “Wanted Her to Lay Down”
A woman was found dead this afternoon at Right 2 Dream Too—the rest area for the homeless at NW 4th and Burnside—possibly after overdosing on methadone and taking other medications for ailments including embolisms and congestive heart failure, according to her husband and other witnesses. Emma Dreier, 45, was found unresponsive in the rest area’s […]
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Right 2 Dream Too Co-Founder Says Cops Mocked His Religion After His Arrest
Ibrahim Mubarak Ibrahim Mubarak, co-founder of Right 2 Dream Too and Dignity Village, was told during his arraignment hearing today to keep out of the University of Oregon parking lot beneath the Burnside Bridge—the scene of his arrest last night while confronting a police officer and several security guards. But Mubarak—after pleading not guilty to […]
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Right 2 Dream Too Co-Founder Arrested Last Night While Confronting Cops
Ibrahim Mubarak, a Right 2 Dream Too co-founder, was arrested last night and booked into the main jail after he and a group of advocates reportedly confronted police officers who’d been cracking down on some of the homeless folks who’d been gathering in recent weeks beneath the Burnside Bridge. Mubarak—booked under his legal birth name, […]
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Saltzman Gets Away, Fish Gets Punchy, and Right 2 Dream Too Gets $846,000
denis c. theriault Notice the large gap between Dan Saltzman and Amanda Fritz and the rest of the council, at the Google presser just after the Right 2 Dream Too vote Saltzman missed. Rather than voting against a million-dollar land deal that would see Right 2 Dream Too paid $846,000 by developers to drop a […]
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Saltzman, With Questions, Forces Delay in Right 2 Dream Too Vote
Commissioner Amanda Fritz tried to be gracious this morning when announcing one last wrinkle in a million-dollar land deal meant to keep homeless rest area Right 2 Dream Too from the Pearl District by giving the group $846,000 to buy or lease a lot somewhere else near downtown instead. The money in that deal, announced […]
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What Hales, Fritz Are Promising Right 2 Dream Too
The words could all change, based on a vote this weekend by Right 2 Dream Too’s board. But for now, the draft ordinance (pdf) underpinning yesterday’s announcement of a potential $1.038 million breakthrough in the rest area’s hunt for a new home has been posted to next week’s city council agenda—complete with details about precisely […]
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Street Roots: Portland Leaders Shouldn’t Be “Making Homeless People Public Enemy No. 1”
Here’s a must-read on a cold snowy morning. Street Roots executive director Israel Bayer just managed to put a whole year’s worth of news on homelessness in perspective, posting a column today that draws from the hardship of winter weather, the next presumed steps for Right 2 Dream Too, the business lobby’s failure to revive […]
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Right 2 Dream Too Breakthrough? $1 Million Transaction Will Give Pearl Group Lot 7, Pay for Relocation
With almost disquieting speed, city officials now say they’re preparing to vote next week on the latest stab at a breakthrough in a months-old impasse over what to do with Old Town homeless rest area Right 2 Dream Too. The Pearl District developers working to block a move to a city-owned lot beneath the Broadway […]