It's almost as if when the City announces that it doesn't intend to ask campers to move, that they become a permanent organized tent city. Who could have seen that coming?

With a wipey board, joints to smoke, and great helpings of "caring" from Dirk, I'm sure everything is about to turn around for these folks.

Blabby - you sir, are a colossal dick.

Yes, I suppose so on some issues. Despite my comments, I actually do care about most of the homeless, particularly the mentally ill and older homeless, homeless families of course. I don't care much about the road warrior types.

Our city turning into a shanty town is a problem, and the solution will not be for the city government to simply rubber stamp and legitimize all the shanties. That actually amounts to ignoring the pathologies instead of trying to solve them. It amounts to giving the homeless white boards and codes of conduct instead of actually addressing homelessness.

As someone who pays $$ in local taxes every year, I do not feel bad asking that the City pursues some level of social order, law enforcement, and cleanliness. I also support the recent investments in affordable housing and mental health.

But those will never be sufficient to solve homelessness. Homelessness is a bottomless pit that we will never fill. So in the meantime, while we invest what resources we can, we can't just allow camping. Because everyone in the West and beyond will hear that you are allowed to camp wherever you can find an open cranny in Portland, Oregon.

We have to help how we can, and ALSO enforce the camping ban and crack down on actual petty crimes that SOME of this population commits.

I can agree with a lot of that, thanks for providing a bit more nuanced argument. this is definitely a much bigger issue than tents or poop. enforcing a camping ban without the resources to help those needing or desiring help is simply sweeping it under another rug.

we need a serious multi-faceted approach to the issues of housing and homelessness that are country-wide, not just at the city or county level. we need to start seeing the homeless as humans and not, at best, annoyances. the Utah experiment is great, but it's not going to solve everything. tent camps won't either but they may provide an interim solution that evolves into something more permanent-ish. which leads to...

but that would mean that we are "giving" something to someone and the conservative half of 'merica will never allow that to happen. rinse. repeat.

Blabby, when you accuse homelessness of being "a bottomless pit that we will never fill," you're simply wrong on the facts. Homelessness is not an ineluctable feature of a modern, advanced economy. The scale of modern homelessness in the United States dates only back to the 1970's, is not replicated in other advanced economies, and can be linked to specific economic and political choices that we've made. Just as we collectively made decisions that got us into this problem, we can make different decisions to find our way out of it.

Instead of submitting to the slough of despond, I invite you to envision the recent increase in the scale of the problem of homelessness as a challenge to Portland's longstanding civic spirit and its remarkably deep bench of entrepreneurial creativity. If we can use technology to make it easy to rent your apartment to a stranger, we can certainly devise a legal, physical, and social blueprint for a 21st Century tent (or tiny house) community that is organized, clean, safe, and attractive. Given the likelihood of increased economic uncertainty, as a community we should be planning for all kinds of new ways of providing shelter. After all, the life of someone you love may one day depend on it.

I am not having the fuel and fire against the homeless some of you have. Let these people have a chance, and how would you feel if it was your loved one in one of these camps? I think many of these homeless just fell on hard times. Some are creeps and addicts just like some of your neighbors who live in your neighborhood in the pretty house next door.
It is a temporary fix, make sure there is police protection and enforcement,as I said once before. Yes cops are the answer to keeping the order. It might work out just fine, and maybe something good will come of it all. Hey City Hall,it's not rocket science. You don't want to see them, so hide them in the bushes. I want them to stay warm,have food and basic needs. I will volunteer a day a month,so can most of you. The poor didn't just pick Portland to come visit and stay too long. Some of you are real Dicks, some of you are really trying to help.

Blabby, as I said in the embedded video, the US Department of Justice views camping bans in a city lacking sufficient shelter space to be unconstitutional. Portland's camping ban would not hold up in court in light the following statement from the DOJ, and the City knows it: http://www.justice.gov/opa/file/643766/download

I've lived in Overlook Neighborhood almost 5 years now. My husband and I attended a neighborhood association annual meeting when we first moved in, and felt the judgment of homeowners here just because we RENT our home, and mentioned we had been hit hard by the Great Recession. There was plenty of talk about helping those less fortunate - (residents of Patton Park Apts were brought up.) -yet a sort of have/have not attitude was pervasive. We felt very much like outsiders and not necessarily welcome in our financial circumstance. I am not surprised at the attitude toward these homeless people, who are doing their best to stay warm, fed and dry. Anyone can become homeless, whether they think so or not. I do not share the sentiments of the neighborhood organization. I hope the city uses compassion and courage to help these people in the colder months ahead, and in the long term.