Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

I just moved to Portland and I live in SouthEast (where this article is talking about). It was a shock seeing guards dressed in the same kit I wore in Afghanistan. They're not exaggerating the homeless situation here either. There's tons, and many of them are addicted to fentanyl or meth.

The political situation is exactly as they described. The county and city in Portland have a weird relationship. They're both "Progressive" but fight over what to do and how to spend money routinely. That's how we got the tents. It's incredibly cold in Portland and we don't have sprawling shelters to go to; most people don't want shelters near them because the homeless can be wild. For example, the night I arrived in Portland I started hearing a succession of booms. I got on to Reddit to find out that at the UHaul I'd dropped my trailer off at earlier that day that someone had tried to drill one of the gas tanks, which is made of magnesium, which sparked a fire. The fire spread to multiple vehicles and they exploded. Things like gunshots are heard pretty commonly; my neighbors deal meth, and down the street a man in the Mexican Mafia had a drive-by done on his house by his ex-girlfriend. PPB (Portland Police Bureau) isn't too interested in anything that's not immediately life threatening.

I didn't know these private security firms were doing this, and I'm glad they are now that I know. This situation between our county and city is what fuels this, though. PPB is its own beast; I haven't been here long enough to know what their issues are. In true Portland style, we are a bit miffed they had the energy to shutdown the Mushroom house downtown but not to deal with immense property crime. The problem with the model in this article is that stores are protected though not all businesses will pay for private security, so we have entire brands thinking about leaving Portland. People are left out of this equation though. If someone breaks into your house or your shed, I doubt you'll have the training to do what Echelon employees have. Oregon, over night, through Measure 114 also became the state with the strictest gun laws in the country thanks to Progressives and the Lutheran Church.

It's a wild state of affairs here past the Cascades.

Maybe I'm a bit of a small-town boy, but I find it hard to understand that a lot of people choose to live in these conditions and don't move away to somewhere quieter/safer.

It's always a balancing act, I suppose. Portland, like many other West Coast cities, is set in a truly beautiful location, with a marvelous blend of mountain and water; and with all the big city amenities on top of it, it does make for a strong proposition.

I myself moved from a big metro area to a smaller and quieter (but unfortunately not safer) city in a different region of the country, because I didn't care for those big city amenities all that much. But I can easily see how someone could live with the faults.

I think it is a hard question to answer.

In a very real sense, most people do not even recognize there is an actual option to move. Yes, there are all sorts of costs associated with the moving and there is stress to be incurred as a result, but I think most people do not even entertain the idea of living anywhere else compared to where they are for numerous reasons including familial ties.

And then there is the 'why should I leave' aspect of it? Maybe if I stick it out, it will get better ( especially if I own that piece of land ).

In short, I would like to be able to say that it is economically prohibitive to do so, but, I dunno, I moved from the old country to US. And separately the moment I heard a first shot in my neighborhood in Chicago ( and police came to my door asking if I saw anything ), I was out of there in a couple of months in the suburbs.

I think people feel safer being where they have always been ( as unsafe it may be to an audience from a statistical point of view ). It is the environment they know. For all they know, anywhere else may be even worse.

> I think people feel safer being where they have always been ( as unsafe it may be to an audience from a statistical point of view ).

As they say: better the devil you know.

> for numerous reasons including familial ties

This is a big one. I don't live in the Portland area, but anytime I've considered moving any large distance away from where I am I've always rejected it because my family/friends are all in this area. As much as I might like it a lot somewhere else, I'm not willing to uproot my social ties for it.

As I see it the alternative is to stay and advocate to make things better, and while that's grueling I think it's worth it.

Not attacking you, but I’m not sure if this is privilege or not.

I’ve uprooted for greener pastures twice in my life, and it has paid off both times. If I didn’t, I’d be impoverished and possibly hooked on (the scary) drugs.

If fluffy social aspects outweigh your immediate economic concerns, it stands that you are privileged enough to make the choice to stay still.

On the other hand, uprooting requires a certain resilience and fortitude that not everyone has. People who can torch their old life to chase something better are privileged in a way too, are they not?

It seems that the word “privilege” is doing all the heavy lifting here, but it sounds to me like it is a stand in for “having the ability to make anything but the default choice” (to remain in one’s location, in this case).

This is kind of an odd take. I'm from a small town, leaving is looked at as the privilege because opportunity is short. Additionally, people who come from families where wealth or security is not common often need to support their families directly or indirectly. That kept me in my home state for a couple years. I likely won't be around to see some of my immediate family pass away, which is an aspect that sucks about geo-centralization of industries like tech that don't need geo-centralization.

All that to say I think you have the privilege statement backwards.

SF is similar and the excuse almost always is: job opportunities. We can actually move out now that we work remotely but my SO’s salary would be decreased by her company based on change of location and she doesn’t want that.

Writing that I do realize that its actually second. First reason for most people is probably just inertia.

SF is not that similar to Portland. While we have homeless people in SF their behavior is much more under control (and concentrated) than it is in Portland.

I think a lot of it is actually more “the pendulum” of attitudes towards things like homelessness and other “nuisances”. When we’re overly strict, the pendulum starts swinging back towards acceptance and laisezz faire because inevitably injustices occur and people decide to become more compassionate. When we’re overly permissive (like many west coast cities right now, though I think the opioid crisis has a big role too) the pendulum starts swinging towards cracking down.

New York has basically gone through this entire process already

SF has so many neighborhoods where homelessness is not an issue though?

The tradeoffs.

I've spent time in dangerous urban areas as well as safer urban areas and rural areas. Dangerous urban areas have a combination of two things that are of major benefit to people looking to better their life situation:

1.) Being an urban area, they have the population density to support a greater number of jobs and potential career paths. Living in a small area means you have much fewer choices and your options for starting over if you fuck up are much more limited. (Or if you just don't fit in: That 'safer' middle of nowhere area might not be safer depending on who you are.)

2.) Dangerous urban areas are usually more cost accessible and the lack of policing makes it easier to be an edge case and live on the margins. As an example, the car I drove when I lived in Flint, MI was absolutely not, strictly speaking, street legal. (It was too loud + it died at stops). The cops in Flint had other shit to worry about, so I didn't get a ticket as I saved up money to fix it. That would not fly in Cambridge, MA or most of the rest of the Boston area. Likewise, in Flint who gives a fuck if my tags are expired or I don't have my mandated car insurance? Nobody does. You need some lucky breaks to get established somewhere new, and breaks of any kind are more likely when there are cracks in the system.

I originally replied to OP, but honestly, I like your take more. It more accurately reflects how I see Portland. I'll add my mess:

Glad you asked! I grew up in a small town in Texas that is now a big town. Portland has some urban growth boundaries that contain its growth, so I was attracted to the idea that a big city is literally up against farm land and wild life. It makes it feel like a little, big town. Portland is also densely packed with trees in my part of town. There's lots of greenery and wildlife for a city this size. It's also set next to rivers with a lot of programs for water and wildlife sustainability. The people are really nice, even the neighbors I mentioned. It's a very working-class community for the most part and that makes me feel like I'm back in Texas. It's an amazing place to live and also, maybe most importantly, one of the areas predicted to deal with climate change better.

Lastly, can't really stress how nice #2 is. The cops don't bug you for simple stuff and it makes life a lot less stressful on the daily. Being in a big city is like camouflage.

I hope they stay. The last thing anyone wants is for them to leave the hellholes they voted for and turn nice places into new versions of them. I know many people in places like Austin and Boise are very nervous about the types of people moving in and not picking up on local values.

>I know many people in places like Austin and Boise are very nervous about the types of people moving in and not picking up on local values.

This sounds like knee jerk nativism. How many people would it take to move and overwhelm an entire city’s culture? Let’s assume a plurality of 30% could do it. I think a wave of people of that size is going to cause problems whatever their political beliefs are.

Austin saw a 33% increase in the decade ending in 2020 (after 38% the previous decade) and it hasn’t let up. Around 8% of Austin’s residents lived somewhere else the previous year.

it would take a lot of people to change the "culture" overnight. likely a prohibitively large number, as you said.

but it doesn't take so many newcomers to significantly change political outcomes. even in red states, republican mayors are pretty rare. in practice, this means that the mayoral race is almost always determined by an n-way democratic primary. it's hard to overstate how chaotic this can be. for example, the current mayor of baltimore won the 2020 primary (effectively the general election) with <30% of the vote, with the runner up trailing by only 2%. this was an election where ~25% of the population cast a vote. it would have taken <4000 votes to completely change that outcome.

It's simple. People live there for the economic opportunity, which is also why the housing is expensive, which is also why the homeless have no homes. Under the supply-constrained NIMBY regime in which housing is never produced, inequality and the effects thereof rise to an equilibrium point where the benefits and the drawbacks are of equal value.

This is why paradoxically cities with high poverty and bad economies also have little homelessness.

Many people might not have a choice. Cities are where a lot of the work is. It's where services are, rental housing, etc. I see it as a privilege to be living in a small city.

The Portland area has lost population in the past year, so many who are able to move are taking advantage of it. I am from Portland and will be moving in a few months mainly due to the lack of safety described in the article.

Completely agree. I don't understand why anyone would move anywhere near places like this. These are places to run away from as fast as you can get away. Even the rare crazy person that's walking down the street screaming random nonsense around where I am (a richer part of north San Jose) unnerves me and I think they should be locked up somewhere out of sight and out of mind. I plan to move away from here at some point.

It's bizarre. I live in Chicago and don't have to deal with anything like this. The West coast has a really strange set of blinkers on about these problems.

I spend a lot of time in Chicago and always find it safe and pleasant. Yet when I talk to some people, typically of a conservative persuasion, they describe it as an urban hellscape in the same way some posters here describe SF or Portland.

A failed city that people are fleeing, with impossibly high taxes, no remaining police, rife with crime, and with corrupt bureaucrats suckling on the government teat at every turn.

I can't square the circle. I know so many people in Chicago and it doesn't seem like they're even describing the same city.

So when I see these hit pieces against the governments on the west coast, and hear anecdotes from west coast Republicans fleeing to the south to escape their purported failures, I take them with a massive gain of salt.

I have no doubt that Portland has its issues, but I can't take these pieces very seriously. As with the mythical failed version of Chicago I keep hearing about, I suspect there is a group of people pushing an extreme version of a narrative that is only loosely based in reality.

Here's the Portland political map: https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-por...

As you can see, Portland proper is nearly entirely Democrat. I'm a registered Democrat as well (I'm OP). Prior to this I lived in San Jose. Portland is a lovely city, but talking about what's going on here doesn't make folks Republican.

I have the same reaction to stories about Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco policing. The impression I get is that these cities have deeply mismanaged police departments.

You say SE, but by your description it almost sounds like you moved to Felony Flats. That's a rough area indeed, even by Portland standards.

I may eventually leave the area altogether, but at this point I only enjoy Portland by not living within the city limits. Instead I live in a quieter area of town that doesn't involve Multnomah County or the City of Portland, and we manage to avoid much of the dumb politics they experience. But if I want to enjoy some aspect of urban life, downtown is only 20 minutes away.

It that a PPB issue or a policy of local prosecutors?

I dont know about Portland but in many "progressive" cities there is a directive to not prosecute minor property crimes (i.e car break ins, shoplifting, etc) unless there was violence involved (i.e a Car Jacking at Gun Point)

So the police have naturally reacted by not arresting anyone for those crimes, why bother to arrest them if they are just turned back out in 2 hours anyway?

A bit of both. PPB is a tiny force for a city the size of Portland. 313 patrol officers over 3 shifts for a city of 650,000. https://www.portland.gov/police/open-data/ppb-staffing-repor...

But even if they were fully staffed and had time to “criminalize homelessness”, the DA is reluctant to prosecute.

But even if the DA presses charges, there is a huge public defender shortage. Loads of people are being set free and having cases dismissed for want of legal representation.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/car-thefts-dismissed-...

In summary:

- police don’t have time or resources to investigate anything that isn’t a homicide (with some exceptions)

- the DA won’t prosecute, to the point that criminals actively know to commit crimes in MultCo

- if the DA does take the case, it will be dismissed because there aren’t enough public defenders

One reform I think should happen is 1:1 funding for the prosecutors office and the public defenders office.

If the DA gets a $100 Million budget, then the Public Defenders office should have that as well.

Right now it is like 10:1 in alot of cases if not even more lopsided.

I moved here in early 2021 for work and my girlfriend moved up with me as well. Her car was stolen twice and broken into once, twice from controlled access parking. Her bike was stolen as well.

My car, in the same month, was rear ended by an uninsured driver with a history of DUIs and a family history of crime and bankruptcy. When my car was rear-ended the trunk popped open and all of the contents were stolen by a 3rd party. In all of these times, calls to 911 failed often and it often took hours to get connected to an operator. Even when I found my girlfriend’s car in a high-crime, high-transient part of the city the police would not assist, nor provide a police report for hours. When my car was totaled by an uninsured driver police did not provide a police report, and when I made a FOIA request none was on record.

The private security here, particularly on/near Hayden Island and around N/SE. Portland are completely justified when they have to use force or project force against shoplifters, squatters and other criminals because it results in business closures which depresses the local economy. Unfortunately Measure 114 was heavily funded by out-of-state billionaires who want to disarm citizens, this measure increases police power, but is fortunately currently blocked due to its unconstitutionality.

The wilderness is beautiful here, unfortunately many people turn a blind eye to the violence and crime because it’s a direct result of their own voting and demonstration history. I’ve found that police dispatchers here don’t ask much info about crimes in progress or physical details of criminals. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t want to add to federal or state records or because they understand that police can’t/won’t actually arrive on the scene. This being said, I’ve taken reasonable and logical precautions to safeguard myself and my property against crime that any free-thinking patriot would take because I don’t want to end up like a person I talked to - they were kidnapped at gunpoint and taken from ATM to ATM withdrawing money recently, his passport and all forms of ID were taken, marooning him here. Every day in this city I see so many cars with windows bashed in and car glass shards on the floor, even in trendy neighborhoods there’s a new puddle of glass shards every morning right off the main streets.

The tents on sidewalks keep people in wheelchairs from using them, forcing them onto city roads where drivers are not anyways lucid. Needles, trash and human waste is a biological hazard that collects even on notable streets like 23rd and particularly on Burnside.

An unusual contradiction is that many people here who call themselves progressive ignore victim’s voices - victims of property time, assault, kidnapping and robbery. I do see that normal citizens here project a sense that they care for others but not when those others are victims of crimes.

Enclosed, closed-off parking, living in controlled-access housing, living on upper floors away from the sounds of paramedic sirens and insane screaming is something I’d recommend. I do also recommend getting a CHL in your county.

The federal government distributes funds to the states which in turn distribute money to nonprofits to give to victims of crime, 10% to my knowledge is supposed to go to victims of violent crime and sexual abuse, with 90% free to go to any victims of violent crime. I don’t see any organizations in Multnomah County that provide funds to people like my girlfriend and I who are victims of nonviolent property crimes, which I find curious because so many occur here.

Does Oregon have the strictest laws? I thought they aren't doing anything new when compared to NJ, CA, or NY.

Gun laws, you mean? Not technically, because the courts have temporarily halted measure 114, but if allowed to go into effect? Yes, absolutely.

114 is poorly written, with several "the authorities will develop and manage this process" without providing additional funding to do so, nor definite timelines. One example is background checks - currently if OSP doesn't complete the check in a certain timeframe (3 days) the FFL is allowed to release the firearm. Under 114, there is no limit. OSP can delay approvals forever, thus effectively denying certain people or groups of people from obtaining a firearm, all at their discretion.

There are other dumb things as well (i.e. many shotguns would be illegal because of the magazine capacity limit, the requirement for "approved" training, but little definition of what that looks lime, etc).

And through all of it, those who obtain firearms illegally will continue to do so, thus bypassing all these new measures anyway.

Doesn't sound much different than the states I mentioned.

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