The best available evidence is that decriminalization essentially had no effect on overdose deaths (https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/03/ballot-measure-110-di...). It was going to go up no matter what because of the nature of fentanyl. The only thing the failure of Measure 110 has demonstrably done is waste taxpayer funds and give businesses in downtown an excuse for why they are failing (when in reality it has more to do with the death of downtown for purely economic reasons post-COVID, just like other major West Coast cities).
Remote work was already growing, COVID just accelerated a societal change already in progress. Without COVID, we probably would have eventually ended up in the same place as we are now, it just would have taken longer.
And even years before COVID, I think the US was already ahead of many other countries in this transition. I remember my first business trip to the US in early 2008, I went to Oracle’s office in Orlando, it was near-deserted-I asked where everyone was, I was told “they’re all working from home”. Whereas, back in Australia (Oracle included), there was still a very strong culture of “if I can’t see you at your desk then you aren’t working”. Or similarly, even back then many of the US Oracle executives had remote EAs - remote EAs were not much of a thing in Australia at that time
Maybe in some places that might be true, but people are still in jail from the past.
With this in mind I can understand why many people are now against harm reduction of any kind, when the same people that fucked it all up in the first place now want to try again.
I’ll pass, thanks.
They're pushed out, either through police violence or a complete lack of viable social support systems. There's many ways to discourage folks from sticking around through ad hoc policies without putting it explicitly into law, or else to simply not mandate the kind of support that other cities have.
Conservatives (and the threat of conservative backlash) can nonetheless meaningfully influence the shape of institutional policies that hinder the stated goals of the organization, municipal government or otherwise. It's not at "tyranny of the minority" levels in many cases but that doesn't mean they're completely shut out.
Intention matters little when it comes to outcomes -- this is the credo of the consequentialist. It's about the material facts as regards what specific elements of specific policies promote or discourage this or that outcome. Deft policymakers can find sneaky leverage points that are only obvious in retrospect as having been a significant influence on the outcome vis a vis the stated goals of the policy in the first place, and it would be naive to assume that large political organizations (parties, PACs, etc.) on both sides don't develop and hire talent to provide exactly this kind of service. It's a battle of shadow consultancies just as much as it is a battle between ideologically-motivated parties, even though you are only exposed to the dramas of the latter in news media.
If you ask me most of our problems come down to fraud/waste/abuse, mismanagement, and dysfunction.
In regards to Portland, you almost certainly have a problem with the key points you identified, but you also have a problem with the fact that public drug use is intrinsically tied with homelessness. You can't fix one without the other. This involves (in the short term) more public housing, but for a better solution (the long term) it involves better education, welfare, health-care and social equality.
You can't try to fix one of these problems while ignoring the others. It won't work.
As someone from the “rest of the world” I don’t know what people mean when they say that. I think this claim is based on a broad misunderstanding of, let’s be honest, Western European politics by people who’ve never voted in elections here.
I live in Switzerland, have lived or worked in the Netherlands, UK and Czechia. The liberal parts of the US are far to the left of any of those countries.
(Yes, healthcare is cheaper, except in Switzerland. It’s not a 1:1 mapping, but on questions related to drug use in the public square, I think you’d find it’s a lot less lenient here than you think.)
Look up some actual political programs from major parties in Western Europe. You’ll be surprised.
I think most Americans have seen a sanitized version of Europe, just like most Europeans have seen the evening news version of America. Both of those ideas are caricatures.
But at any rate, I think European healthcare systems either cost as much as the US (e.g. in Switzerland), end up being two-tier public/private (Czechia), or are near collapse (the NHS).
Union density is higher in the US than in France. French unions make a lot of noise, but don't represent that many people. Unions in many other countries are not very powerful (and the mainstream right is generally opposed to them).
I think there's a way these things are presented for the outside world, that doesn't always match the reality on the ground. I also think there is a tendency for people to pick the example out of a group of 28 countries that best supports their argument in the moment: Swedish unions, Swiss trains and French retirement, as it were.
If you're on the street, none of this helps you much, but across many metrics, I think NYC might legitimately be more affordable to live for the working class than London or Paris.
Australia is way ahead of the US at privatising public transport. Selling off public assets into private hands is a much bigger thing in the UK and Australia than the US. Some Australian states are now even privatising government services such as motor vehicle registration, driver licensing and land title registration. The UK and Australia also have a much bigger culture of commercialising government IP as opposed to the US culture of putting it in the public domain. People always think of the US as more capitalist, but I think these are examples of ways in which the US is less capitalist. Some of these Australian initiatives are almost bordering on anarcho-capitalism (sans the competition part). And they aren’t necessarily the work of “conservatives” - the decision to partially privatise the motor vehicle registry in the State of Victoria was undertaken by the Andrews government, [0] which is arguably the most left-leaning of Australian state governments, in charge of Australia’s most left-leaning state
[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-01/victorian-government-...
Now with social/drug policies it's typically more complicated, and there are vast differences between European countries as well (e.g. Sweden is extremely restrictive for drugs and even the major left parties don't push for changes).
The overall point still stands though. Now among the population there is much greater variety, but this is one of the issues with the US two party system, significant portions of views in the electorate are not represented.
IMO Portland already does every single one of the solutions that you recommend. It’s not working out for them well, in the same way it isn’t working out for Portugal or Amsterdam.
Maybe some drugs should be restricted and usage controlled. I’m pro legalization, but I would not support opium dens being as common as Starbucks.
In Amsterdam, the drug tourism made the city hard to live in, and the authorities have largely cleaned it up now. Weed is a special case, but using anything else on the street will warrant a check-in from the cops.
In any case, Portugal's strategy was supposed to be diverting funds from the narcotics police to rehabilitation efforts. But those funds have steadily eroded over the years with cost-cutting measures such as the merger of the autonomous drug agency into the main healthcare service. It's not too surprising if it is falling short of its initial success.
Another thing to consider is the inseparability of homelessness and drug abuse issues. It doesn't seem to be possible address one without the other, rising homelessness will inevitably bring more drug abuse. (Still I see fewer homeless people in downtown Lisbon than in Barcelona that won't even let you have a beer in the park).
In San Francisco when we give homes to drug addicts, the first thing they do is ripping the sink out to sell it and buy more drugs.
There is a serious drug epidemic that needs to be addressed simultaneously as we try to help the super-minority of legitimate homeless that are bad on their luck and need 2-3 months to find a new job and get back on their feet.
https://www.livescience.com/59329-drug-alcohol-addiction-wea...
More than half suffer substance abuse. Accounting for the fact that many of them would deny admitting to drug use when asked, this is probably a conservative number and the percentage is much higher. Also this is an US average, and it doesn't take into consideration "drug tourism" in cities like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle where drug use is literally the main goal thanks to easy drug access, therefore the drug-related homelessness ratio in some places is much higher.
They also probably take into account both housed an unhoused homeless, with the nuance that unhoused homeless are more likely to be druggies and to refuse shelter. Therefore the percentage of homeless population we see every day in our streets (which is the subset of homeless more likely to affect our day-to-day lives) have very likely an higher percentage of drug use.
Finally, the US actually has another problem: we can't fill up the supportive housing units fast enough! New York has empty supportive housing units [1]. This suggests that the total number of vacancies might be even higher, as more units are added to the system regularly.
[0] https://www.addictioncenter.com/addiction/homelessness/
[1] https://www.theday.com/state/20230529/thousands-of-nyc-apart...
Homeless is in part composed of three things (in Portland):
- Substance abuse (drugs, alcohol, etc)
- Mental health (coincides with the above!)
- Housing (which normally stabilizes, somewhat, both of the above!)
We lack single unit subsidized housing in Portland, which makes the former two more visible and at times problematic.
For as long as we keep ignoring this, we are stuck in nuances.
These people don't want to get better, so we need to mandate treatment (and give them one of the many available supportive housing units after accepting treatment) or - if they refuse treatment - relocate them where they cause no harm other than themselves. Might as well call it a "government-assisted suicide" campus, because this is what it already is in every major American city nowadays. Today, we are literally letting them die on our streets.
Nobody in modern public discourse is complaining about homeless in the context of a regular Joe bad on his luck, who after a while - with dignity and hard work - goes back to a stable life. We should give our all to him and homeless like him.
You are right, on average they cannot maintain housing, which is why I said "subsidized" - which ensures they don't become homeless (aka publicly visible).
> We lack single unit subsidized housing in Portland
What that doesn't solve is the substance abuse, which is a mental health problem. If your intent is to solve both then you need to spend on mental healthcare and subsidized single unit housing. If you just want them off the street and concentrated to certain areas (eg: where I live in Portland) then you just need subsidized housing.
They need to be housed in something like a prison or a psychiatric hospital, after being convicted with due process.
Source? This reads like a Leftist talking point. I’d be interested in understanding who trained on you on this idea.
Also, the reason they can't succeed much beyond a few lefty cities is because they can't stop saying insanely stupid shit, like the suggestion that Boeing workers should seize Boeing factories and use them to make city buses instead of airplanes. Most of America doesn't go in for this kind of nonsense. This is a real example btw: https://www.kiro7.com/news/seattle-city-councilmember-elect-...
That is how you actually decrease total cost of living.
The US has been trending up, between housing and transportation, a huge amount of people spend well above 50% of their income on that, and poorer people even more.
Public housing can be part of this, but by itself it wont fix anything.
It’s time we stop deceiving the public.
[1] - https://www.theday.com/state/20230529/thousands-of-nyc-apart...
Otherwise, I would like to apply for a supportive housing unit penthouse on 5th avenue please.
1) Someone says we need housing.
2) I say: great, let's build it!
3) Someone says: but cities are not building enough housing, we need to invest more.
4) I say: great, let's build it anywhere in the US, where it is cheaper too. Population density in the US is very low.
5) Someone says: not like that! Homeless want to live in places like San Francisco, you can't relocate them.
6) I say: nobody can choose to live where they want if they don't have the means for it. <- WE ARE HERE.
To build housing "anywhere in the US" you have to build all the infrastructure that makes it make sense to move people there. This country hasn't built a new city in ages, it just keeps expanding metro areas into sub- and exurbs. Are you also going to fund hospitals? Groceries? Building supply stores? A car for everyone? All the devices and supplies for heating and cooling in adverse environmental conditions? How do you think that's going to make sense financially compared to providing services and housing where people are and where they already have human-scale support systems (friends and family)? And good luck bringing together the different governments at different scales to avoid scope creep, budget bloat, and general coordination problems. You're being so myopic and naive that your smarminess and vitriol toward those you consider undeserving is not even funny, just pitiful. People aren't bits in a machine, you can't just move them effortlessly to new locations.
> you can't just move them effortlessly to new locations.
Turns out we are exactly where I said we would be in this conversation.
We can allocate the homeless to numerous other existing towns without having to build new cities, and most importantly without having to build expensive shelters in places where land is already very expensive, like the coasts.
Where they have friends and family is irrelevant because nobody is entitled to live where they want, unless their families host them. I have friends in Paris that doesn't mean I can demand a flat there. Plus many of them are drug tourists that are from out of town, and those also happen to be the most dangerous ones.
With that said the small minority of homeless that are genuinely looking forward to being re-integrated into society must be given treatment, housing and support. This is a small minority, unfortunately.
It makes a lot more sense to talk about how to support cheaper communities and migrate people to them than it does to bring down housing costs in expensive areas where the locals are fighting back against bringing in new people.
People in cheaper locations also fight back! Why is that location cheap and why do those people live there? Precisely because the density is so low and the community likes it the way it is. An influx of recently homeless people would be a huge disruption and no one would be happy with the change. Would you want to manage that situation? THINK!
I already have to pay a 1% tax on all household earnings above $200k. Before haters hate, please realize I'm already paying 10% to the state on all earned income. Plus the federal rates.
Oregon has consistently mismanaged funds. Giving them more money won't fix anything. They don't know how to spend it.
I'm tired of keeping zero income until the end of April. Especially when all I have to show for it is constant homeless drug addicts. Lwt the private sector handle it or enforce no camping laws and sober folks up in a cell or ship them away, or just give them all fet lined drugs to permasolve the issue.
In what way? Compared to almost everywhere on earth, American politicians are extremely xenophilic, extremely tolerant of sexual minorities, extremely feminist, more inclined towards individual freedoms in general and perhaps slightly more capitalist.
All of these things are different axes of politics that are correlated differently in different regions of the world.
Pretty much only on the issue of taxes. But the right-wing parties surging in popularity in Europe right now make Trump look like Jimmy Carter.
The gist of it is: to kill any initiative, form a committee or task force around it and then drag your feet at every opportunity.
Nobody is saying conservatives have infiltrated the Portland political scene, only that we see similar failures in other contexts when initiatives are half-assed (on purpose). Similar circumstances-- not identical.
- This is just a common American tactic
- There are other, less nefarious, reasons this happens
Including conservatives in a context where they don't exist and shifting the goal posts outside of American politics on a whim is both entirely inappropriate and distracting if your goal is to discuss how Portland can be better. Nobody in Portland is sabotaging our committees is my point; at the very least they're not doing so intentionally.
What you do get here is what some people call "everything bagel style liberalism" where we do everything, but nothing particularly well, and there is really no North Star when it comes to ethos.
Reductionist perspectives on how politics works always end up at this "one side is dominating the other" kind of narrative but it's never actually that way, both sides still have a lot of influence on the various specifics of the outcome.
It seems a lot more intuitive to believe that you cannot just legislate that all government employees act selflessly towards the Greater Good, and the Homeless Industrial complex is a real thing that is not necessarily working in the interests of the public. Observing waste, fraud, and abuse and reflexively saying "this must be the fault of conservatives somehow" is just sorta sad.
If half the voters think something is not an option, then it isn't an option. That is the joy of democracy. There needs to be a consensus to implement policies long term. Assuming you are correct (big assumption, but still) then the only real choice is to abandon the welfare system. Otherwise, the alternative is to abandon the welfare system spitefully in a way that doesn't achieve anything for anyone.
Participation rates can also be very low, particularly at local/state level, making that core of strongly-conservative votes actually pretty small in absolute terms.
You can quickly judge the actual opinion of the overwhelming majority of voters on completely abolishing welfare provisions, when you mention a few magic words that happen to extend those provisions to "normies" (medicare etc).
The two major parties share the partisan vote.
This means Republicans are actually a quarter of us along with Dems.
Party line voting is not the only game in town. Roughly half the nation wants to vote FOR something, not AGAINST "the bad guys"
I used to hold that view, but the fact is the vast majority of those voters ask this question and declare themselves independents while asking:
Vote for what?
They want to know what politicians will do to earn those votes.
What you call unfaithful is actually a direct failure to garner votes.
And that means speaking with people, not at or to them.
It means actually asking for those votes too. Go and watch some politicians and in particular the one who lost to Trump. There is almost no ask and a whole lot of speaking at or to people not with them.
The unfaithful ignore voter shaming, again something I used to do:
A no vote is a yes vote for the enemy
Unfaithful voters cannot be counted on. Think it through: a politician who knows they have votes no matter what has very little incentive to work for those votes...
Today I do not judge others for their votes.
Our future is in the votes to be cast and why we might think about casting those votes.
And I do not blame or shame anyone either.
It is on those of us running for office to get out there, talk with the people, garner those votes and then act on them.
The optics on that term warrant the framing for reasons already given.
Sidenote: one of the most difficult aspects of threaded text dialog is a very high degree of intent ambiguity is ever present. Same goes for overall emotional perception.
Because of this, I avoid personal judgment and very frequently avoid the top responses to "things one may feel compelled to respond to", which are righteous indignation and subject change.
Much better to assume a friendly dialog, give benefit of the doubt and see where it all may lead.
If nothing else, flat out asking about other people state is often better than declaring it out of hand.