this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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I understand why trash, drugs, and homelessness occur. What I don’t understand is how to fix it.
The cities do clean trash up at, I should probably find a source for this, a significant cost. (From what I understand, this is due to the hazardous nature of the materials being cleaned up) Because these encampments can pop up anywhere, it’s not always practical to provide trash receptacles/dumpsters before it becomes a big problem. Having folks clear out during daytime hours at least helps that situation, but it’s far from ideal. It appears that Victoria BC is/was doing this and the atmosphere seemed a lot better overall when compared to Portland. Green spaces were usable, no major trash piles (that I saw) and homeless folks weren’t hassled when trying to sleep. I should note that I’m far from educated on Victorias homeless woes so there’s probably nuance here.
It’s not entirely clear how much power cities have to stop the housing crisis on their own, but I get the impression that the high cost of rent is mostly out of their control. Additionally, a lot of cities often do not have the resources to provide these services at the level they’re needed. It seems like there should be some level of expectation for every city/county/state whatever to provide services for a percentage of their population and organization to route folks from high saturated services to lower saturated services… and then sweep folks who refuse services… but the devil is in the details I’m sure.
Precisely because they're impermanent. It's a problem that results from cities pushing people out rather than bringing them in.
There's a bus stop on my block that will, from time to time, just drop off someone in medical scrubs. Basically no cloths, no place to go, no cell phone, no nothing. Just someone a hospital ejected into the wild, because he was poor and they didn't know what to do with him.
So my neighbors and I have to figure out how to support Random Person who just crops up on our street, how to keep them safe from police, and how to get this person back on their feet.
We've done it four times. Two of them were just traveling cross country and had medical emergencies. One ran off. One was looking for family in the city but had never been here before and just kinda got arrested for vagrancy and then dumped at a hospital after leaving lockup.
This is just how our city handles indigent people. They snatch you up, fling you through a bureaucracy you don't understand, and if they don't know where to put you, they put you on a bus to anywhere but here.
And we wonder why we get encampments popping up randomly
Wow. That is certainly a failure of leadership there. That’s insanity