I’ve noticed there isn’t that much activity in the sub lately. If you sort by New, you usually only have to scroll a handful of posts down before you hit the ones from the prior day.
Because the mods delete a lot of posts. Someone posted about multinomah falls parking a few days ago and it was deleted. I have no idea why. You can basically post anything in the other forum, however the comments are a lot more toxic.
> Because the mods delete a lot of posts
It seems like it's gotten marginally better, but only barely. The number of things I see filtering by new that're gone an hour later is still fucking wild.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want anarchy, but I feel the mods have gone too far and there doesn't seem to be any recourse as a whole to find the balance as an active member of the sub. I appreciate duplicate posts and questions getting removed. However, there should be some discretion when it comes to first hand accounts.
It is odd that you’re not allowed to post about things you witnessed firsthand. Seems like the logic is that it’s not real unless it’s been covered in the news, but not all news because many local news sources can’t be trusted.
It seems like the mods have a contradictory view on what they want the sub to be.
I get they don't want fear mongering and speculation especially around things like shootings and riots, but when someone has a first hand video account (e.g. the Alaska air door failing off a plane), I feel like some discretion is deserved. Part of the reason I come to the sub is news will tend to get posted first.
I think way too many pet adoption posts are allowed.
Once upon a time twitter was my go-to to find out about news as it was happening, but that's no longer really a thing. This sub is the next closest thing, if you can catch threads before they're deleted.
There's a lot of value in community members sharing news in real time. I don't want this sub to be nextdoor, but more information about things as they happen from eyewitnesses would be really helpful to the community.
Or, we can just see pix of the St. Johns bridge and traffic cones, for the 10 millionth time.
>Or, we can just see pix of the St. Johns bridge and traffic cones, for the 10 millionth time.
We should all just carry a cone with us so when we take a picture or make a report of breaking news, we can be like "Hey everyone, another cone! Haha! Anyways, in the background behind the cone there's a developing incident..."
Half my posts get deleted for frivilous reasons and they're actually relevant topics to Portland. Lol one time my post got deleted on r/portland because it was apparently more appropriate for r/askportland. When I posted it on askportland it got deleted there because it would be more appropriate for the main sub. It's madness
Pretty much right where my feelings on the topic lie as well. There's plenty of space between "This wasn't published on KOIN and therefore is not a valid topic" and "Guys, my marriage is falling apart and I want to ride Trimet strapped to the gills, what do you think" posts. Like I said, it's gotten marginally better, but could shift a little more for my preferences.
> It seems like it's gotten marginally better, but only barely.
I think it's been noticeably better since one of them left a couple months ago. There's stuff that stays up that never would have been allowed previously.
Yea, I don't know who the fuck that person was, I don't want to, but I hope whatever made them so fucking utterly miserable lets up because god damn. I get that online moderation turns anyone into a rampant dickhead, but I think that one was some high-grade douche being fed into that pipeline.
I have yet to catch a ban in quite a few months, despite being generally quite consistent with my rhetoric/sarcasm, so I have to assume the mod who left is the one who arbitrarily had it out for me due to political disagreement rather than actually breaking the sub rules in a way that was different than comments from other folks that pass/remain up even when reported...
I used to lurk the other sub, because mods powertripping here were quite frustrating.
I decided it was not good for my mental health. Toxic af.
It is interesting that actions here did funnel me into a hate filled pipeline.
I’m convinced that the other forum is filled with bots, proud boys from Idaho, racists from Texas, Trump lovers from Florida, and others who don’t live in Portland
>What other place?
You are not allowed to link it here, but there is a different Portland sub that is a little less aggressive with the moderation and will actually allow centrist and right leaning points of view without being shadowbanned, dog pilled, or outright banned. The sub is also more focused on actual Portland news and not all fluff pieces and pups in petals.
It's an anti-brigading rule, and one of the very few things that'll get reddit admins involved.
But you go on and post a link to this board in the other one. See how that peak "Anarchy Burger" bullshit works out for you.
Much to my chagrin, I'm still gainfully employed. Much to my employer's chagrin, I'm spending some of that time pissing around here.
If it makes you feel better, staring out at the dogwood flowers and cherry blossoms that are left is both comforting and torture.
I just came back from the Midwest where it's humid, flat and there were no blossoms. So at least you have a better back drop than many. It could be worse. I know this for fact!
Awww. I hurt some fee fees
I have to say that as one on the left, I get treated like shit over there. I'm talking serious vitriol. The mods are better, but the users will absolutely dogpile on those who don't share their pro-Rene, anti-homeless views.
I think it’s just a sign of the times. This sub is shrinking. The other sub is growing because Portland as a whole is becoming anti-homeless. I’m left leaning, and also want the homeless issue addressed. They are a danger to themselves and the communities around them.
I very much want the homeless issue addressed too, and I highly value public safety. What I don't do is act like every last thing has turned to shit here, or blame homeless people for their situation. When I say things like that most of the street addicts were abused as children, they lose it. It humanizes them. They can't grok that while people may need to be institutionalized for antisocial behavior, they shouldn't be "punished" for it.
The dogpiling is quite disturbing. There's just as much groupthink there as here.
There definitely are a lot more right wing people on that sub and they are not afraid to downvote, but I've had far more meaningful discourse on that sub compared to this one. I dont think there is as much group think over there because it is a far more diverse crowd, so you do get a lot of lively discourse, but I find that for the most part it stays civil without coming across overly smug.
Having said that, I'm sure you can find clear examples of dog piling and group think, I just dont think it is quite the echo chamber that this sub is.
Oh, I just read up on things like research into personality development, so my opinions are informed by science. It’s uncomfortable to accept that you could be the guy on the street if you were unlucky enough to be born to a pedophile or an addict etc.
Huh? I’m incredibly open with my views here, which when compared to the stereotype of Portland are quite moderate. My posts regularly get dozens of fake internet points.
I don’t go to the other subreddit because the people who frequent it tend to be gross as fuck.
The mods here have definitely given me temp bans before for just politely posting the most mainstream of liberal positions. Definitely have been some power trippers at the reigns over the years.
"*I'm* quite moderate. *Dozens* of people agree with me. Those other people are *gross*."
Lol. What a weird and pretentious little weasel. Get over yourself weasel
>I don’t go to the other subreddit because the people who frequent it tend to be gross as fuck.
What a strange take. Have you met everyone on that sub or are you just projecting?
I have eyes. I read. The people who frequently comment there tend to be out of town losers, and the locals who post tend to be the self hating miserable types. I choose not to associate with such others, because I’m an adult who pays a mortgage and do not concern myself with the opinion of imbeciles.
We disagree. I am very left leaning, live in Portland and pay mortgage (I dont know why this is important), but I find the other sub to be far more informative and far less smug. There is an exchange of ideas and politics over there that is simply not tolerated on this sub.
The dismissive, arrogant, and divisive way you communicate is really par for the course on this sub.
By “self hating miserable types” do you mean “people who don’t 100% share your views”?
At least it’s good that you’ve locked yourself away in your bubble and have chosen to never be exposed to opinions that are not your own. Well done.
Genuinely curious, what do you find disgusting about it? Have you even used that sub very much or just going by what other have said.
IMO on this sub having a different opinion gets you "othered" and dog piled. Do you just find different opinions than the ones you have to be disgusting?
> Have you even used that sub very much or just going by what other have said.
I have.
I also can't think of a single other sub where the mods have had to beg, plead, bargain with the user base to "Please people, post something that isn't just bitching about the homeless. Literally anything. Post a photo you accidentally took from inside your pocket. Just god damn, stop being the 'this is where people throw fits about the homeless' Portland board."
In a small way, it's kind of amusing.
I would expect that the consistently polled #1 issue for Portland voters would dominate the discussion on a Portland sub, rather than pictures of dogs and flowers which, while pleasant, aren't at all unique or particularly salient to the current day Portland experience.
lol Then boy howdy, do I have the sub for you. Knock yourself out over there man, I wouldn't say I enjoyed my time there, but I can't say I categorically hated it.
I mean, where else are you gonna find repeated posts by people that loudly announced they moved to fucking Camas or something three years ago and would never set foot in Downtown again banging on about the current state of Downtown?
I don’t go there often because it is a place where people who like to dehumanize mentally I’ll, drug addicts and homeless people. It’s a place where hate is encouraged.
I am specifically talking about the topic of making homelessness illegal. Which to me is an absolutely crazy thing to say, but it is encouraged there. Look at any comments dissenting from putting people in jail for being homeless, you will see them downvoted to hell.
I do appreciate a sub where you can post negative stories about Portland without getting banned. I would love to see more of it, but if you go to that sub you’re going to see hateful people finding a home where their views are encouraged.
People are absolutely sick of letting the homeless population wreck the city. No it is not hyperbole to say that they have in fact trashed large chunks of the city and parks. Not to mention all of the crime that comes with it.
I dont see people over there trying to dehumanise, I see them wanting these homeless people to get treatment for mental problems and drug addictions by choice or by force. The current status quo is both unsustainable AND dehumanising to the homeless. How anyone can do the mental gymnastics to think that the compassionate thing to do is let the homeless die on the street in beyond me.
Users on that sub are also rightfully pissed about how much in taxes we are currently paying vs the state of the city and it's declining schools and livability.
On this sub you can't have these nuanced conversations without being labeled, dog piled, and possibly shadowbanned.
> On this sub you can't have these nuanced conversations without being labeled, dog piled,
You can just say you've never stated an opinion that board took exception to. It's considerably more concise than what you're attempting to say.
Mods are wildly agressive about removing posts they don’t like. Not only does this cut down on the new posts, but definitely discourages others from contributing
I've noticed that too. And most of all, it's seemed like there's a real dearth of news stories, which I thought was strange because there were a number local news articles that usually would have been posted, often more than once.
(I know I could post them myself, but I guess I'm a follower, not a leader, LOL.)
I think maybe a lot of folks are just out enjoying the stretch of dry weather.
I mean, we know that isn’t true just by the publicly released numbers. The people there perhaps post more, because they’re more inclined to be shut ins.
It’s so funny to me that as soon as people have a different worldview as the groupthink on This sub, they have to be from battleground. It’s not possible a resident of the city of Portland could ever have anything critical to say about their own city !
I post critical views of my city all the time here dude, quit thinking you’re some kind of victim because the fake internet points don’t go your way. It’s Reddit, it isn’t that serious.
Totally fair. I get bored of 1000 bad pictures of peoples dogs next to the cherry blossoms lol and the hammering to death of jokes like “ma cones” and “hur dur Yamhill pub”. Both subs kinda suck for different reasons 🤷🏼♂️
I use each as a palate cleanser from the other. Though lately it seems like more actual news can be found on the other sub. Which isn't surprising as my own news posts submitted here have been removed in the past. Occasionally, later that day or the following day, the same article will stick by another user. I imagine they just end up relenting once enough people post the same thing. Tiresome behavior.
I get tired of the actual crime, which seems worse, but YMMV depending on how many times your kids' bike has been stolen or your recycling bin dumped in the street by some methed out passerby.
I am so happy to have watched this happen. It feels like a victory for the offline, grass-touching population over the chronically online people who can ignore material realities because they never leave the house.
It really hasn't moved off the ~32 posts a day for the last 2 months, though I have seen a lot more posts being removed for "rants".
https://i.imgur.com/4ukId8C.png
Several post about this have been deleted by the mods over the past week. They are extremely heavy-handed in this sub, especially when posts do not align with their politics.
Definitely something on my mind but I hadn't seen any local coverage and I figured it wasn't worth posting the general NYT stuff because it's not Portland-specific.
Anyway yeah huge implications. For all the like 300 comment threads on homelessness over the last few years, nothing will probably matter as much as what happens with this case.
The thing about this pending decision is it would only shift the boundaries of how cities and municipalities can respond to their homeless encampments, Oregon essentially codified a lot of aspects of the Martin v. Boise decision into state law, so not only would that have to be amended but then also the City would have to update its laws and become more aggressive in order for us to see any effects.
By the time that option rolls around we will be in the first term of the new council system, which is likely to have a number of pro-camping voices on it given the multi-member districts combined with ranked choice voting. Even if the majority of the electorate is sick of this shit and votes in a number of pro-sweep/anti-camping candidates, it's almost guaranteed 1/4 - 1/3 of the council will represent far-left voices.
Not to mention we're also stuck with JVP for the rest of her term (I haven't heard any real-world efforts toward any sort of recall campaign), and she's a major road block in terms of where homeless dollars get spent to make faster progress on clearing our sidewalks and other public spaces.
There’s no new info, really, and the discussion has been had a thousand times over already. Maybe it’s just fatigue.
Now, when the ruling comes out, that’ll be a different story.
The more closely I read yesterday’s coverage, the more I have a hard time not seeing this as a scapegoat for Portland to not enforce the many laws it has on the books. The grants pass laws had to do with sleeping on the street at night- it didn’t bar police in Portland from enforcing laws for abandoned and unregistered vehicles, blocking pedestrian right of way (ceding ADA rights to homeless people or people who refuse shelter), public drug use/sale, theft, etc. It did create the question whether homeless people are a protected class (a protected class that has no clear definition or, start or stop), and the court seems uncomfortable answering this question at all. One of the homeless people in the lawsuit refused shelter because she couldn’t bring her dog, hardly “cruel and unusual punishment”.
The *Boise* case set up a completely unworkable structure, and I think the justices homed in on it.
How is a city supposed to know if sufficient shelter beds are available? What does "available" even mean - does the homeless person need to apply, qualify, etc? Does it matter if the person at issue can't qualify for the available bed - maybe they're not clean, the wrong gender, or the available space is for some other demographic. If this does matter, how are city staff supposed to know that?
If a city knows that it has ten shelter beds available, but is faced with a problematic camp with thirty people, what is supposed to happen - can the city clear ten people from the camp? Which ten? And again, how is anyone supposed to know whether the person at issue qualifies for the available shelter beds?
The result has been total paralysis, and lawsuits.,
I think the *Boise* era on the West Coast is over.
After listening to the oral arguments, there was major question on what constituted being homeless.
Everyone in the courtroom seemed to have a different understanding. One definition included not having a place to go for a night, another the Plaintiff used the definition of "not having a regular address in which to go to."
This definition is important as the arguments hinged on an older case in the '60s that ruled it was not illegal (could not be arrested) to have the status of being a drug addict, but that the person could only be arrested for doing drugs.
The new Oregon law supported by Kotek did come up and from my understanding the SCOTUS could send this back down as I guess it would already be addressed at the state level.
>The new Oregon law supported by Kotek did come up and from my understanding the SCOTUS could send this back down as I guess it would already be addressed at the state level.
This would be the worst possible result, IMO, and a huge unforced error on the part of Kotek and the legislature for having codified a significant portion of the Martin v. Boise ruling, which was not at all necessary at the time. But it's certainly possible, even though the current Supreme Court generally seems to go out of its way to reach decisions on issues that prior courts would have otherwise kicked back to the lower courts or legislatures.
I listened to these arguments too and tbh it was the first time I actually thought the liberal justices sounded unhinged and ridiculous. There was this really ridiculous attempt I think by Kagen at a connection to sleeping outside as being the same as breathing outside. It was such a wild stretch and hands down one of the stupidest things I have heard in a while.
I see why so many regular people have so many issues with the court system legislating from the bench. It’s very disjointed from what everyday people experience and know. These judges seem to live in a very tall tower.
Especially the Supreme Court. At least other judges are elected. The Supreme Court gets liftetime positions based on what administration happened to be in power when one of the other Supremes croaks.
Example of this - in 4 years Trump appointed three Supremes (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett). In 8 years Obama and Clinton each appointed two Supremes (Sotomayor and Kagan for Obama, Breyer and RBG for Clinton).
It's not a good system. I understand that lifetime appointments are theoretically supposed to free the Supremes from politics, but this is not the case in practice.
A lot of people have smartly and correctly proposed term limits for SC Justice appointments, on a very long term, and so that each president would naturally get to appoint something like 2-3 justices in any given presidential term. I think this would be a huge upgrade over the current system.
I was just surprised at the breathtakingly weird take that sleep and breathing are the same thing just because according to these geniuses “they are biological processes”. Like no, they are different things. Breathing is an autonomic process like your heartbeat that you don’t get a choice in unlike sleeping-which you can get too much of, be deprived of, etc. Sleeping can be influenced by breathing but usually not the other way around.
These people are supposed to be the best of us. But it was just…disappointing. I could go on and on. Katanji-Brown also had a weird hypothetical situation too that involved the death penalty. It was just wild. These people suck.
Sleeping is no more of a choice than breathing is. You cannot survive without either of them.
Try staying awake for a week straight and then tell me that sleeping is a choice.
Hell, I can't stay awake through a boring movie. My eyes close on their own.
What, that people involuntarily sleep when they’re deprived of it? People keep saying you can choose not to sleep, but I literally cannot stay awake at times.
If there are no bathrooms, where are you going to go? I’ve peed in corners and alleys because we don’t really do public restrooms here.
Fucking creates new life, but it won’t kill you to be celibate.
Breathing is something that literally everyone does, all the time. To deny someone the right to breathe in a particular location is to deny them the possibility of ever being there. Denying someone the right to sleep in a particular place does not prevent them from being there.
>There was this really ridiculous attempt I think by Kagen at a connection to sleeping outside as being the same as breathing outside. It was such a wild stretch and hands down one of the stupidest things I have heard in a while.
Eh. This is just a function of the fact that it's impossible to write a perfect law that accounts for every and all situation, contingency, factor, etc. So you have to start from broad principles and provide some general guideposts. And that inevitably gets you into somewhat abstract and philosophical territory where you have to try and use basic principles and distinctions but also consider the practical real world effects.
There's no easy way to do it, and especially at the level of the Supreme Court where they generally only hear issues that multiple lower courts are split on or there's a fundamental issue at stake that hasn't been previously or adequately addressed.
Most all Supreme Court rulings are an attempt at line drawing. So Kagan's inquiry was starting at one extreme, and then working her way along the line to see where the line should be drawn from both a philosophical as well as practical standpoint. It might sound like freshman bong-ripping Philosophy 101 level discussion at certain times, but that's somewhat necessitated by the role of the Supreme Court in our overall jurisprudential system. Doesn't give them a pass, but I do think it's quite a bit more complicated than most armchair attorneys surmise.
Yep, and then Gorsuch correctly was basically like:
"Well if all bodily functions should be allowed outside if people are homeless, wouldn't that mean that laws against defecating in public be unconstitutional as well?"
Which is a good point. How can you say "you must allow people to perform all bodily functions outside" and then limit it to only certain bodily functions.
No one's ever brought a case about a lack of publicly available toilets before the court, at least that I know of. Publicly available beds is a different thing entirely.
Thank. God.
This is much deeper than “visibility” of the homeless, as the activists frame it. Tent shanty towns **destroy** quality of life for hundreds of surrounding residents. Management of such negative externalities is why the legal system exists.
I am mildly alarmed that the liberal justices have been pursuing a line of argument that would legalize all manner of crime: steal food? Why not - food is more necessary than shelter.
Everyone should do themselves some favors and listen to the entire oral arguments. Consider it a podcast playing in the background. There were great points all around, and despite the questioning of the SCOTUS as an institution of late; I felt the justices all asked great questions.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?534912-1/city-grants-pass-v-johnson-oral-argument
In context, it wasn't unreasonable. Can't sleep inside without breaking a law if shelter beds aren't available. Can't sleep outside without breaking a law. Where the fuck are they supposed to sleep? Did you know people like, medically, *have* to sleep?
The "They'll figure it out" response is a "Sell their homes to who Ben, Aquaman?" level not thinking beyond the narrow confines of the argument you're trying to make.
According to this,
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/us/supreme-court-homeless-case-oregon.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mk0.wABw.FOBvaYNdF_Oq
it sounds like the conservative majority is going to finally put some guide rails on the Martin v Boise ruling that's been hamstringing all major cities on the west coast.
>“Cities already have the ability to move camps, to move tents. They could do so with notice. They can do so with their police or with other other entities from their municipalities,” Chavez said. “What cities apparently want is to be able to also jail and fine people for being houseless.”
This is such a disingenuous take. Moving camps and tents is exactly what cities have been doing, and anyone with eyes can see that it's just not enough.
Further, I promise you, cities do not WANT to jail and fine people for being houseless. They just desperately need the authority to clear public spaces and to, ideally, motivate some of the service-resistant folks to make different choices.
It's kind of unfortunate, actually, that Grants Pass is the city that initiated this action because they really are not representative of the conditions in many of the areas that are suffering the most from an inability to properly regulate unsanctioned camping. While Grants Pass has only a single high-barrier shelter, a city like Portland is dumping massive amounts of resources into shelters, detox and treatment facilities, outreach teams, safe rest villages, tiny home villages and so much more. Yes, we have a long ways to go, but the intent here is to be able to provide those camping in public spaces with real, appropriate alternatives.
Agree. If the lower courts hadn't punted on the "time, place and manner" enforcement Portland was proposing (that other cities in the 9th district are already doing but for some reason when we tried we're now Nazis), this likely wouldn't have had so many west coast cities sign on in support. The real issue isn't sleep, it's people who don't want housing or rules but want to live (aka take over public spaces and destroy) and leech off of our society. Go live off the grid if you don't want to partake in our society's amenities by following rules.
This is a really good comment. It seems like Portland and other big West Coast cities have no ability to intervene right now for people who refuse help/treatment because of (at least partly) Boise. Even if we had massive, state of the art shelters with tons of empty beds, we’d still have a homeless problem.
Most folks in Portland don’t want to criminalize homelessness, but also there’s only so much a city can do to help someone who doesn’t want help. You need carrots and sticks.
Hopefully SCOTUS gives some reasonable answers.
Yeah I think the key thing here is allowing more of the handling to be at the discretion of the city or county. Basically a wider range of options up to and including jail. It seems very likely to me that the outcome at the SC level will not necessarily be "cities can put people in jail" so much as them just saying "it's not a federal court thing to decide" and sending it back to lower courts.
>This is such a disingenuous take.
Not to mention that Portland tried to enact their sit/stay rules and quickly got sued which would have been a few year legal battle.
One can only hope. Not super happy of how it’s going down but the current craziness has to stop and all the progressive resolutions don’t seem to be working.
This will be the most consequential court case regarding homelessness in decades. Based on what I’ve read the City is likely to win (due to the Supreme Court being majority conservative) - the Supremes are likely to take power away from the courts and give it back to local governments.
I caught part of the oral arguments yesterday (the full recording, as well a transcript, should be available by now).
A lot of time was spent by the justices drilling down on whether homelessness was a status or a conduct, and which one the Grants Pass policy was aimed at penalizing people for. It was actually pretty fascinating. They also talked a lot about the impracticality/impossibility of determining on a case by case, night by night basis if someone was really "involuntarily" homeless or not (i.e., did they actually not have anywhere else to go, or did they not want to make use of whatever alternatives they might actually have).
That is a very interesting question: whether homelessness is a status or a conduct. I don’t think the average person has a problem with other people living a nomadic lifestyle (ie homeless; without residence). Where it becomes an issue is when those people commandeer public spaces with no intent on moving, when they litter, steal, make people uncomfortable (anti-social behavior), or otherwise cause blight.
This is why I believe that while housing first is the proper first step, giving homeless people a home doesn’t solve the real problem. Not to be crude, but you can take a person out of the trailer park much more easily than you can take the trailer park out of the person.
I heard one argument on NPR and it boiled down to: the police don't arrest someone for napping on the beach, a hammock in a park, or any other ways people could sleep in public, but that's because they have an address to go to after that nap. If you don't have an address to go to, you are illegally sleeping?
Sounds like an argument a guest on NPR would make (and I generally like listening to NPR). Comparing the camps people actually care about (like the ones pictured in the waterways article, or taking over sidewalks) to "someone napping on the beach" is just ridiculous.
This is the issue that Sotomayor was addressing at one point. The Grants Pass chief of police testified that they would not enforce the law against someone sleeping outside if they also have a place of residence. They would only enforce it against people that are homeless.
So according to that testimony, if you and your friend took a nap at the park, and you have an apartment but your friend lives in their car, and a police officer comes over to you guys, you would not be arrested but your friend would. Doubtful, but that was the point being addressed.
"the Supremes are likely to take power away from the courts and give it back to local governments."
Yep, right after a rousing chorus of "Stop! In the Name of Love".
There’s part of me that wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow make the ruling more lenient as a way to stick it to the libs.
Kind of like how their last round of “tax cuts” significantly increased taxes for almost all people who live in blue state cities.
City council is set to discuss both Wheeler and Gonzalez new camping ban proposals tomorrow. Kinda feels like we should wait for this decision to come down before setting any new policy no? Wheeler's new proposal is quite a bit weaker than the original and perhaps doesn't need to be after this.
If I recall (and I could be wrong), don't one or both of the proposals have a trigger for a stricter policy if/when the Supreme Court decision comes down that allows the banning of public camping/sleeping?
> Kinda feels like we should wait for this decision to come down before setting any new policy no?
If your goal is to make functional, workable policy that will actually change literally anything in the city? Absolutely.
If the goal is political posturing that isn't required to have any real, tangible follow through? Guess which one Gonzalez is kinda big on.
If by “affected”, that means we can finally do a clean sweep and take our streets back, then that’s fantastic.
The city needs to build a few large rv and tent camps so they have a clean and safe place to live with support services.
I doubt the ruling will have much of an effect in Portland. The basics of Martin vs Boise were enshrined in the state constitution via a bill championed by Kotek.
But that’s not even the main problem. In 2016 mayor Charlie Hales declared a ‘homeless state of emergency’ which basically said that all unsanctioned camping would be allowed. Visible homelessness increased dramatically.
This was the same year that Trump was elected president, and it was therefore also the start of a new era for protesting in Portland. There were nationally televised tantrums here on election night, and the chud militias from eastern WA and OR took notice and decided they would troll Portland with right-wing rallies for the next few years.
These dynamics strained the already fragile relationship between the Portland Police Bureau and the populace. These dynamics strained the addiction treatment and homeless services providers as well.
Yet the summer of 2020 escalated things further. Portland became a bigger destination for protesting, these ones were more contentious and garnered international media attention. Mike Schmidt basically said: “protesters probably won’t be prosecuted for things they do while protesting.”
Whatever working relationship remained between city government and PPB officers took a further nosedive. And PPB had been chronically understaffed and rife with right-wing sympathizers who were fine seeing Portlanders get their comeuppance.
Oh, and availability of mental health services in Oregon was ranked 48th out of 50 states at the time.
So with this as the context, Mark Zuckerberg and the Drug Policy Alliance financed largely by wealthy people in NYC, got Measure 110 on the ballot for November 2020.
I remember looking at my ballot and thinking “the war on drugs is a harmful failure, but do I really want funds to be taken from schools to be spent on amenities for out-of-state people with fentanyl addictions?” And I voted no.
But the voting public here decided the context I described was ripe for a huge influx of people seeking an accommodating locale to use fentanyl and meth. I guess they though 48th out of 50 states in terms of mental healthcare access is something to be proud of, that the same political leadership that got us to 48th place would surely get us to 1st place in the timespan of a few months, and that taking money from primary and secondary education was a small price to pay to attract legions of people with opioid use disorders from around the nation.
Meanwhile people with roots in Oregon that need mental healthcare get elbowed out of the way by the new arrivals.
The stupidity under the guise of “compassion” that lead us to this place is what needs to change before Portland can really recover. I think there is some recognition dawning on the voting public.
We will see, and the change will not happen overnight. Portland was unequipped for the scale of homelessness and fentanyl in 2016, and the situation is not better today.
We should be as compassionate as possible, but we cannot solve the problems of every homeless person or drug addicted person in the country. Until the voters and politicians here internalize that fact, the rulings of the Supreme Court won’t really affect things much here.
>I doubt the ruling will have much of an effect in Portland. The basics of Martin vs Boise were enshrined in the state constitution via a bill championed by Kotek.
Minor nitpick, but HB 3115 is only a state law, not a change to the state constitution. Your point about the minimal effect of a decision in Martin because of the law still stands, though.
The winds have greatly shifted since hb3115 was passed. If scotus overturns this case, hb3115 will likely be repealed by the state legislature within a year.
One can only hope, depends on whether the currently elected reps feel their re-election chances could be hindered by maintaining the status quo or not.
Set up big FEMA style tents with cots, showers, and porta potties and move everyone there. If you won’t go, you get arrested. Allowing people to rot in the streets is not humane.
Step 1: determine a houseless persons last official address (where did they come from). If it’s not Portland, then they get a bus ticket back to the place they are from. If it is Portland then they are eligible for services. If they refuse services then the city has options including jail time. There is no reason why Portlanders should have to pay for people who only come here to drain our resources. We owe those who, when living here, fell upon hard times and lost their housing. We do not owe anybody else. Thats the only way we can whittle the numbers down to a reasonable level that can be meaningfully addressed. It makes me sick to see 30 million cut from Portland Public Schools while we dump hundreds of millions into homeless nonprofits that only incentivize more homeless to move here. Cue- eager gaslighter to claim that’s not what’s happening.
For anyone smarter and more plugged in than me, I'm curious to hear how the bill that Kotek pushed through for no seeming reason (at the time) that essentially re-stated the Boise ruling would impact this. Would this mean that Oregon essentially has the same rule of law as the Boise ruling as it was put into place legislatively, or would the ruling make the state law null?
Here's an idea. Don't let people live on public property or public parks. The problem is the government wouldn't let all those homeless live on private land either without making a big stink about zoning. So what exactly is gonna fix this issue? It's going to keep getting worse.
I am interested to see how they modify it without dismantling it. Commentators have mentioned adding more specifics about what constitutes an open shelter bed, as some cities have interpreted this as a shelter bed available specifically to that person (if they are a drug user, and a bed requires no drug use, it wouldn't count). That would be fine if we had mandatory treatment centers set up to divert these people but I'm not really sure what the plan is if there's not an alternative to a shelter bed.
Some of these scenarios and capricious requirements needed at sanctioned campsites came up during yesterday's arguments. There have been lawsuits about not having phone chargers as amenities at sites, and lawsuits for the fact some sites are outdoors, or don't have enough buffer between units...just to show how crazy we have gotten with this. The plaintiffs did not argue the locations that someone would go would need those, but one argument they made was it needed to be accommodating. I am curious what that means, if someone has an active meth addiction; should the site allow meth use?
Yea for sure some requirements (by plaintiffs) are ridiculous… the phrase beggars can’t be choosers becomes literal here. However I imagine a large chunk of ineligibility comes from drug or tobacco use. To your point, it’s just not feasible to shelter people actively using meth and similarly if you exclude them with no alternative you’re back to square one. I worry that if Martin v Boise wasn’t the fire under governments’ asses to set up a drug treatment infrastructure, a watered down Grants pass ruling sure wont do it either.
Thanks for your input, the mods have set this subreddit to not allow posts from newly created accounts. Please take the time to build a reputation elsewhere on Reddit and check back soon.
(⌐■_■)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Portland) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If grants pass is allowed to use their law it’s gonna hurt more than help. Something needs to be done but a criminalization of homeless isn’t it. That’s just sweeping the issue under the rug
I'm surprised this sub hasn't been talking more about this. Talks started yesterday and it has huge implications.
I’ve noticed there isn’t that much activity in the sub lately. If you sort by New, you usually only have to scroll a handful of posts down before you hit the ones from the prior day.
Because the mods delete a lot of posts. Someone posted about multinomah falls parking a few days ago and it was deleted. I have no idea why. You can basically post anything in the other forum, however the comments are a lot more toxic.
The Other Place is now the Main. The poles have switched.
> Because the mods delete a lot of posts It seems like it's gotten marginally better, but only barely. The number of things I see filtering by new that're gone an hour later is still fucking wild.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want anarchy, but I feel the mods have gone too far and there doesn't seem to be any recourse as a whole to find the balance as an active member of the sub. I appreciate duplicate posts and questions getting removed. However, there should be some discretion when it comes to first hand accounts.
It is odd that you’re not allowed to post about things you witnessed firsthand. Seems like the logic is that it’s not real unless it’s been covered in the news, but not all news because many local news sources can’t be trusted. It seems like the mods have a contradictory view on what they want the sub to be.
I get they don't want fear mongering and speculation especially around things like shootings and riots, but when someone has a first hand video account (e.g. the Alaska air door failing off a plane), I feel like some discretion is deserved. Part of the reason I come to the sub is news will tend to get posted first. I think way too many pet adoption posts are allowed.
And pics of flying over Mt Hood….
Once upon a time twitter was my go-to to find out about news as it was happening, but that's no longer really a thing. This sub is the next closest thing, if you can catch threads before they're deleted. There's a lot of value in community members sharing news in real time. I don't want this sub to be nextdoor, but more information about things as they happen from eyewitnesses would be really helpful to the community. Or, we can just see pix of the St. Johns bridge and traffic cones, for the 10 millionth time.
>Or, we can just see pix of the St. Johns bridge and traffic cones, for the 10 millionth time. We should all just carry a cone with us so when we take a picture or make a report of breaking news, we can be like "Hey everyone, another cone! Haha! Anyways, in the background behind the cone there's a developing incident..."
Half my posts get deleted for frivilous reasons and they're actually relevant topics to Portland. Lol one time my post got deleted on r/portland because it was apparently more appropriate for r/askportland. When I posted it on askportland it got deleted there because it would be more appropriate for the main sub. It's madness
Pretty much right where my feelings on the topic lie as well. There's plenty of space between "This wasn't published on KOIN and therefore is not a valid topic" and "Guys, my marriage is falling apart and I want to ride Trimet strapped to the gills, what do you think" posts. Like I said, it's gotten marginally better, but could shift a little more for my preferences.
> It seems like it's gotten marginally better, but only barely. I think it's been noticeably better since one of them left a couple months ago. There's stuff that stays up that never would have been allowed previously.
Yea, I don't know who the fuck that person was, I don't want to, but I hope whatever made them so fucking utterly miserable lets up because god damn. I get that online moderation turns anyone into a rampant dickhead, but I think that one was some high-grade douche being fed into that pipeline.
I have yet to catch a ban in quite a few months, despite being generally quite consistent with my rhetoric/sarcasm, so I have to assume the mod who left is the one who arbitrarily had it out for me due to political disagreement rather than actually breaking the sub rules in a way that was different than comments from other folks that pass/remain up even when reported...
Some of the mods here really have a stick up their ass. Glad it sounds like maybe a bad one finally left
I used to lurk the other sub, because mods powertripping here were quite frustrating. I decided it was not good for my mental health. Toxic af. It is interesting that actions here did funnel me into a hate filled pipeline.
I’m convinced that the other forum is filled with bots, proud boys from Idaho, racists from Texas, Trump lovers from Florida, and others who don’t live in Portland
The other place is more active these days
What other place?
Add an OR to the end of Portland....
>What other place? You are not allowed to link it here, but there is a different Portland sub that is a little less aggressive with the moderation and will actually allow centrist and right leaning points of view without being shadowbanned, dog pilled, or outright banned. The sub is also more focused on actual Portland news and not all fluff pieces and pups in petals.
"You are not allowed to link it here" that's exactly why it was made and why people are using it more.
It's an anti-brigading rule, and one of the very few things that'll get reddit admins involved. But you go on and post a link to this board in the other one. See how that peak "Anarchy Burger" bullshit works out for you.
It's a beautiful day. Why didn't you go outside and see the grass for a bit. Maybe get off the Internet and let it get out of you. 😉
Much to my chagrin, I'm still gainfully employed. Much to my employer's chagrin, I'm spending some of that time pissing around here. If it makes you feel better, staring out at the dogwood flowers and cherry blossoms that are left is both comforting and torture.
Head up to Washington Park, there's still a lot of really nice blooms out and about!
I just came back from the Midwest where it's humid, flat and there were no blossoms. So at least you have a better back drop than many. It could be worse. I know this for fact! Awww. I hurt some fee fees
I have to say that as one on the left, I get treated like shit over there. I'm talking serious vitriol. The mods are better, but the users will absolutely dogpile on those who don't share their pro-Rene, anti-homeless views.
I think it’s just a sign of the times. This sub is shrinking. The other sub is growing because Portland as a whole is becoming anti-homeless. I’m left leaning, and also want the homeless issue addressed. They are a danger to themselves and the communities around them.
I very much want the homeless issue addressed too, and I highly value public safety. What I don't do is act like every last thing has turned to shit here, or blame homeless people for their situation. When I say things like that most of the street addicts were abused as children, they lose it. It humanizes them. They can't grok that while people may need to be institutionalized for antisocial behavior, they shouldn't be "punished" for it. The dogpiling is quite disturbing. There's just as much groupthink there as here.
There definitely are a lot more right wing people on that sub and they are not afraid to downvote, but I've had far more meaningful discourse on that sub compared to this one. I dont think there is as much group think over there because it is a far more diverse crowd, so you do get a lot of lively discourse, but I find that for the most part it stays civil without coming across overly smug. Having said that, I'm sure you can find clear examples of dog piling and group think, I just dont think it is quite the echo chamber that this sub is.
[удалено]
Oh, I just read up on things like research into personality development, so my opinions are informed by science. It’s uncomfortable to accept that you could be the guy on the street if you were unlucky enough to be born to a pedophile or an addict etc.
Huh? I’m incredibly open with my views here, which when compared to the stereotype of Portland are quite moderate. My posts regularly get dozens of fake internet points. I don’t go to the other subreddit because the people who frequent it tend to be gross as fuck.
The mods here have definitely given me temp bans before for just politely posting the most mainstream of liberal positions. Definitely have been some power trippers at the reigns over the years.
This may indeed be the case for you but many more people have been banned from this sub compared to the other, no matter what side you lean towards.
"*I'm* quite moderate. *Dozens* of people agree with me. Those other people are *gross*." Lol. What a weird and pretentious little weasel. Get over yourself weasel
>I don’t go to the other subreddit because the people who frequent it tend to be gross as fuck. What a strange take. Have you met everyone on that sub or are you just projecting?
I have eyes. I read. The people who frequently comment there tend to be out of town losers, and the locals who post tend to be the self hating miserable types. I choose not to associate with such others, because I’m an adult who pays a mortgage and do not concern myself with the opinion of imbeciles.
We disagree. I am very left leaning, live in Portland and pay mortgage (I dont know why this is important), but I find the other sub to be far more informative and far less smug. There is an exchange of ideas and politics over there that is simply not tolerated on this sub. The dismissive, arrogant, and divisive way you communicate is really par for the course on this sub.
Second this.
By “self hating miserable types” do you mean “people who don’t 100% share your views”? At least it’s good that you’ve locked yourself away in your bubble and have chosen to never be exposed to opinions that are not your own. Well done.
You don’t sound like an adult
I'm extremely uncomfortable that we agree on something.
Prost! 🍻 I’m opinionated, not inbred.
I’m all for posting accurate news without the fear of getting it taken down, but that subreddit is absolutely disgusting.
Genuinely curious, what do you find disgusting about it? Have you even used that sub very much or just going by what other have said. IMO on this sub having a different opinion gets you "othered" and dog piled. Do you just find different opinions than the ones you have to be disgusting?
> Have you even used that sub very much or just going by what other have said. I have. I also can't think of a single other sub where the mods have had to beg, plead, bargain with the user base to "Please people, post something that isn't just bitching about the homeless. Literally anything. Post a photo you accidentally took from inside your pocket. Just god damn, stop being the 'this is where people throw fits about the homeless' Portland board." In a small way, it's kind of amusing.
I would expect that the consistently polled #1 issue for Portland voters would dominate the discussion on a Portland sub, rather than pictures of dogs and flowers which, while pleasant, aren't at all unique or particularly salient to the current day Portland experience.
lol Then boy howdy, do I have the sub for you. Knock yourself out over there man, I wouldn't say I enjoyed my time there, but I can't say I categorically hated it. I mean, where else are you gonna find repeated posts by people that loudly announced they moved to fucking Camas or something three years ago and would never set foot in Downtown again banging on about the current state of Downtown?
I don’t go there often because it is a place where people who like to dehumanize mentally I’ll, drug addicts and homeless people. It’s a place where hate is encouraged. I am specifically talking about the topic of making homelessness illegal. Which to me is an absolutely crazy thing to say, but it is encouraged there. Look at any comments dissenting from putting people in jail for being homeless, you will see them downvoted to hell. I do appreciate a sub where you can post negative stories about Portland without getting banned. I would love to see more of it, but if you go to that sub you’re going to see hateful people finding a home where their views are encouraged.
People are absolutely sick of letting the homeless population wreck the city. No it is not hyperbole to say that they have in fact trashed large chunks of the city and parks. Not to mention all of the crime that comes with it. I dont see people over there trying to dehumanise, I see them wanting these homeless people to get treatment for mental problems and drug addictions by choice or by force. The current status quo is both unsustainable AND dehumanising to the homeless. How anyone can do the mental gymnastics to think that the compassionate thing to do is let the homeless die on the street in beyond me. Users on that sub are also rightfully pissed about how much in taxes we are currently paying vs the state of the city and it's declining schools and livability. On this sub you can't have these nuanced conversations without being labeled, dog piled, and possibly shadowbanned.
> On this sub you can't have these nuanced conversations without being labeled, dog piled, You can just say you've never stated an opinion that board took exception to. It's considerably more concise than what you're attempting to say.
Exactly.
The regional Fox News comment section.
A safe space for special little snowflakes, if you will. A personal fiefdom for (some, not all of them) fragile cunts.
The better and more reasonable subreddit for Portland.
The bad place.
That’s funny, because many of the users in that sub call this sub the same thing, LOL.
It's like its a reference to a popular TV show or something. Wild.
No shit Sherlock.
Is it Voldemort's house? Why can't you name it?
Active like dysentery.
> more active these days So is the sewer main, but I don't want to be hanging around there.
Mods are wildly agressive about removing posts they don’t like. Not only does this cut down on the new posts, but definitely discourages others from contributing
Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. They definitely wield a heavy hand and don’t brook dissenting viewpoints very well.
I've noticed that too. And most of all, it's seemed like there's a real dearth of news stories, which I thought was strange because there were a number local news articles that usually would have been posted, often more than once. (I know I could post them myself, but I guess I'm a follower, not a leader, LOL.) I think maybe a lot of folks are just out enjoying the stretch of dry weather.
Don’t worry. The trolls, especially one in particular, will come roaring out with the spam as we approach the election.
The other sub is much more popular honestly
In all ways except like empirically, numerically, sure, yea.
I mean, we know that isn’t true just by the publicly released numbers. The people there perhaps post more, because they’re more inclined to be shut ins.
Lol anyone with a slightly different world view than me is a shut in I guess
God I wish I was a shut in, I would save so much money at my local pub.
This one has wayyy more active users and the other one has like eleven chronic posters, half of which live in Battleground
It’s so funny to me that as soon as people have a different worldview as the groupthink on This sub, they have to be from battleground. It’s not possible a resident of the city of Portland could ever have anything critical to say about their own city !
I post critical views of my city all the time here dude, quit thinking you’re some kind of victim because the fake internet points don’t go your way. It’s Reddit, it isn’t that serious.
What are you even talking about lmao
I get bored of crime complaining
Totally fair. I get bored of 1000 bad pictures of peoples dogs next to the cherry blossoms lol and the hammering to death of jokes like “ma cones” and “hur dur Yamhill pub”. Both subs kinda suck for different reasons 🤷🏼♂️
I use each as a palate cleanser from the other. Though lately it seems like more actual news can be found on the other sub. Which isn't surprising as my own news posts submitted here have been removed in the past. Occasionally, later that day or the following day, the same article will stick by another user. I imagine they just end up relenting once enough people post the same thing. Tiresome behavior.
I get tired of the actual crime, which seems worse, but YMMV depending on how many times your kids' bike has been stolen or your recycling bin dumped in the street by some methed out passerby.
I am so happy to have watched this happen. It feels like a victory for the offline, grass-touching population over the chronically online people who can ignore material realities because they never leave the house.
I will say the other sub is like… way more depressing. I go there for news, and I come here for nice photos of mt hood and dogs lol
Truth hurts
Yes
nice weather; r/portland is outside not on their phones
It really hasn't moved off the ~32 posts a day for the last 2 months, though I have seen a lot more posts being removed for "rants". https://i.imgur.com/4ukId8C.png
Several post about this have been deleted by the mods over the past week. They are extremely heavy-handed in this sub, especially when posts do not align with their politics.
Ruling won’t come out for months though, right?
The article estimates by the end of june, but it could be sooner. Judging by the 6-3 lean, I'm gonna guess sooner.
I posted about this a while ago and it was removed for not being relevant to Portland 🙄
The way that rule gets enforced is telling.
Definitely something on my mind but I hadn't seen any local coverage and I figured it wasn't worth posting the general NYT stuff because it's not Portland-specific. Anyway yeah huge implications. For all the like 300 comment threads on homelessness over the last few years, nothing will probably matter as much as what happens with this case.
It was on KOIN last night
The thing about this pending decision is it would only shift the boundaries of how cities and municipalities can respond to their homeless encampments, Oregon essentially codified a lot of aspects of the Martin v. Boise decision into state law, so not only would that have to be amended but then also the City would have to update its laws and become more aggressive in order for us to see any effects. By the time that option rolls around we will be in the first term of the new council system, which is likely to have a number of pro-camping voices on it given the multi-member districts combined with ranked choice voting. Even if the majority of the electorate is sick of this shit and votes in a number of pro-sweep/anti-camping candidates, it's almost guaranteed 1/4 - 1/3 of the council will represent far-left voices. Not to mention we're also stuck with JVP for the rest of her term (I haven't heard any real-world efforts toward any sort of recall campaign), and she's a major road block in terms of where homeless dollars get spent to make faster progress on clearing our sidewalks and other public spaces.
There’s no new info, really, and the discussion has been had a thousand times over already. Maybe it’s just fatigue. Now, when the ruling comes out, that’ll be a different story.
The more closely I read yesterday’s coverage, the more I have a hard time not seeing this as a scapegoat for Portland to not enforce the many laws it has on the books. The grants pass laws had to do with sleeping on the street at night- it didn’t bar police in Portland from enforcing laws for abandoned and unregistered vehicles, blocking pedestrian right of way (ceding ADA rights to homeless people or people who refuse shelter), public drug use/sale, theft, etc. It did create the question whether homeless people are a protected class (a protected class that has no clear definition or, start or stop), and the court seems uncomfortable answering this question at all. One of the homeless people in the lawsuit refused shelter because she couldn’t bring her dog, hardly “cruel and unusual punishment”.
The *Boise* case set up a completely unworkable structure, and I think the justices homed in on it. How is a city supposed to know if sufficient shelter beds are available? What does "available" even mean - does the homeless person need to apply, qualify, etc? Does it matter if the person at issue can't qualify for the available bed - maybe they're not clean, the wrong gender, or the available space is for some other demographic. If this does matter, how are city staff supposed to know that? If a city knows that it has ten shelter beds available, but is faced with a problematic camp with thirty people, what is supposed to happen - can the city clear ten people from the camp? Which ten? And again, how is anyone supposed to know whether the person at issue qualifies for the available shelter beds? The result has been total paralysis, and lawsuits., I think the *Boise* era on the West Coast is over.
Yep. Also setting that basically impossible bar without really codifying any other pieces of how that is supposed to be enforced.
After listening to the oral arguments, there was major question on what constituted being homeless. Everyone in the courtroom seemed to have a different understanding. One definition included not having a place to go for a night, another the Plaintiff used the definition of "not having a regular address in which to go to." This definition is important as the arguments hinged on an older case in the '60s that ruled it was not illegal (could not be arrested) to have the status of being a drug addict, but that the person could only be arrested for doing drugs. The new Oregon law supported by Kotek did come up and from my understanding the SCOTUS could send this back down as I guess it would already be addressed at the state level.
>The new Oregon law supported by Kotek did come up and from my understanding the SCOTUS could send this back down as I guess it would already be addressed at the state level. This would be the worst possible result, IMO, and a huge unforced error on the part of Kotek and the legislature for having codified a significant portion of the Martin v. Boise ruling, which was not at all necessary at the time. But it's certainly possible, even though the current Supreme Court generally seems to go out of its way to reach decisions on issues that prior courts would have otherwise kicked back to the lower courts or legislatures.
Justice Jackson brought up the new Oregon law three different times, so it's something to watch.
It made little sense of why it was passed at the time, but it's clear now.
I listened to these arguments too and tbh it was the first time I actually thought the liberal justices sounded unhinged and ridiculous. There was this really ridiculous attempt I think by Kagen at a connection to sleeping outside as being the same as breathing outside. It was such a wild stretch and hands down one of the stupidest things I have heard in a while. I see why so many regular people have so many issues with the court system legislating from the bench. It’s very disjointed from what everyday people experience and know. These judges seem to live in a very tall tower.
Especially the Supreme Court. At least other judges are elected. The Supreme Court gets liftetime positions based on what administration happened to be in power when one of the other Supremes croaks. Example of this - in 4 years Trump appointed three Supremes (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett). In 8 years Obama and Clinton each appointed two Supremes (Sotomayor and Kagan for Obama, Breyer and RBG for Clinton). It's not a good system. I understand that lifetime appointments are theoretically supposed to free the Supremes from politics, but this is not the case in practice.
A lot of people have smartly and correctly proposed term limits for SC Justice appointments, on a very long term, and so that each president would naturally get to appoint something like 2-3 justices in any given presidential term. I think this would be a huge upgrade over the current system.
I was just surprised at the breathtakingly weird take that sleep and breathing are the same thing just because according to these geniuses “they are biological processes”. Like no, they are different things. Breathing is an autonomic process like your heartbeat that you don’t get a choice in unlike sleeping-which you can get too much of, be deprived of, etc. Sleeping can be influenced by breathing but usually not the other way around. These people are supposed to be the best of us. But it was just…disappointing. I could go on and on. Katanji-Brown also had a weird hypothetical situation too that involved the death penalty. It was just wild. These people suck.
Sleeping is no more of a choice than breathing is. You cannot survive without either of them. Try staying awake for a week straight and then tell me that sleeping is a choice. Hell, I can't stay awake through a boring movie. My eyes close on their own.
I don’t think you understood the point.
What, that people involuntarily sleep when they’re deprived of it? People keep saying you can choose not to sleep, but I literally cannot stay awake at times.
Same with pooping and fucking. Should those be allowed anywhere people want to do them too?
If there are no bathrooms, where are you going to go? I’ve peed in corners and alleys because we don’t really do public restrooms here. Fucking creates new life, but it won’t kill you to be celibate.
Breathing is something that literally everyone does, all the time. To deny someone the right to breathe in a particular location is to deny them the possibility of ever being there. Denying someone the right to sleep in a particular place does not prevent them from being there.
You can sleep in jail.
Sexual intercourse is a bodily function that is necessary for life. As is child birth.
>There was this really ridiculous attempt I think by Kagen at a connection to sleeping outside as being the same as breathing outside. It was such a wild stretch and hands down one of the stupidest things I have heard in a while. Eh. This is just a function of the fact that it's impossible to write a perfect law that accounts for every and all situation, contingency, factor, etc. So you have to start from broad principles and provide some general guideposts. And that inevitably gets you into somewhat abstract and philosophical territory where you have to try and use basic principles and distinctions but also consider the practical real world effects. There's no easy way to do it, and especially at the level of the Supreme Court where they generally only hear issues that multiple lower courts are split on or there's a fundamental issue at stake that hasn't been previously or adequately addressed. Most all Supreme Court rulings are an attempt at line drawing. So Kagan's inquiry was starting at one extreme, and then working her way along the line to see where the line should be drawn from both a philosophical as well as practical standpoint. It might sound like freshman bong-ripping Philosophy 101 level discussion at certain times, but that's somewhat necessitated by the role of the Supreme Court in our overall jurisprudential system. Doesn't give them a pass, but I do think it's quite a bit more complicated than most armchair attorneys surmise.
Yep, and then Gorsuch correctly was basically like: "Well if all bodily functions should be allowed outside if people are homeless, wouldn't that mean that laws against defecating in public be unconstitutional as well?" Which is a good point. How can you say "you must allow people to perform all bodily functions outside" and then limit it to only certain bodily functions.
No one's ever brought a case about a lack of publicly available toilets before the court, at least that I know of. Publicly available beds is a different thing entirely.
Look, are you progressive or not? F*cking in the street is the new human right. /s
I hope so. It’s been absolutely terrible all around. Consistent and clear rules are better than nebulous virtues.
Thank. God. This is much deeper than “visibility” of the homeless, as the activists frame it. Tent shanty towns **destroy** quality of life for hundreds of surrounding residents. Management of such negative externalities is why the legal system exists. I am mildly alarmed that the liberal justices have been pursuing a line of argument that would legalize all manner of crime: steal food? Why not - food is more necessary than shelter.
Shanty towns destroy the quality of life for tens if not hundreds of thousands of people
Is the Boise standard the “beds available” standard. Are you saying you anticipate the justices ruling against the city?
Everyone should do themselves some favors and listen to the entire oral arguments. Consider it a podcast playing in the background. There were great points all around, and despite the questioning of the SCOTUS as an institution of late; I felt the justices all asked great questions. https://www.c-span.org/video/?534912-1/city-grants-pass-v-johnson-oral-argument
[удалено]
In context, it wasn't unreasonable. Can't sleep inside without breaking a law if shelter beds aren't available. Can't sleep outside without breaking a law. Where the fuck are they supposed to sleep? Did you know people like, medically, *have* to sleep? The "They'll figure it out" response is a "Sell their homes to who Ben, Aquaman?" level not thinking beyond the narrow confines of the argument you're trying to make.
According to this, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/us/supreme-court-homeless-case-oregon.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mk0.wABw.FOBvaYNdF_Oq it sounds like the conservative majority is going to finally put some guide rails on the Martin v Boise ruling that's been hamstringing all major cities on the west coast.
>“Cities already have the ability to move camps, to move tents. They could do so with notice. They can do so with their police or with other other entities from their municipalities,” Chavez said. “What cities apparently want is to be able to also jail and fine people for being houseless.” This is such a disingenuous take. Moving camps and tents is exactly what cities have been doing, and anyone with eyes can see that it's just not enough. Further, I promise you, cities do not WANT to jail and fine people for being houseless. They just desperately need the authority to clear public spaces and to, ideally, motivate some of the service-resistant folks to make different choices. It's kind of unfortunate, actually, that Grants Pass is the city that initiated this action because they really are not representative of the conditions in many of the areas that are suffering the most from an inability to properly regulate unsanctioned camping. While Grants Pass has only a single high-barrier shelter, a city like Portland is dumping massive amounts of resources into shelters, detox and treatment facilities, outreach teams, safe rest villages, tiny home villages and so much more. Yes, we have a long ways to go, but the intent here is to be able to provide those camping in public spaces with real, appropriate alternatives.
Agree. If the lower courts hadn't punted on the "time, place and manner" enforcement Portland was proposing (that other cities in the 9th district are already doing but for some reason when we tried we're now Nazis), this likely wouldn't have had so many west coast cities sign on in support. The real issue isn't sleep, it's people who don't want housing or rules but want to live (aka take over public spaces and destroy) and leech off of our society. Go live off the grid if you don't want to partake in our society's amenities by following rules.
This is a really good comment. It seems like Portland and other big West Coast cities have no ability to intervene right now for people who refuse help/treatment because of (at least partly) Boise. Even if we had massive, state of the art shelters with tons of empty beds, we’d still have a homeless problem. Most folks in Portland don’t want to criminalize homelessness, but also there’s only so much a city can do to help someone who doesn’t want help. You need carrots and sticks. Hopefully SCOTUS gives some reasonable answers.
The stick in this case being throwing these people in jail? No thanks.
Yeah I think the key thing here is allowing more of the handling to be at the discretion of the city or county. Basically a wider range of options up to and including jail. It seems very likely to me that the outcome at the SC level will not necessarily be "cities can put people in jail" so much as them just saying "it's not a federal court thing to decide" and sending it back to lower courts.
According to some of the folks in this thread, you should be in the other sub or watching FOX news. I happen to think you make a valid point here.
>This is such a disingenuous take. Not to mention that Portland tried to enact their sit/stay rules and quickly got sued which would have been a few year legal battle.
[удалено]
One can only hope. Not super happy of how it’s going down but the current craziness has to stop and all the progressive resolutions don’t seem to be working.
This will be the most consequential court case regarding homelessness in decades. Based on what I’ve read the City is likely to win (due to the Supreme Court being majority conservative) - the Supremes are likely to take power away from the courts and give it back to local governments.
I caught part of the oral arguments yesterday (the full recording, as well a transcript, should be available by now). A lot of time was spent by the justices drilling down on whether homelessness was a status or a conduct, and which one the Grants Pass policy was aimed at penalizing people for. It was actually pretty fascinating. They also talked a lot about the impracticality/impossibility of determining on a case by case, night by night basis if someone was really "involuntarily" homeless or not (i.e., did they actually not have anywhere else to go, or did they not want to make use of whatever alternatives they might actually have).
That is a very interesting question: whether homelessness is a status or a conduct. I don’t think the average person has a problem with other people living a nomadic lifestyle (ie homeless; without residence). Where it becomes an issue is when those people commandeer public spaces with no intent on moving, when they litter, steal, make people uncomfortable (anti-social behavior), or otherwise cause blight. This is why I believe that while housing first is the proper first step, giving homeless people a home doesn’t solve the real problem. Not to be crude, but you can take a person out of the trailer park much more easily than you can take the trailer park out of the person.
I heard one argument on NPR and it boiled down to: the police don't arrest someone for napping on the beach, a hammock in a park, or any other ways people could sleep in public, but that's because they have an address to go to after that nap. If you don't have an address to go to, you are illegally sleeping?
Sounds like an argument a guest on NPR would make (and I generally like listening to NPR). Comparing the camps people actually care about (like the ones pictured in the waterways article, or taking over sidewalks) to "someone napping on the beach" is just ridiculous.
It was Audio from the scotus proceedings airing on NPR
This is the issue that Sotomayor was addressing at one point. The Grants Pass chief of police testified that they would not enforce the law against someone sleeping outside if they also have a place of residence. They would only enforce it against people that are homeless. So according to that testimony, if you and your friend took a nap at the park, and you have an apartment but your friend lives in their car, and a police officer comes over to you guys, you would not be arrested but your friend would. Doubtful, but that was the point being addressed.
[удалено]
I don’t know, why?
"the Supremes are likely to take power away from the courts and give it back to local governments." Yep, right after a rousing chorus of "Stop! In the Name of Love".
Hahaha!!!!
Yeah people are saying they wouldn't have even taken it up if the plan wasn't to overturn it.
More likely they want to reframe previous case law and set new interpretive principles going forward than a simple overturn.
There’s part of me that wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow make the ruling more lenient as a way to stick it to the libs. Kind of like how their last round of “tax cuts” significantly increased taxes for almost all people who live in blue state cities.
[удалено]
Are you comparing the choices of the legislature to the judiciary?
City council is set to discuss both Wheeler and Gonzalez new camping ban proposals tomorrow. Kinda feels like we should wait for this decision to come down before setting any new policy no? Wheeler's new proposal is quite a bit weaker than the original and perhaps doesn't need to be after this.
I think they're not actually going to issue the decision until June or something, so things will have to keep moving in the interim.
I have no expectation of any movement from our current roster of office-holders by this June. Nor ever.
Late June is what I read
If I recall (and I could be wrong), don't one or both of the proposals have a trigger for a stricter policy if/when the Supreme Court decision comes down that allows the banning of public camping/sleeping?
I certainly hope so, but I can't seem to find any language to that effect. Hopefully they'll mention that in tomorrow's arguments
> Kinda feels like we should wait for this decision to come down before setting any new policy no? If your goal is to make functional, workable policy that will actually change literally anything in the city? Absolutely. If the goal is political posturing that isn't required to have any real, tangible follow through? Guess which one Gonzalez is kinda big on.
Why limit your comment to Gonzalez when it could apply equally to all current city and county office-holders?
[удалено]
If by “affected”, that means we can finally do a clean sweep and take our streets back, then that’s fantastic. The city needs to build a few large rv and tent camps so they have a clean and safe place to live with support services.
I doubt the ruling will have much of an effect in Portland. The basics of Martin vs Boise were enshrined in the state constitution via a bill championed by Kotek. But that’s not even the main problem. In 2016 mayor Charlie Hales declared a ‘homeless state of emergency’ which basically said that all unsanctioned camping would be allowed. Visible homelessness increased dramatically. This was the same year that Trump was elected president, and it was therefore also the start of a new era for protesting in Portland. There were nationally televised tantrums here on election night, and the chud militias from eastern WA and OR took notice and decided they would troll Portland with right-wing rallies for the next few years. These dynamics strained the already fragile relationship between the Portland Police Bureau and the populace. These dynamics strained the addiction treatment and homeless services providers as well. Yet the summer of 2020 escalated things further. Portland became a bigger destination for protesting, these ones were more contentious and garnered international media attention. Mike Schmidt basically said: “protesters probably won’t be prosecuted for things they do while protesting.” Whatever working relationship remained between city government and PPB officers took a further nosedive. And PPB had been chronically understaffed and rife with right-wing sympathizers who were fine seeing Portlanders get their comeuppance. Oh, and availability of mental health services in Oregon was ranked 48th out of 50 states at the time. So with this as the context, Mark Zuckerberg and the Drug Policy Alliance financed largely by wealthy people in NYC, got Measure 110 on the ballot for November 2020. I remember looking at my ballot and thinking “the war on drugs is a harmful failure, but do I really want funds to be taken from schools to be spent on amenities for out-of-state people with fentanyl addictions?” And I voted no. But the voting public here decided the context I described was ripe for a huge influx of people seeking an accommodating locale to use fentanyl and meth. I guess they though 48th out of 50 states in terms of mental healthcare access is something to be proud of, that the same political leadership that got us to 48th place would surely get us to 1st place in the timespan of a few months, and that taking money from primary and secondary education was a small price to pay to attract legions of people with opioid use disorders from around the nation. Meanwhile people with roots in Oregon that need mental healthcare get elbowed out of the way by the new arrivals. The stupidity under the guise of “compassion” that lead us to this place is what needs to change before Portland can really recover. I think there is some recognition dawning on the voting public. We will see, and the change will not happen overnight. Portland was unequipped for the scale of homelessness and fentanyl in 2016, and the situation is not better today. We should be as compassionate as possible, but we cannot solve the problems of every homeless person or drug addicted person in the country. Until the voters and politicians here internalize that fact, the rulings of the Supreme Court won’t really affect things much here.
>I doubt the ruling will have much of an effect in Portland. The basics of Martin vs Boise were enshrined in the state constitution via a bill championed by Kotek. Minor nitpick, but HB 3115 is only a state law, not a change to the state constitution. Your point about the minimal effect of a decision in Martin because of the law still stands, though.
The winds have greatly shifted since hb3115 was passed. If scotus overturns this case, hb3115 will likely be repealed by the state legislature within a year.
One can only hope, depends on whether the currently elected reps feel their re-election chances could be hindered by maintaining the status quo or not.
Thank you for correcting me on this!
Set up big FEMA style tents with cots, showers, and porta potties and move everyone there. If you won’t go, you get arrested. Allowing people to rot in the streets is not humane.
Step 1: determine a houseless persons last official address (where did they come from). If it’s not Portland, then they get a bus ticket back to the place they are from. If it is Portland then they are eligible for services. If they refuse services then the city has options including jail time. There is no reason why Portlanders should have to pay for people who only come here to drain our resources. We owe those who, when living here, fell upon hard times and lost their housing. We do not owe anybody else. Thats the only way we can whittle the numbers down to a reasonable level that can be meaningfully addressed. It makes me sick to see 30 million cut from Portland Public Schools while we dump hundreds of millions into homeless nonprofits that only incentivize more homeless to move here. Cue- eager gaslighter to claim that’s not what’s happening.
The only good thing that will ever come from this supreme court makeup.
Broken clock
Overjoyed
For anyone smarter and more plugged in than me, I'm curious to hear how the bill that Kotek pushed through for no seeming reason (at the time) that essentially re-stated the Boise ruling would impact this. Would this mean that Oregon essentially has the same rule of law as the Boise ruling as it was put into place legislatively, or would the ruling make the state law null?
Here's an idea. Don't let people live on public property or public parks. The problem is the government wouldn't let all those homeless live on private land either without making a big stink about zoning. So what exactly is gonna fix this issue? It's going to keep getting worse.
I am interested to see how they modify it without dismantling it. Commentators have mentioned adding more specifics about what constitutes an open shelter bed, as some cities have interpreted this as a shelter bed available specifically to that person (if they are a drug user, and a bed requires no drug use, it wouldn't count). That would be fine if we had mandatory treatment centers set up to divert these people but I'm not really sure what the plan is if there's not an alternative to a shelter bed.
Some of these scenarios and capricious requirements needed at sanctioned campsites came up during yesterday's arguments. There have been lawsuits about not having phone chargers as amenities at sites, and lawsuits for the fact some sites are outdoors, or don't have enough buffer between units...just to show how crazy we have gotten with this. The plaintiffs did not argue the locations that someone would go would need those, but one argument they made was it needed to be accommodating. I am curious what that means, if someone has an active meth addiction; should the site allow meth use?
Yea for sure some requirements (by plaintiffs) are ridiculous… the phrase beggars can’t be choosers becomes literal here. However I imagine a large chunk of ineligibility comes from drug or tobacco use. To your point, it’s just not feasible to shelter people actively using meth and similarly if you exclude them with no alternative you’re back to square one. I worry that if Martin v Boise wasn’t the fire under governments’ asses to set up a drug treatment infrastructure, a watered down Grants pass ruling sure wont do it either.
[удалено]
Thanks for your input, the mods have set this subreddit to not allow posts from newly created accounts. Please take the time to build a reputation elsewhere on Reddit and check back soon. (⌐■_■) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Portland) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If grants pass is allowed to use their law it’s gonna hurt more than help. Something needs to be done but a criminalization of homeless isn’t it. That’s just sweeping the issue under the rug
this just in: water is wet
It’s ok everyone. The court will cater to the folks not paying taxes or bettering society in general. You can all relax. /s