Comment by swearwolf

People are downvoting this, but it’s true. There’s a little more nuance here as well. In addition to fully tolerated public drug possession and consumption, there is also the tolerance of street camping, and the extremely low prices of meth and fentanyl on the West Coast at play here. However a person enters the drug addiction spiral, once they’re in it, it’s easier by far to stay in active addiction here. In Oregon, where I live, people can either scrounge enough cans to take to the recycling center - about 20 will do - or use their EBT card to buy bottles of water, empty them and then recycle the bottles to get the cash deposit. Either way, less than $10 will buy enough meth to stay high for days here. I assume it’s similar for fentanyl. No one will stop you from setting up your tent or RV on street, and at least in Portland you can steal bikes or cars to earn extra money. There’s a chop shop within sight of my house doing exactly that, all day every day out in the open. You can get enough food from the many homeless services organizations and tents are given out by the city. Essentially everything a person needs to completely destroy themselves with drugs is available for free or nearly free, and law enforcement stopped bothering to try to keep things under control. These conditions are fairly unique to Oregon, Washington and California, so I think the high housing price correlation is true, but also incomplete.