I moved to Portland a year ago. We certainly have a lot of homeless people, many of which are people caught up in the substance abuse cycle with particular drugs. However, one day I was driving back to East Portland, I drove under an underpass that's a particularly rough place. I saw a woman that looked to be my mom's age with what appeared to be a modern suit case, she was well dressed, and sober looking. The blood drained from me head to toe; as I said, I saw my mom in that person and I was instantly depressed. When I got home I decided I'd drive back to the underpass the next day. When I did she was gone. There are a lot of services here if you're sober so I suspect they swooped in and found her.
Portland's housing problem is multifold. There's not enough single unit housing, but even single family homes are affected by an overly burdensome and expensive permitting process. It adds thousands of dollars to construction and creates a lot of delays so when a house is torn down the lot sits empty. The city also allowed a number of lots to be classified as historical; one near my house is now just a vacant lot that a historical home used to sit on but burned down. You now can't build on that lot. We need to get rid of historical homes in Portland, we need to geographically diversify the housing density, and we need a full scale review of our permitting process.
Portland's housing problem is multifold. There's not enough single unit housing, but even single family homes are affected by an overly burdensome and expensive permitting process. It adds thousands of dollars to construction and creates a lot of delays so when a house is torn down the lot sits empty. The city also allowed a number of lots to be classified as historical; one near my house is now just a vacant lot that a historical home used to sit on but burned down. You now can't build on that lot. We need to get rid of historical homes in Portland, we need to geographically diversify the housing density, and we need a full scale review of our permitting process.