Portland Homeless Camps Proliferate, Turning Lawns into Public Bathrooms – One Even Charges Rent

Homeless charging others for rent is not new. The same thing happens in Florida

 

What if they refuse to pay? I’m assuming there’s some physical threats involved since they can’t use legal means.

 

“About three years ago, Angel Grace Brown moved her tent onto the city-owned land here. She describes it as a safe place, and over the years she invited others to camp there as well. Now she charges people $200 per month to camp there. Some of that money goes toward camp maintenance.”

How does she charge rent on city-owned land?

Seattle allowed its parks to be overtaken a few years ago and swiftly reversed course.

I’ll never understand municipalities condoning this in residential areas.

 

You get what you vote for.

 

It sounds like a really ugly situation. But I don't have a clue about what's a good solution for the homeless.

 

I don’t think you can pin it entirely on cities as I doubt most of them are even from these places. The homeless are everywhere. But in a city you might get 100 of them congregating or camping together instead of 10. All a city can do is push them out, but when/if they do those same homeless just go somewhere else.

Supposedly the numbers are that roughly 2x as many homeless live in urban areas vs rural, and there are certainly factors that play into that (higher housing costs, more opportunities for handouts). But in rural areas people are less likely to be noticed/counted, so there is likely to be incomplete accounting as well.

The homeless thing is a national disgrace.

 

Much of it’s always going to be tied to drugs, not much can be done but putting these people in forced rehab and keeping them off the streets. A growing portion are the “working homeless”, that seems like it could be addressable but it would need a serious commitment to additional housing or subsidized housing.

Unfortunately just about everywhere has a NIMBY attitude, and to be fair I wouldn’t want a subsidized housing outside my community either. Who would? But seems like in a city you could at least take some blighted areas and make better use of that with some new construction, making sure a certain % are for affordable housing. Building outright “shelters” is harder because then you aren’t really addressing anything, you are just telling them where they can hang out and pretty much no business or residential wants that nearby.

 

agree. We had a informative thread a few months ago discussing correlation between increased drug addiction-opioid/meth and homelessness. Of course skyrocketing rent exacerbates homelessness

 

Now I definitely know you are a Bernie fan