homeless in portland

Never Ask the Stupid Question

You ever just get into a thing where you do and keep doing until you get to the point you are exhausted and on autopilot and look back to wonder what you were doing to that point. That is EXACTLY how the past two weeks has been for me. Running for chair of the school senate committee on Government operations and finance, homework, nerve attacks, passing out, taping myself back together. Sometimes though, things work out in a way where you are just happy to have.

Despite being exhausted that running for the chair, well it is something more then that now. The problem is that a lot of things going on I am finding needs more then someone to help good ideas, they need someone willing to take the field as well. Always something to be done, and despite it my body is not the font of energy it once was and sometimes, especially since my nerve damage there are limits that have to be respected physically or there will be more problems then whatever good is done in those few moments.

The fraility of existence unfortunately is not something that can be mentally broken sometimes. It must be dealt with, in that dealing though new answers arise. Moments of thought sometime occur here, I like to call them sigma moments, not because of things like sigma grind set, but because it would be something Sigma the character (overwatch) would most likely think of.

So ya, a lot of things are happening here, which is why I went radio silence, things have gotten so hectic I have to actually use a calendar like a responsible adult. You know what I hadn’t looked at what has been happening in Portland since trying to help the students I represent. Hopefully it was a slow news week….

Ever ask yourself why you should ever ask a question that seems to be the start to disaster?

We are starting off with the Willamette Week, who did some interesting journalism this time. Some progress in some areas, but this article is about the value of money.

I am just going to save some pain and just go to the numbers. 82 units, refurbishing a building from 1911 and the refurbishment will cost 36.15 million dollars. Which is about 480,000 per unit or just about 13,00 per sq foot for units that have no bathroom or kitchens. I do not know about you, but this so expensive that anyone tries to explain this as a good value needs their head examined because the only reason this money is of some value is if it’s in someone savingsd account because you aren ot getting that value or even half of it on the work.

https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/02/01/the-fairfield-apartments-will-cost-1300-per-square-foot-when-renovated/

I would fire the people who okay-ed it, the people who accepted the contract, the company, anyone who thought this was a good idea. There would be mass firings of the failure that allowed this to stand. Why would all this be important, why would the value of things be needed especially now?

https://katu.com/news/local/portland-public-schools-announces-hiring-freeze-amid-budget-issues-education-school-academic-standardized-testing-teachers-teaching-enrollment#

Portland Public Schools and …

https://www.koin.com/news/portland/memo-portland-fire-and-rescue-to-freeze-spending-hiring/

Portland fire and rescue have to freeze spending both of them are within the range of the project or even could be heavily aided by the half that could be cut by the building if someone with a calculator worked in Portland politics.

Get some progress done, bask in the bright light if this stupidity and then try to make your day a little better

Stay Strong

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Portland Death Spiral

This blog was initially built on the idea that is going from homeless to a semi-productive member of society, there would be some things I can see that others would miss. One could even say that because of my intelligence and my experience, there are bits and details that politicians do not have or would only use in the political batoning for their own political side. Those who have read this know my politics are rather centered and may pull from both sides depending on what may be needed for specific problems to be removed or handled.

That being said, this is not against a side or a party.

Portland is spiraling into something not a lot of people want to be associated with. Stolen cars are being broken down in broad daylight. Homeless people all over, and laws that made it so there would be no problem carrying all kinds of drugs without a problem. The city commissioners went through protest after protest. Then, there was no movement when they had to rebuild from the ashes. All people who are against them have been deemed from the opposing party when they have made error after error, and the city right now is hurting to the point where no one wants to live there. Nobody wants to open a business there, and there are more taxes than in the surrounding areas.

There are so many problems that when you look at what is going on, you have to ask, where do you start? From that, I do not have an answer, and there is something that seems to be missing every day. Like the city had finally died, it feels passed on. While moments had been good, looking almost normal for small snippets, it is about what the normal is, and the normal in the city is a far shadow from what it once was. There are not enough good things coming, and a lot of the bad has been left to fester, meaning there is even more that needs to get done to bring it back. Again, it looks terrible, and there is not a lot that can be done right now without people enforcing laws and punishing those guilty. None of this is new, and if it is, look in the back posts; trust me, there is plenty to get mad about.

I haven’t written about my home city because unless it is more people not doing their jobs or people trying politically smack people only to get a riptide in the wrong direction, there just isn’t much to say. People in charge in Portland must be the most extensive collection of abject failures in politics. If any of them can look from this time and say they did a good job, I would love to hear their side because it looked like they just sat and played Genshin Impact all term.

Who knows, when things change, I will write about it, and if something is horrible, I will do that too, but right now, I really do not want to. May do some cheap and fun foods to make for later. With the cost of everything, we can all use a couple extra pennies for groceries. We shall see, though.

Keep your head up and stay strong.

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Unfashionably Late

I had plans to get something out talking about the progress on projects and about how it all was building to seemingly more and more and it was going to be very warm and fuzzy. Except for those why may know the history of this blog may remember that this was originally established when due to family issues I was forced out with very little notice.

Then the plan was to do a pat on the back because despite learning of the homeless situation and learning what has built into it, there really wasn’t much to crow about. I was right. There are problems and people really dragged their heels to work on it. I will however still post this gif because some people really wanted to argue about how right I was.

Sometimes it does help when some people actually listen to what is being said.

With that out of the way now we have some issues, I have been trying to stay away from the homeless situation to some degree because I am no longer homeless, except something that has been sticking in my craw has come to be a full-blown annoyance and I feel I have to write about it here and that is I would expect someone from the portland scene to write about the situation and nothing has been done of it since then. I did not want to be the loudest voice trying to talk about my home city on this subject but it has been two full years since I wrote more in-depth on it and I feel that I need to again, especially with how the city has failed its citizens both in housing and not.

I am not going to say that I will be doing so many articles a day but there are some things I think need to be looked at and my place is as good as any. On top of all that it seems that no one really wants to talk about how the problem will need to be handled for the sake of as many people as possible. Right now, what I am worried about is a group of people in Portland trying to make decisions quickly to make up for years of inactivity and going too far on it making their efforts that much of complete failure.

Does this mean that I am stopping anything? Nope, in fact, provided I can get my list of smaller things done I will see how people can just be subbed to that as it seems some of you really like to hear about that subject.

You know the drill, stay strong.

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Portland, We Have A Problem.

Portland has exploded in terms of gun violence. It is one of the things that has may me want to breathe fire. I will be as neutral as I can be because honestly I do not think either side is the all evil. I will say however to anyone wondering that we have had Mayors we ran themselves as Democrats for 29 years. Bud Clark was an independent and his term ended December 1992 and the last Republican mayor was Connie McCready who was a female journalist who was mayor only after someone else died, and was the mayor during the St. Helens eruption. No shade there I just found that an interesting tidbit, and it may save you during a trivia night.

Point of the whole matter, what if you in front of your screen were brought with news that your home city had gun crime that had gone up close to 300% between two years. Some may ask, what are the details, and I will further explain. What if from January 2019 to December 2020 shootings gone up three times over, and on top of that reports are just coming out that this year in a single month we have had almost a hundred shooting incident in a month.

Those are from the City of Portland’s own tally. What if from 2019, to 2020 we went from almost 400 incidents to almost 900?

Knowing we are almost at hundred in a month we can break a thousand this year, and that makes me want to take the circus dive challenge in to a barrel of alcohol strong enough I would forget my own name. This is disgraceful.

Some may then bring up that the majority is driven by the police shootings.

There are some and even some errors made by some officers but they are in the clear minority versus everything else.

We are looking at a huge increase in gun violence and here is the problem. The number one move to get away from such things is move out, great for some, but what if you cannot, what if you are stuck. Portland has few positives right now but cheap and safe ways to move out of the city is not one of them. People are going to be more apt to fight, they will brawl and more people will be shot and it will be at the feet of the city commissioners and the mayor. Not about their politics, but about execution they have failed to such a degree that all of them should refund their wages back to the city and remove themselves in shame for the failure that their tenure has been. All of them, fail after fail after fail and now there is more blood in the streets then ever.

It is not just about shelter, it is about safety, and being somewhere where some can learn good habits and now, we as a state decided that having small amounts of hard drugs is only a fine. No one can tell me how this will actually help, so if anyone will volunteer such secrets I would be appreciative. Some say they have faith they know what the politicians in this city are doing. I trust them as far as they can throw me and since I am a card carrying member of the super heavyweight division, and I actually know a little about defending being thrown that ain’t an inch.

We as a city need to do better. Our homeless, our citizens, our people deserve better. While I tried to inject some humor in places how can anyone feel safe when you know it takes twelve minutes on average for police to help you in high risk crimes like shootings when you know when every second counts.

The world will get better but it will take time.

Stay strong and stay safe.

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