One Day With the Squad That Removes Needles and Feces From Downtown Portland

Are narcoterrorists from Central and South America the difference? Is this a new heroin, why the 10x leap in needles in five years?

Is the difference that mental health is left to someone other than the state?

As a native Portlander and someone that thinks the city should be involved in helping people get out of addiction and homelessness, this story is riveting, tragic, hopeful and maddening all at once.

SF can learn a lot from Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio: they don’t have city blocks covered with shit, needles, or people living in tents on the sidewalks. The more SF “helps,” the more they attract. Houston is the 4th largest city and has a fraction of the homeless. Red districts seem to have less income inequality and fewer homeless and lower poverty.[1]

The San Francisco Approach seems to always be “let’s spend more money on the problem.” But basic economics suggests that subsidizing something gives you more of it. For example, unemployment benefits in France are extremely generous, and you have double and triple the unemployment than in the US. Many people in France stay on unemployment to the last possible moment before they seek a job because the system incentivizes just that. The problem as I see it is that liberals tend to make policies from a position of emotion, such as “we can’t cut because that’s cruel.” However, it is just like feeding stray cats: you feed them and that promotes more strays. If you raise a Lion in captivity, they never learn to hunt and thus they are forever destined to being the wards of the state.

This is a highly unpopular opinion around here to be sure, but if we are being honest, the current policies promote a society of dependency. San Franciscans often cite a pleasant climate as a reason for so many homeless choosing to live in the city, however, for a homeless person, San Francisco weather is a lot colder and more miserable than many other places in the US. So why does San Francisco have such an incredible addiction and homeless problem? Perhaps it’s policies that allow homeless people to shoot up on the street? Perhaps it’s the higher availability of homeless services from well-meaning, but naïve non-profits? One of the richest and most liberal cities in the world — and a profound homeless problem. Is there a correlation? Could the policies of liberal Portland and San Francisco actually be the problem? I had to spend some time in New Haven and Hartford and, as someone from Texas, I was amazed at the total slums right next to gated millionaire neighborhoods. Despite high taxes to “help” the problem, it only seems to make it worse.

What am I missing? I am not trying to throw gasoline on the issue, but I genuinely don’t understand. California is almost 80% Democrat, so supposedly, the state is unencumbered by pesky conservatives, yet the problem seems to be getting progressively worse. It isn’t the federal government’s fault because otherwise there’d be similar levels of problems everywhere else.

[1] https://www.axios.com/income-inequality-blue-red-districts-6...