Obituary

The L.A. Times sizes up Portland's current trashed state with surprising accuracy here. 

“Portland makes it really easy to be homeless,” said Cindy Stockton, a homeowner in the wooded St. Johns neighborhood in north Portland who has grown alarmed by the fallout. “There’s always somebody giving away free tents, sleeping bags, clothes, water, sandwiches, three meals a day — it’s all here.”...

“A lot of people out here are criminals, flat out,” said James Carter, 60, who became homeless after losing his job as an automotive refinish technician early in the pandemic and now lives out of a cargo van. “Stolen cars get dropped on this road constantly. There have been dead bodies.”

Carter, too, uses heroin. He and others said they support their habit by using food stamp benefits to purchase pallets of bottled water, then empty the water and recycle the bottles for cash. Some said they steal electronics from big-box stores and resell the goods. They say the retailers generally don’t try to stop them, worried about the risk of violence to their employees.

It's so out of control. And yet so many people are fine with it. They'll vote for Tina Kotek, Jo Ann Hardesty, Jessica Vega Pederson, the Metro bobblehead, all the other failed incumbents. The Weed and the Merc will root them on, then wonder why there are no businesses left to advertise in them. So dies a once-nice little city.