Portland

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Welcome to the lemmy.world community for Portland, Oregon!

This community has kind of been empty since it was created, I'm hoping to change that!

Unlike "other" Portland communities you may have seen "elsewhere", I believe in a "warts and all" approach. You are free to take off your Rose tinted glasses and talk about topics that are dragging our city down.

At the same time, sunset pics, snowmageddon, traffic monster, cones, that's all welcome as well. Let's collectively keep Portland weird!

2024 is going to be an interesting year politically with all the changes to city government, I will attempt to tag political threads with a [Politics] tag and encourage users to do so as well.

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Don't attack other users.

It's OK to go after Teargas Ted, it's OK to say Rene Gonzales is a fascist, ACAB, BLM, whatever floats your boat (WEFYB).

It's NOT OK to attack or diminish another user. Feel free to disagree, you can point out the many ways you think they're wrong, just don't start throwing perjoratives AT OTHER USERS.

Links to know!

Portland Trailblazers Schedule!

https://www.nba.com/blazers/schedule

Portland Winterhawks Home Game Schedule!

https://www.rosequarter.com/events/winterhawks

Portland Timbers Pre-Season Starts in February!

https://www.timbers.com/schedule/matches#competition=all&date=2024-02-10

founded 1 year ago

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jordanlund

My friend was a popular, promising artist - how did he end up on the streets of Portland, addicted and dangerous? (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by jordanlund to c/portland_oregon

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Seems like they are over complicating it...

"Evan’s younger brother had experienced some serious mental health issues and he was awaiting news of a diagnosis."

"his mother was a schizophrenic and a heroin addict who often paid for her drug habit with sex. They were homeless, moving constantly. Often she would head off for days at a time, leaving Evan with friends or relatives, or sometimes on his own, without food. When he was 11, she took her own life"

"Evan’s father began to suffer with mental health issues. By the time the pandemic arrived, he was in full crisis, using drugs and worried enough about Covid that he had locked himself inside his house. For a week, Evan stayed with him, and they shuttled back and forth to hospital as his father experienced mounting phobias and suicidal thoughts, but refused treatment. At the end of that week, his father took his own life."

Dude literally had the deck stacked against him.

"The real problem came when Evan inherited his share of his father’s estate – $170,000. He used some of the money to rent an apartment. “But I had extreme schizophrenia and I just filled it with trash because I was so out of my mind,” he says. “I was seeing faces dripping down the walls, I couldn’t even be in there.”"

And this, kids, is why the "Housing First" model won't work. Mental Health and addiction treatment have to come first THEN housing.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Housing first is a gift to developers and designed to appeal to middle class baby boomer understanding of the economy. But where is the organized lobbying industry group (doctors? Hospitals?) to accept a gift of treatment centers that appeals to the increasingly numerous friends/relatives-of-mentally-ill-people and others who realize this abundance of disorder is a symptom of global changes and not just a ridiculous number of individuals lacking "character"?