Kotek and Blumenauer Tell Local Officials: Fix Rampant Drug Use on Portland Streets, Now
Kotek and Blumenauer Tell Local Officials: Fix Rampant Drug Use on Portland Streets, Now
The issue will continue until the underlying causes are addressed. Prevent corporations from buying property by taxing the absolute hell out of third+ homes and taxing if unoccupied. Housing is a necessity, not a commodity and should be treated accordingly.
A lack of housing isn't the problem. Portland has a residential vacancy rate of 6%, just about normal and 0.7% under the national average.
The problem is people out of their minds on booze and drugs can't hold a job long enough to pay for ANY housing.
How does housing solve drug addiction?
I don't think housing can "solve" drug addiction. However, there are factors that have been shown to contribute to addiction from homelessness. Less stability, regular trauma, mental health, etc causes all of these things to interact and exasperate each other.
The frustrating part is that voters keep telling the city, county, and state to invest in all of these areas. Measure 110 was supposed to create more space to have drug addiction treated, and there was no follow through. Now, further existing infrastructure is closing with no replacement. Similarly with housing, voters overwhelmingly keep calling for housing solutions, but any progress turns into new vendor procurement, deals with developers that don't follow through, and half baked plans that don't materialize.
Also, I think it's important to remember that a lot of drug addiction happens amongst the housed. We just don't see it. But as our coworker who is struggling falls apart, loses their job, and times get tough the more likely they will be the one moving from pain pills at home to fentanyl in the streets.
I'm glad some of the electeds are at least acting like they are as frustrated as I am. I hope they actually do something about it. (thought the need for national reform on both housing and drug addiction also can't be ignored).
Soooo we closed the drunk tank right after making drugs legal. What could possibly go wrong?
Welllll, to clarify, we did not close it. The organization that was running it, Central City Concern, closed it. Specifically because it turns out that people on meth behave somewhat differently than people who have had one too many Tecates:
The agency said they received more and more patients in the midst of a mental crisis, agitated from opioid or meth use or a combination of both, leading to increased safety risks.
“More and more, we’re seeing people ending up in the sobering center when they should be in places where they can be given medication and a higher level of monitoring until their crisis subsides,” Dr. Amanda Risser, Central City Concern’s senior medical director of substance use disorder services told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an interview last week. “We don’t have medicine, we don’t have padded safety rooms and we don’t have the resources at the sobering center to do the hands-on intervention that happens in psychiatric centers. It just isn’t an acceptable risk anymore.”