Although it was a warm day, I started early and enjoyed perfect conditions. Not difficult at all, but at least I gave myself an easy success to build on. Only 1450 feet elevation gain and less than 5 miles out and back. I chose Angel’s Rest as my first warm up hike – I only had the morning, and didn’t want to drive far. Saturday June 22 was a rare, quiet early morning hike in the Columbia River Gorge with just the dog and my camera. 30.Back in late June, I was in a panic over getting in shape to hike up to the Mt St Helens summit, by our permit date, July 2. The City Council passed the mayor’s plan on homelessness on Nov. “These millions of dollars would be better spent addressing the root causes of homelessness and preventing further homelessness.” “This is further criminalization of our homeless population,” said Daisy Quiñonez, a former planning and sustainability commissioner for the city. One resident accused commissioners of “putting money into internment camps.” During a heated public meeting after the election, a succession of progressive activists criticized the measure. The City Council did not immediately approve Wheeler’s new plan to create 20,000 new affordable housing units in the next 10 years. But the contest was close, and Portland is still divided between different strains of liberalism and leftism. Hardesty was defeated in many of Portland’s blue-collar and diverse neighborhoods. They also voted out Hardesty in favor of Rene Gonzalez, a moderate Democrat who campaigned on cracking down on crime, getting people off the sidewalks and balancing compassion with the expectation of following the law. In November, voters approved a historic ballot measure to scrap Portland’s unusual form of government - which had five citywide council members serving as at-large representatives - and replace it with a more typical mayor-council system of 12 commissioners, a mayor and a city administrator. Still, Wheeler called the homelessness crisis a “humanitarian catastrophe” in October and proposed a sharp change in strategy - banning unsanctioned camping on city streets by 2024 and setting up large, designated campsites where unsheltered people can access services, including addiction and mental health treatment. Officials plan to eventually have six across the city. The city’s first Safe Rest Village, a temporary outdoor shelter of 30 tiny homes designed to help people transition into permanent housing, opened last summer. Since he became mayor in 2017, annual city spending for homeless housing and services has climbed from about $27 million to a record $94 million. Wheeler said cities across the nation were seeing spikes in homelessness and argued that the culprit was a failure of state and federal safety nets. “It very much begins to erode that whole progressive ethos that the city has had,” said historian Chet Orloff, adjunct professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University.Ĭonservatives have blamed Portland’s troubles on left-wing policies: police cuts that led to a drop in morale and staffing shortages harm reduction programs that offer homeless addicts shelter and other services without insisting they pass background checks or be sober and the state’s Measure 110, which decriminalized small amounts of hard drugs. But the surge in crime has resulted in an identity crisis. A recent study showed Portland ranks about average compared with 40 other cities when it comes to homicide, assault and robbery rates. The unhoused roll shopping carts of stuffed trash bags down empty streets as construction crews erect a glossy 35-story Ritz-Carlton, the city’s first five-star hotel. Hood.īut downtown, some buildings remain boarded up. Portland still has many of its charms: towering firs and giant sequoias, efficient light rail and bike lanes, microbreweries and craft markets, and views of snow-capped Mt. “Now, when I think of progressive, I think of extremism.” “‘Progressive’ means something different now than when it did when I was growing up,” the longtime Democrat said. But, he said, people felt less safe and the city had a duty to respond. John Toran, 47, the Black owner of a construction company who was born and raised in Portland, said he understood the bail fund was trying to counter malicious prosecution and inequality in the criminal justice system. A week later, Portland police arrested Adan after finding Abraham, a 36-year-old Black woman, in her home strangled to death and slashed in the face with a kitchen knife.
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