I lived in Vancouver WA for a while. Portland is the worst city I've experienced in this country. You can see trash and needles strewn along the sides of the highways from Portland all the way to Seattle. Enormous homeless camps butted right up to school parks and playgrounds and at nearly every inner-city interchange. Graffiti deliberately painted over traffic signs to confuse drivers, or signs removed altogether (doesn't get fixed or replaced). My wife and I went downtown with our son once, and had to park amongst a sea of tents - several of which were actively on fire, and yet they have the audacity to ask you to pay for parking. There was a major bridge downtown with signage on it begging for donations to repair it (in one of the heaviest taxed cities in the nation). The homeless are not your typical "don't bother me and I won't bother you" types, they are aggressive, unruly, and seem to have a chip on their shoulder against anyone not also homeless. Many of them have serious mental issues, and the drug use is egregious. I'm talking shooting up in public parks and on sidewalks outside of businesses essentially daring families to try and utilize the space. They've taken over every public space and they know it. They seem to relish in it.
Portland has the distinct feel of a decayed, crumbling, forgotten, abandoned city, and yet they still collect 8% or more in non-progressive income tax. I'd always tell my wife that there must be some incredibly rich politicians in Oregon, because all that tax money is going straight into their pockets. You can visibly see that none of it goes back to the city.
Here is the worst part about Portland. You can't talk about it. If you so much as mention the homeless problem, the infrastructure issues, the criminally misused taxes, or any of the myriad other problems rotting the city, you will be promptly and viciously mobbed by extreme left-wing nutjobs. They are so protective over their sh*t-hole city it almost boggles the mind. How does a city even begin fixing it's issues if they can't even be discussed? But they'd have you believe Portland is some gem of paradise, when it's really more like a bunch of mentally-ill extremists gleefully playing in shit that they mistakenly believe to be gold. To make matters even worse, there's a pervading counter-culture of extreme right-wing nutjobs as well. So there's no middle-ground at all, no common thread of community, it's simply a bunch of people that are so far to one side or the other that it feels as if everyone has lost their minds.
Portland is a truly weird place I'll never return to. And Portland prides itself on that fact.
I would love to know the name of the streets the police say are I safe to enter, please post.
