{"id":713434,"date":"2022-06-23T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revealnews.org\/?p=173015"},"modified":"2022-06-23T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T10:00:00","slug":"police-know-arrests-wont-fix-homelessness-they-keep-making-them-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/06\/23\/police-know-arrests-wont-fix-homelessness-they-keep-making-them-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"Police Know Arrests Won\u2019t Fix Homelessness. They Keep Making Them Anyway."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Three<\/figure>\n

In the Lents neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, residents gathered at a public forum last June to voice their concerns about the city\u2019s growing population of homeless individuals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last decade, rent grew twice as fast in Portland as the rest of the country, and the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness increased by nearly 30%. The effects of those dynamics were on full display in Lents, one of the city\u2019s most racially diverse areas and among the neighborhoods where home prices had been rising the fastest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encampments had sprung up in parks and along bike and walking paths, and the tension between housed and unhoused residents simmered. Residents desperately wanted someone to address the litter, drug use and mental health crises they\u2019d seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Months earlier, the residents had expressed their frustrations to a police commander. This time, their guest was the commissioner of Portland\u2019s Housing Bureau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lents resident Martin Johnson complained about the trash left in yards and on streets. \u201cWe clean it up. They come back, we clean it up. They come back,\u201d he said. Johnson noted that he and his wife both carry concealed weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd if it happens in my yard, there\u2019s going to be a problem,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if we don\u2019t come up with a solution, you\u2019re gonna have some deaths around here if people are going in people\u2019s yards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few in the crowd cheered, or murmured, \u201cAmen.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the truth because we are frustrated, totally frustrated,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a tension that\u2019s playing out across West Coast cities, as the combination of a mental health crisis and a decadelong real estate boom have created a new, especially vulnerable, especially visible generation of the unhoused. They\u2019re \u201cunsheltered,\u201d meaning they live in cars, tents and makeshift shelters on the streets, rather than in shelters. Over the decade between 2009 and 2019, unsheltered homelessness continued to grow in California, Oregon and Washington, even as it declined in major cities outside the West Coast. And as the unsheltered increasingly live on streets in residential neighborhoods, their new neighbors have turned to one place for help in particular: the police. <\/p>\n\n\n\n