The Future of Portland

The current situation in Portland is pretty alarming; there’s a possible chance that we can end the houseless crisis sooner rather than later. We can repurpose old buildings that aren’t being used and turn them into shelters. Each shelter can only house so much; shelters on average can hold about 100 people. For example, the Laurelwood center use to be a grocery store that can house up to 120 people. Take in people who are vulnerable like women, children, and disabled. Has a commercial kitchen that will feed the residents twice a day, a clinic, and an astroturf area for residents that have pets. There are thousands of houseless people on the streets now, the least we can do is find new ways of action that can happen fast, smoothly, and consistently.  

The reason we should repurpose buildings rather than build new ones. It’s easier to renovate, it takes a while to find an affordable empty lot, get funding, develop plans or blueprints on what to build, the process of building it, and check for health safety guidelines. The whole process takes months maybe a whole year to get it approved and developed. If we want to get the houseless population down, we have to plan quicker. The only repercussion in doing this is that it could bring down the value of an area. An example of this situation is Santa Fe, New Mexico, they developed an area that supports the houseless community but now it's known as a slums area. To combat that we would have to enforce community guidelines, rehab centers, social services nearby, last thing we want is the houseless community relapsing and never getting out of the cycle. 

Portland is a pretty condensed area, the amount of property available is limited and prices don’t seem to change anytime soon. It doesn’t help that Portland’s housing market is high, apartments in downtown Portland are crazy expensive even low-income housing is getting expensive. At the moment a lot of houseless communities don’t trust the local government to help. They initiated a 2.5 billion plan to get rid of it, but as we have seen through our own eyes, we haven’t seen anything change. Let’s make it more aware to the public that it starts with the people.