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citiesbydiana does some hilarious parodies of various city stereotypes. Here’s the one for Portland and it’s pretty accurate.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by 🇺🇲💥🧨‼️🦅Diana🦅‼️🧨💥🇺🇲 (@citiesbydiana)

Portland’s homeless don’t just camp on the streets – they’re also living on ramshackle and abandoned boats at an ever-increasing rate. Unfortunately, they are a source of a lot of solid human waste and pollution – especially when they sink or are abandoned. Recently they’ve been parking them right in the middle of downtown right beside OMSI children’s museum or St Johns.

The problem is only getting worse. 44 boats were removed from the river in 2024 through funding from the Oregon State Marine Board and the American Rescue Plan Act. Over the past three years, a total of 88 boats were retrieved from the river including 25 in 2022 and 19 in 2023. It doesn’t help that the parks department is forced to store the boats for 30 days before they can clean up the mess.

Either way, it’s costing us millions to get rid of them.

In a step sideways; the city is spending a lot to dispose of voluntarily surrendered boats before they’re abandoned. It prevents them from being abandoned/taken by homeless, but still costs taxpayers to dispose of them.

Articles:

• https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/governor-kotek-earmarks-millions-removal-derelict-vessels/283-2f557b6e-d0b5-4ee7-bd16-8145af450c37
• https://www.koin.com/local/multnomah-county/willamette-river-patrol-pirate-abandoned-boat-removal-2024
• https://www.kptv.com/2024/06/05/north-portland-neighbors-concerned-over-derelict-boats-cathedral-park/
• https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/sunken-boats-removed-columbia-river-st-helens/283-0d593216-6b2d-4d77-a878-e50bb321be78

A 2024 report on city finances report gave Portland a full on ‘F’ for the state of it’s finances. Primarily due to the incredible debt burden of each resident. This isn’t a surprise considering Portland has the second highest tax rates in the country, and is currently facing a $27 million budget shortfall (especially as it’s tax base flees across the state line to Vancouver and businesses increasingly are leaving as well)

Read more about the state of the cities finances as well as thoughts of your favorite other major US cities.

Articles:

• https://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/Financial-State-of-the-Cities-2024.pdf
• https://www.wweek.com/news/2025/01/01/the-city-of-portland-projects-a-27-million-budget-shortfall-but-it-will-balloon-to-much-more/

In another example of well meaning but misguided homeless advocacy policies, Portland is seeing a dramatic increase in suffering and death – at much higher rates than the rest of the country that is seeing declines. A report from the Multnomah county medical examiner shows homeless deaths have been increasing at a dramatic rate year over year – despite some of the strongest implementation and policies that spending millions in free tents, permit free camping, wide distribution of free ‘harm reduction’ drug use kits, legalization of drug use, suspension of prosecution for drug crimes, and open door offers of free treatment.

It turns out that after a decade of homeless advocacy groups encouraging these policies, they are actually increasing deaths at an alarming and clear rate far higher rates than even imprisonment ever did. The death rates can be mapped almost 1-1 with policy implementation. The end result is dramatically more suffering and deaths.

Which should be no surprise. Activists and advocacy groups are not medical or scientific groups. They’re simply (at best) social workers with a particular agenda – many without any training or background in the causes they are behind. It’s probably time we started questioning the policies and money spent by activists and advocacy groups just like we do the proposed policies of politicians. If someone truly cares about the plight of homeless, it’s our duty to question and hold these groups accountable for the deaths the policies are causing.

All of this also in spite of a massive new homeless income tax – proving once again that it’s not a money or compassion problem – but a leadership problem.

Data available in the annual Domicile Unknown Multnomah County Health Department report.

Finders Keepers runs the yearlong hidden glass float events on the central Oregon coast and just released its 2025 schedule Tuesday, detailing its 16 special drops over the course of the year, in addition to its daily drops on Lincoln City beaches.

• Jan. 3-5 – 25th Anniversary Opening Weekend: 100 floats
• Feb. 8-17 – Antique week: 100 Japanese antique-style floats
• Feb. 14-16 – Valentine’s Day: 50 Red/pink/white floats
• March 22-April 19 – Spring break: 200 floats
• April 19-22 – Earth Day: 50 Earth Day floats
• May 9-11 – Mother’s Day: 50 floats
• June 13-15 – Father’s Day: 50 floats
• June 20-21 – Casino Anniversary: 30 floats
• June 21-22 – Summer Kite: 10 floats
• Aug. 30-Sept 1 – Ocean Conservation: 40 floats
• Sept. TBD – Celebration of Honor: 50 Red/white/blue floats
• Sept. 20-21 – Fall Kite: 10 floats
• Oct. 11-14 – Indigenous Peoples Day: 50 floats
• Oct. 31-Nov. 2 – Halloween: 50 floats
• Nov. 14-16 – Restoration Pow-Wow: 50 floats
• Dec. 12-14 – Holiday: 50 floats

Articles

• https://www.oregonlive.com/travel/2024/11/hidden-glass-floats-are-back-on-the-oregon-coast-for-2025-heres-when-to-look.html

The best description I have heard of Portland when I got here in the late 90’s was that it was a city full of shipwrecks and refugees – where people wash up on it’s shores with few prospects and sketchy pasts. Portland is nothing if not a strange place. You’ll find odd things posted on poles all over town. Every now and again, someone will dig into one of these to find out what they’re about. The Willamette Valley Dream Survey is one of those. Long story short: the most recent branch of this that showed up in Utah revolves around a doomsday prediction on Sept 5th, 2020.

Nexpo did a little over-dramatic dig into the phenomenon by going so far to buy a burner phone and calling them. He also digs into a local 2600-like hacker group called Futel (he pronounces it wrong, it’s pronounce Few-tell – like ‘futile’ as a play on words about telephone monopolies and other alt-conspiracy type plays on words). that converts old payphones into free (likely VOIP) phones.

• Reddit posting: https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/1gz8lz3/was_taking_a_walk_and_saw_this_couldnt_get_a/
• Happy Valley Dream Survey: https://www.reddit.com/r/RBI/comments/gds79y/happy_valley_dream_surveys_a_personorganization/?share_id=VwUeGwSqFJS1Iq4VOWPWl&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

Was taking a walk and saw this, couldn't get a better picture
byu/Various_Oven_1362 inPortland

ADP, the payroll company, has shared the lowest and highest median salaries by state. They used the wages and salaries of almost 10 million employees over 12 months to collect their data.

The results? Oregon is 48th – essentially tied with Arkansas and below Nevada as having the worst pay in the country.

Rank	State	Average annual salary
48	Oregon	$50,100
49	Arkansas	$50,000
50	Mississippi	$46,000
51	New Mexico	$40,200

Article:

• https://payinsights.adp.com/
• https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/oregon-has-one-of-the-lowest-media-salaries-in-the-us-new-data-shows/

The housing shortage in Portland seems to be improving – until you look at why. It’s not because Portland (with some of the most housing unfriendly policies in the country) is building more houses (they are a little bit) but because people are leaving.

What is happening in San Francisco—and in Portland, to a lesser extent—is that the housing shortage is temporarily improving, not because of the construction of new housing but because people are moving away to cheaper places.

In a case study on San Francisco, the Up for Growth report noted an issue that a report from the Common Sense Institute Oregon highlighted earlier this week.

“Household formation in these areas significantly decreased. Driven in no small part by the high cost of housing, households that could have formed in these communities formed somewhere else instead

Article

• https://www.wweek.com/news/2024/11/02/national-report-on-housing-shortage-places-oregon-among-10-states-struggling-most-to-produce-new-units/

The fantastic choir at St Mary’s Cathedral in Portland will be having an hour of singing and carols from 11:00pm until midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

Come in, listen or sign along, and find some peace and joy in a world so desperately in need of both.