{"id":15764,"date":"2025-12-23T16:54:38","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T23:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15764"},"modified":"2025-12-24T15:53:48","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:53:48","slug":"372-dead-on-the-streest-in-portland-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15764","title":{"rendered":"372 dead homeless on the streets of Portland in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In another sad year of killing people with &#8216;kindness&#8217;, Portland Oregon has had another record year of dead in the streets. The data on 2024 homeless deaths was just released and reported 372 homeless found dead on sidewalks and in city ditches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to know if your public health policy is working &#8211; you should measure it. The metrics here show that once Oregon legalized drug use, legalized camping, and provided free referrals and free drug treatment options &#8211; deaths went from around 80 per year to over 370. That&#8217;s going from around 1 death a week to more than one a day. How much is supposed compassion worth when jail did a much better job saving lives than the well meaning but misguided free drug use kits, drug legalization, free tents, and enablement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opb.org\/article\/2025\/12\/19\/homelessness-portland-oregon-mulnomah-county-deaths-housing\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.opb.org\/article\/2025\/12\/19\/homelessness-portland-oregon-mulnomah-county-deaths-housing\/\">city leaders pat themselves on the back<\/a> because it&#8217;s just 22 less deaths than 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>St. Andr\u00e9 Bessette Catholic Church (a place I have volunteered at many times) <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/e\/1FAIpQLSfJUr6im2oZNKzxCiguCaQdoMF5eRebzcbDyGX-lW5YvtIIWA\/viewform\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">will hold a memorial service<\/a> for homeless that died due to Portland&#8217;s policies on Dec. 21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/multco.us\/file\/domicile_unknown_report%3A_analyzing_deaths_in_2024\/download\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/multco.us\/file\/domicile_unknown_report%3A_analyzing_deaths_in_2024\/download\">Full report here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=12875\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"529\" data-attachment-id=\"12876\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?attachment_id=12876\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2024\/12\/deaths.png?fit=711%2C588&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"711,588\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"deaths\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2024\/12\/deaths.png?fit=640%2C529&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2024\/12\/deaths.png?resize=640%2C529&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12876\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2024\/12\/deaths.png?w=711&amp;ssl=1 711w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2024\/12\/deaths.png?resize=300%2C248&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2024\/12\/deaths.png?resize=326%2C270&amp;ssl=1 326w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In another sad year of killing people with &#8216;kindness&#8217;, Portland Oregon has had another record year of dead in the streets. The data on 2024 homeless deaths was just released and reported 372 homeless found dead on sidewalks and in city ditches. If you want to know if your public health policy is working &#8211; you should measure it. The metrics here show that once Oregon legalized drug use, legalized camping, and provided free referrals and free drug treatment options&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15764\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-local-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-46g","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15764"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15780,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15764\/revisions\/15780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}