'We're done with Portland': Residents say they are fed up with crime and homelessness

It has only been about 2 weeks since KGW 8 aired a report about people leaving the city of Portland because of crime and homelessness. A few days ago the site published another story along the same lines. People are just fed up with the city’s problems and are ready to abandon ship.

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“At 8 o’clock in the morning there are folks that are smoking meth, they’re shooting up, there’s domestic violence. It’s absolutely absurd,” said Nathan Lamb.

Lamb said he’s lived in the neighborhood for six years, and his 6-year-old son with a disability just started school again and couldn’t safely access his school bus due to the camps.

“A couple of times we had to come out with slumped over individuals and say, ‘Hey! My son’s handicap bus is coming in about five minutes, can you please move along?'” he said.

Lamb and his neighbors spent months writing and calling the city before the absurdly named Rapid Response Bio-Clean team finally showed up to clean up the mess. “We feel like these individuals get more rights than we do,” he told KGW. Lamb’s neighbors aren’t optimistic that the clean streets will last.

“I’m not going to hold my breath,” said Rebecca Philip, who lives three doors down from Lamb. “We’re done with Portland.”

Philip said she and her husband are moving to Washington next month because of the camps, and watching the camps get cleared Monday morning didn’t change her mind.

“Our number one reason is because of the homeless. We’re sick of it,” she said. “We’ve had many camps moved out of here and as soon as they clear them out, they move right back in.”

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One of the people who has been camping near Philip’s house confirmed she was right. “It’s like, thank you for cleaning up the tampons and the f***g booty juice and stuff that’s on the ground, we appreciate that,” [Medina Dawan] said, “but two seconds later all that s*** about to be back on the f***g ground because we don’t have a place to stay. We’re on drugs and that’s just what it is.”

Wednesday of this week, KOIN 6 published a similar report focused on a family that recently arrived in Portland. Four months later, they are already thinking about leaving because of the homelessness and crime.

Demetryus Bright recently took a job with the Portland Timbers as an account executive and moved his family from Ohio to Portland, hoping to escape the rampant gun violence. But after four months, his wife already wants their family to leave.

Bright says the homeless camps in the South Tabor neighborhood have him fearing for his family’s safety and that his car and home have been vandalized. He also said there have been fires on the street, including one that took place Tuesday night.

“It’s kind of disappointing. I worked hard to get where I’m at, to move my family 36 hours, to deal with this? No,” he said. “Gunshots and gun violence and that’s one reason we moved, to get away from stuff like that. And to feel safe walking to school, and to move to a nice neighborhood but it’s like there are people doing narcotics sitting outside. We can’t let our kids go outside and play on the front porch, let alone walk to school.”

Bright told KOIN 6 News that issues with the homeless have gotten so bad, that his wife now wants to take their children and move back to Ohio.

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Why do drug addicts get to break the law and ruin the neighborhood for everyone who is trying to contribute to society? Probably because there are an army of activists paid to make sure none of these people go to jail. Instead their petty crimes get ignored and they pass through the system like ghosts, using up hundreds of hours of police and fire department time in the process. It’s not fair to anyone that these people get treated differently than the people who are expected to tolerate their misbehavior and pay for their care.

Here’s the KGW 8 report.

And finally, here’s the KOIN 6 report about Demetryus Bright. Stick around to the end of this clip to hear what a police officer told Bright after his car got vandalized.

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