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{snip} Like other big cities with major challenges, such as Chicago and San Francisco, Portland boasts many lovely areas and vibrant neighborhoods. But it is also defined by a range of pervasive problems – including crime, homelessness, drug addiction – that are less the consequences of modern society than self-inflicted wounds created by ineffective policies. If Portland stands out from other beleaguered cities, it is because its decline has been so swift.
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Last fall, after the city acquired a reputation for crime, homelessness, and dysfunction, Oregon politicians rushed to media outlets to assure the nation that the city was not literally on fire. They were responding to comments from President Trump, who said, “the place is burning down, just burning down,” following violent protests outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. {snip}
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But in a figurative sense – and at least one literal sense – Trump is right. Portland is constantly on fire. In the year following July 2024, Portland had 6,268 fire-related incidents – and 40% of the fires in the city are a direct result of Portland’s out-of-control vagrancy.
Even city leaders feel the heat. In 2024, Portland City Councilor Rene Gonzalez’s car burned in a fire that authorities believe was intentionally set while it was parked in front of his family’s home. No one was arrested, but a website associated with Portland’s notorious Antifa network claimed responsibility. Then last October, a fire consumed a carport belonging to Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos, burning her car and damaging the side of her house. Authorities eventually determined the fire was started by a vagrant trying to stay warm.
The city also has much more sophisticated criminal problems. As Minneapolis uncovers evidence that it has lost billions of dollars in fraudulent schemes by the city’s Somali community, Jeff Eager, the former mayor of Bend, Oregon, has published a series of alarming reports revealing that Portland may have a similar large-scale problem with its welfare programs – some of it connected to more menacing kinds of organized crime.
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Despite all the documented evidence and the fact that Eager is the former mayor of one of Oregon’s largest cities, he’s been unable to get anyone else in the state’s media outlets to pay attention.
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Portland now has the second-highest crime rate of any city in America, behind Memphis. About one out of every 16 people in the city is the victim of a crime every year. This problem did not happen overnight. In 2017, the city’s Pulitzer-winning alt-weekly Willamette Week ran a feature on car-theft in the city. “At least 102 people in the Portland area have been arrested multiple times in the past year for car theft, though half of 2017’s cases were never prosecuted,” the paper reported. A single 23-year-old homeless woman had been arrested for nine car thefts that year and hadn’t spent a day in jail.
The lack of law enforcement became obvious to everyone during the summer of 2020, as protests erupted in response to George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. {snip}
That same summer, the police union, which had an antagonistic relationship with Wheeler and other local politicians, had its building repeatedly vandalized and set on fire. As part of the Defund the Police movement that year, Portland’s leftist city council cut $15 million from the city’s law enforcement budget, eliminating 84 jobs in the police department – with predictable results. By November 2021, Wheeler acknowledged “many Portlanders no longer feel safe,” and the city council began the process of restoring some funding to the department – though the police are at loggerheads with local politicians and the department remains chronically understaffed.
But nothing that happened in the summer of 2020 had as big an impact on the decline of the city as events that fall. In November 2020, Oregon voters approved Measure 110, which downgraded the criminal penalty for possession of all hard drugs – including fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamines, and cocaine – to a civil violation. The measure passed with a solid 58% majority, and the initiative had major backing from the Drug Policy Alliance, American Civil Liberties Union, and Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation. Thanks to the funding from out-of-state organizations, supporters of 110 easily outspent those campaigning against it.
Starting in February of 2021, police could no longer arrest anyone for drug use. Under the law, if police come across anyone doing drugs, the most they can do is hand out a ticket giving them the following options: Come to a court date and plead not guilty, pay a $100 fine, ask for a reduced fine, or waive the fine by calling a number on the ticket that will help them get treatment.
Predictably, drug addicts were not concerned about the threat of a $100 civil penalty. According to the Wall Street Journal, of the thousands of tickets for drug use Oregon police handed out in the first three years the law was in effect, just 1% of the addicts called the number to connect them with treatment. There’s no doubt that the law made drug use in the state much worse – outreach workers and police began reporting that the Measure 110 was responsible for “drug tourism” attracting addicts from out-of-state. Decriminalization also spiked demand, significantly lowering the cost of purchasing illegal drugs. Most alarming, overdose deaths skyrocketed. In 2019, Oregon had 280 fatal opioid overdoses. In 2023, two years after Measure 110, there were 1,394 fatal opioid overdoses – a five-fold increase.
After a couple of years, even Portland residents could no longer tolerate Measure 110. Polls soon showed the law’s impact on public safety had made 110 deeply unpopular, and business leaders were organizing to put a repeal measure on the ballot. Before the law could be repealed by the voters, the Oregon legislature amended it in 2024 to remove the measure’s decriminalization provisions. Drug possession was once again a misdemeanor, punishable by six months in jail. The Drug Policy Alliance blamed the law’s undoing on an “intense disinformation campaign by drug war defenders.”
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The city is also enduring a full-blown economic crisis. Businesses have been fleeing the city. As of last year, Portland had the highest commercial real estate vacancy rate of any major city in the country, and it remains at record levels. Anything above a 20% office vacancy rate is said to indicate “severe distress,” and Portland’s office vacancy rate is 34.6%. {snip}
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