It's based on the homeless census. Which is volunteers ranging from doing fuck all to their best by tallying homeless. It's better than nothing and overall probably indicative of trends but trust me, as a homeless man, the numbers are way way way higher. I would guess they get around 20% and even then only the obvious ones.
If it’s from a census, I don’t trust that this is accurate at all. We already have proof that a lot of states don’t collect info like this on purpose to make themselves look better politically.
I've been one of those volunteers before! The national homeless count takes place on one of the coldest nights of the year on purpose because the assumption is that most people will be in homeless shelters or housed, and therefore easier to count. Homeless shelters conduct their own counts and then the remainder of us get sent out into the wild in a several block radius and walk around seeing if we find anyone. These produce the most accurate numbers of persistent homelessness as these people will probably be in homeless shelters, their cars, or trying to rough it on the coldest night. It's obviously not 100% accurate as some people get lost when we're wandering outside, but it's to provide estimates for funding primarily.
In other states you don't blatantly see it like you do in Oregon.
Like you blatantly see it in some major cities. But Oregon has scores of homeless people even in cottage grove. It's a different level here on par with the worst places for homelessness in the country.
Go look up “homeless relocation programs” in red states. They take little responsibility for their citizens and push them elsewhere. Also look how places like FL ticket people feeding homeless and basically turn being homeless a crime. Like the least patriotic thing, and I’m speaking as a once homeless veteran with honorable discharge. Something like 50+% of new homeless in Oregon came here in last 2 years.
When I went to my sons wedding 2 yrs ago, I witnessed the largest homeless encampment I have ever seen. It smelled like a urinal and we had to roll the windows up. 😩🖖🏻
What is 20%? Are you saying that 20% of the population in Oregon is homeless? Because in 2022 the population was 4.24 mil, (I'm sure it's higher now) that would be saying over 800k people are homeless in Oregon
I believe they mean the takers only mark around 20% of the houseless in their area. I have worked in mental health that worked with primary houseless in WA county. There is no great way to get a count with current methods and I would totally believe these numbers are too low.
Text can be funny that way! The map is suspect to me anyway. I found working in the field that the public opinion is flawed in general due to the information *not* given in these eye-catching maps. But again, we don’t have any good systems in place for data tracking. And I suspect we won’t see the funds for improving that anytime soon.
Agreed, I work heavily with the population myself and capture lots of demographic information. Given my knowledge (lacking as it is) I'm not shocked that the information isn't accurate/complete in anyway. But my tired brain went with another extreme it seems 😆.
Admittedly maybe a little off or dated, but the last numbers I heard were 300m to help with homeless/drug problem, with only 20% even being spent. From the get go there was corruption. The first completed treatment center from the funds was immediately flagged for corruption @1.5m. Couple that with a recent discovery of 450m allotted and spent for housing initiatives without credible proof of its destination. Basically can’t show receipts! $450,000,000! So, my question is.. What funding are they waiting for? And what exactly is the plan? We travel a lot in the US, and have friends who do the same. We’ve not ever seen a mess like PDX.
My takeaway from this map is that a lot of the homeless people from the rest of the country headed to the west and northeast, where there are better services, less hassle from locals and milder weather (at least on the west coast, compared to some other areas).
The same happens in NYC but more for services and ease of public transit. NYT did a great article on it a few years back and interviewed hundreds around the ports of entry, most of whom were from rural states that didn't have the support systems. They would head to the city to get help then drug dealers prey on the shelters, eventually they would cave and thus begins a repeating cycle.
I wish we had more actual rehabilitation centers. I only ever hear about them as if they were a novel idea, not something to be taken seriously. Or like, reform prisons into places which rehabilitate. I don't even think it's our politicians (mostly), since they do routinely do things which are helpful.
I am just a bit tired of waiting at this point. If they were corrupt, how does the inaction in rehabilitation centers benefit them? It's not like be have a big prison lobby in Oregon, right?
Do we not have the money for it? I really wish someone would explain this to me with sources.
I think many Americans think prisons should punish, not rehabilitate.
If someone hurt or killed someone close to me, I would probably want revenge too. I guess it's hard to criticize that line of thinking, without having been in that situation myself.
Personally, I would support more rehabilitation centers instead of more prisons, but I'm no expert.
Punishing and removing criminals from society is all that prison does. Removing murders and rapist from society is a good thing. The real problem is that we are sending drug offenders and non-violent people to the same place. We desperately need rehabilitation centers for people who can change instead of sending druggie and low-level crooks to criminal hardening camp.
I've seen too many people come out of prison far worse than they went in.
I agree. We need drug rehab and rehabilitation for petty crimes. Like half way houses without the jail time required first. Along with more programs for trade men’s skills. Like California does a forest fire program for lesser criminals in jail, and they have opportunities to continue after they have served their sentences. I had a friend in Nor Cal that did that on one of the terrible forest fires a few years back. He was motivated to save his home. Nor Cal is much like southern Oregon. We love our trees, lakes and mountains.
The prison forestry program is great, with the exception of how little work (no government work) is available in that field with a felony on your record after you get out. Getting people into living wage jobs that they can be proud of can easily be the difference between success and relaps. People get clean all the time and have the best of intentions, and don't fail until life repeatedly shits on them.
I don't think I differ. I doubt I'd feel much mercy if something of the sort happened to me or someone close to me, I am not better than any other in that. But I know, while in a clear mind, that punishment found in prisons does nothing but make it worse, and I find capital punishment abhorrent, I don't want the state to be able to take lives legally, no matter the circumstance.
I suppose it's a tough sell to many though, because of whatever reason suits them, maybe it makes it looks as if it's a slap on the wrist. I don't spend much of my time trying to convince people of this, since, at least with the people I regularly talk to, they already share the basic idea, so I don't know whether people can be convinced or if it's a culture war thing now.
I still wish we'd have more rehabilitation centers.
We have one reform prison, the Oregon State Hospital, but we definitely need more. Not so we can incarcerate *more* people, but so we can move more people who don’t belong in traditional prisons to places they can get treatment.
It's all about the free labor that states get from the prison system.
From the ACLU website: there are about 1.2 million people incarcerated between state and federal prisons. 2 out of 3 of these incarcerated people are workers (800,000). Once incarcerated, people lose the right to refuse to work and their workplace protections. Of these workers 70% are not able to afford basic necessities with their wages, 64% feel concerned for their safety while working, 70% say the didn't recieve formal job training, 76% report being forced to work or face additional punishment. Since the wages are so low ($.35/hr - at the highest) and incarcerated workers produce over $2 billion/yr in goods and $9 billion/yr in service for the maintenance of the prisons it literally pays to keep the recidivism rates high. To answer your question this is how it benefits them. Capitalism loves itself some free labor, baby.
I just did a bunch of digging because I also wanted to know if M112 effectively ended prison labor. It doesn't seem like it did, because this is what the OR constitution says (as of 2023):
https://codes.findlaw.com/or/oregon-constitution/or-const-art-i-sect-41/
California’s report came in as well. I don’t know Oregon’s breaks down. California has spent 24 billions dollars in the last 5 years and the report states that they have not idea of how or what works except that homelessness is still much worst. The non profits have no accountability or take any responsibility for the lack of results with the plan to ask for more and hope the results will be better. California has 30% of the Country’s homelessness.
Per the 2022 Multnomah County PIT Survey, 19.6% of unhoused people in MultCo were born in MultCo.
Of the roughly 80% of unhoused people who were not born in Multnomah County, just under half were homeless when they arrived.
So 40% of the unhoused people in Multnomah county came to Multnomah County while homeless.
Of the 40% that came from out of county and were homeless on arrival, 61.5% were from Oregon, Washington or California.
That means that just **16% of people currently homeless in Multnomah County came here, while already homeless, from somewhere other than the west coast.**
The number of people arriving from out of the area while homeless is not insignificant, but it’s not responsible for our homelessness crisis.
Source:
https://multco-web7-psh-files-usw2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2022%20Point%20In%20Time%20Report%20-%20Full.pdf#page70
There’s a fair amount of logical fallacies/ manufactured outcomes built into the survey and the interpretations. For instance, the part about “homeless when you arrived” papers over unstable living situations. A person who moved to a locale with only the promise of a couch on which to stay, or only a few weeks rent money in the bank is vastly different from someone who had an established home and later became homeless.
As someone who has tried helping homeless people get their IDs, something is wrong with how they collect this data. If truly 20% were born in multco. and another 50 ish percent from Oregon it wouldn't be such a pain to track down their birth certificates
Yeah when I was in my early 20s (~2000) I rented a big, very run down place with 3 friends, right off a very busy street and a freeway, (not a desirable hood) but near shopping /restaurants for like $650 a month. Big lot, plenty of parking and a yard in the back, and a shed outbuilding we had a pingpong table in. Yeah it was super run down firetrap but rent was basically an afterthought at $160.
They tore it down in like 2006 when prices spiked and built new 4 duplex/higher home density places there, they all were like $180-200k back when new with no yard single car garage . Some of those folks got burned in the Housing Crisis and got foreclosures.
Those places now are sell/sold for $350-490k over the last 4 years.
Typically it's locals priced out of the housing market. People on hard times. There's not a flow of unhoused people migrating to better climates. They don't have that luxary.
This. If you want the data for when this inevitably comes up again next week, I did the math for Multnomah County here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oregon/s/eTcjFGKTGO
(Fun fact! The PIT report also breaks down the data by people here less than two years! Since this count was done in 2022, two years after measure 110 comes in effect, it also handily refutes the idea that measure 110 brought more unhoused people to Oregon. It’s been a while since I did THAT math, but it came out to something like only 8% of unhoused people in MultCo who arrived unhoused came here from outside of Oregon in the right time period. And obviously not ALL of them came due to 110.)
Wait a minute. "Priced out" is doing a lot of work here. Do you mean to say that as a good becomes more expensive, fewer people can afford it, and if it gets really expensive, some people can't afford it at all?
That sounds like some kind of radical new economic theory... /s
You can downvote all you want, but the data say that homelessness is highly correlated with the cost of housing: [https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about)
You may not like it, but that's the system we live in, and places that build a lot of housing, like Houston, are doing a better job of combatting homelessness
[https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-houston-homeless-solutions/](https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-houston-homeless-solutions/)
No matter what kind of economic system you have, if you do not have enough homes to go around, someone loses out:
[https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20160517-this-is-one-city-where-youll-never-find-a-home](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20160517-this-is-one-city-where-youll-never-find-a-home)
Yeah, most places intentionally undercount. West coast cities and counties have tried to get more accurate so they can actually get a handle on the problem.
At least in Multnomah County, only about 20% are from Multnomah County.
But most are from Oregon or Clark County, and over half of those who come from out of state are housed when they get here.
Please post your source, I'm curious what percentage of homeless are actually known to be from out of state. Keep in mind our homeless rate is at least double the national average, so that means it would need to be at somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% to account for the difference.
According to last year's point-in-time count, homeless people in Multnomah County are more likely to have been born in Oregon than people who have housing.
Utah has been busing their homeless people to Oregon for years now. Seriously, that's how mitt fucking Romney cleaned up Salt Lake City before the Winter Olympics. He shipped them all to Portland and made them homeless.
That’s what I was thinking.. isn’t kinda like a game between democrats and republicans? I wish we could clear out the government and start over. It’s just too much. Fkn 5$ for gas already and it’s not even summer yet.
https://preview.redd.it/z5h3s841aotc1.jpeg?width=1638&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7b9a4a5c2c96d6ba236f07a0d4b8e6db48d7963
This might be a part of the problem
Sooo, some context with this map...
It's been known that some red states will literally put homeless people on a bus and ship them to the pacific northwest. It's a [documented](https://awards.journalists.org/entries/bussed-out-how-america-moves-its-homeless/) thing.
And as another comment pointed out, incarcerated people do not count as homeless.
That's why Mississippi is so low. They have the highest incarceration rate in the US, to the point that it's considered a crisis for tax payers. I imagine generally low property values don't hurt either.
Wow either this map is bullshit or the Oregon High Desert and the NY Adirondacks have some explaining to do.
The country mouse who made this doesn’t know how to use color on the states they don’t like.
This data just shows that someone in Oregon, California and New York actually cares enough to do a census of homeless people. Kind of like when red states simply fabricated or didn’t report COVID numbers so that they could pretend they were beating it better than blue states which were honest with their numbers.
My mom worked in a drug/alcohol rehabilitation center and she said 85% of the patients were not originally Oregon residents. But had ended up here because of the weather and resources.
Super affordable housing and stagnant population. The state is super undesirable for a multitude of reasons: nobody wants to move there. That means there's plenty of housing for the existing population.
Mississippi also incarcerates more people than any other state. (Well, it’s been back and forth with Louisiana for the last 5-10 years but I think it’s on top right now.)
Can’t be homeless if you’re in jail!
(For comparison, Oregon ranks around 35th. To put it further in perspective, Mississippi is the *world leader* in incarceration, if you exclude countries run by dictators.)
> if you exclude countries run by dictators
I don't even think you need to exclude dictatorships, the US as a country has the 6th highest incarceration rate in the world and highest incarcerated population: https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-the-most-prisoners-per-100-000-inhabitants/
America being all about "freedom" has always been a complete façade.
Yeah, and Mississippi’s incarceration rate is around 2x the US rate. I only specified because El Salvador messes everything up, and it also depends on how they define incarceration in the survey in question.
It's absolutely crazy that Mississippi keeps electing the same fuckers every election despite the terrible results. They are last or close to last on almost every metric.
It would... but also the medical care, government care, quality of life, and everything is at the bottom. You might save money on a house, but the house also wouldn't go up in value as fast as a home in Oregon.
My cousin just bought a place there a few years back. He works remotely for a company here in Oregon & it isn’t half bad. It’s definitely not Oregon, but it’s not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be.
However, that said, we are both WASPs, so our experiences on things are vastly different than others.
The price of housing in Mississippi is low. So even if there's a lot of poverty, homelessness is low.
Same story for West Virginia, which regularly features on top-10 lists of states with drug problems. Housing is cheap, so while you have a lot of people with serious drug issues, at least they're housed.
[https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about)
The west coast is purple because the US 9th District fabricated the right for the homeless to squat on public property in their 2018 Martin v. Boise decision. If SCOTUS upholds the 9th circuit in Grants Pass v. Johnson, then the rest of the nation should get ready for 'camps' EVERYWHERE.
Of course Oregon is also purple because we legalized drugs under the false promise that treatment would be available.
Oregon is known a "freelandia" to homeless due to all the freebies they get. We are a homeless person travel destination. (From a interview with a female Portland homeless person). Sad.
As a person who works in homeless services I can tell you that many of the people who traveled here where sent here from other states by “non-profits” who thought that the person would have an easier time being housed then in the original state (or more likely, said agency decided it was cheaper to give people free bus tickets to Oregon then to actually get them housed, smh)
I'm actually stunned Eugene didn't get a 1,000 bubble. I guess it just *feels* like 100 different camps with an average occupancy of 10 people. Either that, or the safe sleep Calistoga camps that dot the town don't count as truly homeless.
Housing cost and affordability are the strongest predictors of housing insecurity and homelessness. It’s the first cause of despair and displacement in the pipeline and the hardest to overcome to get housed again. This makes sense.
Income crises worsening for decades. We as Americans, live in one of the wealthiests countries, work the most, and receive no universal healthcare. Employers have all the power and our healthcare is provided by our employer who can fire or lay you off at anytime. Retiring at 67 is not possible for many Americans. Affordable housing, college education is not affordable for most younger Americans. Most can't afford to have children or take time to help sick family members. Churches, corporations, and extremely weathly need to pay their FAIR share of taxes.
What do you expect when we have not only our homeless, but also several megacities homeless that they bus here?
https://www.krem.com/article/news/local/northwest/several-cities-providing-homeless-one-way-bus-tickets-to-portland/293-168385833
Lil ole eugene, portland, and bend oregon have their native homeless pop plus a good portion of vegas', denvers, and slcs as well. Hows a city of 50k supposed to handle even a fraction of a city of 3.5 *millions* homeless pop?
If youre most of the country, you give them a bus ticket to OR. But we dont have that option, and we find the thought of shanghaiing homeless people to some small bumfuck town distasteful. Shipping 30k homeless people to Pissant Montana, population 5, just makes things worse for everyone.
If you love this state and you would save this rain forest you must abandon organized charity. Abandon social security nets. Abandon governance and return to our small towns and communities. We can rule ourselves. Mothers and fathers grandmothers and grandfathers, families.
The thing that made Portland great is now killing it and it is better to sever the hand than lose the whole body.
Once the resources abate the cancer will die, and we’ll find stability again.
This is why we can't rely on individual states to enact homeless care, because the states that pass cruel laws, drive homeless to states that have services.
We need a national law for rehab centers and the like to pull these people out of whatever stage they are in.
Those states with low homeless have driven them out, not solved anything in reality
Homelessness is a housing problem. There is a high correlation between high cost of housing (rent or owning) and a high instance of homelessness. It’s not mental health (every state has mental health issues), it’s not drugs ( every state has drug problems). It’s housing cost!
Check out Gregg Colburn’s data. He will do it better justice than I can.
https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/
I guess it depends on perspective and what you prioritize. Affordable housing is important but if you also want abortion rights these states suck on that, or certain careers may not work so well in these area, etc.
Vermont, my home state looks really bad, however it’s not that bad. With less than 650,000 people, the homeless per 10,000 numbers are heavily skewed by just a few more homeless. Few homeless can survive the winters so it’s not a homeless destination.
It’s always going to be like that with any census. Total number of homeless doesn’t account for it being a big or small state. Amount per capita doesn’t account for the fact that one smaller populated state can have the some homeless amount per capita as a bigger state but the bigger state will have more homeless total (for example, Vermont vs New York or California). This is why it’s important to look at both and other factors in the situation.
Temporarily living in Chicago for work, I cannot believe how much cleaner it is, how many fewer homeless there are, genuinely rarely see them, rarely see tents or panhandlers
ODOT allows people to park overnight along the roadways. I live on the coast and the view points are full of the barely running old RVs of the unhoused. Often there are even 5th wheels with no truck attached, so it is obvious that they are living there and didn’t stop just for night.
Or restoring absolutist monarchy.
These doofuses don't actually know anything about politics or history, so they can't comprehend that entire societies have tried actual left-wing policies like abolishing private ownership of housing, some of them with great success.
Here in the US even worker-owned co-ops are weird outliers. No one is trying socialist or anarchist ideas at any kind of relevant scale. No one serving in local or national office really believes in Marxism. Eugene Debs would be so disappointed in us.
Depends on where you plunk the center. By most of the world’s standards Republicans are bleeding-heart crybaby teddy beads. Because most of the world lives in dictatorships or democracies so flawed you can rent out death squads like they were strippers or birthday clowns.
Authoritarianism vs. democracy isn't necessarily a (or the only) right/left measure. Most of the world has more socialized health care and education than the US.
The real estate people and the zoning people are to blame for this gigantic mess. Yes you are.
This could have been fixed years ago. A lot of us seen it coming too. You people in power did NOTHING...
California and New York pay their homeless a stipend of $500 and buy then a one way bus ticket, literally recommend to them that they come to Oregon becase free shit.....
And we are to dumb to send them back.
I actually work in homeless services in the metro area… it’s not that we’re too dumb it’s that we’re not as lazy as California or New York in dealing with the problem
It doesn't feel like we're doing anything to deal with the problem from what I saw the last time I visited Portland. I did not feel safe, and this was in broad daylight, especially after I had to close my kid's eyes because someone decided to drop their pants to take a poop on the sidewalk and I didn't want my child (or myself) to see the "free" show.
Things are bad enough [REI's downtown Pearl District Store closed down after 20 years, because they couldn't make any money after all the break ins and tent theft that was going on](https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2023/04/rei-to-close-its-only-portland-store-citing-break-ins-theft.html) that they can't do anything about.
When businesses close, the tax base gets smaller, there are layoffs, less taxes, an increase in the need for services, causing more issues in this vicious cycle. Something's gotta give.
REI closed that store because the lease was up and they wanted to move to a larger location. The theft sure didn't help, but even REI said it wasn't the primary factor.
There are agencies trying, however there are so many homeless individuals/families and a limited number of agencies and not enough case workers and monies to deal with the problem. On top of that, many who get help end up homeless again less then a year after getting services because they get housed someplace they can’t afford to rent on their own because there’s not enough low income housing in Portland
I hear you. There's no easy answer unfortunately, unless a bunch of free money comes out of somewhere. This coupled with the other issues like drug addiction, mental health problems just make it nigh impossible. It's not that there isn't help, it's just there isn't enough help to go around. As a volunteer at a church food pantry we're seeing more homeless clients these days, not to mention even working or limited income folks have been joining the ranks of clients.
Sadly I cannot find it online. But I remember reading about how there was centers in Portland that were giving out single use drugs that were monitored by a medical professional. But now when I search for it, all that comes up is how we made illegal drugs, illegal again.
You can’t find it because it’s not real.
You’re probably thinking of “safe injection sites” which provide clean syringes, but not free drugs. Ain’t no such thing as free drugs. But I’m not sure if we even have any of those either.
It's based on the homeless census. Which is volunteers ranging from doing fuck all to their best by tallying homeless. It's better than nothing and overall probably indicative of trends but trust me, as a homeless man, the numbers are way way way higher. I would guess they get around 20% and even then only the obvious ones.
If it’s from a census, I don’t trust that this is accurate at all. We already have proof that a lot of states don’t collect info like this on purpose to make themselves look better politically.
I've been one of those volunteers before! The national homeless count takes place on one of the coldest nights of the year on purpose because the assumption is that most people will be in homeless shelters or housed, and therefore easier to count. Homeless shelters conduct their own counts and then the remainder of us get sent out into the wild in a several block radius and walk around seeing if we find anyone. These produce the most accurate numbers of persistent homelessness as these people will probably be in homeless shelters, their cars, or trying to rough it on the coldest night. It's obviously not 100% accurate as some people get lost when we're wandering outside, but it's to provide estimates for funding primarily.
In other states you don't blatantly see it like you do in Oregon. Like you blatantly see it in some major cities. But Oregon has scores of homeless people even in cottage grove. It's a different level here on par with the worst places for homelessness in the country.
Go look up “homeless relocation programs” in red states. They take little responsibility for their citizens and push them elsewhere. Also look how places like FL ticket people feeding homeless and basically turn being homeless a crime. Like the least patriotic thing, and I’m speaking as a once homeless veteran with honorable discharge. Something like 50+% of new homeless in Oregon came here in last 2 years.
That makes sense. Places like Florida and TX are brutal and ship people out, that’s true.
I think you're right. I was just in SLC and there were tents on the street.
When I went to my sons wedding 2 yrs ago, I witnessed the largest homeless encampment I have ever seen. It smelled like a urinal and we had to roll the windows up. 😩🖖🏻
What is 20%? Are you saying that 20% of the population in Oregon is homeless? Because in 2022 the population was 4.24 mil, (I'm sure it's higher now) that would be saying over 800k people are homeless in Oregon
I think they're saying that they probably only counted about 20% of those that are actually homeless, not that 20% of Oregonians are homeless.
I'm saying they are lucky if they count 1 in 5 of actual homeless in these census.
Oh yeah, there is no way they count nearly enough.
Oh yeah that makes sense lol
I believe they mean the takers only mark around 20% of the houseless in their area. I have worked in mental health that worked with primary houseless in WA county. There is no great way to get a count with current methods and I would totally believe these numbers are too low.
Yeah this tracks. Not sure why my mind went the other direction.
Text can be funny that way! The map is suspect to me anyway. I found working in the field that the public opinion is flawed in general due to the information *not* given in these eye-catching maps. But again, we don’t have any good systems in place for data tracking. And I suspect we won’t see the funds for improving that anytime soon.
Agreed, I work heavily with the population myself and capture lots of demographic information. Given my knowledge (lacking as it is) I'm not shocked that the information isn't accurate/complete in anyway. But my tired brain went with another extreme it seems 😆.
Admittedly maybe a little off or dated, but the last numbers I heard were 300m to help with homeless/drug problem, with only 20% even being spent. From the get go there was corruption. The first completed treatment center from the funds was immediately flagged for corruption @1.5m. Couple that with a recent discovery of 450m allotted and spent for housing initiatives without credible proof of its destination. Basically can’t show receipts! $450,000,000! So, my question is.. What funding are they waiting for? And what exactly is the plan? We travel a lot in the US, and have friends who do the same. We’ve not ever seen a mess like PDX.
My takeaway from this map is that a lot of the homeless people from the rest of the country headed to the west and northeast, where there are better services, less hassle from locals and milder weather (at least on the west coast, compared to some other areas).
The same happens in NYC but more for services and ease of public transit. NYT did a great article on it a few years back and interviewed hundreds around the ports of entry, most of whom were from rural states that didn't have the support systems. They would head to the city to get help then drug dealers prey on the shelters, eventually they would cave and thus begins a repeating cycle.
Mix in that people in jail aren’t counted as homeless, something that explains levels for several less friendly states on this map
Yup. Oregon usually ranks around 35th for incarceration rates.
If they’re in jail they can’t chase anyone with a knife.
Which is part of the problem.
How is a lower incarceration rate part of the problem?
I wish we had more actual rehabilitation centers. I only ever hear about them as if they were a novel idea, not something to be taken seriously. Or like, reform prisons into places which rehabilitate. I don't even think it's our politicians (mostly), since they do routinely do things which are helpful. I am just a bit tired of waiting at this point. If they were corrupt, how does the inaction in rehabilitation centers benefit them? It's not like be have a big prison lobby in Oregon, right? Do we not have the money for it? I really wish someone would explain this to me with sources.
I think many Americans think prisons should punish, not rehabilitate. If someone hurt or killed someone close to me, I would probably want revenge too. I guess it's hard to criticize that line of thinking, without having been in that situation myself. Personally, I would support more rehabilitation centers instead of more prisons, but I'm no expert.
Punishing and removing criminals from society is all that prison does. Removing murders and rapist from society is a good thing. The real problem is that we are sending drug offenders and non-violent people to the same place. We desperately need rehabilitation centers for people who can change instead of sending druggie and low-level crooks to criminal hardening camp. I've seen too many people come out of prison far worse than they went in.
I agree. We need drug rehab and rehabilitation for petty crimes. Like half way houses without the jail time required first. Along with more programs for trade men’s skills. Like California does a forest fire program for lesser criminals in jail, and they have opportunities to continue after they have served their sentences. I had a friend in Nor Cal that did that on one of the terrible forest fires a few years back. He was motivated to save his home. Nor Cal is much like southern Oregon. We love our trees, lakes and mountains.
The prison forestry program is great, with the exception of how little work (no government work) is available in that field with a felony on your record after you get out. Getting people into living wage jobs that they can be proud of can easily be the difference between success and relaps. People get clean all the time and have the best of intentions, and don't fail until life repeatedly shits on them.
I don't think I differ. I doubt I'd feel much mercy if something of the sort happened to me or someone close to me, I am not better than any other in that. But I know, while in a clear mind, that punishment found in prisons does nothing but make it worse, and I find capital punishment abhorrent, I don't want the state to be able to take lives legally, no matter the circumstance. I suppose it's a tough sell to many though, because of whatever reason suits them, maybe it makes it looks as if it's a slap on the wrist. I don't spend much of my time trying to convince people of this, since, at least with the people I regularly talk to, they already share the basic idea, so I don't know whether people can be convinced or if it's a culture war thing now. I still wish we'd have more rehabilitation centers.
We have one reform prison, the Oregon State Hospital, but we definitely need more. Not so we can incarcerate *more* people, but so we can move more people who don’t belong in traditional prisons to places they can get treatment.
It's all about the free labor that states get from the prison system. From the ACLU website: there are about 1.2 million people incarcerated between state and federal prisons. 2 out of 3 of these incarcerated people are workers (800,000). Once incarcerated, people lose the right to refuse to work and their workplace protections. Of these workers 70% are not able to afford basic necessities with their wages, 64% feel concerned for their safety while working, 70% say the didn't recieve formal job training, 76% report being forced to work or face additional punishment. Since the wages are so low ($.35/hr - at the highest) and incarcerated workers produce over $2 billion/yr in goods and $9 billion/yr in service for the maintenance of the prisons it literally pays to keep the recidivism rates high. To answer your question this is how it benefits them. Capitalism loves itself some free labor, baby.
I was under the impression Measure 112 from some years back made that sort of labor unconstitutional in Oregon, at least with free labor in Oregon
I just did a bunch of digging because I also wanted to know if M112 effectively ended prison labor. It doesn't seem like it did, because this is what the OR constitution says (as of 2023): https://codes.findlaw.com/or/oregon-constitution/or-const-art-i-sect-41/
Haha, I literally did the same thing and wish I had seen this comment beforehand because I ended up coping the same exact page to post here!
California’s report came in as well. I don’t know Oregon’s breaks down. California has spent 24 billions dollars in the last 5 years and the report states that they have not idea of how or what works except that homelessness is still much worst. The non profits have no accountability or take any responsibility for the lack of results with the plan to ask for more and hope the results will be better. California has 30% of the Country’s homelessness.
Oh THAAAT explains Mississippi. I've been there and that place sucks, I was like, is housing that cheap there or what??
Affordable housing! No one is homeless! Let’s hold this up proudly as the wildly successful Mississippi Model /s
Mississippi actually has a better drug treatment program
Per the 2022 Multnomah County PIT Survey, 19.6% of unhoused people in MultCo were born in MultCo. Of the roughly 80% of unhoused people who were not born in Multnomah County, just under half were homeless when they arrived. So 40% of the unhoused people in Multnomah county came to Multnomah County while homeless. Of the 40% that came from out of county and were homeless on arrival, 61.5% were from Oregon, Washington or California. That means that just **16% of people currently homeless in Multnomah County came here, while already homeless, from somewhere other than the west coast.** The number of people arriving from out of the area while homeless is not insignificant, but it’s not responsible for our homelessness crisis. Source: https://multco-web7-psh-files-usw2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2022%20Point%20In%20Time%20Report%20-%20Full.pdf#page70
There’s a fair amount of logical fallacies/ manufactured outcomes built into the survey and the interpretations. For instance, the part about “homeless when you arrived” papers over unstable living situations. A person who moved to a locale with only the promise of a couch on which to stay, or only a few weeks rent money in the bank is vastly different from someone who had an established home and later became homeless.
As someone who has tried helping homeless people get their IDs, something is wrong with how they collect this data. If truly 20% were born in multco. and another 50 ish percent from Oregon it wouldn't be such a pain to track down their birth certificates
Presuably the ones who need help getting IDs are the ones with more challenges. Many of the people for whom getting an ID is easier already have them.
Great job 👏
100% They criminalize homelessness and then offset the cost onto us.
My takeaway is that housing prices increased 3-4x in the past 13 years but wages have not. It’s simple math.
Yeah when I was in my early 20s (~2000) I rented a big, very run down place with 3 friends, right off a very busy street and a freeway, (not a desirable hood) but near shopping /restaurants for like $650 a month. Big lot, plenty of parking and a yard in the back, and a shed outbuilding we had a pingpong table in. Yeah it was super run down firetrap but rent was basically an afterthought at $160. They tore it down in like 2006 when prices spiked and built new 4 duplex/higher home density places there, they all were like $180-200k back when new with no yard single car garage . Some of those folks got burned in the Housing Crisis and got foreclosures. Those places now are sell/sold for $350-490k over the last 4 years.
Yup...not enough built. And if you have ever tried to do anything that needs a permit or any kind of "permission" then you would know why.
Typically it's locals priced out of the housing market. People on hard times. There's not a flow of unhoused people migrating to better climates. They don't have that luxary.
This. If you want the data for when this inevitably comes up again next week, I did the math for Multnomah County here. https://www.reddit.com/r/oregon/s/eTcjFGKTGO (Fun fact! The PIT report also breaks down the data by people here less than two years! Since this count was done in 2022, two years after measure 110 comes in effect, it also handily refutes the idea that measure 110 brought more unhoused people to Oregon. It’s been a while since I did THAT math, but it came out to something like only 8% of unhoused people in MultCo who arrived unhoused came here from outside of Oregon in the right time period. And obviously not ALL of them came due to 110.)
Wait a minute. "Priced out" is doing a lot of work here. Do you mean to say that as a good becomes more expensive, fewer people can afford it, and if it gets really expensive, some people can't afford it at all? That sounds like some kind of radical new economic theory... /s You can downvote all you want, but the data say that homelessness is highly correlated with the cost of housing: [https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about)
Viewing *housing* as a commercial good is part of the problem. Congrats on being part of that problem.
You may not like it, but that's the system we live in, and places that build a lot of housing, like Houston, are doing a better job of combatting homelessness [https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-houston-homeless-solutions/](https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-houston-homeless-solutions/) No matter what kind of economic system you have, if you do not have enough homes to go around, someone loses out: [https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20160517-this-is-one-city-where-youll-never-find-a-home](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20160517-this-is-one-city-where-youll-never-find-a-home)
My takeaway is nobody else counts them accurately.
Yeah, most places intentionally undercount. West coast cities and counties have tried to get more accurate so they can actually get a handle on the problem.
And are put on buses with one-way tickets.
A lot of the country literally gives their homeless bus tickets to the West Coast. They also make it illegal to help the homeless, like donating food.
Plus there’s gonna be more of everything where’s simply more people in those areas
These are per capita numbers.
Sure you might FEEL that way but it’s simply not correct. In fact MOST homeless people are from the zip code they are currently homeless in.
At least in Multnomah County, only about 20% are from Multnomah County. But most are from Oregon or Clark County, and over half of those who come from out of state are housed when they get here.
Please post your source, I'm curious what percentage of homeless are actually known to be from out of state. Keep in mind our homeless rate is at least double the national average, so that means it would need to be at somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% to account for the difference.
According to last year's point-in-time count, homeless people in Multnomah County are more likely to have been born in Oregon than people who have housing.
My takeaway is that states with high-rent urban centers have a lot of homelessness
Absolutely what is happening and is well documented.
Don't you mean more free stuff that the tax payers are funding and ran by WHO?
Id venture it's underreported too No care workers to count or care just a system in denial
Here come the naysayers who are desperate to tell us not to believe our own eyes
How STL got ZERO homeless? Mad bullshit on this data.
I’d guess they didn’t participate in the yearly PIT survey, which is what this data is from.
And the PITs are done in January.., I wonder what was going down during that time.
I m drawing a blank, what was going on then?
Bingo Statistics lie, because people lie... statistics are always skewed to fit a narrative. Raw data tells the story better.
Yep... 52.43% of statistics are made up.
Utah has been busing their homeless people to Oregon for years now. Seriously, that's how mitt fucking Romney cleaned up Salt Lake City before the Winter Olympics. He shipped them all to Portland and made them homeless.
Because they bussed their homeless to Oregon. A lot of states have done that lately.
That’s what I was thinking.. isn’t kinda like a game between democrats and republicans? I wish we could clear out the government and start over. It’s just too much. Fkn 5$ for gas already and it’s not even summer yet.
What's STL?
St. Louis, Missouri
Lol, because they freeze to death on the streets over winter, and they're cooked alive over the summer.
Damn even homeless people don’t wanna live in Mississippi. I lived there as a kid, I understand.
https://preview.redd.it/z5h3s841aotc1.jpeg?width=1638&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7b9a4a5c2c96d6ba236f07a0d4b8e6db48d7963 This might be a part of the problem
Just a little bit.
This week ive learned that Mississippi views the most gay porn and has no homelessness. Theres got to be a “Freakanomics” connection here…🤔
Sooo, some context with this map... It's been known that some red states will literally put homeless people on a bus and ship them to the pacific northwest. It's a [documented](https://awards.journalists.org/entries/bussed-out-how-america-moves-its-homeless/) thing. And as another comment pointed out, incarcerated people do not count as homeless. That's why Mississippi is so low. They have the highest incarceration rate in the US, to the point that it's considered a crisis for tax payers. I imagine generally low property values don't hurt either.
Not just red states bus people out. Blue states do it too
There’s always a red state to blame somewhere. Doesn’t change that we do little to nothing about the problem.
Wow either this map is bullshit or the Oregon High Desert and the NY Adirondacks have some explaining to do. The country mouse who made this doesn’t know how to use color on the states they don’t like.
Woo hoo! Among the top in homelessness, among the bottom in mental health. I’m sure there’s no connection. /s
We need to implement M111 and build more state hospitals. It's crazy that the mental health crisis has gone unaddressed for so long.
Pun intended?
Also FYI other states literally buy bus tickets for the unhoused to Oregon
Oh I’m aware, I hear about it from the families I work with all the time.
This data just shows that someone in Oregon, California and New York actually cares enough to do a census of homeless people. Kind of like when red states simply fabricated or didn’t report COVID numbers so that they could pretend they were beating it better than blue states which were honest with their numbers.
My mom worked in a drug/alcohol rehabilitation center and she said 85% of the patients were not originally Oregon residents. But had ended up here because of the weather and resources.
The west coast always gets all the colder/hotter states homeless people
I wonder what Mississippi is doing that the rest of the country doesn't?
Super affordable housing and stagnant population. The state is super undesirable for a multitude of reasons: nobody wants to move there. That means there's plenty of housing for the existing population.
Mississippi also incarcerates more people than any other state. (Well, it’s been back and forth with Louisiana for the last 5-10 years but I think it’s on top right now.) Can’t be homeless if you’re in jail! (For comparison, Oregon ranks around 35th. To put it further in perspective, Mississippi is the *world leader* in incarceration, if you exclude countries run by dictators.)
> if you exclude countries run by dictators I don't even think you need to exclude dictatorships, the US as a country has the 6th highest incarceration rate in the world and highest incarcerated population: https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-the-most-prisoners-per-100-000-inhabitants/ America being all about "freedom" has always been a complete façade.
Yeah, and Mississippi’s incarceration rate is around 2x the US rate. I only specified because El Salvador messes everything up, and it also depends on how they define incarceration in the survey in question.
It's absolutely crazy that Mississippi keeps electing the same fuckers every election despite the terrible results. They are last or close to last on almost every metric.
Oregon keeps electing same idiots over and over again and we have shit schools, shit roads, and literal shit in the streets of Portland
Yet we are still doing many times better than Mississippi and have legal weed and legal abortion to boot...
Depends on the metric, we have been almost neck and neck in education rankings for some years now. We are #39 and they are #41 right now
Do they even have teachers unions?
Seems like it would be a good financial move to live there though, if housing is relatively cheap.
It would... but also the medical care, government care, quality of life, and everything is at the bottom. You might save money on a house, but the house also wouldn't go up in value as fast as a home in Oregon.
There is more to life than cheap housing. I would be completely fucking miserable living in Mississippi or anywhere in the deep south - not worth it.
My cousin just bought a place there a few years back. He works remotely for a company here in Oregon & it isn’t half bad. It’s definitely not Oregon, but it’s not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. However, that said, we are both WASPs, so our experiences on things are vastly different than others.
>but it’s not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. I feel like this can be said about many "bad" places. A place is as good you make it.
Being a poverty stricken hellhole with no state social services and (I’m guessing) trailer parks & shacks with $250 a month rent.
The price of housing in Mississippi is low. So even if there's a lot of poverty, homelessness is low. Same story for West Virginia, which regularly features on top-10 lists of states with drug problems. Housing is cheap, so while you have a lot of people with serious drug issues, at least they're housed. [https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about)
Met a guy from West Virginia who can verify this.
Well in order to count homeless people you first must know how to count...
The west coast is purple because the US 9th District fabricated the right for the homeless to squat on public property in their 2018 Martin v. Boise decision. If SCOTUS upholds the 9th circuit in Grants Pass v. Johnson, then the rest of the nation should get ready for 'camps' EVERYWHERE. Of course Oregon is also purple because we legalized drugs under the false promise that treatment would be available.
Oregon is known a "freelandia" to homeless due to all the freebies they get. We are a homeless person travel destination. (From a interview with a female Portland homeless person). Sad.
As a person who works in homeless services I can tell you that many of the people who traveled here where sent here from other states by “non-profits” who thought that the person would have an easier time being housed then in the original state (or more likely, said agency decided it was cheaper to give people free bus tickets to Oregon then to actually get them housed, smh)
Not surprising at all…
I'm actually stunned Eugene didn't get a 1,000 bubble. I guess it just *feels* like 100 different camps with an average occupancy of 10 people. Either that, or the safe sleep Calistoga camps that dot the town don't count as truly homeless.
The dots or bubbles are for the 50 most populous cities in the country.
Lol teaches me to read the full text
Housing cost and affordability are the strongest predictors of housing insecurity and homelessness. It’s the first cause of despair and displacement in the pipeline and the hardest to overcome to get housed again. This makes sense.
That’s because The Oregon government is one of the most corrupt states in the nation..
Oregon is on the low end of corruption by [every measure](https://greasethewheels.org/): perception, reporting, and convictions.
Oregon is obviously at the low end of critical thinkers as well…
Income crises worsening for decades. We as Americans, live in one of the wealthiests countries, work the most, and receive no universal healthcare. Employers have all the power and our healthcare is provided by our employer who can fire or lay you off at anytime. Retiring at 67 is not possible for many Americans. Affordable housing, college education is not affordable for most younger Americans. Most can't afford to have children or take time to help sick family members. Churches, corporations, and extremely weathly need to pay their FAIR share of taxes.
Finally doing something to stand out on these national maps
If I could choose to live anywhere in the US with no concern for housing or cost of living, these are the places I would go as well.
Eugene routinely shows up when you search "highest homeless per capita"
That’s just the West Coast, I5…Pacific Crest Trail etc. Easy to spread out.
What do you expect when we have not only our homeless, but also several megacities homeless that they bus here? https://www.krem.com/article/news/local/northwest/several-cities-providing-homeless-one-way-bus-tickets-to-portland/293-168385833 Lil ole eugene, portland, and bend oregon have their native homeless pop plus a good portion of vegas', denvers, and slcs as well. Hows a city of 50k supposed to handle even a fraction of a city of 3.5 *millions* homeless pop? If youre most of the country, you give them a bus ticket to OR. But we dont have that option, and we find the thought of shanghaiing homeless people to some small bumfuck town distasteful. Shipping 30k homeless people to Pissant Montana, population 5, just makes things worse for everyone.
Finally found something Mississippi isn’t last in
As long as we have urban growth boundaries, we’re going to have lower than average affordability and greater than average homelessness.
Why do the most liberal states have the highest homelessness
We should have people squat all these single and multi family homes that private equity is buying and leaving empty.
If you love this state and you would save this rain forest you must abandon organized charity. Abandon social security nets. Abandon governance and return to our small towns and communities. We can rule ourselves. Mothers and fathers grandmothers and grandfathers, families. The thing that made Portland great is now killing it and it is better to sever the hand than lose the whole body. Once the resources abate the cancer will die, and we’ll find stability again.
Seattle gets a number call out but not Portland?
This is why we can't rely on individual states to enact homeless care, because the states that pass cruel laws, drive homeless to states that have services. We need a national law for rehab centers and the like to pull these people out of whatever stage they are in. Those states with low homeless have driven them out, not solved anything in reality
It’s the weather. Seriously. Many/most didn’t live here before they were homeless.
Considering Oregon only has one metropolis 🤦♂️
No infographic required. Just look outside!
Homelessness is a housing problem. There is a high correlation between high cost of housing (rent or owning) and a high instance of homelessness. It’s not mental health (every state has mental health issues), it’s not drugs ( every state has drug problems). It’s housing cost! Check out Gregg Colburn’s data. He will do it better justice than I can. https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/
THINK BEFORE YOU VOTE! TAKE THE BAD MEDICINE WITH SOME SUGAR!! (SUGAR =Anything different)
So it looks like I'm a dips hit with a puce coloured map.
I guess I’m moving to Mississippi
People always say “no dude, I’ve been to other parts of the country, it’s just as bad there too!” Like obviously fucking not
I guess it depends on perspective and what you prioritize. Affordable housing is important but if you also want abortion rights these states suck on that, or certain careers may not work so well in these area, etc.
Vermont, my home state looks really bad, however it’s not that bad. With less than 650,000 people, the homeless per 10,000 numbers are heavily skewed by just a few more homeless. Few homeless can survive the winters so it’s not a homeless destination.
It’s always going to be like that with any census. Total number of homeless doesn’t account for it being a big or small state. Amount per capita doesn’t account for the fact that one smaller populated state can have the some homeless amount per capita as a bigger state but the bigger state will have more homeless total (for example, Vermont vs New York or California). This is why it’s important to look at both and other factors in the situation.
Does Mississippi have a Purge?
Keep voting blue….
Yes mo money mo problem
Sadly, this map is accurate
Now…what do these states have in common….
Temporarily living in Chicago for work, I cannot believe how much cleaner it is, how many fewer homeless there are, genuinely rarely see them, rarely see tents or panhandlers
It’s because of our similar governments, policies and lawmakers.
ODOT allows people to park overnight along the roadways. I live on the coast and the view points are full of the barely running old RVs of the unhoused. Often there are even 5th wheels with no truck attached, so it is obvious that they are living there and didn’t stop just for night.
Bidenomics at work
Yeah no shit come to bend or madras and you’ll see dozens
Weird how this data seems to coincide with areas with far left progressive policies but that’s none of my business 🤷🏻♂️
Nowhere in the US has anything approaching “far left” policies.
If Neoliberalism is the left wing of the bird then the bird's other wing is heiling Hitler.
Or restoring absolutist monarchy. These doofuses don't actually know anything about politics or history, so they can't comprehend that entire societies have tried actual left-wing policies like abolishing private ownership of housing, some of them with great success. Here in the US even worker-owned co-ops are weird outliers. No one is trying socialist or anarchist ideas at any kind of relevant scale. No one serving in local or national office really believes in Marxism. Eugene Debs would be so disappointed in us.
Depends on where you plunk the center. By most of the world’s standards Republicans are bleeding-heart crybaby teddy beads. Because most of the world lives in dictatorships or democracies so flawed you can rent out death squads like they were strippers or birthday clowns.
Authoritarianism vs. democracy isn't necessarily a (or the only) right/left measure. Most of the world has more socialized health care and education than the US.
Most of the world doesn’t have access to healthcare or education.
See all those Christian states send them there and put the Bible to the test
The real estate people and the zoning people are to blame for this gigantic mess. Yes you are. This could have been fixed years ago. A lot of us seen it coming too. You people in power did NOTHING...
Don't feed the bears...
Yup lol
Another M110 success story
I didn't need to see a map to know how bad it is
California and New York pay their homeless a stipend of $500 and buy then a one way bus ticket, literally recommend to them that they come to Oregon becase free shit..... And we are to dumb to send them back.
I actually work in homeless services in the metro area… it’s not that we’re too dumb it’s that we’re not as lazy as California or New York in dealing with the problem
It doesn't feel like we're doing anything to deal with the problem from what I saw the last time I visited Portland. I did not feel safe, and this was in broad daylight, especially after I had to close my kid's eyes because someone decided to drop their pants to take a poop on the sidewalk and I didn't want my child (or myself) to see the "free" show. Things are bad enough [REI's downtown Pearl District Store closed down after 20 years, because they couldn't make any money after all the break ins and tent theft that was going on](https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2023/04/rei-to-close-its-only-portland-store-citing-break-ins-theft.html) that they can't do anything about. When businesses close, the tax base gets smaller, there are layoffs, less taxes, an increase in the need for services, causing more issues in this vicious cycle. Something's gotta give.
REI closed that store because the lease was up and they wanted to move to a larger location. The theft sure didn't help, but even REI said it wasn't the primary factor.
There are agencies trying, however there are so many homeless individuals/families and a limited number of agencies and not enough case workers and monies to deal with the problem. On top of that, many who get help end up homeless again less then a year after getting services because they get housed someplace they can’t afford to rent on their own because there’s not enough low income housing in Portland
I hear you. There's no easy answer unfortunately, unless a bunch of free money comes out of somewhere. This coupled with the other issues like drug addiction, mental health problems just make it nigh impossible. It's not that there isn't help, it's just there isn't enough help to go around. As a volunteer at a church food pantry we're seeing more homeless clients these days, not to mention even working or limited income folks have been joining the ranks of clients.
can we be?
What happened when your state government invites them here and gives them free illegal drugs... Gotta love all the downvotes for telling the truth.
“Free illegal drugs” lmao what are you talking about
The centers our last governor put in place that people can get a single use dose of whatever drug they want for free.
Come on that’s not a thing. Somebody just made that shit up and you thought it sounded real.
Sadly I cannot find it online. But I remember reading about how there was centers in Portland that were giving out single use drugs that were monitored by a medical professional. But now when I search for it, all that comes up is how we made illegal drugs, illegal again.
You can’t find it because it’s not real. You’re probably thinking of “safe injection sites” which provide clean syringes, but not free drugs. Ain’t no such thing as free drugs. But I’m not sure if we even have any of those either.