[Welcome to our second annual "SAY NICE THINGS ABOUT PORTLAND" issue! Read it online here, or if you like physical, paper-y things, you can find it in more than 50 locations all around the city!âeds]
Before I get started, (and piss people off), I should start by saying this: âhouse keys not handcuffs,â âcare not jail,â and âstop the sweepsââI breathe that.Â
Now, once you get past mantras, thereâs some real life outside that we all have to acknowledge about the mounds of policy failure that has become Portland, and now Oregonâs massive homeless problem: our streets are wild.Â
The endless needles, pipes as common as the rain, the undiagnosed person throwing a chair into a grocery store window, the trash tumbleweeding every which wayâitâs a lot.Â
Even when we recognize the scourge on the streets has been created by decades of government terror and disinvestment, as well as over-fidelity to the most deep-pocketed by those in powerâthose failures have turned into a more materially unstable and unsafe place for all of us if weâre telling the truth.Â
Which, speaking of disinvestmentâdid you know that in Oregon, which is just 2 Â percent Black, the most racially diverse county in the state, Multnomah, is just 7 percent Black? Despite that fact, we Black people make up almost a quarter of the growing thousands of homeless people in Multnomah County.Â
And this ironically, is where the good stuff starts to happenâat least in this story. The good stuff is in the brain and heart of LaQuida âQâ Landford, a Portland-by-way of Belize activist who embodies âthe work.â Sheâs the founder and Executive Director of AfroVillage PDX, a non-profit on the frontlines of tackling Black homelessness in Oregon. All the aforementioned issues with our homeless problem, be it the cause or the consequence, LaQuida is well aware of and more.Â
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