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For more than a year, several square blocks of sidewalks in Portland’s Old Town have been filled with homeless tent encampments. The epicenter of these camps were the blocks surrounding the Gladys McCoy Health Department Headquarters. Last week, WW obtained internal Multnomah County documents showing a security consultant had identified the camps as a significant threat to health workers in the building (“Breakdown,” May 11). Workers at several county clinics told officials they feared for their safety—one even considered wearing a bulletproof vest to work. Two days after WW’s report, city workers swept camps near the McCoy Building. Here’s what our readers had to say:
Iain McKenzie, via Twitter: “The situation around the old Greyhound station has become really bad, as it has in a lot of other places too. Local elected leaders need to find a way to improve the situation, or they’ll soon be replaced with new people willing to be a lot crueler.”
Mongorongo, via Reddit: “The mental health workers that we need to provide services are afraid to show up to work to provide those services. “When do we admit this isn’t working anymore?”
NoPo Resident, via wweek.com: “So Multnomah County’s incompetence and policies are impacting their own employees. Sort of like what citizens experience daily. Felt sorry for a couple seconds, then it passed.”
Rich Harp, via Facebook: “I love PDX and it’s so disappointing to watch downtown decline due to ineffective leadership.
“If only you, Willamette Week, could challenge Portland City Council and Metro leadership to live in Old Town for a month.”
HelloGunnit, via Reddit: “After spending three paragraphs explaining how their employees have been assaulted, beaten, chased with weapons, and threatened with death, they turn around and say they don’t want the police to intervene because: ‘We don’t want to have our clients become justice-involved, especially our BIPOC clients.’
“The lack of self-awareness is staggering.”
Noelle Guest, via Facebook: “Old Town is seriously frightening right now. I brought my son to Ground Kontrol a couple of weeks ago. He was startled and scared by some of the scenes and people we saw, just walking to and from the car. There was no sense of order, really, just a feeling of randomness and helplessness.”
Stephen Judkins, via Twitter: “My new, slightly more authoritarian view on this is that if you are suffering from obvious meth-driven psychosis or mania in public, you should be institutionalized, somehow. My generous liberal view is that the institutions should be as nice as possible.”
LETTERS to the editor must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: PO Box 10770, Portland OR, 97296 Email: mzusman@wweek.com
