“’My goal is to have enough shelter, housing, and treatment access available so that we can fully eliminate unsanctioned, unsheltered camping in Portland,’ Wheeler said in a statement ahead of the talks.”
Wheeler is a moron: they’ll NEVER have enough free shelter, housing, and treatment access because they’ll simply attract an unlimited number of vagabonds ... it’s pretty much like feeding pigeons: the more you feed them, the more pigeons you’ll get ...
>>it’s pretty much like feeding pigeons: the more you feed them, the more pigeons you’ll get ...<<
I call it the “stray cat problem.” My BIL (now dead) couldn’t resist a stray cat. There were upwards if a hundred of them in and around his car repair business at the time of his death. His affinity for giving shelter, food, and unrestricted access to rampant procreation, untreated disease, and daily cat fights that looked like an Antifa protest, was well-known and tolerated by the locals - especially those who didn’t live near the mess. The cats, themselves, were not unlike the denizens of human homeless encampments - sickly, disfigured by disease and injury. Malnourished beings with rheumy eyes, open sores, and pandemic-level diseases. It was the disease that kept this population from growing exponentially. The environment in and around his business was very much like one sees in these human vagrant encampments. The amount of animal waste, trash, rotting food and garbage was staggering. The resident rats, crows and seagulls attended to the disposal of the dead and dying, but even they couldn’t keep ahead of the filthy landscape. Animal shelter workers would trap, sterilize, and release these strays back to this location as time and charity donations allowed. It rewarded the humans with a fine sense of compassionate good-works but, in truth, it only served to perpetuate the miserable existence of these pathetic animals. When my BIL died, the cats were trapped en masse and most were euthanized. Only a scant few were able to be rehabilitated sufficiently to become barn cats for local farmers willing to take them. The point is, this was a Hellish existence of the cats’ own making - aided and abetted by humans with a misguided sense of what compassionate treatment looked like. I don’t see a nickel’s worth of difference between these stray cats and the human “homeless” population infesting our cities today. Do you?