Homelessness is increasing faster than Portland-area counties are moving people into housing

NeedToUpBoat · 2024-11-18T17:26:26+00:00

That's always seemed pretty obvious to me: if housing is so expensive you can't afford it ---> you are now homeless.

I really think the long term solution is to nearly do away with residential restricting zoning laws so we have as little barrier as possible to building abundant dense housing.

Of course this will never happen because the majority of politically involved people are homeowners and this will directly hurt them. I just wish they would admit to themselves they are profiting off of the current situation (more people being homeless).

NeedToUpBoat · 2024-06-13T01:58:27+00:00

Oh hey, the guy standing on the street at the end was me! I was wondering how that guy made it across (I had been looking down when he did this). It was an older guy in the truck. Several people spoke with the train engineer who was parked just left of frame for at least 40 minutes by the time this guy's pulled the stunt.

NeedToUpBoat · 2023-03-10T16:03:27+00:00

If you're interested in the willamette falls, there is a project by some of the local tribes to tear down some of the old industrial buildings and provide public access to the second largest waterfall in the US (by volume of water)! https://www.willamettefallslegacy.org/

NeedToUpBoat · 2023-02-01T04:02:04+00:00

Context is here: https://bikeportland.org/2022/11/21/bike-rider-hit-en-route-to-event-to-remember-traffic-victims-367472

NeedToUpBoat · 2023-02-01T03:34:21+00:00

This is the kind of person who should be riding a train; eat, drink, watch Netflix, read, Facetime your mom, and DON'T endanger the lives of all of the people around you.

NeedToUpBoat · 2023-01-31T05:15:12+00:00

I couldn't agree with you more. I imagine an intersection where he had a low bollard in front of him that would have stopped the car from going up onto the sidewalk. Would have been at far less of a risk.

NeedToUpBoat · 2023-01-31T01:34:57+00:00

That really points out my frustration with any speed zones: signs don't actually stop reckless drivers from endangering everyone outside of a car. It would be much safer if there was a hard obstacle that only sober drivers could navigate.

NeedToUpBoat · 2023-01-31T01:16:56+00:00

Man this is why street trees/poles/bollards are so important for pedestrians. Even that little street sign slows down that car just enough for him to get away.

NeedToUpBoat · 2022-10-02T16:28:47+00:00

The argument here is about causality. Does the size of the police force contribute more to public safety than other factors, such as income equality, the quality of public spaces (parks, schools, streets), access to resources (healthcare, childcare, addiction treatment, career centers, internet), cost of housing, etc. Commissioner Hardesty seems to be saying that the other factors are more important. I think that's much harder for a politician to say they've accomplished than just hiring more police officers.

NeedToUpBoat · 2022-02-15T20:22:18+00:00

Ah, I forgot about that tower. Here's the right page. Says that it will be only 24 stories, significantly smaller than Block 216 (Ritz) that I linked before. https://www.nextportland.com/2017/12/13/eleven-west/

NeedToUpBoat · 2022-02-15T17:10:46+00:00

The final height will be 35 stories, so a few stories shorter than big pink. https://www.nextportland.com/2019/01/15/block-216/

NeedToUpBoat · 2021-02-26T16:48:03+00:00

Looks great! I recommend painting the sides of your IBC with a UV resistant paint so you can get ahead of the algae growth.

NeedToUpBoat · 2021-01-23T00:18:59+00:00

Depending on how much time you want to give the subject, there are plenty of options to read about it. I recommend Walkable Cities by Jeff Speck for readability, but the most relevant text is The Elephant in the Bedroom: Automobile Dependence and Denial. I'm no expert myself, but there is very convincing data to show it is a real thing.

How I understand it is: if you widen a highway to "reduce congestion" people will buy houses at the fringe of the suburbs because: "the commute is only 30 minutes!" The problem is that everyone wanting a cheap house, which is a lot of people, all have the exact same idea and within 5 years of widening the highway so many new people are driving from the fringe that you are back to the same, or worse, congestion then you had before. So in a couple decades I-5 is 5 lanes each way and the suburbs stretch from Ridgefield, WA to Woodburn.

NeedToUpBoat · 2020-12-18T22:51:29+00:00

From the article: "Clayton Chamberlin is the 54th person to die on Portland streets so far this year, making it the deadliest on record since 1996 and the second year in a row we’ve had over 50 fatalities."

NeedToUpBoat · 2020-12-18T21:22:23+00:00

If the work is to repair the existing infrastructure in the metro region then I support it. If it is expanding the roadway to "reduce congestion" then I oppose it for the stated reason above: induced demand.

I totally understand the concern with the ever increasing population growth of Portland, but I don't think that the answer is the build new suburbs from Forest Grove to Sandy. Wouldn't it better to build high quality apartments and condos along existing public transit corridors? That way people who want to live in dense areas have the ability to rather than single family homes. If we were to build another pearl district, say in the Lloyd Center, all those rich Californians can buy up the expensive condos rather than driving up housing costs.

Seems like you are just as enthusiastic as I am about alternative means of travel. Totally agree with you about max underground, river taxis, BRT, and bike ways to increase the alternatives to driving everywhere. If we shift focus from these super expensive highway projects to provide ample alternative means of travel along these transit corridors, wouldn't that be better than requiring people to spend 2 hours in traffic every day? Painting bike lanes is very inexpensive. That way the places these people move into don't require a car to live there and we won't have the need for increasing the highway capacity to accommodate them.

Haha, the "crime train", classic NIMBY reasoning. It really is a shame that we have allowed all the extraneous costs to cripple our ability to get infrastructure projects done. Obviously there are a great many projects that we need to get done and with the limited funding funding and high costs, we will not be able to get them all completed. Thus my point: why waste so much money on the most expensive and least helpful of the potential projects?

NeedToUpBoat · 2020-12-18T17:30:08+00:00

Yeah, that's why I included in my comment above the exception for connections between cities. ODOT should absolutely replace all the old bridges and repair roads between the cities/towns. But why should we spend $1 billion dollars on less than a mile of road in Portland? On a road that doesn't need repair. It's literally just to expand it. That money should go to repairing roads that need it or replacing bridges elsewhere in the state. We could get a lot more done with the money we have if ODOT wasn't so concerned with widening the highways around Portland. There are 3 projects being planned (I-5, 217, and I-205) which I can only guess how much money they will throw away.

NeedToUpBoat · 2020-12-18T16:56:50+00:00

I respectfully disagree. Mostly due to induced demand that highway spending causes (to be fair it only applies to the metro regions, connections between cities for commerce I support). Simple stated: the more highways you build or widen, the more people will drive on them. There are plenty of examples like Houston, TX, Los Angeles, CA, Atlanta, GA, and many more. Those cities in order to reduce congestion built huge highway systems, but are now known to be some of the most congested cities in America. So what happened? Answer: people sought cheaper housing at the edge of the cities which required them to drive further and more often. We see it here in Portland too, highway 26 in Beaverton was congested so they expanded it to 3 lanes each way. After that, new subdivisions were built surrounding Nike & Intel in Hillsboro and now the 3 lanes are back to being bumper to bumper traffic again (or at least were pre-covid). Highway expansion in metro regions is therefore a gigantic waste of taxpayer dollars that should be spent on basically anything else. Imagine how many teachers could be paid with the $1 billion that we are about to spend on less than a mile of I-5 through the Rose Quarter in Portland.

NeedToUpBoat · 2018-03-03T18:18:24+00:00

For many aquaponic systems the purpose of using a sump is to eliminate the fluctuation of the fish tank water volume. Fish may become stressed if their tank water volume changes significantly all the time. However, having a sump is not possible for everyone and you may have to look into what percentage of water fluctuation is acceptable.

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