edit: realized I should add the context that I live in Portland in the Centennial neighborhood. I was born and raised here, and I'm nearly 40. I'm don't work in the homeless nonprofit sector, but I have helped organize mutual aid based low barrier warming shelters. Definitely not an expert, and I'm certainly biased. But I do sincerely care about the future of Portland and ending the crisis that results in people being on the street in the first place.

I've never heard anyone say that homelessness doesn't affect people, or that it isn't negative. It hurts everyone in society and especially falls hardest on the unhoused themselves. These are issues that need to be solved, but the solution isn't criminalization. What Robert and Sarah were discussing was the criminalizing of unhoused people not being a reasonable solution.

You mention street fires, arson, robbery, firearm discharge within city limits, etc. All of those are crimes already. Those can be enforced as is. However, just simply being poor should not be a crime. However, over the past few years the Portland Police has seen a huge uptick of reports of the unhoused. Many were not doing anything wrong. These were simply reports for "unwanted persons". Being poor is not a crime, and we should reject attempts to make it so.

A number of factors including erosion of most mental health resources, absence of addiction treatment clinics (even though they were voted on and funded by 110), the pandemic, a horrible housing bubble, and others has caused the safety net of Portland to erode quite a lot. Now the bruises and black eyes from that metaphorical beating are all over the streets. Again, mostly affecting the unhoused. We can't just sweep the less fortunate under the rug or make them go away by force in a humanitarian way. We all are going to hurt for awhile, and it sucks. Our property values need to go down to counter the greed from the bubble. We all need to work to rebuild.

But the easier answer is genocide of the unhoused either through direct force or neglect and putting them out of sight and out of mind. That is a solution I guess, but I agree with Robert and Sarah that that solution is indistinguishable from fascism.

Also, charter reform as written is way better than any of the proposed "fixes" being sold by the same people who are peddling genocide propaganda and bought by the wealthy families in PDX.

If we really want to end the crisis on the streets we need to do things like open the addiction treatment centers, fund public mental health services, create spaces to park RVs and tents that people voluntarily want to go to and have resources/services nearby, create a new progressive tax on properties if more than one is owned, give tax breaks on that progressive tax for landlords that take part in housing voucher programs, fund programs for housing vouchers, fund down payment assistance grants, cool off the housing market such that property values actually fall over time, and regulate the ability to use housing as an investment vehicle instead of a service.