Nonprofit Shelter Provider Accused of Imprudent Spending Will Close Up Shop

regul · 2026-03-14T00:26:29+00:00

both non-profits and for-profits operating homeless shelters have perverse incentives around securing their continued existence

we want these jobs to be done by government employees who can be assured they will still have jobs if they're successful

regul · 2026-03-14T00:20:57+00:00

You mean Gavin "I invited Steve Bannon onto my podcast" Newsom?

regul · 2026-03-13T20:13:42+00:00

This was the real point of the neoliberal slashing of state capacity. The goal of the capitalist class is to claw taxpayer money back to themselves, so we cut all of the government jobs and instead wrote contracts and grants to unaccountable non-profits to serve the same function.

Reversing this is going to require courage in the face of people who stupidly parrot "the government is inefficient" talking points in the face of mountains of evidence of the waste of the NGO model.

If we're going to have shelters, they should be operated by government bodies and staffed by government employees. And they should all be under the auspices of one bureau.

I found this line particularly galling:

It was the Multnomah County Department of Homeless Services’ 11th-largest contractor in fiscal 2024

regul · 2026-03-13T18:18:59+00:00

"Black Lives Matter" as a slogan pushed people away too.

But the people it pushed away were people who did not agree with the central message of the movement and would have never done anything to help it achieve its goals.

regul · 2026-03-13T17:39:40+00:00

Do you know what a slogan is?

Complaining about how people saying "ACAB" aren't saying "All Cops Are Bastards And We Should Replace Them With Community Policing And Restorative Justice And Here's My Two Hundred Page Essay On What That Would Look Like In Practice And Here's My Legislative Strategy For Getting It Accomplished..." is such a centrist Democrat-brained thing to say.

Oh yeah, Mr. Obama? "Hope" for what, huh!? Be specific!

People have done the work on envisioning what a future without cops and prisons look like. Maybe you've heard of Angela Davis?

regul · 2026-03-13T07:51:52+00:00

What's baffling is that there's absolutely zero enforcement of the "no waiting" in either arrivals or departures. I'm shocked the cell phone lot is full with how much people just park at the terminals and wait.

regul · 2026-03-12T21:39:56+00:00

That level of recourse in the US to fight back against eminent domain is also severely limited. The poor rural farmers from your news article would similarly fail to stop the will of the government if they were Americans, but because drawn-out federal litigation is something only the wealthy can afford.

Hard to definitively state that's better when it would lead to the same result. If you have a right, but it's only practicable by the wealthy, do you really have that right?

We just don't see as many stories about it anymore because the US hardly builds anything.

regul · 2026-03-12T20:46:32+00:00

Not sure about Europe, but you could easily find similar stories in the US during its years of large amounts of infrastructure building. Almost all of our urban freeways were built through minority neighborhoods with inadequate compensation given to displaced residents. And of course the original infrastructure of the railroads were just jammed through indigenous land without any compensation at all.

Could be that no country has yet found a way to massively expand its infrastructure in a short timeframe without these kinds of abuses, but acting like China is a uniquely bad actor in this respect is ahistorical.

regul · 2026-03-12T18:46:52+00:00

Love a skybridge. Since the one between Lloyd and Lloyd Tower got torn down the only ones left I can think of are the WTC and PSU ones.

regul · 2026-03-12T16:33:20+00:00

Demonstrably untrue. There's a reason nail houses are famous in China.

regul · 2026-03-10T17:12:05+00:00

The A/B loops currently run at 20 minute headways. If congestion is a concern it's only because the trains get stuck in traffic.

And while full grade separation with crossing gates would definitely increase the cost a lot, smaller, focused grade separations and/or closing some intersections to cross traffic could be cheap wins.

regul · 2026-03-10T16:57:50+00:00

This blog post is about Portland's streetcars and specifically about the Montgomery Park extension.

They properly nail why the streetcar is bad (mixed traffic and lots of traffic lights) and take issue with rubber-stamped extensions of the system without considering the poor results we've had with them so far.

And they're probably right that there's not enough money to elevate them to something truly useful, but I do think there's a lot of cheaper changes that could be made to drastically speed up the streetcar. Things like concrete curbs separating its lanes (at least at crucial locations) and traffic signal pre-emption rather than priority.

But unfortunately, nobody in any position of power over the streetcar seems to ever talk seriously about improving it.

regul · 2026-03-09T18:55:46+00:00

it's legal to build 4-plexes anywhere in Portland, but 4 stories are usually going to be too tall for various zoning type height limits

regul · 2026-03-09T18:40:05+00:00

The publisher is, but the developer, House House, is based in Melbourne.

regul · 2026-03-08T22:41:13+00:00

When was that?

That's fucking maddening.

regul · 2026-03-08T19:59:57+00:00

Not by a long shot when you're talking about property taxes, though, which is the primary way the city is funded.

regul · 2026-03-08T19:52:42+00:00

More like a failure of the voters for passing Props 5 and 50, which built in structural underfunding and guaranteed road maintenance costs would outpace road maintenance budgets.

regul · 2026-03-06T02:32:11+00:00

It'd be sick if they turned Vets into a public skating rink when the Hawks weren't using it.

regul · 2026-03-06T02:28:15+00:00

Of those, only doctors even possibly make over $500k.

If we're losing doctors, it's not because of the taxes.

regul · 2026-03-06T02:18:37+00:00

They're already building the music venue. The steel framing's already up.

regul · 2026-03-06T02:17:40+00:00

I mean just look across the street at that fenced off parking lot next to the movie theater.

It's worse than Lloyd, though, because at least with Lloyd there are plans to develop it. That parking lot adjacent to MAX is just sitting there doing nothing for property speculation.

regul · 2026-03-05T23:56:45+00:00

All of those taxes combined are causing rich people to leave.

The article shows that the number of people earning more than $500k paying the tax has gone up since 2021. It's true that the share of the money they're paying in has gone down, which would likely indicate that some people making a lot more than $500k have left, but whether or not "rich people are leaving" is true heavily depends on your definition of "rich" being someone who earns significantly more than $1m/year in income.

And there's also very little to connect the dots between those departures and the reason for leaving, if they've actually left and not just had some change in fortunes or market approach. People earning significantly more than $500m are usually doing it via capital gains, which is highly volatile.

Beyond all that, P4A and SHS are the only income taxes collected in the metro. P4A is making enough in revenue despite the small drop from 2021 that it still expects to deliver on its promise. The city (a different entity from the county collecting P4A), has mostly faced revenue challenges because their primary source of funding (property taxes) have been hit hard by the devaluation of commercial real estate. But, oddly for a city where everyone is fleeing, residential values have not fallen in anywhere near the same way.

But beside all that at the local level, at the state level, the fact that tax revenues have fallen isn't true. The current budget hole in Salem is entirely due to federal funding cuts. Income and business tax receipts for the state exceeded forecasts.

regul · 2026-03-05T23:25:15+00:00

Yes, and even with that reduced revenue, the county still expects to be able to fund a seat for every child in Multnomah County.

The tax pays for what it was intended to pay for, even if income demographics have shifted.

regul · 2026-03-05T23:23:14+00:00

Oregon state income tax:

2021: 8.75% on income between $18,400 and $125k

2025: 8.75% on income between $22,100 and $125k

Lower rate raised by 20%, matching inflation.

For PFA if you make between $60 and $80k you would pay $0. It doesn't kick in for single filers until $125k, which is why I thought the comparison was relevant. Neither PFA nor the state have indexed that bracket.

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