Well, to start, the majority of the population of homeless people in Portland (and most major cities for that matter) are severally mentally ill and/or struggle with the opioid epidemic. We lived downtown, right off Broadway in the NE, close to the Rose Quarter - the places hit hardest by the homeless in Portland are the NW neighborhoods (like the Pearl), the Rose Quarter, and anywhere off the Springwater Corridor. These homeless are known for their comically large and obvious bicycle chop shops, aggression, and hypodermic needles. Go to /r/Portland for a better picture.
On our block we began with a group of addicts and mentally ill who, while unstable, were actually extremely friendly. I volunteered at a shelter in Seattle that catered to the mentally ill so I have a soft spot for the homeless. With our group I tried to say hello to them and ask how their day was, be compassionate in giving them blankets and hats in the cold weather, and generally just treat them as people. They were a nice little mis-matched group who looked out for each other (in particular one man with severe mental and probably physical illness; they kept him warm, kept him fed, and kept him from being bullied by other transients) and just generally kept to themselves. Not a “blight on the neighborhood” by any means.
However, over a period of a couple months (in the winter actually which was unusual as most transients moved in during the warmer months) we had another group (or several small groups; we aren’t sure) start to move in. They were loud, obnoxious, constantly cased cars (and I suspect they were responsible for the smashed windows that suddenly started happening more often), would shamelessly shoot up on the sidewalk at all hours, harass you for money, etc. I worked graveyard so I left at around 8pm and got home around 7am. One morning I was followed from my car to my apartment by a man making lewd remarks. A couple of times I had a group of men follow me down the block to my car at night, so I started parking only where I could be seen from our apartment windows. I got used to not being able to walk anywhere without having to tune out some form of sexual harassment. More than once I waited with the convenience store cashier (the store which we could literally see from our bedroom window) until someone who had followed me in to the store, left.
The verbal harassment and following got so bad I started asking my boyfriend to walk me to my car (on the nights he was able). I specifically remember once incident where I was getting into my car and a man had followed us and made kissing sounds/comments at me with my boyfriend there with me.
There is a population of homeless in Portland who live there because they can get away with just about anything - there’s news story after news story of women being sexually assaulted along by this new population of transients(of course I’m sure it happened before, but it seems to be significantly more common now). It’s impossible to own a bicycle for any significant amount of time. It’s expected your car will get broken into at some point. Fired start at the camps all the time. And I wouldn’t recommend wearing sandals in any of the parks.
It’s a damn shame. Portland is a beautiful city but it’s being ruined because of its government’s inability to address the issue in a constructive manner.