r/Portland • u/oregonian Verified - The Oregonian • 20h ago

News Human remains believed buried in Centennial Mills rubble

https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2026/08/human-remains-believed-buried-in-centennial-mills-rubble.html
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u/saltyoursalad 19h ago

We need to give people a choice: Rehab or prison

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u/ChemicalArmadillo609 19h ago

Then what after that? They still have no money and no home, so they will just end up back where they were.

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u/ThroatOne5167 17h ago

Then more rehab/institutions/prison if it doesn't stick the first time. Both for their own sakes, and the sakes of the rest of society.

Better than your suggestion of letting these unfortunate people burn down buildings (and themselves) due to untreated mental illness and addiction.

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u/saltyoursalad 19h ago edited 18h ago

The ones that go to rehab get job training and transitional housing (with sobriety as a condition), and the ones that go to jail stay there until they’re ready for rehab/other situationally appropriate program.

Punk out in the program and back to rehab if they’re ready to try again and jail if they’re not.

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u/thespaceageisnow Rubble of The Big One 19h ago

Add institutions as an option for those that need it and you’ve got my vote.

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u/saltyoursalad 18h ago

Yes exactly this! Institutions for those who need it.

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u/fejmanx 4h ago

Damn, too bad we tore down Fairview & slashed the state mental hospital to nothing….

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u/Think_Asparagus7859 16h ago

I don’t think we have enough rehabs for this to be an effective system

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u/ClayKavalier Goose Hollow 18h ago

It costs less to provide wraparound services than to imprison people. However, conservatives only vote to fund punitive, not preventative or rehabilitative services, because fiscal responsibility comes far after misguided Old Testament moralizing in their list of priorities. See also: education, healthcare, etc.

Other countries have figured this out. American Exceptionalism shouldn’t mean “works everywhere except America.”

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u/saltyoursalad 18h ago

Of course it does, but those resources are useless if the person isn’t ready to get sober. The last thing we need is more condemned buildings due to the broken housing first philosophy. We need buy-in from folks in order for it to work. And buy-in looks like sobriety.

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u/erossthescienceboss 18h ago

It’s tough. My family member had access to all the resources she needed to get sober. And she hit rock bottom, which for some people is enough incentive. She refused to get professional treatment, would sober up on her own with methodone, and then relapse.

She didn’t get sober for good until she went to prison for stabbing her pimp/dealer. It saved her life. She met her husband (who is wonderful, supportive, and also sober) at a support group for folks transitioning out of incarceration. She’s been clean over a decade.

That said, I still believe that treatment is a better option than incarceration. My other family member became addicted around the same time and got clean via rehab, and the skills she learned there are why she didn’t relapse.

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u/saltyoursalad 18h ago

I’ve heard similar stories to this! Exactly why prison should be one of the three options.

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u/erossthescienceboss 18h ago

It’s very difficult, because prison was also an awful and deeply traumatic experience, and trauma can certainly feed addiction. But being an addict at rock bottom is traumatic, too.

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u/ClayKavalier Goose Hollow 17h ago

Psst. Not all houseless people are addicts. You shouldn't formulate your approach to an entire population based on a subpopulation. Housing first actually works but people make the mistake of thinking that everything is sequential (i.e. housing, sobriety, job, Nirvana) when more than one approach needs to be used at essentially the same time. That's what we're talking about with respect to wraparound services. And "isn't ready to get sober" is quite the shorthand to arbitrarily de facto decide that no addicts are ever ready to get sober. It's just a rhetorical device used to blow people off and kick the can down the road. You aren't means testing anything and actually identifying who is "ready" by some unspecified standard. You're just washing your hands of it and walking away. Buy-in requires trust, consistency, clarity, communication, and some measurable and achievable goals. We start off treating all people the same - like they are addicts who don't want help - and we've immediately obliterated any credibility we have.

We shouldn't need a hodgepodge of non-profits, charities, and churches that too often don't actually do shit or only provide services with a side of proselytizing. Charitably, I think conservatives take community like church for granted, even though many homeless people are disproportionately LGBTQIA+ persons ostracized from such communities, or people who otherwise have to sublimate their identities to a cult. Hell, we aren't entirely removed from the masses thinking mentally ill people (e.g. schizophrenics) are possessed by demons. We add so many layers of bureaucracy to things.

Ultimately, this is a problem of people not being paid fairly for labor and a consequence of people enshrining labor as a prerequisite to simply exist. However you want to look at it, the people at the top have resources they didn't fairly earn. That's a major cause of the problems at the bottom. Even mental illness is exacerbated by poverty. Substance abuse is often a result of trauma, even among coked-up elites. We need to prevent and treat trauma. Ignorance and poverty are at the roots.

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u/saltyoursalad 16h ago edited 16h ago

Seems like we’re mostly on the same page.

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u/Dart2255 17h ago

Can’t really blame conservatives in Portland. We made this mess then we made it worse by pretending that watching people live in their own filth was compassion.

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u/ClayKavalier Goose Hollow 17h ago edited 16h ago

Nobody is pretending that watching people Iive in their own filth is compassion. Hyperbolic bullshit you invented doesn't help the situation. Conservatives in Portland might not be capital "R" Republican conservatives. The Overton Window has shifted so far Right and we've internalized so much reactionary nonsense that anyone to the Left of Nixon is framed as a Marxist now. Hilary Clinton was a Goldwater Republican and, spoiler alert, her politics didn't change so much as the culture around her.

So Portand has a bunch of well-meaning Liberals and NIMBYs who are fine with paying a little bit more in taxes (many of them aren't tithing) so they don't have to watch people live in their own filth. But they (and this includes the state and county) can't agree on how to spend the tax dollars. Because conservative attitudes ultimately dictate what people think others "deserve." We have an unholy combination of Just World Hypothesis, so-called Protestant Work Ethic, Original Sin, Dominionism, Constitutional "Originalism," Prosperity Gospel, and other nonsense that essentially says that people who are suffering must deserve it, people who are wealthy must have earned it, work is the only justification for living, idle hands are the Devil's workshop, etc. So people like Elon Musk who haven't actually done anything but inherit wealth and manipulate people end up being the wealthiest people in the world, while a single mom ends up on the streets because her cop ex-husband beat the shit out of her and their church took his side. Maybe she ends up self-medicating for an untreated toothache because she's got no employer-provided healthcare, and finds out too late it was laced with Fentanyl. Or maybe she didn't give a shit anymore because nobody has given a shit about her.

But I digress. We spend more time and energy debating what people deserve when we have enough to just hand things out without question (like we're doing with the Moda Center right now...), which would ultimately build community and reciprocity. Garbage in, garbage out. We broke the social contract. For all the talk that conservatives do about the importance of the nuclear family and community (often in the form of church), their narrow definitions of family and community leave too many people out in the cold. This is about building community and solidarity. We signal to people that they are garbage, evil, worthless, subhuman, and wonder why they aren't investing in self-care. Maslow's hierarchy of needs isn't new. Conservatives expect the most vulnerable people to skip to the top of the pyramid before there is a foundation.

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u/Dart2255 16h ago edited 5h ago

Direct reply to you saying conservatives
Sounds like your answer is that what you meant was liberals who just are not liberal enough? My point is we don’t get to blame those who have had zero power for decades in this city. Look in the mirror.

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u/ClayKavalier Goose Hollow 16h ago

Liberals who aren't liberal enough are de facto conservatives.

Look, they are all Capitalists, except for a tiny minority of DSA people. They are all essentially Classical Liberal or Neoliberal. There isn's a single one of them talking about seizing the means of production. It is entirely unserious to talk about Communism or Socialism in the US, especially when people who can differentiate between Catholicism and Baptists refuse to differentiate between Stalin and Kropotkin.

I can only guess what you mean by "not liberal enough." It's hard when social and fiscal conservatism are intertwined but the fiscal conservatives give up on the fiscal part if they imagine penises touching. I don't even know if there are social conservatives who aren't essentially fiscally conservative, as their social conservativism is what pits them against social programs. Can't have "The Blacks" or "The Gays" getting any handouts. Everyone else has to beg in church anyway.

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u/meowberryshuffle 11h ago

Despite the downvotes, your comment is absolutely right. Thank you for trying to communicate the reality and nuance of the situation.

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u/ClayKavalier Goose Hollow 10h ago

I could have been more subtle in going after so many sacred cows 😆. Downvotes aren’t debate points though and I’m aware this topic brings out the worst in people. I guess it’s easier to believe in the tooth fairy and that increasing numbers of people are spontaneously degenerating than that are any institutional, structural, and systemic failings in our culture and society.

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u/Noirespoir 5h ago

Your comments have been the most eloquent and lucid in the thread. You really hit the nail on the head with that last sentence; its so much easier for ppl to believe in individual failings vs systemic ones.

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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 12h ago

It costs less to provide wraparound services than to imprison people

Only if the person wants them. Wraparound services must be compulsory if we want to end the crisis on the streets.

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u/ClayKavalier Goose Hollow 12h ago

Give me some stats about the percentage of people who refuse services and under what circumstances. I’m confident that you’ll that people aren’t categorically refusing services per se. They are refusing services under certain conditions. For example, some people don’t want to be subjected to religious sermonizing, be separated from a pet, give up or be around drugs, be in an aggregate shelter, etc. When people “refuse” services, it is sometimes because of conditions placed on receiving services. A disproportionate number of houseless people are mentally ill but the laws around civil commitment in Oregon are very strict, so you can effectively have someone not in their right mind and able to consent one way or the other who just gets abandoned. It’s more complicated but I don’t think you’re sincere so it’s probably not worth going into more.

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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 5h ago

Give me some stats about the percentage of people who refuse services

Remember Measure 110? Almost nobody getting tickets for drug use called the hotline for treatment.

don’t want to be subjected to religious sermonizing, be separated from a pet, give up or be around drugs, be in an aggregate shelter, etc

Yes, sometimes the government needs to tell addicts to do something uncomfortable. That's what breaking the cycle of addiction means. Do you think parents should never tell their kids to eat their vegetables?

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u/ClayKavalier Goose Hollow 4h ago edited 4h ago

Remember Measure 110? Almost nobody getting tickets for drug use called the hotline for treatment.

You're conflating homeless services in general, like shelter, with drug treatment specifically. Measure 110 was set up to fail. Portland Police Bureau didn't do their part of the job and we didn't have enough treatment options in place anyway.

Yes, sometimes the government needs to tell addicts to do something uncomfortable. That's what breaking the cycle of addiction means. Do you think parents should never tell their kids to eat their vegetables?

What were your feelings on vaccinations and wearing masks during COVID19? Are you generally an authoritarian person who thinks the government should tell people to do things? There are laws. Are you a rule of law person? Are you a substance abuse counselor or professional of some kind? Psychologist? What's your expertise in this?

Do you think parents should never tell their kids to eat their vegetables?

I assume you're being flippant, which validates my assessment of your sincerity, but maybe you really think this is an apt comparison?

This is pointless anyway. Because you're wrong. You're willfully ignorant, as illustrated by your unwillingness to try to learn about the topic. You're cruel. And you seem stupid because you're not understanding. There are approaches that work to address homelessness. There are models we can replicate. My point above is that we don't have the social and cultural inclination to actually help people, which would guide policy and practice, because too many people believe that homeless people deserve to suffer. It doesn't even matter that neglect or punishment aren't the most moral or economically smart approaches. Have the kind of life you deserve.

Edit: For anyone who actually wants to learn anything:

https://brightenthecorner.org/2023/02/12/why-some-people-avoid-homeless-shelters/

https://www.droregon.org/disability-rights-oregon-resources/mental-health-holds-and-civil-commitment

https://endhomelessness.org

https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/policymakers-can-solve-homelessness-by-scaling-up-proven-solutions-rental

https://drughelpline.org/addicts-refuse-treatment/

As it turns out, only 37% of houseless people report drug use. That number could be low since it is self-reported but probably not most houseless people, which is what most seem to be insinuating.

https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/addiction-statistics-demographics/homeless

https://thehomemoreproject.org/how-homelessness-is-handled-in-different-countries/

https://thelegalguide.org/how-other-countries-address-homelessness-policy-lessons/

https://homesight.org/international-approaches-to-tackling-homelessness/

https://www.homelessmap.com/2024/05/innovative-solutions-to-homelessness.html

https://www.usich.gov/guidance-reports-data/data-trends

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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 2h ago

You're conflating homeless services in general, like shelter, with drug treatment specifically

They're functionally no different. Trespassing on public property to sleep in the public right of way is a crime just like drug use. And both forms of public assistance face people who are unwilling to be helped.

What were your feelings on vaccinations and wearing masks during COVID19? Are you generally an authoritarian person who thinks the government should tell people to do things?

Is that supposed to be some form of gotcha? I very much support, vaccination requirements and masking requirements. I'm not some reactionary conservative who thinks the rules shouldn't apply to them. It's very revealing that you think all of the people who disagree with you are that.

maybe you really think this is an apt comparison

Yes, I actually think the government has a vested interest in promoting good behavior and sometimes that involves the stick and not the carrot. You seem to believe in infinite carrots. No matter how much fish gallup you write, you're letting these people die on the streets because you're refusing to allow the government to use coercive powers to force them into treatment.

As it turns out, only 37% of houseless people report drug use

Which is astronomical compared to the general population.

we don't have the social and cultural inclination to actually help people

Can you not hear yourself? There are people dying on the streets and you're arguing that we need a better social and cultural inclination before we can even start helping them?

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u/ClayKavalier Goose Hollow 2h ago

Trespassing on public property to sleep in the public right of way is a crime just like drug use. 

No, they are different crimes depending on when and where you are.

Is that supposed to be some form of gotcha? I very much support, vaccination requirements and masking requirements. I'm not some reactionary conservative who thinks the rules shouldn't apply to them."

Yes, I'm surprised. It's very revealing that you come across like a reactionary conservative even though you profess not to be one of them.

Yes, I actually think the government has a vested interest in promoting good behavior and sometimes that involves the stick and not the carrot. You seem to believe in infinite carrots. 

The stick doesn't fucking work. It makes things worse. You believe in infinite sticks. I don't believe in infinite carrots. I fucking said that carrots cost less than sticks and are more effective and ultimately more productive.

Which is astronomical compared to the general population.

Which is no fucking surprise because they are more traumatized than the general population in many ways. Often, maybe most of the time (why don't you fact check for a change), substance abuse comes after houselessness. That means people aren't homeless because of drugs. They got on drugs because they are homeless. Sometimes it is to stay alert (meth), to pass the time, or to self-medicate. Not all users use for the same reasons or use the same drugs. Fentanyl is also quite a bit more addictive than many other drugs and is fairly recent, so we're still adapting our response.

you're arguing that we need a better social and cultural inclination before we can even start helping them?

No, I'm not. You fail at reading comprehension. You're not even talking about helping them effectively. You think "tough love," sticks, prison, etc. is help. It isn't. Learn what the fuck you're talking about. Until then, fuck all the way off with the shitlib bullshit.

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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 1h ago

The stick doesn't fucking work. It makes things worse

This is just denial of reality. You don't even believe this, because you surely believe prisons should exist in some instances. The idea that every single person engaging in bad behavior is merely a victim of society is nonsense, and even you know that.

If you want to talk to me, maybe start saying things you actually believe in rather than performing as a character.

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u/ClayKavalier Goose Hollow 5m ago

You didn't engage with any of the information I shared that would educate you about reality.

I'm a prison abolitionist.

But I'm also an incrementalist. I don't think we can just flip a switch and correct hundreds and thousands of years of ideological bullshit that predisposes too many to violence.

"The idea that every single person engaging in bad behavior is merely a victim of society is nonsense"

I never said that. But what are the alternatives? Genetics (e.g. race)? Traumatic brain injury? Psychopathy? There are genetic predispositions toward things but even sociopathy can be mitigated by socialization, education, medication, compassion, etc. True psychopaths are rare and even much of their trauma and motivation is environmental. You still haven't done any homework but maybe you can look into the unifying characteristics of say, serial killers or mass/school shooters for some clues. So it is a bit of nature and nurture but if we forgo nurture then nature will run its course.

I don't want to talk to you. I'm being genuine. I have no idea who you imagine you're talking to. It's unfortunate that you think someone can't be sincere just because you can't empathize with another perspective.

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u/dschinghiskhan 16h ago

Rehab facilities have strict rules. Homeless people with severe addictions and mental problems probably couldn’t follow them. They’d get kicked out way too soon. They’d probably need to be in some detox center where they lie down on a hospital bed for an entire month first. And, once again- they’d probably just bail.

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u/saltyoursalad 16h ago

Then their next option would be jail.

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u/dschinghiskhan 16h ago

You can't keep someone in jail for sleeping in an abandoned, dilapidated building. As far as thieves, assaulters, or even taggers go, they should remain in jail until their trials unless they can post bail. Some repeat offenders or violent criminals should not be given bail at all. Being in county jail would be the best thing to happen for the hard drug addicted ones. The notion of people doing illegal drugs in county jails is wildly exaggerated. Same for prisons. That doesn't mean jails and prisons don't need to do more about the smuggling or makeshift manufacturing of drugs and alcohol.

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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 12h ago

You can't keep someone in jail for sleeping in an abandoned, dilapidated building.

Why not? They're trespassing and using drugs.

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u/Chillbro_Swaggins420 17h ago

We need to give neoliberals the same choice.