Cascade CounterPoint

Full text: On Saturday, police responded to a call that a man was in the middle of I-84, swinging a pipe at cars. As police approached, the man jumped the freeway barrier onto the MAX tracks, where he got creamed by a train and was pronounced dead at the scene.

But there’s more.

Just two hours earlier, the same man entered a house and confronted a woman working upstairs. He refused her order to leave and left only when her husband and children came home. Police quickly tracked him down and arrested him.

But, get this, they didn’t book him because of so-called “booking restrictions” at the city jail. So, they issued a citation and let him go.

In a space of two hours, a person was killed and dozens of people got traumatized—the homeowners, the MAX driver, the police officers, and the team who had to deal with the aftermath of the crash.

Much of this could have been prevented if only the man had been booked after his first run-in with police.

Something is fundamentally wrong if we think it is compassionate to let clearly troubled people remain on the streets. If he’d been booked, he’d be alive. Instead, he’s dead and many have been traumatized by his actions. We did no favors to the dead man with our catch-and-release policy and we’re making a mockery of public safety.

Full text: The Portland region’s top homelessness officials delivered another set of promises and excuses in a statement last Thursday.

Instead of cutting off funds to failed approaches, our policymakers promise to “permanently end homelessness” with another $1 billion over ten years. In the same breath, they blame untreated mental health and substance abuse disorders for the homelessness crisis, the very thing their programs failed to do.

These are the direct results of programs that promised to “end” homelessness with a “Housing First” approach since 2005. A Housing First approach believes that homelessness can be solved by simply keeping people in some sort of supportive housing with no requirement that any of the support services are used. Unfortunately, the people who are most in need of treatment are also the most resistant to being treated.

You can see that the Housing First approach failed, because as homeless services budgets tripled, the streets are more hazardous, the sidewalks are increasingly impassable, and the total number of homeless isn’t decreasing.

Our public programs do everything but require harmful problems to be solved. And our public officials intend to keep pouring money into this failed approach, so it’s time to demand that your dollars go to those who want help.

It’s time to put Reentry First: Resources must be focused on those who want to use them to regain independence.

Full text: Yesterday, the Oregon Senate overwhelmingly approved a $9.3 billion education budget. That amounts to $11,800 per student—and that doesn’t count the money from local sources.

What do we get from that kind of spending? We get the third worst graduation rate in the country and a middle-of-the-pack ranking in college preparedness.

What could we get with that kind of money?

One thing you don’t hear much in the mainstream media is that the average private school tuition is about $9,800 a year. Think about that: Our kids can get a private school education for $2,000 less than the average cost per student in the public school system.

Just think of what a family could do if state school fund money went to the student instead of the system. Their kids can get a first rate education and still have money left over to buy books, pay for tutors, and enroll in enrichment classes.

Our state is failing its students and the system is failing families. The time is now for families to demand that state funding support students instead of the system dominated by entrenched special interests.

Full text: A newly redeveloped model used by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to calculate annual loss of load probability (LOLP) shows significantly higher LOLP in 2023 compared to previous predictions.

The LOLP calculates the likelihood that utilities will have to take some kind of emergency measure in order to prevent a blackout. Emergency measures could include initiating rolling blackouts, calling on ratepayers to decrease usage, and buying back power from large industrial users.

The classic model estimated the LOLP in 2023 would be 15.7% with a resource need of 1250 MW. The redeveloped model, which simulates more aspects of the power system in detail, predicts an LOLP in 2023 of 32% and a resource need of 1600 MW. That’s a 104% increase for LOLP and a 28% increase for resource need from previous predictions.

Rolling blackouts are becoming less of an anomaly now that more reliable resources like nuclear and natural gas are being replaced by intermittent resources like solar and wind.

Oregon officials can reduce LOLP by legalizing nuclear power, ensuring current resources stay on the grid, and investing in resources that promote reliability like natural gas and hydropower. These steps can prevent Oregon from becoming the next Texas or California.

Learn more at cascadepolicy.org.

Listen to Vlad Yurlov explain why Portland Street Response has been struggling to operate at full capacity.

Full text: "Portland’s Lents neighborhood got a new homeless program in 2021. Could you tell? For the past three months, a paramedic and a social worker have been connecting homeless people to social services and addressing disturbances. But the pilot team has been waiting for police dispatch to give it leads, so it goes on just two calls per day. Relieving Portland’s officers from non-emergency calls is useful, but a proactive approach would be more beneficial for homeless people and worn-out police officers.

The City intended Portland Street Response to reduce interactions between police and homeless people and those in mental crisis. Dispatch calls can be one method of contact, but the team is hitting just one quarter of its capacity.

There have been thousands of calls requesting non-violent interaction with the homeless since the program began. The team could easily fill its capacity by scanning sidewalks and connecting homeless people to resources while waiting for opportunities from dispatch. This would truly prevent police interaction and fulfill the program’s mission. Before expanding the program citywide with millions of dollars, Portland Street Response must operate at maximum capacity. Portland deserves proactive solutions."

Learn more at cascadepolicy.org.

Remember Portland’s 10-year plan to end homelessness by 2015? The plan fizzled out, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. Roughly $70 million flowed into affordable housing production, homelessness prevention, and support services each year. Despite all these efforts and all that spending, the number of homeless continues to rise in the Portland area.

Portland’s homeless service response during the pandemic reveals how quickly taxpayer money can evaporate with no effect. In June 2020, the Joint Office of Homeless Services began providing motel vouchers totaling more than 400 bedrooms across eight buildings by late 2020. The monthly bill to run these programs is over $2.2 million per month. That’s roughly $1,900 in rent per bed plus $1.4 million in services every month. But use of these services is largely voluntary, so after funding runs out, the underlying issues which may have caused residents to need such services could easily drag them into the streets again.

Listen to Vlad Yurlov discuss the failures of Portland's current homeless policies and what the future could entail. 

Last week, a Craigslist post brought it home—we’re in the era of Do It Yourself Government.

The Craigslist post offered $50 an hour to so-called “real men” to monitor police scanners and to “find the troublemakers” vandalizing downtown Portland. It brought home the fact that many residents have lost confidence in their local government and are doing the jobs that government won’t or can’t do anymore.

They believe they’ve been abandoned. They’ve been abandoned by the police. They’re on their own to protect themselves and their property. They’ve been abandoned by the public schools. They’re on their own to teach their kids or set up learning pods. Some residents have even started filling the potholes in their local streets, because they’ve been abandoned by the transportation bureau.

It’s easy to think that some of our local governments have given up on us, and now it seems some local residents are giving up on them. How can voters keep supporting new taxes and higher taxes, when the money government already has isn’t being used to keep the promises politicians have already made?

When people take public safety into their own hands, it doesn’t end well. That’s what happens when local officials abandon their people.

Learning pods have become a popular solution for parents searching for additional support for their children struggling to learn during the pandemic. Here are four things you should know about learning pods in Oregon:

Learning pods hint at the future of education. Parents want more flexibility and more options for their children. Let’s ensure that future is possible in Oregon.

As a new driver, I avoid Portland’s Rose Quarter because I’m not eager to test my car’s insurance policy. There were over 800 crashes in the Rose Quarter between 2011 and 2017. It’s congested for most of the day and drivers must bob-and-weave through the short lanes between ramps.

That could change with the Rose Quarter Improvement Project. The project, approved by the Oregon legislature and signed by Governor Kate Brown, would relieve the largest bottleneck in the region by adding auxiliary lanes and expanding safety shoulders.

Listen to why Vlad Yurlov believes the Rose Quarter Improvement Project could bring relief to Portland's congestion and explains what's stopping politicians from providing a solution.

We’ve heard a lot of bad news during the pandemic: business closures, job losses, weight gain. But, there’s one area that’s seen a massive boom—online charter schools.

Over the past year, enrollment in online charter schools has increased by a whopping 58%.

But, like many things, government is getting in the way of growth. Under Oregon law, online charter school enrollment is capped at 3% of a sponsoring district’s enrollment.

That could change. Oregon Senate Bill 240 would remove the cap on online charter school enrollment.

During this pandemic, families have been forced into an experiment with distance learning. Some have found it to be an incredible success, while others have seen dismal failure.

Regardless, families have both the interest and incentives to move forward with the educational options that work best for them and their students. If online learning works for your family, you deserve to have that choice.

The Senate Education Committee is holding a hearing Wednesday, April 21, on Senate Bill 240. Let your voice be heard and tell the Senate to lift the cap.