Portland thinks DEI can fix homelessness
Briana Oser
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HereTogether, a homelessness nonprofit organization in Portland, Oregon, has just petitioned city leaders to contribute $828,000 in taxpayer money to the Clackamas County Office of Equity and Inclusion. The organization’s insistence that DEI-related issues are at the core of Portland’s homelessness crisis could not be any more out of touch with reality. The exuberant fiscal decision will only decrease necessary resources and cause more harm to homeless Portlanders.
Clackamas County founded its million-dollar Equity and Inclusion office in July 2020 in response to the Black Lives Matter protests in Portland. According to HereTogether, “The crisis on our streets is exacerbated by racism, homophobia, and transphobia, sexism, ableism, classism, and xenophobia.” Statistics point otherwise. The homelessness crisis in Portland is really exacerbated by poverty and drug addiction, the latter of which Portland leaders have effectively made worse.
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After Clackamas County Commissioner Mark Shull proposed that the county cut the office’s funding to address homelessness and other pressing issues, HereTogether wrote a letter signed by almost 90 businesses and hundreds of county leaders to defend DEI initiatives.
HereTogether’s efforts might make you wonder if the organization has any understanding whatsoever of the homeless demographic in Portland. Fifty-eight percent of the homeless population is white as of 2019. Even if DEI initiatives were to play out and house people of color, or whatever “minority” group the nonprofit decides to help, the majority of Portland’s homeless would still be homeless.
Shull told the Washington Free Beacon, “The words equity, inclusion, and diversity are friendly words that naïve people are attracted to, but for the woke, the words really mean one thing: Applying unequal standards to ensure preferential outcomes for individuals and groups based on race, color of skin, sex, or gender identity.”
He is right. Portland’s population consists majorly of white liberals. HereTogether’s obsession with DEI is just another case of out-of-touch virtue signaling.
Meanwhile, Portland continues to enable drug addiction, which according to a 2019 statistic caused 2,000 people to become homeless. After the city employed its senseless Drug Treatment and Recovery Act, decriminalizing “small possessions of drugs,” the number of fentanyl deaths tripled from 2019-2021.
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In June, Portland finally criminalized fentanyl in an attempt to slow the rate of overdoses. But it has since backpedaled by increasing its “harm reduction” practices, a criminal misnomer. Multnomah County started handing out syringes for “safe drug use” in 2019, but it now offers pipes for meth addicts and straws for fentanyl addicts. Portland will buy a meth lab for drug abusers before it proposes a proper solution to homelessness.
Progressive ideology has destroyed the quality of life in Portland. The BLM movement’s demands to defund the police and the cowardice of city leaders have caused residents to move out. Crime rates, addiction, and homelessness have all increased. The patterns and statistics are clear. But organizations like HereTogether will push DEI until the city is in ruins.
Briana Oser is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.