Category: Portland, Oregon Local News

PORTLAND, Ore. — The early evening rain picked up as an EMT and paramedic team at Portland Fire & Rescue (PF&R) headed out to patrol the streets of downtown Portland on Thursday, looking for what many people try to ignore. 

“We’re coming into this with a different mindset,” said Justin DeJesus, a paramedic and member of PF&R’s new overdose response team based out of Fire Station One.

DeJesus and EMT Mandy Boynton scanned the sidewalks, looking for people who look like they could have overdosed. 

“There’s been a lot of drive-by happenstance overdoses that we’ve come up upon,” Boynton said.

They headed to Old Town, a neighborhood they describe as a hotspot. They are part of a pilot project that launched about a month ago. They work 10-hour days, four days a week responding to overdoses instead of firefighters. 

“I think it’s what the city needs in a more appropriate resource,” Boynton said.

RELATED: ‘It’s a tragedy, frankly’: Portland Fire launches new strategy for responding to downtown overdose calls

A man slumped under a blue sleeping bag caught Boynton’s eye on Southwest 5th and Harvey Milk. They circled the block, only to watch him stand up and shuffle away with the sleeping bag still draped over his head. 

“He could be dosed appropriately, and he’s gotten the high that he wanted, but you want to make sure that they’re breathing,” Boynton explained as they kept driving.

Two overdose calls came in both were in deep Southeast Portland, which is outside their response zone, so firefighters went instead.

“Hopefully we’re kind of proving our worth in this and then if we can make an expansion for some other areas that we know could use some relief from the overdose response team,” Boynton said.

Typically, they go to about 10 overdoses a day in downtown Portland. Thursday afternoon was particularly slow. 

“It always makes me a little nervous when it’s oddly quiet,” Boynton said. 

She explained that it’s a sign of a lull in drug supply and said she expected the number of overdoses to increase any hour.

“Looking at the clock it’s a little after 4 o’clock. Justin and I are only on until 5:30. We have to have our rigs back and restored by 6 p.m. and so that just means if a bunch of overdoses start happening, we’re not on to help relieve crews; that’s just a weight all of us carry,” she said.  

Not long after, an overdose call came in. It was close by on Southwest Salmon Street inside an apartment building.

“This building here in particular lately has had a lot of drug addicts around,” said Rosie Edwards, who was waiting outside for a friend.

A man had overdosed on drugs, but didn’t say which kind.

“We did end up administering a low dose of Narcan,” Boynton said. “We allowed that to take effect and then we had the ambulance crew come in and he came to and decided to decline going to the hospital despite us advising him to go to the hospital.” 

Boynton spent about 10 minutes with the man who had overdosed. It was nearing the end of their shift, yet they knew once they clocked out, the crisis would only continue.

“They’re happening everywhere at all hours all the time just because we go home doesn’t mean that overdoses and emergencies stop,” Boynton said.

While their hours are limited, the program is growing in other ways. Next week, they’ll start to offer people who have overdosed with a drug that helps lessen withdrawal symptoms. A follow-up team will also be able to connect them with addiction services, if they are available and if the person who overdosed is willing to accept the help.

PORTLAND, Ore. — While Portland leaders have touted recent progress on metrics like crime, new polling shows that many people in the metro area remain deeply pessimistic about their quality of life and how it compares to the area’s cost of living.

The polling comes from the Portland Metro Chamber, formerly known as the Portland Business Alliance. The group takes an annual assessment of voter sentiments, and they commissioned local firm DHM Research to conduct a survey of 500 voters in the tri-county area late last year. Portlanders made up half of the people polled.

Over half of people surveyed, 51%, felt that the Portland region was on the wrong track, compared to 26% who felt it was heading in the right direction. That sentiment was more pronounced in Multnomah County, where 69% felt it was on the wrong track. An overwhelming percentage, 78%, felt that quality of life was getting worse — a figure that remained flat from last year.

RELATED: Gov. Kotek, Portland Central City Task Force release recommendations for revitalizing downtown

When asked to name their biggest concern, 40% named homelessness — by far the most commonly mentioned topic, and an increase over 2022’s 34%. Distant runners-up were crime and public safety, drug use or addiction, and affordable housing.

Most issues that DHM asked respondents to rank remained the same from recent years, although cost of living overtook crime for the first time since 2020.

DHM’s survey identified a spike in people saying that they were worse off financially in 2023, with 49% saying as much compared to 38% in 2022. This was largely driven by residents outside of Portland. For the first time, an overall negative outlook on economic opportunities in the area outweighed a positive one, although the two remained closely matched.

Over half of those surveyed said that they’d visited downtown Portland within the past 30 days. Older respondents, Republicans and residents of areas outside of the city were far less likely to have visited — demographics with considerable overlap.

RELATED: Downtown Portland arts organizations worry about the future: ‘We will become a shadow of our former selves’

Perceptions of safety in downtown Portland remained dismal, with 55% of respondents saying that they felt unsafe there during the day and 81% feeling unsafe at night. However, those numbers were a slight improvement over polling done in 2022.

The poll also revealed rising anti-tax sentiments, particularly in Multnomah County where voters have historically been willing to bear new taxes. In all, 69% of respondents said that taxes were too high for the services provided, an increase over 2022 that was driven entirely by voters in Multnomah and Clackamas counties.

Support for specific taxes like Metro’s Supportive Housing Services tax, Multnomah County’s Preschool for All tax and Portland’s Clean Energy tax have all slipped, though each still had the support of at least a plurality of polled voters; in the case of Metro’s homelessness tax, it was just 48% in support compared to 47% in opposition.

RELATED: Despite crossover, different issues motivate people who left Portland compared to those who remain, survey finds

Trust in local elected leaders also continued to scrape the bottom of the barrel, with just 25% reporting that they trusted officials. That was down from 35% in 2022, amid an overall slide from a now-unthinkable 63% back in 2019. The only time polls showed lower trust was in 2021, when it hit 25%.

Both representatives from DHM Research and the Portland Metro Chamber acknowledged that public opinion might not reflect the facts on the ground, which have shown signs of improvement, and that sentiments can be difficult to rescue and slow to recover after an event that had as much negative impact as the COVID-era in Portland.

“You see a cliff (in 2001), and you see another cliff in 2021,” said John Horvick, senior vice president of DHM Research, referring to the question about whether people think Portland is heading in the right direction. “What you don’t see, ever, at least in our historical record, is big spikes up. … It’s easier for people to turn sour than it is for people to turn positive.”

December was downtown Portland’s highest month for foot traffic since the pandemic, according to Jon Isaacs, executive vice president of public affairs for the Portland Metro Chamber — their best month in five years.

“We agree there are definite signs of progress,” said Isaacs. “But, at the end of the day, we also have to respect the perspective that residents of the region have, and understand that we are in for a long haul until people who live here, voters, taxpayers start to feel that difference, and we’re not there yet.”

Horvick and DHM President Michelle Neiss both suggested that, to some extent, it’s a matter of the stories that people continue to hear and the stories they’ve become used to telling themselves.

“I do think we’ve been telling ourselves a negative story for a long time, and it’s really hard after you’ve been telling everybody — your friends, your colleagues, everything — that things are bad, to start saying that things are good,” Horvick said. “I think that’s a lot harder for people to change in a positive direction. So, what is the time lag? I think it’s difficult to measure, but I do think we should expect it to be much slower coming out than it is falling down.”