By Nicole Montesano • Staff Writer • 

McMinnville requests that county support homelessness project

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Comments

BigfootLives

Zero tolerance policies work and it doesn’t cost us 1.3 millions dollars.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/california-city-nearly-eliminates-homeless-population-zero-tolerance-policy-encampments

Tyler C

BigfootLives, zero tolerance policies will either 1) just move the homeless people into neighboring communities, or 2) put even more homeless people in prison for the crime of being too poor. Neither one solves the problem and neither one, saves money and in most cases costs us more money than simply putting these people in homes and providing them the social services they need to get back on their feet.

BigfootLives

And if NOBODY puts up with it..? A hand up, not a hand out. A hand up is a short term solution. A hand out is a forever worsening, forever expanding mess. Which one do we have? We are tripping over ourselves to spend as much money as we can as fast as we can to 'fix' this problem. The same thing that San Francisco has done, LA has done, Portland has done, but our results will be different.

Bill B

So, are we inviting more homeless to town?

Tyler C

I don't know if you ever been to San Francisco, LA or Portland but none of those cities take a "housing-first" approach. Almost all of them take an "ignore and punish" approach. Putting people in housing and providing them with the counseling and services they need to get back on their feet is the cheapest and most effective approach. Utah, had great success with this until they decided they wanted to spend more money to have more people living on the streets. Finland has also had great success.

At some point we have to accept that solving this problem will require the government do its job and help its own citizens. And if we really want to save taxpayer dollars, we will have to give up on trying to punish people for being poor.

Sparkler

IMO, at least the City of McMinnville is trying to do something. All the County commissioners have done is be obstructionist. They haven't forwarded any solutions at all, and have blocked anything to enable access to state and federal funds that are needed by the city. They have no interest in being part of the solution. In the meantime the city under the leadership of Mayor Drabkin is trying to address the issue and solve problems. Whether it's homelessness or pandemic response, these commissioners have done nothing but stand in the way and pontificate their meaningless political agendas. Thank you Mayor Drabkin and Lindsey Manfrin (H&HS Director) for your continued efforts in spite of the obstructionist response you're continually faced with from the worthless Board of Commissioners.

Jean

We can fix this super easy if we all just vote....but we don't....so we're stuck with obstructionists.

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