Greetings from Junktown

Sometimes it really is about picking up the garbage

To say that the COVID-19 pandemic has turned life upside for most Americans sounds like a pronouncement from Captain Obvious, but it’s true. I can’t speak to what it’s been like in other cities, because like most of us, I haven’t been to other cities since I was in San Diego in early March 2020. Well, I was in Minneapolis twice after my father died last July, but my attention was pretty narrowly focused on each occasion.

Here in Portland, though, the city has seen an eruption in the homeless (more correctly, “houseless”) population. With that increase has come a staggering escalation in the amount of garbage to be found seemingly everywhere. While the City of Portland says it’s picked up more garbage this year than last (it probably has), piles of trash are distressingly easy to find.

(photo credit: KGW.com)

Portlanders have come to accept that the Rose City has a very large homeless population for a city approximately the size of Baltimore. What we’re struggling with is the desecration of the city we love. Frankly, “desecration” is the only way I can think of to describe it. You see garbage on streets, along the sides of freeways, along entrance and exit ramps, in parks, near churches and schools. To say that it’s everywhere may be a literal exaggeration, but it certainly does FEEL like it.

Of course, in the middle of a pandemic, cleaning up the garbage- a difficult task under the best of circumstances- is even more challenging. You don’t just start picking stuff up, not when you realize that drug paraphernalia might, and almost certainly is, mixed in with whatever trash you’re collecting. Throw in a public health crisis and…well, you get the point, right?

Remember the cries of “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!”? I’m not certain how you can argue that a great country allows people to live under bridges, overpasses, in fields, parks, and other “houseless” situations. Yes, capitalism may be great and socialism may be nasty, awful, and that sucking sound you hear robbing Americans of initiative…but WTF??? Surely, this can’t be the America we want.

(photo credit: Mike’s America)

I’m not going to sit at my keyboard and posture about what I think the answers are. I’m a writer. I was a History and Anthropology major. My knowledge of public policy and how to make government work better hovers just slightly above zero. That said, I’m intelligent enough to know that there ARE solutions out there, and there ARE people creative, driven, and smart enough to implement them and make things happen.

Then I realize that we’re talking about Portland. As much as I love this city (and I really, truly do), one of the things that drives me absolutely crazy about city government is the perceived need for consensus. Portland is the only major city in the U.S. that uses a “weak mayor” system of government, which means that the mayor has no more power than individual city council members. Major decisions are made by the council, on which the mayor sits. Sometimes, coming to a consensus is an excruciating process. Everyone gets to have their say. Everyone’s voice needs to be heard. Every opinion needs to be considered.

All of this is happening while the people of Portland are screaming internally: MAKE A F*****G DECISION!!!!

Portland lost a AAA baseball team to Salt Lake City because the City Council couldn’t reach a consensus on where to site a stadium. So how can we expect the city to clean up the garbage? Well, judging by the results we clearly can’t…but that’s not being totally fair to our city government. Given the events of the past year (don’t even get me started on last summer’s protests), yeah, things have been a wee bit out of control.

Still, like my battalion commander used to tell me, when you’re surrounded by chaos, you pick a problem and work on that until you finish it. Then you begin another…and so on and so on. Granted, Portland is SO not the U.S. Army, but the principle applies. You can’t solve problems by taking on everything at once. You stand a much better chance if you can prioritize the problems face and then tackle them in order of priority.

Where to start with the garbage? Well, you identify a problem, you work on solving it, and then you move on to the next problem. Sometimes it’s the best you can do.

Sometimes it’s ALL you can do.