Portland keeps learning where its leftist policies lead.
Selling a house there may require you to make a price adjustment for squatters you can’t get out.
Take the virtual tour on Realtor.com of 5256 SE Flavel Street in Portland. A modest neighborhood surrounds the 3-bedroom 2-bath 1940-era home.
But the yard looks like a landfill, as does the yard of the house next door.
And the seller of 5256 wants $330,000 for the house.
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But, given the squatters, Realtor.com has said the price is negotiable, since the owner lacks the resources to remove them, according to The Post Millennial.
It’s become a way of life as southeast Portland is overrun with homeless people camping in the streets and destroying the neighborhood.
“I want to cry. I just want my house back,” Christina Harnett told KGT. She lives in an area with a major concentration of vagrants.
“My lawn is now becoming a public bathroom,” she said.
Annette Benedetti said in another KGW report that “It’s unbearable to watch your whole city become a dumpster fire.”
She said early in July there were 16 more homeless people who moved into the area.
Dustin Shannon, a 19-year resident of the neighborhood, called the situation “a living nightmare.” Picking up debris and hypodermic needles from a path near his house, he has to restrict where his grandson can play.
“There’s no peace of mind, there is no sleeping well at night – every little noise, I’m jumpy,” Shannon said.
There’s violence and shooting in the neighborhood, according to Benedetti and Shannon.
True to the gentle image the Pacific Northwest likes to project, there are negative thoughts about things like guns. But when reality strikes, Portland residents are getting them, Shannon said.
And, “We’ve got a security system in place and I keep a bat at both my back and front door,” he said.
Attempting to recover stolen property, some local residents broke into an unoccupied house. “We went in. It’s filthy. There’s human waste in the closets, there’s pornography, there’s drug paraphernalia, there’s torn out siding, doors propped against windows where the fire has burned through,” one of the residents, who desired anonymity, told KATU.
One local house had squatters in it. After being damaged by a fire, the homeowner was going to remodel it, but was unable to.
There’s a couple living there now, according to KATU, and they are regularly looking around the neighborhood to see what they can steal out of houses and cars.
Of the fire-damaged house, neighbor Dennis Kelley said, “If it had burned down it would have been a lot better.”
A house listing on Redfin.com shows a house in which “Squatters caused a fire in downstairs bed and living room.’ Although the squatters are gone, according to the seller, the house has smoke damage and trash remains.
Will leftist government ever realize what the problem is?
Although Redfin estimates the house is worth $370,000, in reality, it sold last fall for $195,000. “Corner lot allows for duplex and possibly triplex. Tear down and build single family, multi-family or restore current home,” says the current listing.
Evict squatters? Try that and you might have a new problem, since left-wing thugs have been known to put up barricades and attack police, Post Millenial said.
So it goes in wonderful Portlandia, where they defunded the police (but later changed their mind on that).
In Portland, police, unsupported due to leftist policies, have even been instructed not to make traffic stops when it was learned a disproportionate number of people stopped were black.
After their gun violence department was dissolved in 2020, police found it hard, despite a growing murder rate, to get recruits, and the city’s anti-police environment resulted in its entire riot squad resigning.
Of course, Portland is the place where people feel free to vandalize the police union building.
And it’s the place where high-sounding leftist college campus theories evaporate when faced with the vulgarity and crudities of the real world.
Portland is disintegrating because its Democrat leftist government has allowed it.
Sadly, if there are solutions, they will have to be draconian.
From the hazy past, it’s easy to see the reasons for involuntary incarcerations — and, we hope, treatment — for the mental illness plaguing so many homeless.
And the wisdom behind old-time vagrancy laws also comes into focus.
Even a struggling addict, Brendan Harvey, who has repeatedly been homeless, told KGT-TV that he understands the frustration of local residents.
“I feel like they have a right to be upset,” Harvey said and he noted increased violence in the area. “I feel like it’s just gotten more bold, more rash, you know, people aren’t as afraid to do things that … have to do with criminality.”
Meanwhile, Harnett said that it would take one of the local residents getting killed before there is any help for the neighborhood,
So it goes, paradise in Portland. Just be sure to lock your door.
