Residents and businesses in Portland, Oregon, are increasingly selling out and moving to greener pastures as the Democrat-led city continues to spiral downward due to rising crime, an out-of-control homeless population and economic malaise.
Portland is in such bad shape that business owners have been closing up shop and selling at a loss just to get out of the place, according to one business owner who spoke to Fox News.
“We have people all around us that are making the decision to turn around and leave,” said Jim Rice, the owner of Portland’s The Fields Bar & Grill.
“They’re selling their places literally at a loss just to be able to get out of Portland. They’ve lost faith in the local government,” he said.
Rice also said crime is forcing a lot of business owners to quit the city.
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“Our business has been burglarized five times in the last year,” Rice told Fox. “U.S. Outdoor, which is only maybe about six blocks from us, they have been burglarized 17 times. They finally had to close their doors because they just could not afford being burglarized as many times as they are.”
Rice added that another fellow merchant closed his outlet because his insurance could not cover his losses from repeated burglaries.
The homeless population in Portland is growing out of control… Homeless moving in taking over, blocking stores and access neighborhoods! Wondering why the city’s leadership and Real Estate Expects never noticed a problem in the making! pic.twitter.com/CMDv3NTWRZ
— Jack (@Jack21139688) September 7, 2022
Another now-former resident of Portland, Jeff Reynolds, told Fox that the homeless problem has made Portland unlivable.
Do you have any desire to visit Portland?
Reynolds noted that there was a public park down the street from where he lived for 30 years that became a hellscape filled with homeless people, drug users and criminals.
The park was once a beautiful spot for a stroll through nature, Reynolds said, but “it was just infested with homeless people drugs, needles, people having sex in the park, people defecating in the park, the whole thing. I mean, it just got unbearable.”
Reynolds added that one of the final straws that caused him to decide to move is when homeless people started wandering onto his neighbor’s properties and began using their lawn as a toilet. He began to make serious plans to leave after “talking to my neighbor across the street and all of the times that she told me that she had to clean up after homeless people defecated in her yard, that was a big one.”
Reynolds also blamed the “woke” city council for refusing to address the issues destroying the city.
“I think it really is a matter of not wanting to confront the problems,” Reynolds explained. “I think the problems are so big, and they want to hold on to their woke ideologies to the point that they’re sacrificing actual public safety. They think that they’ve got the answers, and anybody that has a different idea is dismissed.”
Fox noted that crime has skyrocketed in Portland.
“Total crime has spiked nearly 25% according to the Portland Police Department. Motor vehicle theft has increased by 51%, burglary by 19% and robbery by 42%,” the news outlet said.
No wonder people want to get out.
But the left-wingers destroying Portland with woke policies are not the only ones causing people to consider drastic measures. San Francisco is having the same issues.
It is so bad in San Francisco that a group of businessmen recently gathered together and threatened to withhold their business taxes to the city until something is done to fix the city’s systemic problems.
Chicago is having similar problems, especially with crime. Recently, business owner Teresa Ging told the Chicago’s WBBM-TV that she is leaving the Windy City because of the growing crime problem. She is closing down her business and moving to the suburbs, she said.
Another Chicago business owner, Uzma Sharif, said crime is so bad that Chicago feels like the famously dangerous and corrupt city of Gotham featured in the Batman comic books — only Gotham is better because they at least have Batman.
“Here you don’t have Batman. I’m going where they have the well-funded police departments and where they want our business,” Sharif told WBBM-TV.
The Daily Mail added that crime is up in four out of six metrics in Chicago. Sexual assault is up three percent, robbery 20 percent, overall crime up 35 percent, and theft is up a whopping 66 percent.
These Democrat-infested cities have no one but themselves to blame. Criminals don’t simply decide to go on rampages unless they feel certain that there’ll be no consequences for their actions. And in many cases, these big-city governments are making sure that the conditions are ripe for lawbreakers and increasingly bad for business owners and average, everyday citizens.
