I was stuck in the Portland airport during the snowstorm. I had several illuminating conversations with people in the five hours I waited to reschedule my flight there at the airport.
For context, my family recently relocated to a medium sized Florida town (~100k) from a Portland suburb.
It was really interesting to hear the 20 and 30 somethings in line with me talk about Portland. They seemed to prefer it to Florida (where one grew up) and Portland, Maine (where the other grew up). They loved access to snowboarding (1.5 hours away from downtown Portland) and the restaurant and music scene. I half assumed they would be intending to flee Portland, but their mindset was not the same as mine is (saturated with bad news from Twitter and shitty local news stations).
My news feed is all about the crime in Portland. These two people clearly weren't bothered by this to the extent I was (with small kids, etc). I think for many young people, living around other young people is still very, very important. I miss that part of my old life. It seems very stale in central Florida, to be honest.
It's a small sample, but if cities could convert their downtowns into affordable homes (option to buy, not rent) I bet there would be a resurgence of young people establishing long term ties. If you don't have kids, you can avoid the homeless people (Portland recently voted to evict them from downtown anyway) on your way to multiple dates and drinking establishments.
It (revitalized downtown) happened in Detroit, right, when they were at the bottom. Why not in all the other cities? Crime is, even now, no where near the levels it was in the 80s when I grew up in Portland never felt uncomfortable at all. Social media is amplifying a point of view for certain people, IMHO.
I live in a high-crime area. I hear gunshots every now and then. In two years there's been one shooting on my block.
I treat others with respect and mind my own business. My neighbors reciprocate, and don't bother me.
For various reasons it was convenient for me to go for regularly long walks late at night, and I never ran into any issues with that. There was one homeless guy who was grumpy I woke him up, so I learned to aim my headlamp better.
In my experience people who end up seriously hurt by criminals tend to be criminals themselves. It's pretty easy to stay out of all that.
I got really triggered by the crime reporting about Portland because I feel like it is motivated with a political bias.
So, I went and looked at the crime reports (which are from the police, and come with their own filters, of course) from Twitter.
Almost all the homicides are in areas where significant homeless populations exist. And, very late at night.
My takeaway is that it is currently very dangerous to live on the streets. You call them criminals, and I think that is the inevitable consequence of living on the streets, especially when more and more cities are outlawing homelessness, but that's probably more a perspective, and I still have a lot of fear of people living on the streets.
Is that the message we see in the media? No, we see that it is more dangerous for the "common person living in a blue city."
Random violence is not the root cause of the increase in the homicide rate.
This makes me frustrated because the police could easily target those areas from midnight to 6 am and solve 80%+ of the homicides. Or, they could, if you believe that police can stop that kind of violence. Maybe they can, maybe they cannot. They should not be in the business of solving homelessness.
The story that homicides in a liberal city were due to BLM protests is a much more bombastic and clicktastic story than that.
Sound to me that what I found aligns with your experiences in many ways.
For context, my family recently relocated to a medium sized Florida town (~100k) from a Portland suburb.
It was really interesting to hear the 20 and 30 somethings in line with me talk about Portland. They seemed to prefer it to Florida (where one grew up) and Portland, Maine (where the other grew up). They loved access to snowboarding (1.5 hours away from downtown Portland) and the restaurant and music scene. I half assumed they would be intending to flee Portland, but their mindset was not the same as mine is (saturated with bad news from Twitter and shitty local news stations).
My news feed is all about the crime in Portland. These two people clearly weren't bothered by this to the extent I was (with small kids, etc). I think for many young people, living around other young people is still very, very important. I miss that part of my old life. It seems very stale in central Florida, to be honest.
It's a small sample, but if cities could convert their downtowns into affordable homes (option to buy, not rent) I bet there would be a resurgence of young people establishing long term ties. If you don't have kids, you can avoid the homeless people (Portland recently voted to evict them from downtown anyway) on your way to multiple dates and drinking establishments.
It (revitalized downtown) happened in Detroit, right, when they were at the bottom. Why not in all the other cities? Crime is, even now, no where near the levels it was in the 80s when I grew up in Portland never felt uncomfortable at all. Social media is amplifying a point of view for certain people, IMHO.