[irrational]

We live in a suburb of Portland. To be honest, Portland itself has become so terrible that we have not set foot in the city in over 5 years. 10+ years ago the city was amazingly clean and beautiful. The last time I visited it was so filthy and overrun with needles and homeless camps that we haven't returned since.

[galago]

Portland was never, ever "clean and beautiful" and its a weird lie to suggest that its gotten worse. Its actually better today than its ever been.

[kthejoker2]

This is interesting, two truth-orthogonal comments.

As someone who has never been to the city - not 20, 10, or 0 years ago - how should I go about verifying which one is "more true"?

[ikeyany]

Both can be true. Portland has some nasty parts (inner downtown, anywhere near a trail or a body of water) that are riddled with needles or feces, but there are also some very nice parts like the suburbs or anywhere that can afford private security.

[loco5niner]

I live just outside Portland, and the homeless problem is MUCH worse here than it was 10 years ago. For one more data point....

[jcims]

My quick hack for plausibly quantifiable info is to do a google image search and scan through the charts to find a trend.

[ff10]

Take a guess.

[drdeadringer]

For my own clarity: Do you intend more of a "flip a coin" meaning or more of a "we should inherently already know what the answer is" meaning?

My density today is more than average.

[rayiner]

I don’t know if that last bit is completely true. Portland was worse on my last visit earlier this year than it was on my first visit almost ten years ago. On the other hand, my wife grew up in Oregon and from her account, the city was dirty and full of drug addicts when she was growing up in the 1990s.

[microcolonel]

Now the mayor is also giving Antifa full license to harass and disrupt with impunity. Every couple months they'll come out and start disrupting and redirecting traffic because they feel like feeling powerful. This has now been going on for a few years.

[malandrew]

I would also add that the mayor and police force are doing nothing to address the increasing lawlessness. The situation with antifa injuring a journalist is a perfect example.