Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I'm Alex Stone, former military service member and law enforcement officer, now CEO of Echelon Protected Services, one of the fastest growing private security firms on the west coast. And this is ride along, where our guests and I witness firsthand the issues affecting our community.
You, I believe our proven method of enacting meaningful change through compassion and understanding.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Is the best way to make our.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Streets a safer place and truly achieve.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Security through the community.
[00:00:53] Speaker C: Hello, everybody. My name is Vadim Mazerski. I am a community activist. I am a community volunteer. I work a lot in the Portland community, but I am also a lawyer, a judge, and running for the Multnoma commission, district one in order to address the problems that Multima county and Portland is facing in a new, novel and better way.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Welcome back to the ride along. I'm your host, Alex Stone. Our guest today is my great friend Vadim Mazirski. He is a local community activist, and currently he is running as a candidate for the Multinoma county commission, district one. Vadim, introduce yourself to the folks.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Thank you, Alex. It's a pleasure to be here. As you mentioned, I'm running for Multinoma county commissioner, district one. I fully believe that this is one of the most important races we have in the history of Portland. And let me tell you why. Because everyone's complaining about homelessness and the fact that we have so many people dying. The streets, they're very upset about the drug addiction problems. Measure 110 is being changed as we speak right now during this podcast.
And all the deaths that we have and the overdoses that we have constantly on the streets and in people's homes affecting children. In fact, they're very upset about the mental health issues that we have in the streets. And they're very upset, as you know, with your line of work, of public safety. All those things tie in together, and all those things are squarely at the foot of the Multnoma County Commission. They're the ones that are in charge of dealing with those issues. They're the ones that are failing. And so we need people elected to that office, like myself, who know how to plan, who know how to work across boundaries with the city, with the state, and with the metro in order to get things done. And that's why I'm running.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Well, I'm so glad that you are. I know that you're the right candidate for the job.
I want to say one thing, that I'm not in political office, but just as a professional and as an individual walking around Portland, it does feel as if the city is on a precipice that at any moment, the city could fall into what I would call an urban death spiral. It's not going to take two to five years to get back to a period of normalcy or normality, but it could take an entire generation. And so I think what you're speaking to is a reality that a lot of people don't see. What about your past? And what about everything that you've done up until this point has led you to want to lead in this way?
[00:03:19] Speaker C: So let me say, you mentioned you're not a candidate. You should probably run for office. We have something like 70 people running for city council right now. There'll be quite a few more. So there's a lot of opportunities. Right now, we have a brand new form of government.
But from my perspective, my family came here as immigrants from the former Ukraine. It was the USSR at that point in time, and we left because of religious persecution. So I arrived in this country seven years old. My family didn't speak any English. I started school without knowing one word of English. My father, who's an engineer, started working as a coachecker because he couldn't get a job as an engineer. And my family moved around from job to job as their english proficiency improved. And so we went from city to city, job to job. My mother went back to community college and became a nurse. And finally we settled in Texas. During the oil boom years, my dad got a good job. Then he lost it as the oil bust happened.
And so it was a quintessential american story, the immigrant story. We came here with literally a few suitcases, no money, and we were able to get jobs and succeed and bought a house and all those things that are the american dream.
And then I went to school. I went to law school. And because maybe my family traveled a lot, I traveled a lot. So I lived all over the United States, and I came to Portland, fell in love with the city. This is the best city, in my opinion, in the United States. Perfect size, lots of great places to hike and ski and go to the ocean in the vicinity of the city, great restaurants, great nightlife. Perfect city for me. And then I just saw it deteriorate. I saw how things became worse here for a lot of families. I saw it getting worse here for the homeless population. I saw it getting worse here for businesses. And then people started moving out. So I decided to help in. I jumped in. I was appointed by city council and the mayor to various committees overseeing the police. For instance, the disability commission, as well, and then I became appointed to boards of community organizations. What I heard time and time again is our city government, our county government are not listening to us.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: There seems to be a vacuum of true leadership.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Right, exactly. There's a philosophy that some people in positions of power have that is inconsistent with the needs of the people that actually live in the city.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: And what you hear time there is a real disconnect.
Like they don't even understand the issues at hand.
[00:05:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
What I bring to the table is that ability to bring people together. I've talked to thousands of people either through the campaign or through the work that I do hear their stories, and some of them are very tragic stories. And, you know, those as well about people have been hurt, about people have been killed, family members that have died as a result of poor government here. And I'm bringing that to the table. Those stories, those needs, and honestly, those solutions. There are a lot of people out there, like yourself, with a nonprofit that you have that are out there solving these problems 1% at a time, but they need help, and we need to make sure that we have people elected to office that are willing to help.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: I agree, Badeem. So let's say you're elected, right? Because I think that you will be what's going to be your top three items on that platform.
[00:06:41] Speaker C: So item number one is address the homeless situation.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: What does that look like?
[00:06:46] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So the county has about $300 million per year that it spends on homelessness currently.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: That's the current fiscal budget from one year to the next.
[00:06:57] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: 300 million.
[00:06:59] Speaker C: 300 million. And that doesn't entail money.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: We have about 5000. So just for people who aren't, because we have people that watch that are not in Portland, Moulton county has I would say around 5000 to 6000 homeless with maybe another thousand transitory, then those are the high numbers. So you're talking 300 million to serve 5000 people.
[00:07:20] Speaker C: Exactly. And you look at the point in time counts and that's roughly about right. It's a little bit less than that on a point in time counts. But generally speaking, you're probably right. And so if you divide the money just with the county, there's enough to put everybody into an apartment if that's what people want.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: And this doesn't include city money and also possible state and federal funds for emergency.
[00:07:42] Speaker C: Exactly. And it doesn't include all the faith based nonprofits that are helping all the people that are just contributing to places like Blanche House, which self funds. So there's a lot of people out there, over 100 nonprofit organizations that are working in the field, there's lack of coordination, but the main thing is lack of outreach. What we've seen in the press, Oregoni did a really good article about this, but also talking to people is no one living in a tent, basically, is getting people coming out to them day in, day out, week in, week out. Most people have never encountered an outreach worker, period.
[00:08:14] Speaker D: No.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: In fact, we call it the field of Dreams model. Kind of like that movie back in the day. I don't know if you remember that movie.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: I do. Yeah.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: It feels like there's all this money and activity occurring, and the model they chose was, hey, we're going to build an office, this beautiful office across town. And they tell the homeless, I want you to abandon your tent so you'll definitely get robbed. Go steal a shopping cart. Push the shopping cart back to your tent. That where you just got robbed because you had to abandon your tent.
Take everything you own, put it in a stolen shopping cart. Push that stolen shopping cart an hour in the rain to a building where you don't even know what the address is because you've been high on fentanyl for two weeks, stand in line for 6 hours with a 50 50 chance you might get a shelter bed for one night.
This is the current system. There is no direct service occurring to the individuals that are on the street.
[00:09:14] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And we need to make sure that that system gets changed to one that actually works. And we know what works.
Last couple of years, we've had pretty high increases in our homeless population. Well, guess what? Clackamas county has had a decrease in their homeless population. Washington county has had a decrease in their homeless population. If we just do what the counties around us do, we can make an improvement, much less cities like Houston or Salt Lake city. There's various cities around the United States that have done dramatic work.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: And I'm from Houston, and I agree with.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I actually spoke with the executive director of here together, which is that coalition of these nonprofits that are out there working, and they cited the Houston model, the fact that they were able to get people together and be on the same page. Well, we're not doing that here in Portland, multnoma County, there's no overriding urgency on the part of the county to make sure that everyone's working together instead of being siloed. We hear that word, siloed.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: There isn't even a central bed tracking system. Right.
As an executive director, nonprofit, loving one another, we currently transition around 150 people a month into sheltering, detox or housing.
And also we transition them back to home, to a safe environment at home.
When we wake up that morning, every morning when we wake up, the person that works on the back end, her name is Tiffany, you know where she's amazing. We have to call each individual place and ask if they have a bed available. So we start our day with maybe 20 or 30 phone calls just to see if there's a bed available. And we could be calling a church, we could be calling a city program, we could be calling a nonprofit program, county programs, state programs. And sometimes because we're right on the border with Washington state, we're even calling detox and shelter centers in Vancouver, Washington, not even in our state, in order to transition people successfully.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: And I know she's on the board of the Goose Holland Neighborhood association. I'm the president of that neighborhood association and also the president of the Coalition of Neighborhoods here on the west side. We're dealing with these situations.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Or our.
[00:11:25] Speaker C: Board members are because the city and the county are not. We're working with organizations like loving one another because we can't work with the county in order to find out where the beds are available. So that when people on a freezing night need to go somewhere, we have ready access to beds for them. Whereas if they go through certain organizations such as yours, we know that there are beds available in places that you all locate. We need to improve upon that. And so part of that, to answer your question earlier, is getting people off the streets. We're not going to get to 5000 people at 5000 street corners with outreach workers. It's inhumane to allow people to suffer in tents, in freezing weather, in the rain, with drug addiction, with mental health problems, in poverty, in all these tent areas throughout the city. Let's get them into sanctioned camping areas. Let's get them into shelters like Bibe lakes. Let's get them into places where we know we can send outreach workers and those continuum of care workers, mental health, drug addiction, medical housing. Let's get them on those housing lists. The average number of years people have been in housing unhoused as six years now. Those people are not on lists waiting for a house anymore. They're off those lists. So let's get them on those lists again. And so get them into that continuum of care where we can triage, where we can help people and then make sure we solve the underlying problems of drug addiction and mental health through those ways and we can do it. There's plenty of money out there, plenty.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Of money, plenty of people that want to see change.
[00:12:49] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: And plenty of people who have big enough hearts that actually want to dive in and help individuals that can help themselves.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: And then we coordinate with all these organizations that are getting paid to do that job, making sure we give them access to those individuals, know who they are, know their histories, know their know. You hear that by name list from build for zero, which is not being implemented here in Motnoma county. But once we know what their needs are, once we know what their histories are, once we know what kind of treatment they need, then we can put them in a path to recovery, not a path to addiction, which is what we're seeing in the streets, a path to recovery.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Vadim, you mentioned your work that you want to do with the houseless.
Know your role. You're currently a judge. What do you see your role in the county commission in reforming the criminal justice system as it is.
[00:13:35] Speaker C: Know that along with homelessness are the two top issues that most Portlanders have. Every poll is public safety, and homelessness is what people need to address.
Definitely. We're seeing on the streets rising crime. We're still way above 2019 levels for murders, for assaults, for robbery. And so we need to have that addressed. And what I think people misunderstand is it's not totally the city's fault. They blame the mayor and the Portland Police Bureau and things like that. But the county is responsible for the DA budget, the sheriff's budget, the jail budget. They're responsible for setting the long term plans for addressing the public safety needs of Multnoma county, which includes the city. And so we need to make sure that those needs match the reality. On the streets. We're seeing a lot of misdemeanor crimes that are not being addressed. A revolving door where people.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: You want to see an increase in funding?
[00:14:29] Speaker C: I want to see an increase in funding for the DA's office. I think whoever the DA ends up being elected right now, it seems to be Nathan Vazquez from what I'm hearing. But whoever the DA is, that individual will need the funding in order to address these, to prosecute what we're seeing on the streets.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: And you're also for opening more jail beds.
[00:14:49] Speaker C: Well, we need to make sure. Yeah, exactly. We need to have enough jail beds to address it, but also we need to make sure that the jail beds are safe. What we've seen reports on is the sheriff's office doesn't have enough mental health professionals in the jails in order to prevent suicides and things like that. So we need to make sure that is addressed. I'm not saying put people in jail. What I'm saying is we need to make sure that we deter crime, and part of that is enforcing the laws that we have.
So what we're seeing right now, as I'm saying, is a revolving door system where people are sometimes arrested 30 times for these crimes, putting back on the streets until they do something drastic. So let me give you an example. There's a woman that lives in, or that lived in old town in a tent. She woke up in the morning, smoked some methamphetamines, stepped outside her tent, saw another homeless woman talking to somebody, stabbed the woman and killed her. No reason. They weren't in a fight or anything. It was just in that moment she lost her mental health and stabbed somebody, possibly because of the methamphetamine use. Now, that person had been arrested twelve times within the past 30 days and put back on the streets. There was twelve times during which we can have intervention link her up to services, link her up to drug addiction services. Instead, we put her back on the street to deal with the problems until she killed somebody. And now she won't be on the street for a long time. We need to improve that where people are, it's not just a revolving door anymore.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: And for people who aren't aware with Portland, Portland is one of the only major cities in America that has no city jail and has no city court. So all violations, tickets, right? Former cop, all misdemeanors, low level crimes, and all felonies for the city of Portland run through the county DA's office and the county jail. So the county is not just servicing the county multimedia county, it's servicing both in prosecution and in housing of criminals, every crime and every individual that's arrested in the city of Portland, correct?
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: And so we need that funding to occur. Let's turn over, let's take a left and talk about mental health.
Most counties handle the mental health issue at the local level.
In the 1970s, there was a Supreme Court decision, O'Connor v. Donaldson, that essentially led to the closing of state institutions. It made it very difficult to hold people against their will just for mental health issues. So if someone is considered insane, it was no longer considered constitutional to hold them against their will. Just if they're dealing with mental health issues, they have to be an imminent threat to themselves or another. So essentially a life has to be, there has to be a threat to real life. Right. This is one of the issues we deal with in Portland, being on a city commission or a county commission isn't going to give you the tools we need to fix that problem. But would you be willing to advocate in order to have the laws changed in Salem to make civil commitments more readily available?
[00:17:54] Speaker C: That's exactly what we need.
Let's be clear. I think in 2019, central city concern closed down its sobering center, and there's an interplay between drug addiction and mental health. Self medication, whatever you want to call it.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: But people both can lead to each other.
[00:18:11] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Chronic drug use will lead to psychosis, and being in true mental health, psychosis will often lead to self medication with illegal drugs.
[00:18:20] Speaker C: Exactly. So if you have been taking methamphetamines for a while, you will have psychosis.
Central city concern, an organization, hundreds of millions of dollars, that is able to run this sobering center, closed down because there was too much violence within the sobering center. Well, guess what? All those people are in the streets, and our neighborhoods are dealing with that violence. So we need to address people with mental health conditions. We need to address people that are harming themselves. Some people are sleeping naked on the streets on a mattress, and that's a story that a shopkeeper had to deal with because our city and county are unable to deal with it. So there's actually work right now within the legislature to expand the ability to put people into a 72 hours hold to help them get stability. And this is all about getting stability, whatever those avenues are.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Something a police officer can do is called, in Oregon, a police officer hold, or poh, and then there's a physician's hold. And so that physician's hold is a 72 hours hold. The main issue is there aren't people in white coats with stethoscopes walking around. There aren't physicians on the street. There aren't registered nurses walking around. So if law enforcement, currently, law enforcement is the only agency that can really engage in civil commitments on the street level, what I'm advocating for is that emts and the firefighters be given that authority as a sworn officer. So as a police officer, where you have the legal right to violate someone's civil rights for legal reasons. Right. Legal, ethical, and moral reasons, this gives police officers the right to do that. Civil commitment.
I think that we need to increase that to firefighters and emts. Is that something that you think you would at least think about?
[00:20:13] Speaker C: Well, as I understand, doctors can do it in an emergency room when they triage it, so. Yeah, exactly. This is something that the frontline individuals need to be able to do.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: The people that need the help are on the street. They're not in the hospital.
[00:20:23] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And you don't want the first response to be either a jail cell or an emergency room.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:28] Speaker C: These people need to be triaged to where they get the help quicker rather than creating undue work for already overburdened emergency rooms or already overburdened firefighters and first responders. So that's something that needs to happen, because we have too many people, as you know, walking around Portland that are suffering from mental health problems, too many people that are not being helped. And we need to once again get people to stability and get people into those services and make sure that they are able to get those services. So I'm all for that. My opponent, by the way, is against expanding those mental health holds. They've been fighting in Salem against expanding that. So if you want to address the problem in a holistic way that actually helps the people on the streets, that's the humane and compassionate way of doing things. You need to get them to those services, get them to medications, which they may need, get them to counseling, and this is a way to do it.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: So, full disclosure, I've contributed to your campaign.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: I'm completely endorsing you for district one, for molten county commission, and I want others to do so. So explain when the vote is, what's going on, how your campaign is being run, and how people can get in contact with you.
[00:21:37] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you for that question. So my website is votevadeem.com. Vadim is spelled Vadim. And you can get a lot of information there. You can sign up to volunteer, which we're already knocking on doors and canvassing and spreading information about my campaign. You can contribute to that campaign, and it does cost quite a bit of money to send the information out. I have two competitors in my race. They are individuals that come from the nonprofit sector, advocacy work for these interests that they have. I'm the only candidate in this race that is impartial and the only candidate that is talking to all those groups rather than representing a certain group. And so, please, if you can contribute, do that. But if you can volunteer, that's great as well. If you can endorse. We have a very thriving campaign. We're off to a good start. The campaign has only been live for about a month now, but we are raising good money. We have quite a few volunteers. I have great staff that has a lot of history in doing campaign work in the past, so I rely on them completely.
It's going to be a May primary. So whereas the city is doing this ranked choice voting, single transferable vote or very unique form of voting where there's no primary anymore. The county this year still has a primary. So this election will be decided in May. So it's a full court press up until May. Long hours. I'm going to be making lots of phone calls and if anybody out there is listening and wants to help, please jump on board.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: So votevadeem.com. Yeah, district one, Moltenama County Commission. The vote will be occurring in May, May 21. And we want people to be activated for your campaign.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that'd be great.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: As everyone knows, the name of this podcast is the Ride along podcast, right? And so we don't just sit in a studio because we know that the work that needs to be done doesn't happen in studios. So Vadim's going to jump in with me. We're going to meet up with Michael Bach. You all know him. He's on national news. He's a big character and he's a great, literally. Yeah, he is. He's a beast of a man. And so we're going to go right along with him. We're going to go encounter some folks. We're going to give you an opportunity to ask these individuals who live in the district who actually are here now in multinama county, and we're going to ask them what they need and who's encountered them. What do you think about that?
[00:24:00] Speaker C: That'd be great. I know you and I have talked to these people before. I don't know exactly who we'll be talking to today, but I fully expect really sad stories, people seeking help, and we'll see if they're receiving the help.
If that's what's happening and you're providing it, I think there's going to be a lot of learning opportunities here.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Great.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Well, we will see you on the street in a couple of minutes. Fadem let's hit it.
[00:24:27] Speaker E: All right.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: We'Re just hitting the street. We're in the patrol vehicle now, which is a sprinter van we prefer tactical vehicles for a lot of our patrols. Vadim, I'm just wondering, we kind of talked more about your platform and what you're doing for your candidacy. But tell us a story about when you personally became aware of the problem and how it affected you as an individual.
[00:24:55] Speaker E: There's not really one nexus when it all happened. It's like that story of the frog in the boiling water. It just gets warmer and warmer and then you realize that the water is boiling. But I'll give you one example.
Our neighborhood association does a lot of cleanups of the streets of graffiti and things like that in order to keep the vibrancy going. Well, we were in one part of my neighborhood where there had been campsites, and the city would move them, they'd come back. The city would move them, they'd come back. And we were helping to clean up that area and just noticed hundreds of syringes. There was just a bucket of syringes sitting on top of a stool where the previous night people had maybe had been using them. They were still open syringes.
And then in this little park area, there were more syringes. And then under an overpass for the on ramp to 26, just littered with syringes. And you see what's happening on the streets. It's not as simple as people needing a place to stay.
What narrative you hear a lot about is housing. First, we just need build enough housing that is low cost, enough for people to transition. But you look at just hundreds and hundreds of syringes that we're all trying to clean up, and you realize it's not that it's such a complex question. And so that's when you start digging into what are the possible solutions? And how is it that we're not dealing with the underlying issues that are.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: On the streets when it comes to the current nonprofit, public private kind of user experience for the homeless? That ux UI user experience user interface with the private public partnership in the county that deals with homelessness? I think that the people that are transitory, that transitory group, the single mom that lost her apartment, is out on the street living in a vehicle like I was with my mom as a child. Right. I think that the current system actually does really well with that segment, with that population. Yeah.
[00:27:12] Speaker E: There's some years where the county doesn't even spend all the money they have for rent assistance.
If somebody is about to lose their home and they might have lost a job, they need some extra money. We have funding for that. And some years it doesn't get used up.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: That's incredible.
[00:27:27] Speaker E: Yeah, it is incredible. And that's some issue right now in the news today.
Metro is saying that the county is not spending its money well enough that they want to claw back some of that money and use it for other means. So imagine that with all the horrors that we're seeing in the streets, with all the tragedy that we're seeing in the streets, the county can't actually utilize the money that it has in an effective way. And now the Metro government is saying.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: We want that money back, we'll use.
[00:27:53] Speaker C: It for something else.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: So in the private sector, if that was my company, I would assume we have a feedback loop issue here. We have money to meet a need. Right. But we don't have enough needs that require the money. So do we not understand, are we not receiving enough feedback from our constituency, our quote, unquote, clients, and are we just not doing a good job getting those funds or resources to the end user? And I have a feeling it's the latter, not the former. Right? Yeah.
[00:28:24] Speaker E: I mean, there's no question it's the latter when you're talking about not being able to hire enough mental health counselors, drug addiction counselors, have enough beds out there. Well, let's take the sobering center. For years now, people have been advocating that we need to have a sobering center, a place where first responders can drop somebody off that's not a jail, that's not an emergency room, and we can pay for it. There's enough money.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: We had this. I used to come and bring my individuals from my county. I would come all in multnoma and use Hooper. Hooper detox.
[00:28:54] Speaker E: Yeah, Hooper detox. That's the one that's closed. So we have the money, but the planning is not there. And so it's a question of how to best utilize the resources. I mean, don't get me wrong.
Portland and Multnoma county have the highest tax rate in the country, unless I think you're earning over 5 million. So there's a lot of taxes out there, and it's a big question as to whether it's being spent well. But when it comes to homelessness, let's make that impact and address the issues and get that money out there to the services that need it, like Bibi lakes and things like that, that can really utilize that money and be effective with it. And instead, we're not spending it. And the money that is being spent, it's hard to tell where it's going. Let me tell you about this.
Eco Northwest. It's an economics firm here in Portland. They wanted to do an audit of the joint office of Homeless Services. Well, guess what? There's no easy way of doing it. So they try to contact the county, so on. Doesn't really help. They pull down all the 990s for all these nonprofit organizations, try to figure out how the money is being spent.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: How many mandatory IRS filings they said.
[00:29:58] Speaker E: Mandatory IRS filings for nonprofit organizations. Exactly.
Eco Northwest said it's going to take them three years. Three years to figure out how the money is being spent and whether it's being spent effectively. Now get this. They're doing it because our county doesn't have those answers.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:30:14] Speaker E: So a private organization is doing this privately with the resources they have. They're reaching out to all these organizations trying to find out what they're working on because nobody is doing it on the county side. And we need to fix that.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Yeah. If we're going to spend the money, we need to know exactly what we're spending the money on. Yeah.
[00:30:33] Speaker E: If you're going to have the highest.
[00:30:34] Speaker C: Tax rate in the country, you better.
[00:30:37] Speaker E: Have the best results in the country.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: Righteous.
[00:30:54] Speaker D: Yes, I do.
Yeah. It's 955 in the morning. Do you need any clothes or anything? Because it looks like you're clothes. Yeah. Ready?
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Okay, so Vadima and I are rolling up. We're here to meet Bach. Bach's already engaged on a call. He's with a houseless, appears to be female. She had no shoes on. We're showing up. There are some G's up in this alcove, maybe like 15 meters in front of us. As we rolled out with cameras, they all split. Literally three of them went three different directions. So it looks like it was a pretty popular drug dealing spot. We're going to go meet up with Bach now. Seems safe out here now that those guys are gone. Hey, you good, man?
We saw some people running out of here. We're filming a documentary on homelessness.
You doing okay today?
Looks like you've been using, man.
Are you? You're not going to overdose. You look pretty normal right now.
Okay, cool.
Awesome.
So I think you met Michael Bach before.
[00:32:10] Speaker E: Yeah, I've met Michael before. I've read the story in New York Times as well.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Oh, that's right. Yeah. Front page. Yeah.
[00:32:15] Speaker D: There you go. Okay. And you know how to get to Blanche house?
[00:32:18] Speaker E: Yes.
[00:32:19] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:32:20] Speaker D: These are my friends.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: We're here to meet Michael.
[00:32:24] Speaker E: You feel like somebody's around you.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: Do.
[00:32:33] Speaker D: You need a shelter so that you're safer? I can make some phone calls. If you need to get into a safer place, that's what I would do.
You do?
[00:32:48] Speaker E: Where is there a day shelter?
[00:32:50] Speaker D: Well, there's a day shelter here. Right over here. It's called the BHRC, the behavioral health Resource center. But it's really just a place to rest. Like, it's not an overnight shelter.
Are you in fear for yourself or you have got a safety concern? Because if you do, honey, you don't have a. What?
A tent? Okay.
Well, sweetie, I might be able to help you if you want to get into some shelter. Do you. You want me to make a phone call for you? Okay. We're kind of in the rain. Do you want to step underneath the overhang over here?
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
So this is a high service area.
There's all kinds of private security. There's a bid, business improvement district. This will work, honey, here we have a lady. She doesn't. What's your name again? Completely coherent.
[00:33:42] Speaker C: Alicia.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Possibly mental health.
[00:33:44] Speaker D: Is that right?
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Possibly drug. Right. Good to meet you, sweetie. When we drove by earlier, she had no feet on.
[00:33:50] Speaker E: She was bare shoes on.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah, no shoes on. It looks like Bach was able to get her to get some shoes.
[00:33:54] Speaker E: She was just putting her shoes on. She was in that alcove where people were using drugs, and the guy from out there came to talk to her, went back, and then when he saw you coming out, two of them ran away. One of them was still there and left her on the street here by herself.
That crux of mental health, possibly, certainly.
[00:34:15] Speaker D: Drug addiction that was foiling there from fentanyl women's shelter. Okay.
[00:34:18] Speaker E: That's what we see downtown all the time.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Right? This is normal. Yeah.
[00:34:22] Speaker E: Let me ask you this. Why are you all out here with being a security agency, certainly with that nonprofit. Why are people from the other organizations that are being paid for not doing this outreach, not talking to these people, seeing if they need some drug addiction service?
[00:34:38] Speaker D: You're welcome, sweetie.
[00:34:39] Speaker E: Why am I not seeing more people out here, individually talking to these people?
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I can't speak to their.
[00:34:45] Speaker D: Come on over here.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: But what I can tell you is what I think is going on.
I think that there was a period in which several years ago, what we would call travelers or people that are truly homeless, that are not addicted to drugs, not suffering from mental health, but people that are choosing to be homeless because they're like travelers. Right.
That Population got overtaken by a larger criminal element, and Portland's never really been a city. Yeah, let's walk down there. Portland's never really been a city that's been under the thumb of criminal element like a Chicago or New York with a true criminal underclass. And I think that there are so many criminals embedded within the homeless population, keeping them enslaved, making.
Forcing people to engage in sex work to pay off their drug for their drug habit, forcing people to go steal 2030 bikes a night to pay for their drug habit. There's such a large criminal class now, and the gun violence has gotten so great that the nonprofits and the county workers, I think they're just scared. I think the main issue is the people that they hire to work in shelters. They want to be inside where they feel they're safe, and they are absolutely terrified to come and contact a group like that.
[00:36:08] Speaker E: Let's get some context here. So today is what? February 20 eigth. February 20 eigth, right. It's cold out here.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: It's really cold.
[00:36:17] Speaker E: I'm wearing a fleece. I'm wearing a rain jacket. There were four people there not dressed for this weather. They were smoking fentanyl. She was out here barefoot, even now, not well dressed for this weather. She put some shoes on. And this is what we're seeing constantly happening here. And these people are not getting help from people that should be out here helping them day in and day out.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: Yeah. In fact, if you were to ask me, based on my training and experience as former law enforcement, what I think was going on, the gentleman that was in the light colored sweatshirt that was kind of lurking, I think he was in charge of this group to the right. He was likely a drug dealer, and I think that she was actually working for him. Either dropping off drugs to people driving by or possibly engaging in forced sex work. Right. Yeah.
[00:37:08] Speaker E: And then you hear a lot about that. Right.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: It looked like she was trying to wait for a client, and he was in the area waiting, trying to. Making sure that she was doing her job.
[00:37:19] Speaker E: I mean, it's hard to tell, but that guy seemed coherent. Fine, and 100% the other individuals did not. But no matter what's happening here, with respect to.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: He looked like a regular dude. He's probably clicked up in a gang, he probably lives in an apartment, and he's out here making money. We see this all the time.
[00:37:38] Speaker E: Exactly how often do you see something like this?
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Every day.
[00:37:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: You go to a hundred different street corners and you'll see this activity every time. Yeah. Let's check in with Bach. Yeah.
[00:37:49] Speaker D: Lunch hours.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: He's on a phone call with likely someone from loving one another, trying to get a shelter space for her.
[00:37:57] Speaker E: And how do you determine which shelters to go to?
[00:38:00] Speaker B: Whoever has a bed. Yeah, like I said, the loving one another team starts the day calling every shelter she was talking about and asking, do you have a bed available? Is it a short term bed, long term bed? Calling the detox centers. Do you have a detox bed? Unity. Unity is a 24 hours mental health facility where you can take people suffering from mental illness. I got my friend saying, hey, does this person need to go to unity? Is it mental health, do they actually need to go to the hospital? Emmanuel, are there other injuries involved? And so triaging that individual call and then finding that resource for them. So that's who he's on the phone with. Now, we have a large problem, but the solution has to be unique to that individual.
And so how do you take $300 million and create a program that gets on the street and dealing with the individual, with their individual problems? Right.
That is something that we as a community have not been able to figure out. In fact, I think we've gotten worse at it.
[00:39:08] Speaker E: And we have safe rest villages, we have sanctioned camping sites, we have day shelters, we have evening shelters. We have a plethora of services. But what I'm seeing and what I'm constantly hearing about is things like this, individuals in an alcove, and it takes individuals like you to come out here. But are you funded by the county?
[00:39:29] Speaker B: No.
[00:39:30] Speaker E: Exactly.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: We've taken a couple of city grants for special projects, but no, most of it's private funding. And I, as an individual, my business partner and I probably give around $10,000 a month to the nonprofit.
[00:39:47] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Just because we care.
[00:39:49] Speaker E: And we've been driving around downtown, homeless. We've been driving downtown, and I've heard about that. And you turned your life around.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:56] Speaker E: And you hear stories all the time about people that are able to turn their life around. Very seldomly do they do it by themselves, whether it's Alan Evans from Bibe lakes, talks about how he was arrested and a sheriff helped him to turn his life around.
Someone needs to be out here. But what I'm seeing driving around with you today, and what I'm seeing all the time driving around downtown is you don't see people out talking and helping people.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Right?
There's no workers. You'll see different security companies driving around. Very unlikely getting out of their vehicles. You'll see, like I said, it's a field of dreams model. If we build it, they will come. They're expecting these people that are high and drunk and enslaved to criminal organizations, right?
Literally criminal organizations, forcing people to steal and sell themselves for money to pay for their drug habits. A lot of these people are indebted up to 30 to 60 days in fentanyl money. They owe this drug organization. They're being forced to do these things. And they're not going to go to a shelter. They're not going to go to a shelter.
[00:41:05] Speaker E: I mean, she needs help, right? I mean, look at that. And I'm glad that you're out here trying to find her shelter space, but there should be more.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: There should be hundreds of people doing this.
We need mobilized sprinter van units that are doing full wraparound services to individuals on the street. They need to be able to register them to vote, they need to be able to get them into shelters, they need to be able to create ids for them, mobile in the van on site, because if you don't have an id, you can't even get some of these services. So let's bring the services and all that money and all those resources to the street and actually help people in need. I don't know, they're not even going to show up.
[00:41:47] Speaker E: You've been working this area for a little while. Let's say we get her to shelter space today. Hopefully we get her to a place where she can find some stability. Let's say two, three days from now she's back on the streets.
And then somebody else, not you, but somebody else comes. Do they have any records of that? Will they be able to find out who she is, where she's been and all that kind of stuff?
[00:42:09] Speaker B: No, there's no share case management system.
The same is true when we talked about this in studio. We're not tracking the beds. There's no centralized tracking system. We can do this for hotels across the entire world, but we can't do this for shelters for some reason. And there's no shared case management, you would think that each individual on the street would get a unique identifier and you could also use their face through facial recognition to say, hey, can I use your face to see if there's already a case built for you? Yeah. Boom. Okay. Using your facial recognition and your permission to use facial recognition, I see that you've been contacted by these agencies. You've done this and this and this and this. Okay, let's get you back on track. But no, there's no shared case management and there's no central location where you can find out where all these resources are. Like you said, there's $300 million for that lady. $300 million a year to help that lady.
Are you going to hand her a street routes guide?
[00:43:15] Speaker E: And that's another one of those things where people have been calling for something like that for a long time. There's a build for zero concept that's worked in other cities to help address homelessness, and it hasn't been very effective, but part of that is knowing who the individual is, knowing what their history is, knowing their contacts with service providers or anybody else, so that when they're found again, people can know what their impairments are. Drug addiction, mental health, whatever it might be, and how to get them back on track. And we're not doing that here, right?
[00:43:44] Speaker D: No.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:46] Speaker E: I mean, how do you solve a problem when people just come back on the streets and you have to start things all over again? You can't.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: You can't. And the problem is her problem.
[00:43:54] Speaker E: Yeah, exactly.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: We talked about problems as a city, but what about her problem?
[00:44:03] Speaker E: It's her problem that we're asking her to deal with it. We're not saying we have professionals that will help you each step along the way. We're like, you deal with it. You come to the professionals and you keep coming back, and then we'll help you. And that's not happening, right?
[00:44:17] Speaker A: It's not happening.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: We'll get a check in with Bach, get a sit rep, see where he's at. Hey, Bach, can you give us a sit?
[00:44:27] Speaker D: Yes, totally. I called Tiffany. Tiffany's getting a radio cab. We've got a possible shelter opening, but we're going to get her to Blanche so she can talk to the mental health therapist.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Going on good time for lunch for her. Yeah.
[00:44:42] Speaker D: It's almost ten, but by the time we get all this going, it'll be eleven. She's hungry already. But by the time we get all those pieces.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Did we identify who the guys were circling around her?
[00:44:49] Speaker C: They're sharks.
[00:44:50] Speaker D: No, I don't know who they are, but they left right when they saw me coming up.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so what we have going on? Box been able to identify the female. We've. He's gotten in touch with loving one another. Loving one another. Stan, the shelter bed for her. That's going to take a couple of hours. We're going to get a radio cab. We're going to radio cab her to blanche house. She'll get a meal. She'll be able to spend about an hour and a half, 2 hours at that location. And then from that location, we're going to get another radio cab to the shelter. And we did this in ten minutes.
Ten minutes and radio cab. You don't need to have sprinter vans transporting people all across America, right? Yeah. All you need is good radio cab accounts. Right? And people that are willing to care to come out and have a conversation. Yeah.
[00:45:35] Speaker E: And my neighborhood association likewise has a radio cab account. So when people need to go to shelters and we go through you or somebody else to find those shelter spaces, we get them out there. That's what we need is to get people from where they are to where.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: They need to be.
[00:45:47] Speaker E: And no one's doing that. You're doing know there's some service providers that are out here, but not in the numbers that we need.
[00:45:56] Speaker D: Hey, Felicia.
Felicia.
[00:46:05] Speaker B: So again, we did all of this work and the person that we're trying to help is suffering from mental illness or drug psychosis. So their reality is not real to them. She started walking away. She might have forgotten the entire conversation she's already had.
[00:46:22] Speaker D: Come here, honey.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: I got a difficult situation and we're not going to go to sitting in.
[00:46:27] Speaker D: Honey, don't you remember?
[00:46:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:28] Speaker E: And now she's coming back. He's there. She understands.
[00:46:35] Speaker B: That's a hard mother. I was homeless with my mother.
[00:46:39] Speaker D: Felicia, come on.
[00:46:39] Speaker B: Sleeping in a vehicle at a young age.
[00:46:42] Speaker D: No, honey, I got a tax dangerous city.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: Houston, Texas.
[00:46:46] Speaker D: Come on over to the.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: This is the type of stuff that all we needed. All I wanted was someone to come by and offer us help get you. And that's all these people really want. The majority of these people want help.
[00:46:56] Speaker D: Have a seat, sweetie. Like I said, I have a taxicab coming to take you to go get.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: I think every company in Portland has the resources to do what I.
[00:47:04] Speaker E: Well, they should be able to work with people that have those resources. When they call three one one, they should have the ability to have someone be out here right away. If we call three one one right now, the county emergency line for this.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: Sort of 45 minutes wait.
[00:47:16] Speaker E: 45 minutes wait?
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:18] Speaker D: I don't have.
[00:47:18] Speaker E: And 45 minutes. There's no way she's going to be here 45 minutes from now, right?
[00:47:21] Speaker D: Taxi caps coming. Okay, sweetie?
[00:47:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:26] Speaker E: And that's the question is these people will agree to get help if they have the. She she wants to help, she'll get a warm meal at Blanche house for sure. And then hopefully a place to stay.
[00:47:42] Speaker D: Hey, Felicia, Taxicab's coming up.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: There's a radio cab behind you. Buck, right there.
Hey, nice to meet you.
[00:47:51] Speaker D: Hey, Felicia, this is the cab right here, honey.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: Good luck.
[00:47:56] Speaker E: Felicia.
[00:47:59] Speaker D: This is Felicia. She's going to go to the Blanche house. There you go, honey. They're going to take you to Blanchet, okay? All right. Thank you. When you meet there, you're going to meet a counselor and somebody who can get you some food, and then you're going to meet with somebody else who can get you into housing. Okay, honey? Okay. Good luck, sweetie. Thank you, bud.
[00:48:19] Speaker B: So give us a fit rep, the breakdown of what's going on.
[00:48:22] Speaker D: Sure. When we originally were driving by, clearly this was a situation that was way out of the norm.
Had her pants pulled up, had sores on her arms, on her barefoot and her legs. She was no socks, no shoes on, but had shoes next to her. Several guys were circling her. So when we circled the block and parked, I walked up and they left. We made contact with her and she's clearly in a fragile state. The easiest way to put it, she's emotional. Sounds like she's dealing with the loss of a loved one, is in fear of her safety with regard to some of the things that she mentioned.
So made some phone calls for her, got her connected with the Blanche house, which is a wonderful nonprofit in the area that does food and a ton of different other outreach services. So she just got a cab ride over to Blanche where she's going to meet with their mental health team and get some food and some new dry clothing. And then there's a bed that is available for sheltering that's kind of earmarked for her right now. But when she meets with them, they're going to kind of get all that positioned so that she's in a better spot tonight because out here, not good for her.
[00:49:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:36] Speaker E: Scott Kermit at Blanche House, he's such a good advocate for their program, but he's a realist also. He's like, we have violence over there. We have needs that are not being met. They're providing food. And during the pandemic, they were providing food, I mean, throughout this whole time.
And it's know we can help, but what's that coordination that's lacking? I think that's the part that we need to improve on.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: We do. And that's why we need Vadim elected to the county commission in order to provide the type of leadership that can bring those $300 million to the street level to help people. Yeah.
[00:50:10] Speaker E: And get more people out here to help a lady like her. Those three other people that probably if we had more people, we could have talked to them as well.
For every person we get in there, there's dozens more that are still out here.
[00:50:25] Speaker B: You can join in the fight. You can be on the street level. You can help people. It's as easy as just having a conversation with somebody and providing them resources, finding people that can help you. There are great shelters out there, great programs like Blanche House and others. The people that we need in leadership that understand this, they're people like Vadim. Vadim. Votevadeem.com.
If you don't know who he is or if you do know who he is and you want to join the cause? If you want to donate, I suggest that you check out that website and do it quick because we need real change now. Portland needs this now, not later.
[00:51:00] Speaker E: Thank you, Alex.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: Yeah, appreciate it.
[00:51:02] Speaker E: That was an amazing job, Mike. That was something else to see.
[00:51:04] Speaker D: Thanks. It takes coordination. It takes a lot of people knowing, but just point people in the right direction where the resources are. People get the help they need.
[00:51:10] Speaker E: I mean, if only she gets food and some warmth for a little while out of this rain, out of this cold, and hopefully she'll get the services that she needs. But just that in is something.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: Hey, Bob, can you give us a fit rep?
[00:51:41] Speaker D: Sure. I just got off the phone with Tiffany. We transported her out to Blanche house from where she was, and she's not there anymore. She left the area, unfortunately. We tried to get her those resources that were all there for her waiting, but she left and she's in mental distress right now. So we're going to go do an area check and see if we can't find her.
[00:52:01] Speaker B: All right, Tim Ford. Thanks, Ben.
[00:52:02] Speaker E: So, Alex, what we saw is a tragedy, but it sounds like it's a tragedy that repeats itself over and over.
Seeing what you've seen being out there every day, what's the solution?
[00:52:17] Speaker B: The solution is direct service.
Right.
You can come up with a large program, but that program has to meet individual needs. So we have to find a way to get, like you said, there's $300 million on the street, contacting people, coming up with real solutions in real time. The reason we're successful, because a lot of nonprofits ask, why are you so successful? How are you able to transition 150 people a month? The reality is what I tell them. And the standard answer is like, hey, the only reason we transition so many people is because we're on the street every day, seven days a week. Right.
[00:52:54] Speaker E: So if I can just encapsulate that into a very basic thing, it's linking people to the services.
[00:53:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:02] Speaker E: And we can have all the services in the world, but if there's no way to bring people to those services and ensure that those services are met or bring the service providers to the people, whichever way that works best for people, it doesn't matter.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: It doesn't matter. Yeah.
[00:53:17] Speaker E: And so we were seeing right now, Blanchet has some food. Lady was out there in the rain, cold shelter, food. There needs to be a link. And you provided that link, but there's not enough of that link out there.
[00:53:32] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm going to go get out and see if I can find her.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: All right. We're going to patrol around the area and see if we can find her as well.
Hey, Alex stone. So we're back on the streets in old town Portland. We met up with Felicia in the downtown corridor and we came here to Blanchet to meet up with her. Bach, why don't you give us a little sit wrap? Yeah.
[00:53:56] Speaker D: We got her a cab out here to get additional resources including food and shelter and more clothing because she was not warm, not in a good space. But when she got up here, she got out of the cabin and left.
So we can't connect her. She's got to be here. So now it's a matter of finding her and see if she wants the resources still.
I want to be able to help people, but they have to be able to accept it.
[00:54:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're going to wrap now. Vadim has things to do. We've been out for several hours today, but bach and the team are going to continue to look for Felicia and hopefully we'll be able to find her and get her back on that track into getting into a.
[00:54:35] Speaker E: Mean, it's a little bit of a success story in that we actually got her away from what was happening with the drugs out there.
But the end is not inside and it won't be inside for a while, but every day, keep on going. So thanks for the work you're doing.
[00:54:49] Speaker B: Thanks, vadim. Yeah. Appreciate you coming out today and good luck on your race.
[00:54:53] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:54:54] Speaker B: Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah. All right. This is the ride along. We appreciate you joining us. Votevadeem.com multinama county commission, district one. Check them out.
All right. Let's go.
[00:55:06] Speaker A: Let's go look for it's.
