What happens when your leadership, which is obsessed with building “affordable housing,” but has no clear vision to do so besides building Pruitt-Igoe style projects, then this is what you get: No real difference in cost between what private development charges for its rentals than government subsidized properties charge, which are supposed to be considerably more affordable. Gov. Kotek has utterly failed in her attempt to build ourselves out of our rental crisis, although she will lie to your face about what she says is one of her successes. This is utter failure, and the nation is watching and learning what a metropolitan area should not do to make rents more affordable. Morillo, Green, Avalos, Doofy Dunphy, Kanal, and Koyama-Lane - social housing my ass. wsj.com/real-estate/portland…

Grace remembers the divide between the haves and the have-nots in Cuba—and the promise that communism would change it. Then she lived through what came next. Watch our full conversation: piped.video/uwhNHFuchSs?si=gzaH…

Yet another example of a Portland Housing First™️ debacle at a Home Forward property at the Hollywood East low-income project. Home Forward, which had a $297 million budget for 2025, has allowed the building to fall into disrepair while simultaneously becoming a crime ridden Hell hole. In the last two years, there have been over 1200 911 calls placed for various issues at the property. In May of this year, the orgs CEO, Ivory Mathews, stepped down after it was reported that she had taken $100k in travel expenses using the non-profit’s funds. Mathews total compensation was over $350k/year. Hollywood East is just the latest example in a long list of Portland affordable housing properties which become a magnet for drug dealing and other criminal behavior.

More about PPB canine Kylo who died of gunshot wounds from today’s officer involved shooting at SE 97th and Stark. Tragically this was Kylo’s last day before he retired- it was his final shift. He was transferred to two hospitals. The last PPB canine killed in the line of duty was 2014. Official police statement: portland.gov/police/news/202…

Here is Kylo, the PPB canine who lost his life in today’s shooting

Instead, she’s created an economy that works for no one, except those who work in bureaucracy and the non-profit grift.

U.S. Marshalls from the Violent Offenders Task Force, shot and killed a suspect at the Chestnut Tree Inn at 97th and SE Stark while trying to apprehend him. During the melee, a K-9 unit with PPB, named Kylo, was shot and killed. The Chestnut Tree Inn had operated as a county shelter, leasing it from 2020 until June of 2026, when it was sold to a different private owner who had turned it back into a private hotel.

PDX Real proudly kicks off a new series: Oregonians who have actually lived under communism and socialism, telling us what they experienced — in their own words. Meet Grace. She was 7 when armed men came to her home in Cuba in the middle of the night and took her father. He would spend 15 years as a political prisoner. Grace and her family eventually fled Cuba and made their way to Portland. We’re still looking for Oregonians from Venezuela or Southeast Asia (including Cambodia and Vietnam) who would like to share their experiences. Feel free to comment or help us with an introduction via DM.

We keep paying more and being told to trust the people in charge. Look at Oregon’s rankings: education, mental health, homelessness, affordability and business climate. No, it isn’t working. Time to take a chance on the Drazan plan: christinefororegon.com/draza…

I’m looking to connect with someone who grew up in Venezuela, Cambodia or Vietnam and later came to the United States. I want to hear what life was like there, what brought them here, and how those experiences shaped the way they see America and Oregon today. Maybe that’s you. Maybe it’s your parent, grandparent, friend or neighbor. Please reply, DM me, or send this to someone I should meet.

Public unions such as SEIU are mafia-level thugs who use intimidation tactics and lawfare to shut down any opposition that threatens their political power, financial interests, or influence over government. We’ve been threatened with lawsuits from this organization because we called them out on their corruption.

💯 % the truth.

It will be interesting to see how Multnomah County prosecutes the Jesse Calhoun case. PDX Real was the first media outlet in the region to publicly raise the possibility that the disappearances and deaths of these young women were the work of a serial killer. At the time, local authorities stated that the deaths were not connected. Our involvement actually began much earlier, when we started posting missing-person reports involving young women disappearing from SE Portland. Since then, we have spoken with most of the victims’ families and spent considerable time investigating the circumstances surrounding these women’s lives and deaths. What we found went far beyond one suspect. Many of these women knew one another. Some had stayed at the same shelter in Clackamas County. Families described young women struggling with addiction, exploitation and people who appeared determined to keep them dependent and separated from those trying to help them. Based on numerous conversations with families, people on the ground and others familiar with Portland’s dark underworld, we do not believe Calhoun acted alone. We have repeatedly heard accounts of networks involving drivers, people watching camps, individuals supplying drugs and people exerting control over vulnerable women and interfering when family members attempted to help them. We have also heard disturbing accounts of what can happen when exploited women talk, attempt to leave, or are no longer considered useful. The question should not simply be about what Jesse Calhoun did. It’s whether anyone else helped him—and how much of the network surrounding these women remains in place today.

Last week, walking into a grocery store in SE Portland, I saw a friend who happens to drive taxi for one of Portland’s largest taxi companies. I asked him how business was, thinking that ride share companies such as Lyft and Uber had taken the lion’s share of the market. His answer was not what I was expecting. “Business is booming.” He said. He told me that his company had record profits in 2025. I asked him why that was the case. He told me that his cab company had contracted as a CCO (Coordinated Care Organization) with CareOregon’s Ride to Care program. My friend was waiting in the parking lot for his client, a homeless man, to finish purchasing items at the grocery store. The man came out after several minutes looking every bit the part of a Portland homeless individual. In 2025 alone, the Ride to Care program, which receives money from the Oregon Health Authority (OHP) to transport clients to grocery stores, gyms, support groups, court hearings, warming/cooling shelters, and other social-service trips. The Ride to Share Program is managed through non-profits, primarily Health Share of Oregon, which receives funds through the OHA. The cost of this program is astronomical: Nearly 1.7 million trips Nearly 40k users 5.8 million miles Total estimated cost: $88 million That is $88 million in federal and state taxpayer dollars. Besides the “Flex Trips” (social service trips), clients were also transported to doctor’s offices, substance-abuse treatment facilities, and pharmacies. It seems that the only companies in Portland’s economy that do well have figured out a way to contract with local governments in order to tap into taxpayer funds, especially those siphoned through the Homeless Industrial Complex.

There will be no Portland gubernatorial debate hosted by KGW and The Oregonian this year — only the second time since 1978 that it won’t happen. The sticking point appears to have been a live audience. Kotek wanted one; Drazan reportedly did not. The proposed format didn’t include one. What I still can’t find explained is why that was important enough for Kotek to decline the debate altogether. Does anyone know more about what happened behind the scenes? KGW: kgw.com/article/news/politic… Oregonian Paywall: oregonlive.com/politics/2026…

I've been to this museum, formerly known as Security Prison 21 (S-21). It's a sobering place that smells of suffering and death, even nearly 5 decades later. Of the 15k+ people who were sent there, 9 survived. This is where the Khmer Rouge sent people to admit to all sorts of things: being an agent of the CIA, or the KGB, or Vietnam, belonging to counterrevolutionary organizations in opposition to the Khmer Rouge, sabotaging the revolution, espionage, and other things. You were also forced to name five others who were supposedly co-conspirators, who would also be rounded up and suffer the same fate horrific fate. Pol Pot, Brother No. 1, who led the regime, came from a highly connected land-owning family. His family sent him to Paris in the 1950's for his education, where he joined the French Communist Party. After failing his exams in Paris, he returned to Cambodia and became part of the underground Cambodian communist network.

When Councilor Mitch Green says he wants to work toward a world in which both police and prisons are abolished, an obvious question follows: What exactly would such a world look like—and who would enforce society's rules? Green and other advocates of police and prison abolition argue that conventional law enforcement could ultimately be replaced by other institutions focused on prevention, social services, “restorative justice” and community-based intervention. That is the theory, anyway. But we can also look at places where conventional state policing has already become absent, ineffective or displaced and ask what has actually filled the vacuum. One example can be found in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In many favelas and peripheral neighborhoods, criminal organizations have established systems of parallel authority and have taken two forms: Milícias are criminal or paramilitary organizations in the city. In territories they dominate, militias have provided or controlled security and basic services while simultaneously extracting protection payments, monopolizing utilities and transportation, controlling real estate and using violence to maintain their authority. Then there are drug factions, most prominently Rio's Comando Vermelho (CV). In territories controlled by such factions, criminal organizations have sometimes operated informal courts—often referred to as tribunais do crime or tribunais do tráfico. Residents may bring disputes before members of the organization rather than government authorities. These organizations can establish local rules and determine punishments, which have ranged from warnings to beatings, expulsion and murder. The term for these systems is criminal governance—the exercise of governmental functions by criminal organizations. An even more dramatic contemporary example is Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Armed gangs have become de facto governing authorities across much of the Haitian capital as formal state authority has collapsed. Recent estimates have placed roughly 90 percent of Port-au-Prince under gang control. These organizations control roads and neighborhoods, operate checkpoints, restrict movement, extort businesses and residents, and impose their own rules. Reports have even documented gangs staging informal "trials" and imposing sentences, including death. The state has not eliminated coercive authority. It has lost control of it. Versions of this phenomenon have appeared elsewhere. In parts of Mexico, cartels have exercised territorial authority and imposed rules on local populations. El Salvador historically experienced extensive neighborhood control by MS-13 and Barrio 18 before the government's massive crackdown beginning in 2022. Colombian guerrilla and paramilitary organizations have administered territory, collected taxes, resolved disputes and punished violations. Italy's Mafia organizations historically offered protection and dispute resolution while using extortion, intimidation and violence to establish parallel systems of authority. A much smaller and shorter-lived example occurred considerably closer to home: In June 2020, Seattle experienced its own experiment with a "police-free" community. Following days of protests after the death of George Floyd, the Seattle Police Department evacuated its East Precinct on June 8. Protesters subsequently established what became known first as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and later as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), encompassing roughly five blocks of Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. Seattle's own Office of Police Accountability described what followed explicitly as a "police-free" autonomous zone. During CHAZ’s approximately three-week existence, two people were shot and killed and several others were wounded in shootings in or around the protest zone. One of the deaths, of a 16-year-old boy, was due armed security at the site, firing into a Jeep that the boy and his 14-year-old friend, who was also shot and injured, were traveling in. There are also important historical comparisons with communist states, although the mechanism was different. The Soviet Union maintained comrades' courts(tovarishcheskie sudy), informal tribunals composed of coworkers or neighbors that dealt with lesser offenses and violations of accepted social conduct. During China's Cultural Revolution, existing legal and administrative institutions were severely disrupted. Revolutionary organizations and committees assumed governmental functions in many places, while political accusations, public denunciations and extrajudicial punishment became widespread. Eliminating a police department does not eliminate that function from human society. Eliminating prisons does not eliminate decisions about what should happen to people who commit murder, rape, assault or other serious crimes. Someone—or some institution—still has to decide what conduct is prohibited, determine whether a person violated those rules, and decide what happens next. The consequential question, therefore, isn't simply whether we call that institution "the police." It is who receives the power that the police and courts once exercised, what constraints are placed upon that power, and what recourse an ordinary citizen has when the people exercising it abuse it. Let’s test the abolitionist theory with a relevant case. Someone commits murder. Without police, who investigates, collects evidence and takes the suspect into custody? If a community tribunal finds him responsible, but prisons have also been abolished, what happens when he refuses restorative justice—or simply remains dangerous? Abolitionists propose alternatives, but none eliminates the fundamental problem of coercive authority. Someone still has to stop the dangerous person. And therein lies the paradox: abolish the police and prisons, and eventually someone must be given the power to police and confine. You can change the names of those institutions. You can’t eliminate their functions.