I saw a really interesting documentary the other day on MSNBC about the homeless youth problem in Portand. They said that there are roughly 100 new homeless kids on the streets of Portland each month and that Portland has the highest population of homeless youth in the country.
According to the documentary, Portland has the highest number of per capita heroin-related overdose youth deaths in the country.
Apparently Portland has some of the cheapest and most accessible heroin in the nation. It also seems that Portland as a city is fairly permissive in terms of what they will allow as far as panhandling and vagrancy.
What do you Portlanders think about all of this?
Is the problem as bad as this documentary indicates?
Is anything being done to combat this problem and do you think things are getting better, worse, or generally staying the same?