Magical thinking: It's contagious

One of the Portland City Council's new members says things are turning around in the city now.

Mingus Mapps told KOIN that the town has "hit bottom" and will now begin to rise back to its former glory.

But from what he's touting, it is going to be a slow rise at best. He confirms that the city is basically normalizing tent camping, and that no one will ever be arrested for refusing to take down their tent and move on.

Meanwhile, here's an interesting story from L.A. The cops down there are waking up the tent campers in the middle of the night in Venice Beach and pushing them out, to a shelter or wherever. It's slow going, but that's what it's going to take. It will be years before Portland ever even thinks about doing something like that.

And therefore decades before it recovers.