Hello & welcome to my petition on how we can kill two birds with one stone here in Portland, OR. The first city to employ homeless people was Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2015. They started with them picking up trash, pulling weeds, and cleaning the city. Along came: Chicago, Denver, Fort Worth, and Portland, Maine, that all have similar programs on employing the homeless population to clean up the city.

Right now Oregon is ranked #2 nationally for the percentage of homeless people not sheltered. The most recent number as of 2018 is 14,476 and 1 in 4 of them are with children. This number was a 10% increase from 2017, and there is already set to be a 20% increase as of 2020. This can be solved by employing these same people with jobs to clean the trash in our city. People who want out of that life, will take it seriously enough if it meant change for them and their future. Not only would it potentially decrease the homeless camps around us, but we could also start to see our beautiful Oregon come back to life again. Trash is left at every corner nowadays and I have only seen it increase in my years of being here. I myself have gone out and cleaned up trash that wasn't mine, even if it isn't yours it is destroying our Earth.

I've noticed a lot more people becoming flustered and upset with homeless populations popping up near them. Asking, "Can't they just go somewhere else?!" Well, no because there are 16,000-17,000 vacant units right now in Portland, but less than that number are in need of a home. Getting angry and becoming degrading to these people is not the solution. We all must come together and together we can make a positive change for us all and hope the jobs lead to less camps, more pretty areas, and less vacancies of units that were there because of gentrification to begin with. Let's do this and fight back.