Portland Keeps Smothering Its Businesses

As it turns out, letting homeless drug addicts and serial criminals run your city does not create a friendly business environment.

Like so many cities, Portland, Oregon, is stuck in a doom loop as a result.

REI, the major outdoor gear and apparel chain, is shutting down its only Portland location after experiencing “its highest number of break-ins and thefts in two decades” last year. Coava Coffee also permanently

its doors, citing safety concerns.

Despite the crime surge that started in 2020, Portland has failed (or, more accurately, refused) to get a handle on crime. A survey of small businesses found that 79% had faced break-ins or vandalism in 2022, an increase from 63% in 2021.

The city is finally launching fullon anti-shoplifting “blitzes,” recovering thousands in stolen merchandise. But those blitzes are only masking the problem. The city’s leaders cut a hole in the bottom of this boat, and now they are trying to scoop out the water with plastic cups. Portland sabotaged its own police force and justice system to give criminals a pass, and its leaders are now doing damage control with too-littletoo-late publicity stunts that let them claim they are doing something about the problem.

Unfortunately, they were the ones who let the water into the boat in the first place. They don’t want to stop the water — instead, they simply catch some of it sometime later and dump it back into the ocean so it can flood the boat again. And on and on it goes until Portland’s boat sinks and drowns the businesses that stay aboard.

REI and Coava Coffee have jumped ship, as have several other companies. Portland doesn’t need a bigger boat — it needs new leaders who want to keep the boat off of the ocean floor.