By Ted Wheeler

Portland is a dynamic and prosperous city, and I'm honored to serve as your mayor.

People are moving here from all around the nation and the world to participate in what our community has to offer, including diverse employment opportunities, thriving and unique neighborhoods, world-class restaurants and access to nature.

I am committed to ensuring that, as Portland grows, the things we love about our city grow along with us.

The Seattle Times recently characterized our economy as "transformational," and Forbes called Portland the "Best Place for Business and Careers" in the country. A recent survey from Downtown Clean and Safe found that employment, wages and the number of new businesses are all growing.

But this success and its resulting growth have come with some big-city problems, among them rising housing costs, concerns about safety, more litter and graffiti, and increased traffic congestion. More than anything else, I hear about the need to address our homeless crisis with clarity, consistency and compassion.

In concert with my colleagues in Portland, Multnomah County and the Joint Office of Homeless Services, we've made record investments - driven by record business license revenues - on a compassionate and comprehensive approach to homelessness. Our approach includes more rent assistance, enhanced shelter options, improved community mental health services, addiction treatment and permanent housing. We are doing more, even as the federal government retreats from its commitment to housing and mental health.

The goal is to get people the help they need to get off and stay off the streets.

We are already seeing signs of progress. Last year, our community partnerships with local business, non-profits and public agencies created pathways to stable housing and services to nearly 30,000 people in our community. A recent official count showed that there are fewer homeless people without shelter in Portland and Multnomah County than there were two years ago.

At the same time, our growing city is facing pointed questions about public safety and livability. I want to be clear: We can address safety and livability issues head-on without criminalizing homelessness. After all, people living on our streets are themselves vulnerable to crime and other hazards.

All of us should expect to live, work and conduct our daily lives in a community that is safe and clean. Nobody should feel threatened anywhere in our city, and nobody should be exposed to public health or environmental hazards that can be prevented.

My administration is pursuing common-sense public safety and livability strategies. We started by enforcing existing laws that had been inconsistently and sparingly applied in the past. That means increasing the number of police walking beats across the city, hiring more Park Rangers to patrol our parks, creating a new Community Service Officer program, enhancing Clean and Safe efforts to eliminate trash, biohazards and drug needles, expanding our neighborhood graffiti abatement program, and starting a new program to get hazardous and abandoned RVs off our roads.

Our most recent public safety effort includes identifying areas with a lot of foot traffic - the kinds of places frequented by visitors to our great city. Portland doesn't have a "sit-lie" ordinance like Seattle or San Francisco. Our use of high pedestrian zones is significantly more limited and nuanced, but it gives authorities the flexibility they need to address specific public safety or public health threats in congested areas, by keeping our sidewalks accessible and walkable. This common-sense approach will not be used to harass homeless people as some have wrongly suggested.

We have a comprehensive strategy to address housing, homelessness and livability. The strength of our strategy is bringing many threads together. Alone, any one thread can break. But woven together we are creating something effective, something durable.

The majority of our work lies ahead and I expect us to continue to make significant progress. I am dedicated to ensuring that the prosperity our city is experiencing extends to everyone who lives, works and visits Portland.

Ted Wheeler is the mayor of Portland.

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