The Struggle to Save Portland, Oregon
Come to Portland, his sister said. It’s green and beautiful, people are friendly and there are plenty of jobs.
In 2018, Anthony Saldana took his sister’s advice. He left Las Vegas, where he was working in a casino, and moved to a Portland suburb.
He rented an apartment and got a job at Home Depot. Mr. Saldana, though, never quite found his footing. By early 2021, he was living in a tent, under a tree on the edge of a highway in Portland.
He wouldn’t let his sister, Kaythryn Richardson, visit him and shared only a few details with her about his life on the streets. He told her about the “bad people” terrorizing him and about the Disney movies he had watched to drown out the chaos that was slowly pulling him under.
Source: The New York Times
