Do you live in a Seattle, a Portland or similar? I do.

I live in a small town in southern California, Carpinteria, a little outside of Santa Barbara. I've lived in those two cities most of my 66-year life, other than a stint in Oregon for college, and a stint in DC for my first five years. When I was a kid, we had a Republican congressman, a Republican mayor, and a Republican governor (the congressman and mayor being well-known as people of first-rate character even by those who disagreed with their politics, and all of whom I'm pretty sure would be turning over in their graves at the current administration).

Over the years, the area has become very solidly blue. It's always been a nice place to live. There's a lot more people here now than I grew up with. That would be my main complaint, but it's still a pretty darn nice place to live, and I feel as safe here as ever. I don't lock my door unless I'm going to be gone overnight, I don't lock it at night, and I don't lock my car, though I live in one of the lower-end, more highly populated neighborhoods in town. Twice in several decades I've had someone go in my car in the night and swipe a Starbucks card and CDs, but nothing major. I came home from a week-long trip one time to find my front door standing wide open--I had just gotten a new door and I believe I didn't firmly shut it before I left and a draft blew it open at some point--and...nothing happened. Everything was fine. When I was a kid, there was a murder by a prowler in the same middle-class block that I lived in. That was much worse.

I have family in Portland, I visit there occasionally, and I visit Eugene often (very blue). The last time I was downtown in Portland--I think it was around four years ago--the area I was in (the downtown REI, their flagship store) was, in a word, "awful". Lots of homeless, lots of mess, little in the way of people going there to eat or shop, even though it was a Friday evening at 6 pm. I suspect that's the kind of thing that you're referring to, and I know what you mean. How much do the politics have to do with it? Probably lots of room for debate there. I don't know enough to have an educated opinion about it. The homeless have to go somewhere. Does Oregon attract them because of more efforts to help them? They're certainly not there for the weather. Is trying to help them a bad thing? Eugene has a visible homeless population also, though downtown still has a lot of restaurant/shopping activity. My family in both places are quite happy there.