News For Reasonable People

Matthew Morales boarded the Metro Red Line at MacArthur Park as classical music blared over the station loudspeakers. It was rush hour on a Tuesday afternoon, and Morales made his way to a back corner seat and unfolded a tiny piece of foil with several blue shards of fentanyl. As the train started west, he heated the aluminum with a lighter and sucked in the smoke through a pipe fashioned from a b...

The degraded state of the Sanborn Hotel Apartments is apparent from the sidewalk. Holes have been smashed in the wire-reinforced windows of its front doors. And one of the latches doesn’t work, leaving the building open to intruders, who roam the halls at night turning doorknobs, trying to get into open apartments. Inside, a rancid smell permeates the hallways, begging for Lysol. The manager’s off...

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office began a program this week to shuttle employees between their cars and workplaces in downtown Los Angeles amid a series of incidents in which some have been confronted by the public, officials said Thursday.  On Monday, the DA's office launched the Employee Secure Transport and Escort Program (E-STEP) in an effort to provide free secure tr...

A member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who previously called for "defunding the police" is outraged after city officials allegedly told her there are "no officers" to send to her district. During a Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Supervisor Hillary Ronen voiced frustration that the city's police force appeared to be prioritizing retail th...

Michael Thomas shopped at the Walmart at 301 San Mateo Blvd. SE in Albuquerque, New Mexico, every week for roughly three years up until six months ago. He began to see more people stealing items from the store. Sometimes, he saw shoppers physically attacked. So when Walmart said last month that it would be closing the store, Thomas wasn't surprised. It's "very sad," he told Ins...

Cracker Barrel announced Monday that it is closing three of the remaining four locations in Oregon, seven months after it closed its Jantzen Beach store. Employees at the Beaverton, Tualatin and Bend locations were notified Monday that the three stores were closing, effective immediately, the company told KGW. Only one Cracker Barrel remains open in Oregon, the Southern Oregon location in Medford....

A proposal to give $5 million to every eligible Black person in San Francisco as part of the city's efforts to pay reparations was slammed Wednesday as "preposterous" by critics. It is one of dozens of suggestions, along with a guaranteed annual income of nearly $100,000, a house for $1 and the cancellation of debts, which came from a committee tasked with finding ways to atone for...

Alexander Jay waited for nearly a year behind bars at the King County Jail before being transported on March 3 to Western State Hospital for mental health treatment. State law, as well as federal and superior court orders mandate inmates like Jay who are deemed incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness must be moved to a state psychiatric facility within seven days. In Jay’s case, it was 29...

Data from the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) shows a significant drop in the number of bicycle riders in Portland in 2022, which had the lowest number of cyclists since at least 2006. The numbers have been declining since before the pandemic, and looking at information from the city's Bicycle Counts 2022 report, KATU gathered several factors for why people have stopped commuting by...

Isaiah Willoughby, a man who was charged with arson after setting fire to a police precinct during the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), is officially running for the 2nd District seat on Seattle’s city council. “I am committed to educating the youth to lead and to serve the community, enlightening the minds, developing the region, touching the heart, and aspiring the soul,” Willoughby said on...

Two new ordinances approved by the Portland City Council are seeking to get more people to live full-time downtown as well as make the transition from office to housing more viable. According to a release by the city, vacancy in Portland’s central business district is up almost 26%, and that rise is expected to continue. ‘Not again’: Bus union calling for greater safety after TriMet driver stabbin...

The governing committee of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) met Thursday to discuss its work handling the homeless crisis in Seattle and the county. The KCRHA is in the process of revising its five-year plan, which includes bringing together 39 cities and King County into one system to deal with homelessness and has a proposed price tag of nearly $ 12 billion. At Thursday&ap...

Uptown is losing another business, and this one hits a little closer to home. Minneapolis-based Target announced Monday that it will close its small-format store in the south Minneapolis neighborhood because of a lack of foot traffic. Target joins a growing list of national and local retailers that have left the area in the past few years following the COVID-19 pandemic and damage from riots in th...

Mortgage rates tumbled Monday in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse that has rattled markets. The average 30-year mortgage rate dropped to 6.57% on Monday, according to the latest Mortgage News Daily quote. That’s down from 6.76% on Friday when SVB failed and 7% on Thursday when the bank’s stock got hammered. The rate tracks the 10-year Treasury yield, which has fallen around 30 basis poin...

On a sidewalk littered with tarps, bicycles and discarded food containers, one tent sat farther away from the rest. It was clean, with the rain fly removed, showcasing the vacant interior. "This is an empty tent erected by activists to encourage people to live in tents," Kevin Dahlgren said. Dahlgren's day job is reducing homelessness in the City of Gresham, but he spends most of hi...

Open house traffic has been brisk around Western Washington, signaling the start of the spring market, suggested brokers at Northwest Multiple Listing Service. They noted softening prices are enticing some would-be buyers, while others remain on the sidelines hoping fluctuating mortgage rates will stabilize or decline. “It’s a very interesting market, comprised of primarily serious buyers and sell...

Every 42 minutes there is a report of vandalism in Portland — often involving broken windows. Some storefronts have been hit repeatedly. “We’ve seen a lot of it,” said landlord Matt Kaplan, as a repair crew worked to replace the broken glass outside of his Old Town building. It was the fifth time in three years vandals smashed the windows. A few doors down, the dispensary Serra is hidden behind a...

The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has thousands of tech startups wondering what happens now to their millions of dollars in deposits, money market investments and outstanding loans. Most importantly, they're trying to figure how to pay their employees. "The number one question is, 'How do you make payroll in the next couple days,'" said Ryan Gilbert, founder of ve...

Retail industry analysts say that rising concerns over theft may have contributed to Walmart’s decision last month to shutter its Portland stores. But it’s likely not the driving factor. Theft and other crime, the Walmart watchers said, is surely a concern for the chain. But the impact is rarely enough to close an otherwise successful store without warning, and especially without appeals to local...

How much would you pay for an in-demand Girl Scout cookie? That's the question being asked of consumers on secondary selling websites such as eBay, where a flavor of Girl Scout cookies called "Raspberry Rally," is seeing a host of listings, according to news reports. After selling out on official websites, the raspberry-flavor-filled cookie has become a hot secondary market commodit...

Green Zebra, a Portland-based healthy convenience store, is closing its doors after ten years in business. The three locations will be closed on March 31. The local grocer, founded in 2013, tried to redefine convenience stores. Instead of cigarettes, lottery tickets and sugary drinks, Green Zebra was known to offer fresh produce, kombucha Zlurppees and locally sourced meat. The store cites the pan...

As harried Americans rush to file their taxes before the April 18 deadline, one of the IRS’s most puzzling rules — to self-report income from crimes — has turned into comedy gold. Outlined in the IRS Publication 525, the agency tells sticky-fingered taxpayers: “If you steal property, you must report its FMV (Fair Market Value) in your income in the year you steal it, unless in the same year you re...

Stevon Williams says he is proud of his job as a bus driver for King County Metro, but he says fentanyl smoke is now so common that it's making him sick. “I really hadn’t ever heard of fentanyl smoking on the bus when I was hired by Metro," Williams told KOMO News. "I don’t want to be put in a predicament where I’m around drugs every day on my job - I didn’t sign up for that.” King...

Mayor Ted Wheeler is firing back at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who recently blamed the upcoming closures of Portland’s last two Walmart locations on the city’s apparent lack of law and order. Walmart recently announced the stores at Hayden Meadows and East Port Plaza in Portland would permanently close on March 24. According to a spokesperson, the decision was made based upon “several factors,” includ...

Worries about the safety of New York City's deli clerks and bodega workers have Mayor Eric Adams making an unusual request: Members of the public should lower their face masks to reassure store workers they're not criminals, Adams and other city leaders said on Monday. "We are putting out a clear call to all of our shops, do not allow people to enter the store without taking off the...