By Emily Scarvie
(PORTLAND, Ore.) Hello Portlanders! It's Wednesday, June 8 - Here's your daily round up of all the news happening in the City of Roses.
1. Neighbors put up planters in Laurelhurst neighborhood to deter homeless camping
Portland’s Laurelhurst neighborhood has struggled for years with the city’s homelessness crisis. Homeless camps have repeatedly been removed from the area, only to come back days later. Over the weekend, neighbors fed up with the lack of change placed planters where tents once were.
Those against the tactic showed up days later and destroyed the planters, leaving behind only piles of dirt. One neighbor, who wasn’t part of putting up the planters or taking them down, told KATU more needs to be done by the city.
“Well I don’t think it’s a solution to the problem,” he said. “I think there is a lot of reasons people are homeless – affordability, mental health, drugs and alcohol… There are a lot of different solutions. But just putting up barriers isn't going to help reduce the impact of the homelessness.”
2. Fleet Week bridge lifts impacting traffic starting Wednesday
Fleet Week starts Wednesday in Portland and several big bridge lifts are coming with it. The HMCS Edmonton and the Ironwood are set to arrive first around 3 p.m., with another arrival Wednesday afternoon and several more on Thursday.
Most of the ships will arrive during the afternoon commute hours and departures will take place on Sunday and Monday, during morning commute hours. Traffic will be impacted on the Broadway, Steel and Morrison bridges.
3. Deaf job applicant wins $225K settlement over Portland software company, staffing agency
After a Portland software company and its Seattle-based staffing agency allegedly refused to hire a deaf job applicant because he requested a sign-language interpreter during a group job interview, the two firms will each pay the applicant $112,500.
Viewpoint Construction Software and CampusPoint Corp. were both sued last year by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Indigo Matthew, a Portland man who applied to work for Viewpoint as a product and pricing analyst in 2018. Viewpoint has not commented publicly on the settlement.
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